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Machine-learning researcher on open language models; writes the Interconnects newsletter and the RLHF Book, after leading post-training at Ai2.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  AI-caused catastrophic extinction risk is negligible, but disasters like critical-infrastructure cyberattacks and bio-risks from AI are real and worth debating.

  Their words

  I put the probability of complete extinction as being so low it isn't worth discussing, but the probabilities of AI caused disasters - e.g. cyber attacks on critical infrastructure or bio-risks - as being worth debating.

  interconnects.ai

Mathematician and Senior Lecturer in the Mathematics department at Columbia University. Author of the book Not Even Wrong and of the long-running physics blog of the same name.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  AI agents are going to have major consequences for how mathematics research is done.

  Their words

  The new AI agents have profound implications for mathematics research and I think the math community needs to start discussing specific ways to deal with these.

  A Modest Proposalmath.columbia.edu

Founded Bridgewater Associates in 1975 and led it until stepping back from control in 2022. Author of Principles, The Changing World Order and How Countries Go Broke; publishes economic analysis at economicprinciples.org.

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  MasterClass Executive program

  Their words

  It was great discussing this and other topics with Masterclass CEO David Rogier and future members of the @MasterClass Executive program. You can learn more about the program here: https://t.co/9wMKPLsuTY

  x.com

Writes on effective altruism, energy and the arithmetic behind arguments people repeat — including how much electricity a chatbot query actually uses.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The American data-centre backlash is homegrown, not a foreign influence operation.

  data centersAmerica

  Their words

  I have a long separate post here looking at the evidence we have, and I come away thinking the data center backlash is basically entirely homegrown.

  blog.andymasley.com

Professor of economics at George Mason University and Bartley J. Madden Chair at the Mercatus Center. Co-writes the blog Marginal Revolution and co-authors the textbook Modern Principles of Economics with Tyler Cowen.

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  Enlightenment 2.0

  Their words

  In my 2015 post discussing Joseph Heath’s excellent book Enlightenment 2.0

  marginalrevolution.com

British open-standards and open-source technologist, formerly of the UK Government Digital Service and the W3C Advisory Committee. Blogs at shkspr.mobi, where he posts a book review most weeks.

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  Coding Literacy

  Their words

  This is a disappointing and frustrating book - not least because it so nearly hits the mark. The subtitle is "How Computer Programming Is Changing Writing" - but it never gets close to discussing that topic, let alone deeply examining it.

  shkspr.mobi

Chief Scientist at Google DeepMind and Google Research, at Google since 1999, where he co-created MapReduce, Bigtable, TensorFlow and the TPU.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The numbers an AI engineer should know by heart are memory bandwidths and the energy cost of a single operation.

  energy

  Their words

  Yeah, I mean I think if you looked at what is important in AI systems these days, you would want to know things like the bandwidth between you know your main memory system on your accelerator to the onchip memory to the um you know the multiplier unit or whatever. You want to know how much energy does it take to do a single multiplier operation.

  Jeff Dean: The 1% Rule for Building in AIyoutube.com

Historian of maritime strategy at the US Naval War College; wrote The Wars for Asia and works on why continental and maritime powers fight differently.

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  The maritime world does not try to eliminate a rogue state; it aims only to contain the problem at an acceptable cost.

  Their words

  This world is not about the operational win of totally eliminating a problem. It's rather it's containing it at acceptable cost.

  youtube.com

Freelance climate and energy analyst in Oslo, writing on Europe, the US and Australia; worked in the Australian renewables industry before that.

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  Data centres will become the majority driver of electricity demand growth in Australia's National Electricity Market.

  data centersenergy

  Their words

  Even if a small fraction of this pipeline ends up operational, data centres will drive far more than 50% of demand growth in the NEM.

  ketanjoshi.co

Co-founder and CEO of Snap Inc., the company behind Snapchat, which he started in 2011 while studying product design at Stanford.

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  A company needs both a flat inventive team and a large operational one, and the leader's real job is the relationship between them.

  Their words

  the companies that are very successful actually have both types of organizations inside their company. And that the leaders of the organization are the ones who are responsible for creating a healthy, functioning relationship between the two types of organizations.

  youtube.com

Genomics researcher and writer on science, biotech and the culture of research.

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  Better drug candidates do not shorten clinical trials, because a trial's duration is set by operational and regulatory friction rather than by how good the drug is.

  Their words

  Even if AI can help design more effective drugs, timelines will not compress until we solve the operational and regulatory bottlenecks of trials.

  writingruxandrabio.com

Roboticist; co-founded iRobot and Rethink Robotics, directed the MIT AI Lab, and publishes a scorecard grading his own dated predictions about AI, robots and self-driving.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Tesla's robotaxi service is a facade rather than a real driverless service, and it is not on a path to becoming one.

  self-driving cars

  Their words

  Tesla (owned by Tesla) has put on a facade of being operational, but it is not operational in the sense of the other two services, and faces regulatory headwinds that both Waymo and Zoox have long been able to satisfy. They are not on a path to becoming a real service.

  Predictions Scorecard, 2026 January 01rodneybrooks.com

Novelist, author of twelve books including Foundry, Bandwidth and Cumulus. Sends a newsletter of monthly book recommendations.

