Steve Newman
@snewmanpv
Co-founder of Writely (aka Google Docs) and 7 other startups. Now at the Golden Gate Institute for AI, working to bring AI’s toughest questions into focus.
On one had, this is pretty cool. On the other hand, the only press releases I want to see from fusion companies at this point is “we achieved net energy”.
Congrats to the team at @MarathonFusion for identifying a plausible, scalable process for transmuting mercury into gold. This is something that drove Isaac Newton insane.
Digression: Dean is literally editing something worth billions of market cap to GOOG on google docs, and everyone is (correctly!) very implicitly certain that they don't need to worry about GOOG peeking at it. This is a genuine, important thing our society has achieved.
my transition from human to google doc is now complete
ChatGPT just negative-1-shotted a task. I copied a list of names from our CRM into Gmail, but it came out cluttered with <a> tags. So I pasted into ChatGPT, planning to ask it to fix... and something about the ChatGPT prompt being plaintext caused the list to paste cleanly. 🤦
Asterisk Magazine is a treasure, and this promises to be a stellar program (with a dream team of mentors). If you have things to say about AI – apply!
Asterisk is launching an AI blogging fellowship! We're looking for people with unique perspectives on AI who want to take the first step to writing in public. We'll help you build a blog — and provide editorial feedback, mentorship from leading bloggers, a platform, & $1K
I've enjoyed my online conversation with Nate and @joel_bkr on this paper; looking forward to discussing it with them in public & IRL!
Join us for a fireside chat about the new METR paper! (+ dinner & drinks) @snewmanpv will chat with @joel_bkr and Nate Rush about their methodology, whether the takeaway generalizes, how to square this result with other AI evals and forecasts, and more. 6pm next Wed, 7/16, SF
Steve gave us really useful feedback throughout the study—and he wrote a really accessible but thorough summary of our results! I'd recommend reading, he's a very measured thinker on AI
How much time do AI coding tools save? @METR_Evals just released a rigorous study with a startling result: developers take 19% longer to complete tasks when using AI! The result is consistent with the idea that AI tools are most helpful for routine work in small projects,…
I sincerely cannot express how excited I am for The Curve. It'll be a beehive of deep conversations about AI with people + topics outside your usual circle. Click through to apply, nominate, or propose a session. Be at the firepit where it happens!
The Curve 2025 is on! We're bringing together people from a broad range of fields & with disparate perspectives to discuss big questions about AI's future (timelines, natsec, growth, applications, & more) October 3-5 | Berkeley, CA Apply by July 4th for early bird pricing