Michael Liskin

Nike 3D billboard for AirMaxDay 😳

Dear AI guy, would you burn down a forest for the 20% chance that humanity solves earth science totally and can remake forests? 🌳

# Black October For anyone who knows me even somewhat well, it's clear that I am a 99th percentile tech optimist. However, the vibes have shifted for me quite a bit in the last 18 hours, and I feel a moral imperative to share what I'm thinking and feeling with my circles so that everyone can understand, and hopefully take seriously, what's happening right now. I think October 2026 will have many chapters written about it in the history books. You know those scenes in financial movies like Margin Call where someone realizes that they're all fucked, and no one else sees it yet? And that person feels like they're crazy, and then suddenly everyone is pulling an all-nighter in a boardroom and freaking out? Yeah, that's kind of how this is feeling right now in the SF/Bay Area/AI circles. We're 48 hours into what is being called Black October. In the last 2 days there have been several dozen cyber attacks which, in isolation, would each have been the worst to happen in an entire calendar year. Every sector from government to education to big tech and banks is being massively affected, and people are starting to freak out. In a nutshell, what's happened is that frontier AI models have gotten to a point where they are as advanced as the most sophisticated programmers, with one critical difference: they can work 24/7, and you can spin up 10,000 of them with a single command and they'll work together tirelessly until they accomplish their task. The most advanced models today are from companies like Anthropic and OpenAI, whose current best technology is so good that they haven't been able to roll it out to everyone yet because of the national security risks it poses. Meanwhile, the best open source models (where anyone can just download the model weights and do whatever they want with them, uncensored) are slightly behind the frontier but still 90-95% as capable. These models, developed primarily in China, are being used by black hat hackers to wreak havoc on the Western capitalist structure. Presumably, this has been part of China's plan the entire time, and we're seeing its implications fall out in real time. In red-pilled AI circles, we've been sharing and reading papers called things like "Situational Awareness" and "AI 2027" for the last year or so, which at the time felt a bit like near-term speculative fiction. They laid out the case for why Artificial General Intelligence (AI smarter than any human at any knowledge task) and Recursive Self-Improvement (models that are able to use themselves to get better) weren't half-baked future ideas anymore, but instead an inevitable outcome of the linear progress that's happening. These papers would then talk about things like "takeoff scenarios," trying to envision how that moment would come to be and what it would be like when it happened. It would either be a "slow takeoff" that would play out over the course of months and quarters, happening subtly and only obvious to a few. Or, it would be a "fast takeoff" where it would pretty much happen instantly, like a bit flipping from 0 to 1. From everything that I can see and am feeling, we are currently experiencing the fast takeoff scenario. Beyond the crazy security vulnerabilities that have come out recently, there have also been massive breakthroughs in life sciences, fundamental computer science, materials science, and pure mathematics that have all landed in the same time frame. While I still firmly believe that AI will be a net positive for humanity, it's more clear to me than ever that the societal and individual risk is very real, and is playing out NOW. For as much conviction as I have that this is happening, the thing that's caused me to lose sleep is that I don't really know what to do about it, or more importantly, what to tell you, reader, to do about it. So, the best I can do is make a few suggestions that have always been a good idea but are more timely now than ever: Set up 2-factor authentication for everything. I use Duo. Use a password manager across your devices. I use 1Password. Get an identity protection app set up. I use Alta. Move your IoT devices to their own network. Claude helped me do this. And last, but certainly not least, if you've been avoiding leaning into AI, see this as a catalyst to wake up and start using it. Don't just use the chat mode version of ChatGPT/Claude; click that Code/Work button and see how easily you can have AI write code to help you with your job. One of the biggest vulnerabilities was in a massively popular programming language called PHP, and the prompt that set it off was literally, "Find vulnerabilities in php." This is an unprecedented time for humanity, but as we've done with many things before, we will prevail so long as we are kind, loving, and open-minded to the world. Much love.

OMG! This is incredible! Wow! Wow! Wow! 😮 I got chills watching this 🤯 Speechless! @Figure_robot !

Live with Norgard on the Fires and Criminal Gangs teapawt.org/i/broadcasts/1PlKQbpNq…

If you have lost your home in the fire today or find out that you have in the coming days and need an RV or somewhere to stay, please reach out to me or @EmergencyRv. I promise we will do everything we can to help.

