
unlearned helplessness | partner @lowercarbon, previously @stripe
sf
Joined December 2011
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I wrote an essay about why the next frontier for AI is the world outside the data center
Nature is a system more complex than anything we've ever created
AI can learn how the system fits together, so we can finally understand how to shape it
How?
naturalgeneralintelligence.a…
Ryan Orbuch retweeted
Today @standinsurance announced $70M at a $1B valuation, led by @Saga_Ventures. A year ago, we insured $1B of property. Today it's $10B. Disasters follow the laws of physics. Insurance should too. Here's what our team is building:
Ryan Orbuch retweeted
interpretability might be the most important scientific problem in the world right now, as I don't think we can solve alignment if we don't know what we're building. I think I have good news about it. I co-authored early work in mechanistic interpretability at OpenAI and came away pessimistic, because neural networks appeared to fold into arbitrary tangled knots. years later, I started openai's first large-scale automated interpretability project, finding about 2% of neurons legible with the primitive tools we had
with modern agentic tools and a much closer look, the picture looks totally different. the vast majority in models up to trillions of parameters are legible, and their circuits beautiful. many famous examples of tangled neurons turned out to be misunderstood. The roadblocks I expected mostly aren't there. I now think ambitious interpretability will be solved by the time we need it most, and possibly quite soon, as automated scientists keep improving. it may be a bitter lesson for interpretability: the simple thing, at absurd scale, works
already-clean.goodfire.com/
Ryan Orbuch retweeted
Amen to everything Ian said. Arbor is one of the most ridiculous technical teams in Lowercarbon’s entire portfolio, and when the dust settles they will be one of the defining energy companies of this era.
Is Arbor Energy the key to power AND water for data centers? They just cracked the code to supercritical CO2 turbines, which have been something of a holy grail in power generation, especially in Arbor's case, because:
1. Using sCO2 as a working fluid can achieve energy efficiency rivaling large combined cycle gas plants in a much smaller footprint––e.g. behind the meter at data centers. No one had pulled it off though because it requires engineering a system capable of withstanding immense pressure, temperature, speed, and corrosion. Until now!
2. Combining this with oxycombustion of natural gas (CH4) means the outputs are only CO2 (used, recycled, and/or sequestered) and water. Arbor's power modules will PRODUCE tons of water while powering data centers... a MILLION gallons per megawatt, to be exact. So not only will their 25MW Halcyon system power data centers, it can ELIMINATE their water burden and even produce surplus water for local communities!
3. The key components can be 3D PRINTED! You've surely heard of the bottleneck in gas turbines, which is primarily due to the way in which combined cycle turbine blades must be produced (single-crystal casting).
I'm extremely proud that @cantos was Arbor's very first investor and has invested in every round since then. Watch this company!
Ryan Orbuch retweeted
Wood is the rarest material in the Universe.
SpaceX will capture an asteroid with more gold than Earth's crust and land Optimus robots carrying American flags on Mars within 8 years.
Starship parks Psyche in geosynchronous orbit over an American Pacific atoll. No humans within 50 miles. Optimus robots extract the metals. Delivery to Earth is free though some burns up on entry.
Bezos said 15 years ago Earth gets zoned residential as heavy industry moves to space. Vast distances make emissions irrelevant.
The same fleet lands on Mars in 8 years max. Optimus robots deploy solar panels, batteries, compute, and Starlinks for 4K video before humans arrive.
SpaceX moves the factories off the planet.
I’m surprised people aren’t using the term evolution for this, developing some notion of speciation re the particular expertise of subagents, some concept of an ecological niche within which that species performs best
You can always rely on @kevin2kelly to conjure up mind-expanding visions for the future of what machines want
kevinkelly.substack.com/p/sw…
I’ve seen people talking about agent ecologies which seems directionally right, but begs the question of speciation or something like it
has anyone aggregated/denoised all this radar data on bird migrations?
If you have been paying attention to radar this morning, you may have noticed it looks quite active even though there is little to no precipitation. Much of this radar activity is actually migrating birds! 🦅 🐤 #flwx
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Ryan Orbuch retweeted
The best place to put data centers might be the middle of the ocean.
After studying and corresponding with @_panthalassa, a startup building wave-powered data centers, I’m releasing a model and interactive dashboard that tests the viability and cost of moving compute to sea.
If you’re curious about what harvesting massive amounts of energy from the ocean looks like and why I believe ocean compute beats data centers on land, read it.
Ryan Orbuch retweeted
this research direction has been criminally under-discussed by serious AI people. I'm not sure why. maybe the notion of "models in sync with nature" is somehow too woo. or is seen as not serious in comparison to x-risk. in any case, I think this is a mistake that needs to be remedied.
thanks to @orbuch for writing it up!! hope it garners lots of interest
I wrote an essay about why the next frontier for AI is the world outside the data center
Nature is a system more complex than anything we've ever created
AI can learn how the system fits together, so we can finally understand how to shape it
How?
naturalgeneralintelligence.a…
3blue1brown comes for Arbor Energy!
xitter.cf/orbuch/status/18420450…
Ryan Orbuch retweeted
Today I joined the investing team at @lowercarbon
I started my career in big law and banking. I didn’t expect that path to lead to factories and rocket launches, but working alongside hard-tech founders has reshaped my thesis about life and the future. 1/n
Ryan Orbuch retweeted
In a break from the current VC world drama, I pose the question everyone actually cares about. Can we use AI to talk to whales?
@ProjectCETI’s David Gruber is building the infrastructure to enable the first human-whale conversation and initiate an interspecies dialogue.
We discuss:
- David’s journey to sperm whales
- How AI can translate a language no human has ever spoken
- Sperm whale culture & the whale economy
- The seismic societal implications of human-animal communication
- The future is going to be much stranger than we can imagine.
Enjoy!
TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Intro
1:48 David's Journey
12:30 An Interspecies Dialogue
17:14 Sperm Whale Language & Culture
23:48 The Breakthroughs Yet to Come
27:49 The Whales Are Yappers
31:03 Sperm Whales Have Accents
39:47 Verifying a Whale Translation
42:13 What Success Looks Like
47:32 Saving the Whales
Ryan Orbuch retweeted
We need equivalent of Kardashev scale for planetary system stabilization. Type I civilization is able to keep planetary systems within livable bounds. Type II civilization has fine grained control over all home planet systems and can achieve livable conditions on a new planet. Type III civilization can establish instant fine grained control on any arbitrary new planet or other gigascale structure.
Ryan Orbuch retweeted
Thank you for the open minded conversation @KatieMiller !
People deserve transparency about new technologies and I’m grateful to have to opportunity to answer questions about weather modification
On this week’s episode of the Katie Miller Pod, rainmaker Augustus Doricko sits down with Katie to talk about how he makes rain and snow for a living, the possibility of weather modification being be used in war, and if seeding the skies is even safe for our health.
1:35 – Weather Modification
3:34 – Chemtrails
6:13 – Camp Mystic Tragedy
12:54 – Can Weather Modification Be Used in War?
19:17 – Silver Iodide
20:44 – Who Owns the Rain?
27:47 – Transparency About Cloud Seeding
28:47 – China Investing in Weather Modification
30:54 – How to Improve Weather Forecasts
31:48 – Would You Rather
32:05 – The Future of Weather Modification
32:50 – Conspiracy Theories
35:00 – Daily Routine
41:18 – Dream Dinner Party & Guests




























