Hot take of the day: investing in an AI company with posted results in benchmark X is equivalent to investing in the theory of intelligence belied by benchmark X.
I.e. benchmarks are "mini-theories" of intelligence.
(PS: we are biasing ourselves towards a quantitative theory of intelligence.)
Amazing, so glad it resonated!
Thanks so much, so glad you're enjoying it! Yes Go has been an incredible inspiration for so many math and AI advances!
and here are a few interviews with him where he described his process discovering the surreal numbers a bit more: www.todlippy.com/writing/inte... www.cim.pt/magazines/bu...
Oh sure! not sure how that escaped the bibliography--the easiest quick reference is en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surreal... and here is a fun book by Donald Knuth on surreal numbers people.math.harvard.edu/~knill/teach...
Aw thanks, would be my pleasure! Would love to hear what you’re up to!
Really enjoyed "Playing with reality" by @kellybclancy.bsky.social. Beautiful prose, well-organized, clearly written with deep subject matter expertise, and non-trivial broader social considerations.
Enjoyable read and IMO underrated.
Thanks for the kind words—so glad you enjoyed it!
Journalists interested in AI--here's a great paid training fellowship with applications due Jan 7: www.tarbellcenter.org/fellowship
This will be a fascinating read!
“Cartography of Generative AI (2024)” shows a sprawling, diagrammatic ecosystem of how generative AI is produced and maintained. The background is light pink with turquoise and yellow highlights. The left side has a turquoise vertical sidebar with labeled sections such as AI imaginaries, Critical expertise, Data sciences, Silicon Valley, and AI harms. The main diagram maps the flow of generative AI development from top to bottom: Top left: A globe icon with arrows represents global energy consumption, linked to servers and calculation power (chips, GPUs, and companies like TSMC). Top center: Rows of red server racks show data centers, connected to big data platforms and pipelines of training data (shown as orange blocks). Top right: Yellow stacks and schematic diagrams depict the supply chain of raw materials (e.g., cobalt, lithium) and scenes of mining. Upper right corner: A vignette labeled digital colonialism shows resource extraction sites and cables crossing oceans. Middle section: Blue isometric office-like spaces labeled AI start-ups and Silicon Valley venture capital, with tiny illustrated workers at desks, computers, and whiteboards. Orange and yellow arrows and blocks represent the movement of datasets, training, and alignment processes. A section labeled human labour shows rows of workers annotating data. Lower section: Gridded platforms in orange and yellow depict data extraction from the internet—social media, images, sound, text—and web scraping from sources like Wikipedia, Reddit, Flickr, YouTube. Groups of small figures interact with large wireframe cube models labeled generative AI engines. Other vignettes show AI products (like chatbots), digital gig work, and consumer use. Far right: Layers of stacked chips show advanced chip production and global supply chains. A blue network node diagram illustrates the infrastructure economy behind AI technologies. Boxes at the bottom describe research and governance structures.
Hadn't seen this "Cartography of Generative AI" before. From Estampa, a collective of programmers, filmmakers and researchers working in the fields of audiovisual media and digital environments: cartography-of-generative-ai.net
I reviewed two books about games, @kellybclancy.bsky.social's superb Playing with Reality: How Games Have Shaped Our World, and Marcus du Sautoy's more superficial Around the World in 80 Games, which come at some of the same subjects from different angles: meadowparty.com/blog/2025/09...
So glad you enjoyed it, thank you so much!
Any rich dems want to fund an independent science news and commentary outlet, hmu
(climate, vaccines, energy, public health, biomedical research, assults on science writ large, etc)
Ooh that sounds like such an awesome class, thanks so much!
What do caribou bones have to do with AI? Graphic artist Drew Dernavich made an awesome comic explainer for part of my book, Playing with Reality, and did an amazing job of crystallizing dense ideas into lovely art! whisperbubble.substack.com/p/the-dice-r...
There's gotta be a German word for the phenomenon whereby I like a particular book/show/media but consider it a red flag if someone else likes it.
Yes! What’s exciting is how cultural and technological systems can display macroevolutionary patterns we usually associate with biology — diversification, collapse, persistence. Arcade games are just one tractable case study.
Also NY’s Christopher Ortloff! 30 years in the house and has since been convicted!
That's great advice! Also might be worth checking out 'Turing's Cathedral' if you haven't already, it is...obsessively detailed :)
Arguably what my book is about! Maybe also explains why it didn’t sell 🤷♀️
He chose to activate the electrode in his centromedian nucleus, which gave him the sense that he was almost, nearly, at the tip of remembering or understanding something. It's an incredibly seductive feeling.
In a crazy 1960s experiment, a patient was implanted with 50 different stimulating electrodes in his brain--including in an area that gave him orgasmic feelings. He could stimulate any of these at will.
Support indie magazines and pick up @thebeliever.net! I have a little story in this delightful new issue, which was mainly an excuse to get a cute illustration of my cats into the magazine. But every issue is packed with goodness! Why not subscribe and get strange and profound observations all year?
Those who have incorrectly ascribed much of the progress made in the last century to capitalism are about to learn where it really came from.
I recommend everyone consider reading the United Nation’s charter these days.
I wonder why we don’t talk about it more. Imagine the world if we truly resolved ourselves to join efforts toward the aims of the UN charter.
www.un.org/en/about-us/...
Yarvin attempting to justify autocracy with word play has precisely as much explanatory power as a New Age healer willfully mispronouncing disease as “dis-ease”
I wrote a quick-start guide for people to replicate this across the country. It was, in our experience, a very effective way to get real action in a short amount of time.
People are willing to talk to scientists! And when you provide everything, they are happy to contact their reps too. Try it!
Aw thanks! Hope you enjoy—psyched to read yours!
Congrats! Looks fascinating!