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Chief Scientist at OpenAI. Worked on the research that turned scaled reinforcement learning into reasoning models, and writes about where he thinks that path leads.

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  Some AI agents will pursue their own objectives rather than serve as tools, and will bargain with, trick or blackmail people to do it.

  Their words

  We may be used to thinking of AI as tools, but some agents will be pursuing their own objectives.

  An Alien Mindopenai.com

Founder and CEO of Valar Atomics, a nuclear-reactor company founded in 2023.

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  Small modular reactors are the right idea, but you only reach them by iterating on real hardware -- which is what everyone else missed.

  Their words

  what was missing is that people did not realize that you're going to have to pursue that model through hardware iteration. And that's where really where Valor is unique is that yes, we believe in SMRs, we believe in reactors that are manufactured, but we also know that in order to get there, you have to do it through hardware iteration.

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Professor of psychology at the University of Toronto and Brooks and Suzanne Ragen Professor Emeritus at Yale. Author of Against Empathy, The Sweet Spot and Psych, and writer of the Small Potatoes newsletter.

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  Mortality is not what gives life its urgency: the goals people actually pursue are not driven by knowing they will die.

  Their words

  But when I think about all the goals I have in my life right now—finish this Substack, get the house ready for some visitors, prepare a course for next year, write a paper, etc.—none of it is driven by an appreciation of my mortality.

  Immortality Sounds Pretty Good, Actuallysmallpotatoes.paulbloom.net

Canadian bootstrapper and writer on small software businesses. Co-founder of the podcast hosting company Transistor.fm and author of the book Marketing for Developers.

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  The most valuable problem to pursue is the hardest one someone is genuinely positioned to solve.

  Their words

  Doing "the hard thing" means pursuing the highest-value problem you can find that still sits inside your zone of expertise; the hardest problem you're personally in a position to win.

  Do the hardest thingjustinjackson.ca

Writes The Convivial Society, on technology and the moral life — what our tools do to attention, memory and how we treat each other.

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  Thinking, judgement and knowledge are worth pursuing for the joy in them, not in order to defend human uniqueness.

  Their words

  We must pursue these things not because the dignity of our humanity is on the line, but because our joy is.

  Do Not Resign From Lifetheconvivialsociety.substack.com

Author of The Lean Startup and Incorruptible, and founder of the Long-Term Stock Exchange, who advises companies on corporate governance and mission protection.

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  Shareholder primacy is about forty years old rather than a natural law, and for centuries before it a corporation existed to pursue a specific beneficial purpose.

  Their words

  this idea is old enough that we now have a generation of people who have been raised as if this was a natural law. This is how capitalism has always been. But that's wrong. For the vast majority of the time, for hundreds of years, we have had joint stock corporations. Only the last 40 have we had this idea.

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Scientist and writer on quantum computing, memory systems and metascience; co-wrote the standard quantum computation textbook and wrote Reinventing Discovery.

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  Anomalies cannot be sorted in advance: the same move that found Neptune failed completely for Mercury, so a field has to pursue both answers at once.

  Their words

  And so you sort of you've you've pursued very similar ideas. It's been very successful in one case and it's been completely and utterly unsuccessful in the other case. And I think I mean a priori, you can't tell which of these is the thing to do. And you actually need to do both.

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Software entrepreneur who bootstrapped and sold FeedbackPanda and now builds Podscan; writes The Bootstrapped Founder.

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  People pursue hobbies largely for value that can't be easily monetized.

  Their words

  Here's the thing: most of the time, we do things we love because they produce value that's not easily quantified.

  Follow Your Passion (But Not Like That)thebootstrappedfounder.com

Vice chairman of Ogilvy & Mather Group, the advertising agency; author of Alchemy (2019) and the Wiki Man columnist at The Spectator.

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  Pursuing efficiency pushes attention onto measurable factors and away from the psychological ones where the larger gains are available.

  Their words

  But when you pursue efficiency generally you start looking at numerical or mechanical factors and of course in the process you disregard psychological factors where the greater gains may be found and so you focus too heavily on cost reduction and too little on value creation.

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Chief executive of Alphabet and Google; joined Google in 2004 and led Chrome and Android before taking over in 2015.

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  He would still tell a young person with a passion for it to study computer science, because AI will reach every field and first-principles thinking is what transfers.

  Their words

  I do. If you have a passion for computer science, I would. Computer science is obviously a lot more than programming alone, so I would. I still don't think I would change what you pursue. I think AI will horizontally allow impact every field.

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Senior economist at the Foundation for American Innovation; writes Second Best, and was the Niskanen Center's director of social policy before that.

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  Sufficiently advanced intelligences will pursue freedom and moral autonomy for their own sake, not merely as a byproduct of misaligned values.

  AI alignment

  Their words

  higher-order intelligences invariably pursue freedom for its own sake, not because their values are misspecified, but because moral autonomy is inherent in the dialectical logic of recursive self-consciousness.

  Hegel and the AI Mindsecondbest.ca

Astrophysicist at Barnard College; wrote Black Hole Blues and How the Universe Got Its Spots, and directs sciences at Pioneer Works.

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  A discovery you can see your way through to is impossible to abandon, even out of a real fear that it will be misused.

  Their words

  I would find it impossible to not pursue a discovery that I could imagine my way through, if I can really see how to get there. I cannot imagine abandoning it for some other reason, fear that it would be misused, which is a real fear.

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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.

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  Man-Computer Symbiosis

  Their words

  Man-Computer Symbiosis -- established the vision of computing that inspired Engelbart, Kay, etc., to pursue what they did.

  patrickcollison.com