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S1: That's v a n t a.com/unsupervised. Welcome to Unsupervised Learning,
S1: a security, AI and meaning focused podcast that looks at
S1: how best to thrive as humans in a post AI world.
S1: It combines original ideas, analysis and mental models to bring
S1: not just the news, but why it matters and how
S1: to respond. All right, welcome to unsupervised learning. This is
S1: Daniel okay. I'm going to start off with something that
S1: just happened. So strawberry just launched. It is being called
S1: zero one, which I assume the O might mean Orion
S1: because people were saying that it might have been called Orion.
S1: So this is the new model from OpenAI, and I've
S1: been messing with it for a couple hours already. So, uh,
S1: first thing is I gave it a task of building
S1: a business plan for something I'm working on, and it
S1: produced output that was far and above better than Ford
S1: or Sonnet 3.5. Yeah, it was really quite, quite good.
S1: Very detailed. It took quite a while. There's no streaming
S1: in the API, so it feels a little rough compared
S1: to the current models, but Whatever that. That will come
S1: with time. It's quite expensive. So basically I did a
S1: couple of conversation analysis analyses by passing in, um, you know,
S1: conversations like transcripts from podcasts. And I think I did
S1: 2 or 3 of those and it was almost a dollar.
S1: And there's also a mini version which is way less expensive,
S1: but I'm trying to test the capabilities, so I'm using
S1: the full model. But yeah, a few requests for a dollar,
S1: whereas I would say probably many dozen or a couple
S1: of hundred requests are normally like a few dollars. So
S1: it's many factors more expensive. So just something to consider.
S1: As with most models, you don't need the biggest, best
S1: or latest. This is a tweet I just put out,
S1: so I'm going through it. So this does one particular
S1: thing well which is in better than anything else, which
S1: is pausing to think and actually going step by step.
S1: That's kind of like the magic sauce. Here is the
S1: chain of thought reasoning. So if you don't need that
S1: for what you're trying to do, you definitely shouldn't use
S1: this because it's more expensive, takes longer to run. All
S1: those sorts of reasons, this type of model and similar
S1: ones going forward are going to massively benefit from high
S1: quality prompting. So things like we use with fabric, which
S1: is open source on GitHub, if you're not familiar, but
S1: you probably are if you're listening to this. But essentially,
S1: the more you know what you want and the better
S1: you can articulate that, the better this is going to perform,
S1: because it is a chain of thought sort of concept.
S1: So the more you give it to help with that,
S1: the better. Okay, sorry about that. I was just checking
S1: to make sure I wasn't doxxing anyone by showing my messages,
S1: but I was not, so I don't have to rerecord. Okay, so, um,
S1: continuing on here and going to expand this window fully. Okay. So, um, yeah,
S1: the better you can articulate all of this. And by
S1: the way, I want to do an edit there for
S1: the team. So the better you can articulate this stuff
S1: in exactly what you want, the better things are. That's
S1: the bottom line here. So a lot of people are
S1: going to question is this AGI or not? Uh, Sam
S1: Altman already responded. He's like, yeah, this absolutely is not.
S1: So that that should end it in terms of the
S1: actual creator of this thing saying it's not. I also
S1: don't think it is either, whatever that matters for. But
S1: bottom line is, anyone who's making the claim of like
S1: this is or isn't AGI. Here's my request to the internet. Basically,
S1: anyone claiming something is or is not should also provide
S1: a concise and achievable definition of what that means. And
S1: I have one here, of course, which is I've talked
S1: about before, whether the ability of an AI, whether a
S1: model or a product or a system to perform the
S1: work of an average US based knowledge worker in 2002,
S1: and I say 2002 because that's pre GPT four right.
S1: So basically pre AI in these terms anyway. So yeah
S1: anyone who's talking about AGI make sure they have a definition.
S1: Otherwise you're just wasting your time because the entire conversation
S1: will be about definitions. And you might not even figure
S1: that out until fucking two hours later. Sorry for the cussing.
S1: All right. One of the most important changes to me
S1: with this model. This this is massive, okay? This is
S1: the first model that does this. It's the first model
S1: of its kind to do this. Very very interesting. It's
S1: actually spending tokens to think, okay, before you had input
S1: and you had output and you were being charged in,
S1: the amount of work that was being done was based
S1: on the number of tokens coming in and the number
S1: of tokens coming out, and that that was the extent
S1: of it. What's happening now is you have tokens coming
S1: in and you have tokens coming out, but there are
S1: tokens being spent while it's thinking. It's actually thinking and
S1: reasoning through how to solve the problem. And what's really
S1: fascinating about this is that you now have multiple factors here. Okay.
