Three hundred million years ago, plants evolved lignin—a complex polymer that gave wood its strength and rigidity—but nothing on Earth could break it down. Dead trees accumulated for sixty million years, burying vast amounts of carbon that would eventually become the coal deposits we burn today. Then, around 290 million...
Three hundred million years ago, plants evolved lignin—a complex polymer that gave wood its strength and rigidity—but nothing on Earth could break it down. Dead trees accumulated for sixty million years, burying vast amounts of carbon that would eventually become the coal deposits we burn today. Then, around 290 million years ago, white rot fungi evolved class II peroxidases: enzymes capable of dismantling lignin's molecular bonds. With their arrival, dead plant matter could finally be broken down into its basic chemical components. The solution to that planetary crisis did not emerge from the top down—from larger, more complex organisms—but from the bottom up, from microbes evolving new biochemical capabilities.
It took sixty million... (read 1137 more words →)
The "are LLMs conscious" debate bugs me a lot, because it assumes brains and silicon are remotely comparable. I keep arguing that they are not.
Brains are 3D. ~100 trillion synapses in 1.4 liters, every neuron within 40μm of a capillary, with 400 miles of vasculature doing cooling and nutrient delivery at micron resolution. Our silicon chips are flat with heatsinks glued on top. We don't have the manufacturing tech for anything else.
As for energy, a brain runs on maybe 20 watts (rough estimate, includes maintenance). Over 80 years that's ~14,000 kWh total, and we have developed countless incredible minds across that kind of horizon. Training GPT-4 used ~50 GWh. That's about 3,500... (read more)