Links and short notes, 2025-01-26

Atlas Shrugged and the irreplaceable founder, pumping stations and civic pride, thoughts on the eve of AGI, skyways for the suburbs, and more

Much of this content originated on social media. To follow news and announcements in a more timely fashion, follow me on Twitter, Threads, Bluesky, or Farcaster.

Contents

• Jobs and fellowships

• Events

• AI news

• Other news

• Atlas Shrugged and the irreplaceable founder

• Pumping stations and civic pride

• “Thoughts on the eve of AGI”

• More thoughts on AI

• Politics

• Other links and short notes

• Maps & charts

• Art

• Closing thoughts

Jobs and fellowships

• The Institute for Progress is hiring a Fellow/Senior Fellow, Emerging Technology. “Apply to ensure the AI frontier is built in America. (I'm biased, but I think this is the agenda with juice to advance the discussion in DC)” (@calebwatney). Apply here by Feb 21.

• Marian Tupy at HumanProgress.org is hiring analysts to explore the economics and psychology of human progress

• Alan Tomusiak is hiring scientists to work on the problem of genome instability (@alantomusiak)

• Ashlee Vance is hiring for his new publication, Core Memory: “Are you an ambitious type based in DC who can write a weekly newsletter that dives into tech-related legislature and discern what's real and has real money involved versus political garbage? … Can you do this with some flair but not let your politics color the facts of what's going on? Can you spot interesting military and infrastructure bids and break them down? Can you make this a must read for people in the tech industry? Can you go deeper on the juicy stuff and really add context? If so, let's talk. I'll help give you a big audience and develop your following” (@ashleevance). Email him: ashlee@corememory.com

• The Federation of American Scientists is looking for senior fellows “to advance innovative policy and drive positive change. If you’re a leading light in your field and ready to shape policy discourse and implementation, we want you. Apply by Jan 31” (@scientistsorg)

Events

• Edge City Austin, March 2–7: “explore how frontier tech can be built for human flourishing. Live, cowork, and collaborate in this fun week before SXSW” (@JoinEdgeCity)

• “ANWAR will have its US premiere at Sedona Film Festival! Screenings with Q&A Feb 25 & 27. ANWAR is a sci-fi short about a mother who chooses to live forever, and a son who longs for heaven” (@FawazAM). ANWAR was screened at Progress Conference 2024, with discussion from the writer-director and producer.

• Boom XB-1 first supersonic test flight slated for Tuesday, Jan 28. FAI and YC are hosting a watch party in DC (@JoinFAI). Related, how about a supersonic Air Force One? (via @bscholl)

AI news

• “The Stargate Project is a new company which intends to invest $500 billion over the next four years building new AI infrastructure for OpenAI in the United States. We will begin deploying $100 billion immediately” (@OpenAI). Lots of skepticism about how real this is: it’s unclear how secured the funding is, and “intends” may be doing a lot of work here. But I wouldn’t bet against Sam

• DeepSeek releases R-1, a model on par with OpenAI’s o1. “Fully open-source model,” MIT licensed. Lots of chatter about this because (1) DeepSeek is a Chinese lab, (2) they have distilled some of the models down pretty small, and at least some of them are open, to the point where you can run them on your laptop, (3) there are some claims about the model costing very little to develop, followed by counterclaims that China is hiding the fact that they’re in violation of export controls (@kimmonismus, @avichal). RPI fellow Dean Ball provides some context

• Anthropic introduces Citations: “Our new API feature lets Claude ground its answers in sources you provide. Claude can then cite the specific sentences and passages that inform each response” (@AnthropicAI)

• Humanity’s Last Exam: “a dataset with 3,000 questions developed with hundreds of subject matter experts to capture the human frontier of knowledge and reasoning. State-of-the-art AIs get <10% accuracy and are highly overconfident” (@DanHendrycks)

Other news

• Zipline piloting drone delivery in Pea Ridge, Arkansas (@zipline). “They’re amazed by how quiet it is. They’re delighted by how charming it feels. They’re surprised that it doesn’t require any special packaging. And so much more. … Everyone who has witnessed this new delivery system in action at their doorstep is convinced they’ve just experienced the future of delivery.” (@keenanwyrobek)

• Lindus Health raises $55M Series B to fix clinical trials (@meribeckwith via @HZoete, story in TechCrunch)

• Charter-cities venture Próspera raises funding led by Coinbase Ventures. “This is very much in line with our mission of creating economic freedom, and these zones will be heavy users of cryptocurrency” (@brian_armstrong). “We will continue to push for economic freedom in every country of the world.” (@ProsperaGlobal)

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