S1: So you can do better prompting. This is the next
S1: piece here. Number seven. You could do better prompting. You
S1: could use a smarter model. Or you could have the
S1: model think harder on the problem. And these are all
S1: going to be levers and knobs that we have to
S1: get better results from AI. And this is the first
S1: time we have this third level lever of like actually
S1: having it think right. So at inference time, more effort
S1: being spent. And they actually say in the blog post
S1: they're like, hey, look, right now it's taking, you know,
S1: a few seconds to think or whatever, and it's going
S1: to get back great results. But we're thinking, what if
S1: it thinks for minutes? What if it thinks for hours?
S1: What if it thinks for days or weeks? And not
S1: only that, but we give it more compute power to think.
S1: And the example they gave, I think this was an
S1: OpenAI post. The example they gave here was how much
S1: do you want to solve cancer? What if you could
S1: build a data center? What if you had one data
S1: center just for working on cancer and one data center
S1: just for working on aging and so on? Okay. And
S1: you basically have models like this that scale with the
S1: inference difficulty based on the amount of difficulty of the,
S1: of the thinking. And then of course, you have a
S1: smart model and a good neural net and all that. Right.
S1: Scalability of the of the neural net. So maybe that's
S1: GPT five, GPT six, whatever. Combined with the good prompting,
S1: combined with this thinking capability and combined with, you know,
S1: all those things unified into the combined with having that
S1: giant infrastructure to run it so that that's insane. And
S1: the scales all the way down to like the smallest
S1: stupid problem where it's just like whatever GPT three and
S1: you get back the answer almost instantaneously. In fact, forget
S1: GPT three. It's some local model that only does one
S1: thing well. You're spending almost no resources whatsoever. It just
S1: goes to your phone, bounces back immediately. It doesn't go anywhere,
S1: barely costs any cycles of a GPU or a CPU
S1: because you don't need those resources to run because it's
S1: just an easy thing to answer. So now we're talking
S1: about AI that scales with the difficulty of the problem, right? With,
S1: you know, cancer, aging, getting out of the solar system,
S1: escaping the sun, expanding, ultimately heat, death of the universe.
S1: That's a big one, right? Because entropy kills everything. So ultimately,
S1: we're going to need a way out of here at
S1: some point, assuming we survive that long. Not happening anytime soon.
S1: I wouldn't worry about that. But these are the types
S1: of things that are really exciting. You know, the size
S1: of the problem being being a factor, for which I
S1: you point at it with lots and lots of different
S1: knobs and levers controlling that decision. So I think that's
S1: really cool. Another important thing to mention is that the
S1: innovation seems independent of what we were waiting for for
S1: GPT five. So based on all I read, all the
S1: releases from OpenAI, and I've seen all the rumors and,
S1: you know, talked to a bunch of people who've been
S1: speculating about this. And this seems completely independent from, oh,
S1: is this GPT four oh, is it for oh, is
S1: it five? Is it an early version of five. Doesn't
S1: really matter. It's like a separate axis. This is like
S1: a capability. This is like thinking capability which is on
S1: a separate axis from how big or smart is the
S1: neural net, right? Or how big or smart is the
S1: is the model. So really, really cool to think about
S1: those being two separate things because now we can start
S1: thinking about, okay, well if GPT five is still going
S1: to come out, you know, later this year or be
S1: getting in next year or whenever it's going to come
S1: out and whatever they're going to call it. Well, imagine
S1: GPT five with this thinking capability. That's cool. So presumably
S1: this is just a feature that you can add onto
S1: any model, which is what we're just talking about. And
S1: I think this is okay. This is really, really crucial here.
S1: I've been talking for a long time about slack in
S1: the rope and tricks that we're going to use to
S1: jump ahead in, um, advancement of AI, so so check
S1: this out. A lot of people are like, oh, we're
S1: running into a data wall. Neural nets are only so
S1: good they can only get so good. We've already hit
S1: a thing. I mean, so many, so many people are
S1: saying things like this that just sound absolutely ridiculous to me.
S1: First of all, they were the ones saying we wouldn't
S1: be here. And so now we are here and everyone's
S1: surprised and they're like, well, here's what we know for
S1: sure is we're not going to get any better. How
S1: can I believe you if you didn't predict any of
S1: this and you were absolutely certain back then, and now
S1: you're absolutely certain it's not going to jump ahead again, right?
S1: Leopold talks about this in his paper. There's lots of
S1: different ways to get better. There's the architecture of the model.
