Nick Whitaker 🇺🇸
@ns_whit
Fellow @ManhattanInst. Founder, @worksinprogmag (@stripe), anti-cheems aktion. Views mine.
The 2024 GOP platform calls for abolishing the Biden EO on AI, and instead supporting AI development rooted in free speech and human flourishing What should that look like? In my new piece report for the Manhattan Institute, I argue for four principles to guide AI policy. 🧵
🚨It’s time for a new issue of Works in Progress 🚨 Read Issue 19 to find out: - What we can do to eliminate lead in the developing world - How Japan successfully densified its cities - The best way to build good railway networks, cheaply And much more! worksinprogress.co
There are really 2 bitter lessons in AI. This is the second.
The Manhattan Institute works to improve the quality of life in America's great cities by fostering competition, entrepreneurship, and fiscal responsibility.
There’s an interesting story of intangibles and antitrust to be told here (thanks to @ns_whit for spotting!)
My guess is that big tech companies increasingly opting to poach key personnel without acquiring the whole startup is driven by antitrust concerns. If true, this means that antitrust regulation adds meaningful equity risk for startup employees, which is unfortunate.
When the weather gets hot, mortality risk skyrockets for Europeans, but not Americans. This is likely because more than 90% of Americans have air conditioning, compared to just under 20% of Europeans. Europe should adopt A/C.
When the weather gets hot, mortality risk skyrockets for Europeans, but not Americans. This is likely because more than 90% of Americans have air conditioning, compared to just under 20% of Europeans. Europe should adopt A/C.
TRADE ALERT: @ThriveCapital has signed veteran @TBPN intern @JackgWhitaker to a three-month contract.
DeepSeek’s Progress Stalled by U.S. Export Controls DeepSeek's next AI model is coming, but China doesn't have enough chips to run It. Read more from @QianerLiu and @JuroOsawa 👇 theinformation.com/articles/deeps…
At one point the llm cope was just a stupid but tolerable part of the discourse. But now I fear the Experts who supply llm cope to the market are actively harming the world, singing a lullaby to those who would rather not notice the tectonic plates shifting beneath their feet.
I used to think the "fancy autocomplete" stuff was just goofy cope from NLP dead-enders, but maybe it's actually more calculated than that. There's clearly a market for people who want to be told that AI is a fad and that they don't need to worry about it.
Twin Peaks is insane because it appears to be one of the most legitimately powerful memes with the potential to gigafry your feed but it's exclusively posted by literal turbo normies who unironically want to like "meet small town diner waitress" and basically get oneshotted by it
New in Washington Post: During Covid, scientists at CDC selected policies that promoted “social justice” even when CDC data showed this would cause more deaths.
Always take the side of the Waymos
Multiple Waymo vehicles set ablaze here in LA
Some forecasters dismiss predictions of soaring AI power use as hype, arguing that efficiency gains are coming fast and will tamp down rising power demand. They’re half right. Energy efficiency is improving rapidly—but that’s exactly why demand will grow, writes @MarkPMills.
Does the existence of the generator-verifier gap lower or raise the status of the Critic?
When I was 18, I took a year off before college and traveled across Eurasia by land. Spent dozens of long days on rickety trains and busses with no internet but thousands of canonical blog posts saved on Pocket. Glorious times, RIP
Multiple Waymo vehicles set ablaze here in LA
The SF Bay Bridge successfully implemented congestion pricing in 2010, but it was suspended indefinitely "due to COVID"
VR (broadly construed) feels fairly underrated in AI futures, probably because it's cringe. But when the robots are rolling off the assembly lines, how many people are already in ~experience machines?
There is a funny leftist critique of tech that it's all reprehensible trans-humanist succession planning, except the one field that is outwardly doing trans-humanist succession planning, which is fake because the tech occasionally makes mistakes
INVESTIGATION: Uncovering Chinese Academic Espionage at Stanford. After interviewing multiple anonymous Stanford faculty, students, and China experts, the Review can confirm that the CCP is orchestrating a widespread intelligence-gathering campaign at Stanford. 1/8