# Progress links and tweets, 2023-04-05

**The Progress Forum**
----------------------

*   [Wizards and prophets of AI](https://progressforum.org/posts/baPwkBDa9f9b8ja2z/wizards-and-prophets-of-ai-draft-for-comment). I posted this for comment, then decided to rewrite it, then ended up [posting the core argument of the new essay as a Twitter thread](https://twitter.com/jasoncrawford/status/1642965570566889474), then got replies to that thread, and now I don’t know what to write anymore. I’ll post *something* about this on the blog at *some* point, but if you want my half-baked, outdated thoughts, you can read those links
*   [AMA: Allison Duettmann, Foresight Institute](https://progressforum.org/posts/mLYtBanaPywCCjm5f/ama-allison-duettmann-foresight-institute)
*   [AMA: Mark Khurana, author of *The Trajectory of Discovery: What Determines the Rate and Direction of Medical Progress?*](https://progressforum.org/posts/QEtKhjiLeALMjmDdd/ama-mark-khurana-untold-health)

**Opportunities**
-----------------

*   [Loyal (longevity) hiring a full stack software engineer](https://jobs.lever.co/loyalfordogs/175cea89-c5ca-42fc-bb8d-1b13ed040a2c) (via [@celinehalioua](https://twitter.com/celinehalioua/status/1641153111418093568)). Also they are [looking for founders/execs to speak at their onsite](https://twitter.com/celinehalioua/status/1638895483400916995)
*   [Nat Friedman wants to meet people who are doing technical alignment work](https://twitter.com/natfriedman/status/1639805751358263296)

**News**
--------

*   [RIP Gordon Moore](https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/gordon-moore-obituary.html). “[We at Intel remain inspired by Moore’s Law and intend to pursue it until the periodic table is exhausted](https://twitter.com/jasoncrawford/status/1639631713407049728).” Gordon’s 1965 paper: “[Integrated circuits will lead to such wonders as home computers… and personal portable communications equipment](https://twitter.com/jasoncrawford/status/1639696594886070272).” Also, [the story of the microprocessor](https://twitter.com/garrytan/status/1639461694702485506)
*   [Last Energy to sell 24 small modular nuclear reactors to UK, $5/W](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/03/20/us-firm-agrees-sell-24-mini-nuclear-reactors-uk-customers/) (via [@Atomicrod](https://twitter.com/Atomicrod/status/1638109117347778561))
*   [Law firm Cooper & Kirk accuses regulators of an attack on crypto](https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2023/03/the-government-conspiracy-against-crypto.html)

**Announcements**
-----------------

*   [Discord for discussion of futuristic tech: nanotech, longevity, etc.](https://diyhpl.us/wiki/hplusroadmap/) (via [@kanzure](https://twitter.com/kanzure/status/1615359557408260096))
*   [A proposal for NEPA reform](https://www.thecgo.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Bringing-NEPA-Back-to-Basics-v1.pdf) (by [@elidourado](https://twitter.com/elidourado/status/1640829159654998016))
*   [ChatGPT plugins](https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt-plugins) (via [@sama](https://twitter.com/sama/status/1638951865319821312) and [@gdb](https://twitter.com/gdb/status/1638949234681712643)). Example: [processing a video clip](https://twitter.com/gdb/status/1638971232443076609)
*   [Worldcoin launches “proof of personhood”](https://worldcoin.org/blog/engineering/humanness-in-the-age-of-ai) (via [@sama](https://twitter.com/sama/status/1642000529986588676))
*   [Lindy, the AI assistant putting your life on autopilot](https://twitter.com/Altimor/status/1638571677490774017)

**Interviews**
--------------

*   [Sam Altman on Lex Fridman](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_Guz73e6fw)
*   [Marc Andreessen interviewed by Erik Torenberg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VBj1gzxFkg)
*   [World’s Fair Co. founder Cam Wiese](https://www.startupcities.com/p/lets-bring-back-the-worlds-fair)
*   [Nat Friedman interviewed by Dwarkesh Patel](https://www.dwarkeshpatel.com/p/nat-friedman)
*   [Ilya Sutskever (cofounder of OpenAI), also by Dwarkesh](https://www.dwarkeshpatel.com/p/ilya-sutskever)
*   [Nathan Myhrvold interviewed by Shane Parrish](https://fs.blog/knowledge-project-podcast/nathan-myhrvold/)

