Mind Expanding 24 Feb 2023: a couple of weeks in AI🤯we're all going to die😱genomics for biodiversity conservation🧬mapping the observable universe🌌what's our problem?🤷

Finding myself in uncanny valley

Welcome to Mind Expanding links, sharing some of the deeper dives and bigger thinks I’ve come across while compiling the weekly Memia newsletter.

• Firstly, as new cracks emerge in Elon Musk's Twitter, I’m now all set up on Farcaster, the “sufficiently decentralized” challenger social network protocol. Right now it’s a parallel alternative to / insurance policy for Twitter for me… find me using the excellent Warpcast mobile client at @bdr. (Or use one of the 16 other evolving apps in the ecosystem… early days but by far the best alternative to the bird app I’ve seen so far…) To get an account, DM founder Dan Romero @dwr on Twitter (the irony…) and ask nicely. :-)

Curated links in today’s post:

• 🤯A couple of weeks in AI:

  • 🎓Stephen Wolfram has a clear explainer on how ChatGPT (and other LLMs…) work.

  • 📈AI-generated submissions spiked to a well known sci-fi magazine (the irony!)

  • 🧑‍🏫How AI chatbots enable new modes of teaching and learning.

  • 😱We’re all going to die: AI doomer Eliezer Yudkowsky blows crypto-bros’ minds on AI alignment.

  • 💸Will Capitalism survive the Singularity? If not… what replaces it?

• 🧬Genomics for biodiversity conservation.

• 🌾Future of agriculture, mapped - Simon Wardley goes abstract the major landscape investment opportunities for food production.

• 🫠Magnesium as the metal of dematerialization.

• 🌌A new map of the observable universe.

• 🤷What’s our problem? WaitButWhy’s Tim Urban has a new book out.

• 🤳Finding myself in uncanny valley: my attempts this week at generating a new profile picture using the latest generation of AI tools…. hours of addictive fun sorting through the results (=hours of time which could definitely have been spent better elsewhere, don’t blame me if your productivity takes a dive next week…😇)

  

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A couple of weeks in AI

ChatGPT, Bing and their ilk continue to break the internet, AI (dis-)alignment debates and the End of Capitalism?