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  The Player of Games

  Their words

  The Player of Games by Ian M. Banks is about a champion board-game player who gets roped into an espionage operation infiltrating an alien culture where political power is determined by the outcome of a uniquely complex strategy game. Set in a far-future human civilization run by a constellation of (mostly) benevolent and inscrutable AIs, Banks's science fiction is more relevant than ever.

  eliotpeper.substack.com

Investment researcher and engineer who runs Lyn Alden Investment Strategy, writing on macroeconomics, currency systems and equity analysis.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Utility blockchains that provide useful services tend not to accrue much long-term value to their coinholders, unlike a winning monetary protocol.

  Their words

  Utility protocols face heavy competition, and thus their value trends toward their marginal cost of operation.

  Why Most Cryptocurrencies Won’t Accrue Valuelynalden.com

Co-founder and CEO of Shopify; long-time Linux user and Omarchy contributor.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  A job title is a calcification of how a company once solved a problem, not a description of what a person is.

  Their words

  you are you are a sales operations expert, right? Like what is that? That's that's that that's like a title for a particular way how companies end up solving a particular operational problem they had at some point.

  youtube.com

Historian of the Second World War; wrote Normandy '44 and Brothers in Arms, and co-hosts the We Have Ways of Making You Talk podcast.

From one piece James Holland: World War II, Hitler, Churchill, Stalin & Biggest Battles | Lex Fridman Podcast #470 3 beliefs, in the piece's order there

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  On the scale of Barbarossa the operational level of war decides everything: it does not matter how good your commanders at the front are if the backup is not there.

  Their words

  So when you’re talking about Operation Barbarossa, to go back to your original question, Lex, you’re dealing with an operation on such a vast scale, that that operational level of war is absolutely vital to its chances of success or failure. It doesn’t matter how good your individual commanders are at the front. If you haven’t got the backup, it’s not going to work.

  youtube.com

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  Operation Barbarossa should never have come close to being a victory; the Germans got as far as they did because of Red Army and Soviet incompetence, not German prowess.

  Their words

  I mean, it is largely down to incompetence of the Red Army and the Soviet leadership in the summer of 1941 that they get as far as they do. I mean, Barbarossa should never have come close to being a victory.

  youtube.com

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  The fall of France in 1940 was half German operational brilliance and half French failure and incompetence.

  Their words

  I mean, the reason why France is subdued in 1940 is 50% brilliance of the Germans and their operational art in that particular instance, and 50% French failure really, and incompetence.

  youtube.com

Founder of Terraform Industries and formerly a physicist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory; writes about energy, space and manufacturing.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Below about a thousand dollars a kilowatt of capital cost, the right way to run a plant is intermittently on raw solar with no batteries at all.

  solar

  Their words

  For loads below $1000/kW, intermittent operation with some modest solar array oversizing is the winning strategy. Above $1000/kW, we charge and discharge batteries daily to run them.

  Solar and batteries for generic use casescaseyhandmer.wordpress.com

Software engineer who writes the blog Made of Bugs about performance, debugging and understanding computer systems. Previously worked at Anthropic on interpretability, at Stripe on Sorbet, and at Ksplice.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  A profiler measures time already spent in an operation, not how much time would be saved by optimizing it.

  Their words

  a profile tells you how much time a program spent in a given operation; but not how much time it would spend if you optimized that operation.

  blog.nelhage.com

Co-founder of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute and the writer who started the modern argument that a sufficiently capable AI would by default kill everyone. Has argued the case since the early 2000s, latterly with the conclusion that it is being lost.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Alignment has to be right on the first try at a dangerous level of capability, because failing at that level leaves nobody to try again.

  AI alignment

  Their words

  unaligned operation at a dangerous level of intelligence kills everybody on Earth and then we don’t get to try again.

  AGI Ruin: A List of Lethalitiesintelligence.org

Economist; former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund.

From one piece Fiscal Policy under Low Interest Rates 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

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  Automatic fiscal stabilizers give fiscal policy an advantage over monetary policy in stabilizing output because they act faster.

  Their words

  In some dimensions, fiscal policy has an advantage over monetary policy in stabilizing output. The main example is indeed the operation of automatic stabilizers, which act faster than monetary policy can.

  Fiscal Policy under Low Interest Ratesdirect.mit.edu

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  The main obstacle to sound fiscal policy debate is a widespread, quasi-religious belief that public debt is inherently bad.

  public debt

  Their words

  The main challenge in discussing fiscal policy is the widely held and nearly religious belief that public debt is very bad.

  Fiscal Policy under Low Interest Ratesdirect.mit.edu

Working on @ampcode. Writing registerspill.thorstenball.com. Once authored interpreterbook.com and compilerbook.com.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Needing to gather everyone in the same room to make a decision indicates that too many people are involved in that decision.

  Their words

  if you often need to get everyone in the same room to discuss and decide on something, you probably have too many people discussing and deciding things.

  thorstenball.com

Software engineer working on distributed systems and databases; creator of rqlite, the distributed database built on SQLite.

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  The Mythical Man-Month

  Their words

  The amazing thing about The Mythical Man Month is that it doesn't feel dated, even though it was first published in 1975. Instead it simply feels like a group of programmers discussing the very same challenges the industry has today, with just different technology in use.

  philipotoole.com