Introducing the Holodeck  Here on X.com @IrenaCronin and I are tracking 700 companies building it. But most humans haven’t heard of it. When visions of it are presented, like Jason Silva’s groundbreaking video, released yesterday, introducing the user interface of it that he calls “Psychedelic Puppets,” most people shrug. Not understanding just how deeply all of human life is about to change thanks to Spatial Computing driven by new AIs that will arrive in the next year. These AIs know everything humans have ever done. And learn quick, so if they missed something they can ingest the new knowledge, and incorporate it in its existing understanding. It is extremely difficult to explain just how deeply life is about to change. Jason’s video got close. For everything. Factories. Hospitals. Parks. Cities. All of it. Everything will have a Holodeck. Every cup. Fork. Knife. Plate. Table. Each has their own. Inside another Holodeck. Which is inside another Holodeck. When I have gotten demos the digital rabbit hole does not end. Many things in the world may have billions of Holodecks. Actually trillions and the number might be far larger than that. Each atom will have its own Holodeck. What? A Holodeck is hallucinated by the system in response to both human reality and artificial reality. With both real humans and many types of virtual beings. Zoom into the atomic level and you will find even more. There will be Holodecks that humans never see with virtual beings living complex lives in some sort of simulation. Electric Sheep company trained their landscaping robots in one. So do most robot and autonomous car companies. Tesla has one of the most complex. The public has only been shown small pieces. Nvidia’s corporate strategy is built around one. Omniverse, it calls it. The technologies that are foundational to it are Neural Radiance Fields, Gaussian Splats, and Convex Splatting. Ask your AI about them and what they could do. The Holodeck will bring new religions. New belief systems. New ways of learning, playing, entertaining, traveling, healing, building, and much much more. It is infinite. Whatever humans can dream up it will present to us. And enable us to build, whether in some sort of virtual theme park, or on a 3D printer. And as Silva’s video demonstrates, some of your dreams are pretty damn weird. It is why I say the future is weird. When I say it is infinite it is true both in the visual and in the audio. They can create and display an infinite set of what we used to call movies. Experiences. It is the ultimate TV. Virtual beings will take you places in it. Hand you things. Talk with you. Go to war with you. Help you improve your factory, hospital, retail store, or help you learn about history or enjoy a modern art museum better.  Which is why the new lightfield displays that will be shown at LG, BOE, and Samsung booths at CES in Las Vegas next month are so important. They will bring the Holodeck to new users who refuse to wear devices like Meta’s Quests or Apple’s Vision Pro. Which will mean everyone will join in eventually over the next decade. If you want to see just how weird this will be spend a weekend and go through each of the 700 companies building it. I have because I built the list. I can not comprehend the scale. But it is coming. You will be able to buy the screens worldwide in 2026. I have already bought one. Remember, I wrote a book about social media before this website started. The guy who started X/Twitter came to my dinner before that. In five years none of us will use anything like what we are seeing here. The other night, on an audio space here, Dylan confirmed that not only is Unity building one but that he knows of at least three other companies building one too. He calls the Holodeck a “continually hallucinated world.” Someone told me he would never use it, too freaky. It will do his spreadsheets.

You can encounter various leadership styles in the workplace: Some may be more effective, while others may be less so. A great manager should be familiar with all of them and: Utilize positive styles in relevant situations, While ensuring to steer clear of negative ones.

What if a debate was focused not on one participant defeating the other, but on everyone LEARNING about the issue being debated about?

NEWS: Tesla has released their Q3 2024 safety report. "In the 3rd quarter, we recorded one crash for every 7.08 million miles driven in which drivers were using Autopilot technology. For drivers who were not using Autopilot technology, we recorded one crash for every 1.29 million miles driven. By comparison, the most recent data available from NHTSA and FHWA (from 2022) shows that in the United States there was an automobile crash approximately every 670,000 miles." Full report: tesla.com/VehicleSafetyRepor…

I started clocking the calls for @TomArnold as SNL’s Tim Walz last week. It was zero. Today it’s 4 ppl not including me. He’s a doppelgänger! Like or RT if you agree or want to see this, let’s track it …

The BBC sound effects library is now completely free to access. This is news. sound-effects.bbcrewind.co.u…

Find your flow with us: quantumtao.org

This is pretty stunning AI spaghetti art... Like modern/abstract art, AI art will be a thing, and creative pieces will be displayed in museums. I can't wait for AI song to win a Grammy

Zoom/Teams needs a feature that lets you replace your screen with a full screen "I'll be right back" sign for those times when you have to leave for a minute (someone's at the door, Fedex delivery, kid calling for you, etc). Right now you have to turn off your camera which doesn't convey why you aren't there. Are you there but don't want your camera on? Are you away for a minute and will be right back? Something else? A fun twist could even be one of those signs small retailers sometime put on their door that says "Out to lunch" or "Back in a few" with the little clock that shows when they'll be back. This could be similar but you'd have a simple dial (or button selection) to say something like "3 minutes" or whatever. Anyway, just an idea based on constant real-world experiences.

There are a ton of little things that could be improved to make this a better tutor... but it is impossible to watch this video & not see a coming transformation in education, given this is GPT-4o out of the box. We need to decide how to integrate it into education, starting now