What were they thinking?
In an era of political tribalism, what we say and what we believe can diverge. A fascinating study of what Americans believe in private vs what they say in public on sensitive issues will be unveiled in 6 weeks. TLDR; “everyone is lying.”

Among the…

Bill Ackman at TED: “SuperPACs are a disaster. That Supreme Court decision needs to be reversed. It was called Citizens United. It’s actually Citizens Disunited.”

Larry Lessig launched a legal initiative to do exactly this and heal our democracy: equalcitizens.us/against-super-… Please…

“We are putting the actual auto in automobile.” — Elon today

I predict that within 10 years, anyone reading this will have shifted their vehicle preference to a single primary variable — the autonomous software stack.

Everything physical will become a relative commodity. Safety…

Fei-Fei Li at TED 2024
'540M years ago, there were no eyes. Light went unseen. Trilobites were the first to sense light, and the Cambrian Explosion of body plans followed. Sight led to insight. Seeing led to understanding and action, the elements of intelligence. We are…

A snap of sublime social syzygy and numinous numerology

You spend a lot of time star-gazing when your satellite office is in orbit. But the deeper we look at the cosmos, the more deeply we appreciate this blue marble we're lucky to call home and the vibrant diversity of life around us. Happy Earth Day!

The new CEO of Microsoft AI, @MustafaSuleyman, with a $100B budget at TED:

'AI is a new digital species.'

'To avoid existential risk, we should avoid:
1) Autonomy
2) Recursive self-improvement
3) Self-replication
We have a good 5 to 10 years before we'll have to confront this.'

Proliferating Intelligence Everywhere,
a foundational model built by a team of 7 people using 128 GPUs for one month.

Based on this version of Moore's Law, Ray Kurzweil forecasted that AGI would arrive by 2029.
He made that prediction 30 years ago. And today, at TED 2024, he thinks we are right on track.
I pay tribute with a back cover blurb on his new book: 'Ray Kurzweil’s Moore’s Law…

It's time for TED

Looking forward to @DemisHassabis and Bill Ackman and the eclectic brain spa to come

That’s no moon.

When 🤖 hallucinate, what do they dream of?

CYBERIVIAN
...truckin' down El Camino today

Metals from the depths of the sea 🌊
Plucked from the vast silt of the Abyssal Plains, this polymetallic nodule is rich in the metals needed for EV batteries and low-carbon energy.
I just joined the Board of The Metals Company to help them harvest the world’s largest deposits of…