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Co-founder and CEO of Stripe and co-founder of the Arc Institute. Keeps a personal site of reading lists, open questions and notes on scientific progress and how research is funded.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Models can prove monumental theorems and still have never written an essay worth reading.

  LLMs

  Their words

  I mean, it's very interesting, right? Because these can prove the Jacobian conjecture, you know, whatever. Uh and so clearly they're capable of these monumental feats. Um but somehow I still haven't read the LLM essay that I found super compelling.

  youtube.com

Director of strategy at Georgetown's Center for Security and Emerging Technology; an OpenAI board member until November 2023, and writes Rising Tide.

From one piece The term “AGI” is almost useless at this point 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The term AGI has stopped being useful: today's best systems already meet some people's definitions of it while falling far short of others'.

  AGI

  Their words

  Today’s best AI systems are good enough that they’re now inside the fuzzy conceptual cloud of “AGI-ish”: that is, they’ve surpassed some people’s definitions of AGI, while falling well short of others’.

  The term “AGI” is almost useless at this pointhelentoner.substack.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  AI capabilities are jagged rather than smooth, so the different definitions of human-level AI will be met years apart rather than together.

  AGI

  Their words

  This makes it likely that there could be big gaps between when different definitions of AGI are fulfilled.

  The term “AGI” is almost useless at this pointhelentoner.substack.com

Economist at George Mason University, co-author of Marginal Revolution, host of Conversations with Tyler. Writes in short, dense claims about economics, culture and AI, and has moved position on AI in public more than once.

• Likedrcmnd.app

  The Proof is in the Code: How a Truth Machine is Transforming Math and AI

  Their words

  A very useful book about the history of proving math theorems by computer.

  marginalrevolution.com

Mathematician at UCLA, working mainly in harmonic analysis and partial differential equations. Writes What's new, a long-running blog on their research, open problems and expository notes.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Some theorems may only ever be provable by unintelligible case-by-case brute force; the four colour theorem still has no conceptually elegant proof.

  Their words

  I mean, some problems have been basically solved by pure brute force. The four color theorem is is a famous example. Um, we have still not found a conceptually elegant proof of this theorem.

  youtube.com

Software engineer at PlanetScale and creator of the vim-go plugin. Writes at arslan.io about Go, tooling, industrial design and books.

• Mixed onrcmnd.app

  The Inner Game of Tennis

  Their words

  I'm mixed on this book. It doesn't really offer actionable exercises, and the Self 1 and Self 2 framing didn't fully convince me.

  arslan.io

Novelist and critic, author of The Body Scout and Metallic Realms; writes the newsletter Counter Craft on fiction craft and the publishing industry.

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  Exercises in Style

  Their words

  Oulipo's co-founder Raymond Queneau has a book to include here called Exercises in Style (trans. by Barbara Wright), which retells an intentionally banal story 99 times.

  countercraft.substack.com

Astrobiologist and theoretical physicist at Arizona State University, working on assembly theory and the physics of life.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Astrobiology's standard definition of life — a self-sustaining chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution — is wrong in every single one of its words.

  Their words

  That’s one of these standard different definitions that a lot of people in my field like to use in astrobiology is life as a self-sustaining chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution, which I was once quoted as agreeing with, and I was really offended because I hate that definition. I think it’s terrible, and I think it’s terrible that people use it. I think every word in that definition is actually wrong as a descriptor of life.

  youtube.com

Co-founder and CEO of OpenAI; previously president of Y Combinator.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Asking when AGI will arrive is a poorly formed question; the answerable question is when a system will be able to do a particular capability.

  AGI

  Their words

  I used to love to speculate on that question. I have realized since that I think it’s very poorly formed, and that people use extremely different definitions for what AGI is. So I think it makes more sense to talk about when we’ll build systems that can do capability X or Y or Z, rather than when we fuzzily cross this one mile marker.

  youtube.com

Writes jvns.ca, turning "hard and scary" topics — networking, debugging, Linux internals — into plain explanations and hand-drawn comics. Publishes Wizard Zines, illustrated programming zines. Software developer based in Montreal.

• Likedrcmnd.app

  Cryptopals

  Their words

  Cryptopals – a set of exercises to learn cryptography by breaking it. Very fun.

  jvns.ca

Software engineer; co-founder and former CTO of Tailscale, previously on the Go team at Google.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The software industry misunderstands backwards compatibility by focusing on narrow legalistic definitions rather than outcomes.

  Their words

  We as a profession misunderstand and misuse the concept of backwards compatibility, both upstream and downstream, by focusing on narrow legalistic definitions instead of outcomes.

  log4j: between a rock and a hard placecrawshaw.io