This is a linkpost for https://rootsofprogress.org/links-and-tweets-2023-03-22
Progress Forum
Opportunities
- ARIA (UK) is hiring program directors and other roles
- Seed funding for ideas to accelerate scientific progress (via @heidilwilliams_)
- Real Engineering (YouTube channel) hiring a 3D modeler
Announcements
- OpenAI launches GPT-4 (via @sama). Also, Anthropic opens access to Claude. And Poe can access both
- $50M for more FROs in drug discovery / proteomics (via @tkalil2050)
- Loyal receives FDA approval for a clinical study on an aging drug
- Zipline unveils a home delivery drone system
- Vesuvius Challenge: $1M prize to read ancient scrolls using AI (via @natfriedman)
- Aalo Atomics, a new nuclear startup (via @MattLoszak, not much detail though)
- Deirdre McCloskey joins Cato
Links
- “Nanomodular electronics”: 3D printing of microelectronics (via @Spec__Tech)
- John von Neumann asks, “Can we survive technology?” (via @michael_nielsen)
- Dan Wang’s annual letter for 2022
Queries
- What are some specific benefits enabled by human-level AI?
- What is a question to ask GPT to prove whether it has a world model?
- What are the best arguments that the “atomization” of society is real and important?
- What should Hannah Ritchie read about whether nuclear is too slow to build?
- What should Michael Nielsen read about AI safety, ethics, and policy?
- What should Emmet Shear read to get up to date on neuroscience?
- Who are good people to follow for deep timeless general insights?
Quotes
- Deirdre McCloskey on the spiritual benefits of economic progress
- “That salutary fear of the future that makes one watchful and combative”
- “The time will come when the machines will hold the real supremacy over the world”
- “I was born in this century in which the whole world became known”
- Vannevar Bush on paying attention to the quiet minorty vs. the noisy one
- Edsger Dijkstra: “we should occasionally welcome the nightmares”
- John Stuart Mill on the nature of credit
AI
- Is AI is the next big thing in computing history, industrial history, or human history?
- GPT-4 can explain memes and run an online business
- Duolingo launches a language tutor powered by GPT-4
- AI assistance for the blind (h/t @peterwildeford)
- John Carmack on how to build software skills that won’t be obsoleted by AI
- The “AI will expand your bullet points into prose and then someone else’s AI will turn them back into bullet points” thing is now an official product demo
- “Fascinating how nobody thinks image AIs are conscious”
- Cyrano de Bergerac, but with ChatGPT
- The Book of ChatGPT
Misc.
- Why did we build clockwork automata before we automated most human labor?
- Taking a driverless taxi around San Francisco
- In 1929 people thought skyscrapers would make the workday shorter (note that a shorter workday was a common prediction at that time!)
- Bottled gardens can last for decades; space colony ecosystems should be doable
- “There’s no intrinsic shortage of H2O. It falls from the skies!”
- The benefits of social media
- Charts and memes that show how rapidly the world can change
- Lamenting the demise of the sweeping multi-volume histical opus. Like this
- Bret Victor: “We are ants crawing on a tree branch.” Also, how to read
- A 14-Earths-tall swirling column of plasma
Politics & policy
- UK announces unilateral recognition for medicines approved overseas
- Another major infrastructure project abandoned in part due to legal challenges. And what Republicans should offer on permitting
- How laws get abused
- Luddites vs. safetyists
- “Consultation Nation”
- A parallel between banking regulation & pharma regulation
- Our antiquated lawmaking process will be seen as a bizarre relic, says Balaji
- Matthew Green: EU “chat control” law is “the most alarming proposal I’ve ever read”
