The Second Quarter of 2015: Projects

I put it in a safe spot. -- a phrase my mom would always say when she’d lost something. Why do we lose things inside our homes? When we are interrupted or need to hastily respond to a new demand, we often make quick decisions about where to place physical items. We always place them in locations which make sense given our current state of mind,...

situational-awareness.ai Situational Awareness is submarine marketing so Ilya can raise a fat round for SSI. Situational Awareness overstates algorithmic improvements because benchmarks are in the training data and models can’t operate on out-of-distribution questions. Situational Awareness overstates future algorithmic progress because...

I am severely lactose intolerant, so I strictly avoid lactose in my diet. Unfortunately, there is no lactose free label1. However, lactose is a sugar. So, can you use the sugar entry on a nutrition label to determine if a product has zero lactose? Firstly, is lactose including in the analysis of “Total Sugar” on an FDA mandated nutrition label?...

Thesis: AI companions will be mainstays in human life. We can learn from the past 50 years of technology companionship to guide this next era. Social surrogacy - people spontaneously seek out social surrogates when real interactions are unavailable. Phase 1 - Television (general parasocial, mitigates feelings of loneliness) Phase 2 - Social media...

Summary Altruist’s1 bundled custodian + platform software model presents an existential threat to Schwab & Fidelity’s ~$5T AUM hold on the independent RIA market. Altruist is making a classic disruption play, and, as of April 2023, they’re on the brink of stage 4 of the Disruptive Innovation process. Schwab & Fidelity need to address their...