**AI**
------

*   [Bill Gates: AI is the most impressive technology since the GUI](https://www.gatesnotes.com/The-Age-of-AI-Has-Begun) (via [@BillGates](https://twitter.com/BillGates/status/1638226408412708864))
*   [Scott Aaronson on AI risk](https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=7174) (or see [my excerpt](https://twitter.com/jasoncrawford/status/1641419145861386242))
*   [How do you integrate your API with an AI? You just give it your docs](https://twitter.com/mitchellh/status/1638967450510458882)
*   [A GPT prompt: “no-nonsense teacher with an ambitious, self-directed student”](https://twitter.com/mbateman/status/1640422308845060096). And [another GPT prompt, to cut the caveats and pleasantries](https://twitter.com/drorpoleg/status/1642588167084597249)
*   [AGI and nanotech as “the last two big general technologies”](https://twitter.com/perrymetzger/status/1640871105341837312)
*   [“GPT-4 saved my dog’s life”](https://twitter.com/peakcooper/status/1639716822680236032)
*   [Ben Evans on the Jevons Paradox applied to AI](https://twitter.com/benedictevans/status/1637802225375277056)
*   [GPT has trouble counting backwards](https://twitter.com/joelgrus/status/1639026893843230724) (or [maybe it’s just Markdown?](https://twitter.com/asmeurer/status/1639028882811817985))

**Other links**
---------------

*   [Lithium, once expensive, is cheap again. Hooray for markets](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/20/business/lithium-prices-falling-electric-vehicles.html) (via [@scottlincicome](https://twitter.com/scottlincicome/status/1637809808613974020))
*   [50 years of the supersonic flight ban](https://www.elidourado.com/p/50-years-supersonic-ban) (by [@elidourado](https://twitter.com/elidourado/status/1638889287298039810))
*   [The evidence for smartphones / social media harming kids’ mental health is weak](https://inews.co.uk/news/technology/dont-panic-about-social-media-harming-your-childs-mental-health-the-evidence-is-weak-2230571)

**Queries**
-----------

*   [Evidence for GPT-4 building a world model?](https://twitter.com/michael_nielsen/status/1638907027857739779)
*   [Good examples of tight 1-page proposals in simple language for technical projects?](https://twitter.com/Ben_Reinhardt/status/1638629071780184068)
*   [Quantifying scientific efficiency in time elapsed from when a discovery becomes possible to when it happens?](https://twitter.com/jachiam0/status/1640088980749447168)

**Quotes**
----------

*   [“The shapes arise!” Walt Whitman and the poetry of progress](https://twitter.com/jasoncrawford/status/1640697214623162373). Also, [Hart Crane](https://twitter.com/HenryEOliver/status/1640803036745584640)
*   [The evolution of our buildings: from exoskeletons to internal skeletons](https://twitter.com/jasoncrawford/status/1639272177525567492)
*   [The amazing talent center of early 16th-century Florence](https://twitter.com/jasoncrawford/status/1639075875642834944)
*   [The use of mathematics in biology was important as early as 1616](https://twitter.com/jasoncrawford/status/1640697735824252928)
*   [“They don’t make ‘em like they used to,” 1540s edition](https://twitter.com/jasoncrawford/status/1638704823397933056)
*   [“A crisis of values confronted liberals in the mid-thirties”](https://twitter.com/jasoncrawford/status/1639069387935318017)
*   [“Industrialization is the only hope of the poor”](https://twitter.com/PradyuPrasad/status/1638175176763514883)
*   [“What matters in the long run is whether growth is sustained”](https://twitter.com/jasoncrawford/status/1639071738964361216)
*   [In 2006, Steven Johnson predicted what happened during covid](https://twitter.com/jasoncrawford/status/1639070281192054784)
*   [America used to care about running trains on time](https://twitter.com/jasoncrawford/status/1639074688856117249)
*   [“On average, buildings that are being blasted with a firehose right now are significantly more likely to be on fire than the typical structure, but this does not mean we should ban fire departments as a clear fire hazard”](https://twitter.com/jasoncrawford/status/1637810629481250817)

**More tweets**
---------------

*   [Biomolecular glass](https://twitter.com/NikoMcCarty/status/1638136884122775553) (!)
*   [A positive vision for biology: “what we’ll create and do once all disease is gone”](https://twitter.com/kanzure/status/1637966694009262081)
*   [Twitter created a socially acceptable way to publish a single sentence](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1641728128518086656)
*   [Collider bias](https://twitter.com/jasoncrawford/status/1639007656869240832)

**Fun**
-------

*   [Midjourney is confused about how humans hold things](https://twitter.com/jasoncrawford/status/1639293189654806530)

[![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fr_v-m1WwAED0R0.png)](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fr_v-m1WwAED0R0.png)[![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fr_wA4uXsAARy8N.png)](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fr_wA4uXsAARy8N.png)[![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fr_wBucWcAIQidT.png)](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fr_wBucWcAIQidT.png)