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50 years after the publication of The Selfish Gene, it's time for books that capture the complexity of life to take centre stage
go.nature.com/4dXkdlX
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Physics. Reality Explained.
In superstring theory, the extra dimensions of spacetime are sometimes conjectured to take the form of a 6-dimensional Calabi–Yau manifold.
Image: A slice of a 6D Calabi–Yau quintic manifold, adapted from Andrew J. Hanson, tinyurl.com/4ssc4yzu
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Jeff Bezos, the man who once rewired how the world buys and sells everything, is chasing an even grander project—but one man is standing in his way, @Tyrangiel argues in The Atlantic’s November cover story. theatln.tc/r9H2DISd
🎨: Thomas Burden
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Richard Ho, who helped create Google’s first TPU chip, built OpenAI’s semiconductor unit from scratch. Now he’s dealing with deploying its first chips, doomerism and “competing among friends” with Nvidia.
Read more: forbes.com/sites/richardniev…
📸: OpenAI
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The firings of three OpenAI safety researchers came in the throes of a battle over how to keep AI systems under human control—and who gets to see the secret designs that could determine the winners of the biggest commercial race in history. on.wsj.com/4jDBu7k
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He is Grigori Perelman, the last mathematician to solve a Millennium Prize Problem with nothing but his mind.
In 2002–03 he proved the Poincaré conjecture, the only one of the seven Clay problems ever solved. He published the proof on arXiv, walked away from the $1 million prize, declined the Fields Medal, and disappeared back into obscurity.
No AI. No large collaboration. Just pure, solitary mathematical force.
He proved it. Then he vanished.
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Researchers from the MIT Center for Information Systems Research explain why AI has made robust data monetization capabilities not just a competitive advantage but a precondition for success. mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-…
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The glymphatic system flushes toxins out of the brain, but this seems to be disrupted in Alzheimer's disease, and cholesterol may be involved newscientist.com/article/259…
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A powerful gene-editing technique has been used to edit DNA directly in a person’s body — the first known instance of such a treatment.
go.nature.com/4Bgi3Yx
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Some argue that consciousness could emerge in AI systems. bit.ly/4ihTTnZ
Here, philosopher and Lead for Responsible AI at Microsoft Ken Archer, and phenomenologist Harald Wiltsche, argue that the attempt to reduce consciousness to a mechanism won't work and relies on a misunderstanding.
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Marc Andreessen says the gap between what AI-native startups and incumbents think AI can do is the widest he’s ever seen:
"The AI-native early stage startups have just a completely different view on what they can do with AI than the typical incumbents in almost any industry, almost without exception."
"AI is just racing ahead in capability even week by week... There are going to be a lot of industries that are really up for grabs in a fundamentally more profound way than maybe has been the case in the past."
"The founders are gonna have a level of superpowers coming from the use of these tools and these technologies that they just simply haven't had in the past... Had I had Astra and Netscape in 1994, like, oh my God. Like, Ben, what would you and I have been able to do at Netscape?"
"Those entrepreneurs are gonna color way outside the lines. We already see this. They're not gonna think of themselves as like, 'I'm just a software company,' or, 'I'm just a hardware company,' or even, 'I'm just an AI company.'"
@pmarca @bhorowitz
Today, a16z Crypto is becoming a16z Frontier.
Since joining a16z in 2013, @cdixon has focused on technologies that look futuristic well before they reach the mainstream. Those themes led to investments in Oculus, Skydio, Zipline, Coinbase, Solana, and Uniswap.
Frontier expands that mandate beyond crypto to back "outer planet" founders who are building new technologies and creating markets that may take years to develop.
Chris joins @pmarca, @bhorowitz, and @eriktorenberg to discuss why crypto has become part of the broader tech landscape, why Frontier fills a hole in the firm's architecture, and why they'd rather be too early than too late.
They also get into why the gap between AI-native startups and incumbents is the widest Marc has ever seen, how AI could pull forward 20 years of frontier technology, why stablecoins may become the way AI agents pay each other, how AI is breaking the internet's business model, and why today's 18-year-olds are about to become superhumans.
0:50 Introducing a16z Frontier
2:49 Smartphone parts to drones and VR
4:47 Backing the "outer planets"
7:11 Good ideas that look like bad ideas
10:43 The JP Morgan photo in Marc's office
15:13 Good tech ideas eventually work
16:53 AI may pull tech 20 years forward
18:18 The widest AI gap Marc's ever seen
22:06 Workers adopt AI before companies do
26:32 Old use cases vs. AI-native ones
30:08 Beyond "product manager brain"
34:45 AI can reverse engineer any hardware
38:23 The case for open source AI
46:36 How AI breaks the internet's model
49:11 VR, homebrew hacking, multiplayer AI
54:00 If you're 18, study "modern alchemy"
YouTube: youtu.be/-9XQMHhpypc
Not an offer or solicitation. None of the information herein should be taken as investment advice; Some of the companies mentioned are portfolio companies of a16z. Please see a16z.com/disclosures for more information. A list of investments made by a16z is available at a16z.com/portfolio.
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‘Know Your Agent’ will be the new rule of the AI age ft.trib.al/E8Q2DSo
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Fusion plasma can go haywire without warning. One researcher calls the problem “kind of existential.” A new superconducting AI chip kept up with a million tokamak data samples per second. The catch: so far it’s only seen recordings, never the live plasma.
sciam.com/article/new-superc…
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When you type an unpublished idea into a chatbot or coding agent, could it end up being used by the company that built the model—or a rival who asks the right question a year later? And what can you do to reduce the risk?
No setting makes a chatbot fully private, but experts suggest steps that can make leaks much less likely: scim.ag/4sihqtz
ALT Could your chatbot tip off a scientific rival? It’s possible, researchers say
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Scientists have mapped one of the most mysterious parts of the human brain in unprecedented detail
go.nature.com/4zIRwSb
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An enzyme found in the brain could help to preserve cognitive resilience with advancing age
go.nature.com/4ehfED4
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Moritz Hardt, a computer scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, thinks that the “measuring sticks” used to assess AI models have been broken for decades. Quanta spoke to Hardt about what went wrong, and where to take them next: quantamagazine.org/he-wants-…
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Attention is a mathematical operation built into AI systems that allow them to link words and build context. What can this mechanism teach us about our own linguistic ability? quantamagazine.org/is-attent…
