From the article:

I’m also worried that being on A.I.’s bad side could have dire consequences.

Today’s chatbots mostly seem like harmless assistants and homework helpers.

When I set out to improve my tainted reputation with chatbots, I discovered a new world of A.I. manipulation.

From the article:

When Saha and Sinha took a closer look at the resulting equations, they realized that they could express the number pi in this way, as well as the zeta function, which is the heart of the Riemann conjecture, one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in mathematics.

Two physicists have come across infinitely many novel equations for pi while trying to develop a unifying theory of the fundamental forces.

By Manon Bischoff

The number pi (π) appears in the most unlikely places. It can be found in circles, of course—as well as in pendulums, springs and river bends. This everyday number is linked to transcendental mysteries. It has inspired Shakespearean thought puzzles, baking challenges and even an original song. And pi keeps the surprises coming—most recently in January 2024, when physicists Arnab Priya Saha and Aninda Sinha of the Indian Institute of Science presented a completely new formula for calculating it, which they later published in Physical Review Letters.

A Mormon Transhumanist has trained a chatbot that was trained on his entire collection of writings, internet social media posts, and presentations.

I’ve merged with artificial intelligence. Well, I’m working on it. And I’m excited to share the results with you.

! Trained on everything that I’ve written publicly since 2000, he might be better at Mormon Transhumanism than I am.

Friends, I’m excited to introduce you to LincGPT! This artificial intelligence, built on the OpenAI platform, is designed to engage with you on topics related to technological evolution, postsecular religion, and Mormon Transhumanism. I’ve trained LincGPT on all of my public writings since the year 2000. That includes the following:

An initiative that sounds a lot like Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth might mark the first time humans have tapped into magma, the molten rock liquid flowing beneath Earth’s crust. In 2026, Iceland’s Krafla Magma Testbed (KMT) project will drill into a volcano’s magma chamber, seeking to tap into its super-hot fumes to generate geothermal energy at a scale that has never been attempted before.

The endeavor promises to power homes across Iceland with a renewable, limitless energy source. And no, this won’t cause the currently active Krafla volcano to erupt, according to John Eichelberger, a volcanologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks interviewed by New Scientist.

Geothermal energy, a technology harnessed by Iceland for years, involves drilling into hot underground regions to produce steam from heated water. This steam drives turbines, generating electricity. Today, at least 90% of all homes in Iceland are heated with geothermal energy and 70% of all energy used in the island nation comes from geothermal sources.

From the article:

Ceyda Sayali, a cognitive neuroscientist at the Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research at Johns Hopkins University who was not involved with the study, said she was struck by the images that showed a marked change when participants on psilocybin were asked to answer…

A small new study shows reactions in the brain in people who were given psilocybin in a controlled setting.

From the article:

Goldman Sachs estimates that US utility companies will have to invest roughly $50 billion in new power generation capacity to support data centers.

New artificial intelligence data centers are coming online so fast that the electricity demand is straining global power grids and threatening clean energy goals.

From the article:

Longtermism asks fundamental questions and promotes the kind of consequentialism that should guide public policy.

Based on a talk delivered at the conference on Existential Threats and Other Disasters: How Should We Address Them? May 30–31, 2024 – Budva, Montenegro – sponsored by the Center for the Study of Bioethics, The Hastings Center, and The Oxford Uehiro Center for Practical Ethics.

For twenty years, I have been talking about old age dependency ratios as an argument for universal basic income and investing in anti-aging therapies to keep elders healthy longer. A declining number of young workers supporting a growing number of retirees is straining many welfare systems. Healthy seniors are less expensive and work longer. UBI is more intergenerationally equitable, especially if we face technological unemployment.

But as a person anticipating grandchildren, I think the declining fertility part of the demographic shift is more on my mind. It’s apparently on the minds of a growing number of people, including folks on the Right, ranging from those worried that feminists are pushing humanity to suicide or that there won’t be enough of their kind of people in the future to those worried about the health of innovation and the economy. The reluctance by the Left to entertain any pronatalism is understandable, given the reactionary ways it has been promoted. But I believe a progressive pro-family agenda is possible.

Bill Gates’ TerraPower broke ground yesterday on its Natrium nuclear reactor plant, making it the first advanced reactor project ever to start construction.

Once it comes online, the Natrium demonstration plant in Kemmerer, Wyoming, will be a fully functioning commercial power plant. According to Gates, founder and chairman of TerraPower, Natrium will “be the most advanced nuclear facility in the world, and it will be much safer and produce far less waste than conventional reactors.”

It’s being constructed near the retiring coal-fired Naughton power plant and is the world’s only coal-to-nuclear project under development. TerraPower, which will employ between 200 and 250 people at the Natrium facility, wants to hire the 110 former coal workers to tap into their transferrable skills.

China’s first AI hospital, developed by Tsinghua University, features robot doctors capable of treating 3,000 patients daily, vastly outpacing human capacity.

These AI doctors, trained in a simulated environment, can diagnose and treat 10,000 patients in days, a task humans would need two years to…

China debuts an AI hospital town featuring AI doctors caring for virtual patients to advance medical consultation and evolve doctor agents.

From the article by Robin Hanson, a professor of economics who also holds degrees in physics and computer science.

So this remains my worry: our rapid rates of change in unconditional choices of cultural norms are not mostly driven by reason, but instead by a cultural evolution process that has…

I’ve been reading, thinking, and talking, trying to get clearer on what exactly are the culture problems I’m worried about, and how best to describe them. I seek descriptions not only easy for an outsider public to understand, but also for prestigious insider specialists to embrace.

It seems maladaptive culture might be a better name for the problem. So that is the title of this post. Also, I tentatively see four key ways to distinguish more from less problematic cases; the big problems that I fear sit mainly in one corner of that 16-cornered 4D cube of possibilities. Here are the four dimensions:

1. First, culture can work great when tied to particular relevant observable outcomes and inputs. If you want to catch more fish, it can make sense to copy the fishing-related behaviors of the people around you who catch the most fish. You need to be able to tell who gets more fish value (e.g., quantity and size) per effort invested (e.g., time and harms) and you also need to be able to tell which of these folks’ many features and behaviors are plausibly oriented to catching fish. So you can’t do this sort of cultural change until you’ve developed sufficient cultural gadgets to see these things. But once you do, things can work great.