S1: There's the size of the model. I forget what all
S1: levers he had, but it was the architecture of the model,
S1: the size of the model. And I think it was
S1: hobbling was the other one, which is what I called
S1: like a year ago. Slack in the rope or tricks
S1: we're going to. This is what I told a friend
S1: of mine who's really smart in this stuff. I said,
S1: watch this. We're going to find multiple tricks where we're
S1: messing around in percentage points, and then we find a
S1: thing and it jumps us two or 3 or 5
S1: or 10 x or 100 x ahead. And I actually
S1: learned this from him. Uh, I actually learned this from him.
S1: He was like, hey, you know, there are things that
S1: jump you ahead. Um, and I think he gave me
S1: example from some public paper or whatever. And it was
S1: an example of like a big jump. And my natural
S1: intuition was, there's going to be a lot more of those.
S1: And they're not coming from pursuing along this axis, which
S1: is difficult. They are actually just hanging off to the side.
S1: It's like, oh, did you know if you just changed
S1: the color of this? Hey, did you know if you
S1: just orient the data backward instead of forward? Hey, did
S1: you know if you just prune the data in this
S1: way or if you add this particular data set or.
S1: And I'm just making up these examples, but simple things
S1: that you wouldn't think would work. And this is why
S1: Leopold talks about if you automate an AI engineer or
S1: an AI researcher, is what he called it. That's when
S1: it gets completely silly because they have the ability to
S1: now go and try a whole bunch of these things,
S1: including these tricks. All this to say that the slack
S1: in the rope or this series of tricks is going
S1: to keep multiplying our advances. And that's at the same
S1: time that we're working on the algorithms. Oh, that was
S1: the other. That was the other factor is algorithms. That
S1: was this is going to happen. At the same time
S1: we're working on the algorithms to make those better. We're
S1: also working on the size of the neural net and
S1: the quality and the structure. And everything about the neural
S1: net is going to get bigger and more powerful, but
S1: mostly just a matter of size, number of parameters. But
S1: all those things are changing at the same time as
S1: we're finding all these tricks. Right? So we're talking about
S1: this is just begun. And this is what people don't realize.
S1: This is just now starting. We're going to look back
S1: in two years and be like, what was that? That
S1: was silly, right? And so I really want to warn
S1: people against thinking we're hitting some kind of a wall.
S1: Think of it this way. We just found alien technology.
S1: We have no idea how it works. And we're, like,
S1: poking it with a stick, and it's already spitting out
S1: amazing things. So think about that. Okay, we got a
S1: glowy ball. We don't know how it floats. We don't
S1: know how it's doing. Anti-Gravity, right? We don't know how
S1: it's doing this. We don't know how it's reflecting its surface.
S1: We don't know how it's coming up with these answers.
S1: We don't know how it got here from the other
S1: solar system. We don't know anything about it. You poke
S1: it with a stick and it tells this magic stuff
S1: and we're like, Holy crap, that's amazing. Somebody walks up,
S1: sees you poke it with a stick and goes, yeah,
S1: that's I mean, that's that's all it's ever going to
S1: be able to do. I mean, I've seen you poke
S1: it with a stick twice, and it gave you kind
S1: of a similar answer, which means that's all we could
S1: learn from this alien ball. That's their conclusion. I am
S1: certain that since you poked it with a stick while
S1: I was standing here three times, and it kind of
S1: gave you a similar answer. One it must be stupid. Two,
S1: it's not as smart as us. And three, this is
S1: as as smart as it's ever going to be. This
S1: is the most it has to offer. That is the
S1: claim that's being made by these kind of like denialists,
S1: in my view. And that doesn't mean the current shiny
S1: ball is better than humans, or it should replace humans,
S1: or it could do everything we could do. Like this
S1: is not a competition. Okay, here's a better way to
S1: think about this. This is not like a rock that
S1: we have animated. Think of it this way. If an
S1: alien comes here because someone else was like, hey, this
S1: is not thinking, this is processing. And I'm like, come on,
S1: come on. If you if an alien comes here, let's
S1: assume we know how our brain works. An alien comes
S1: here and we look at its brain, or it shows
S1: us its brain and it looks different. And we're like, oh,
S1: you guys do neurons and synapses different than us? Who's
S1: going to walk over and be like, well, since they're
S1: doing neurons and synapses different than us, they're not thinking.
S1: Only humans can think. And I'm like, they got here.
S1: They got here, didn't they? It's a little shiny ball.
S1: And they got here from whatever part of the galaxy
S1: or universe that they came from. They're obviously doing something right.
S1: And AI is obviously doing something right too. So I
S1: think it's a little bit specious. Is that is that
S1: the name of the word? It's like specious to just
S1: magically assume that we are the best. Only we are
S1: thinking only we are special. Instead of thinking like we
S1: might have this nascent alien intelligence thing going on that
S1: actually is doing things that are very much analogous to us.
S1: It reminds me of the first time that I clicked
S1: around inside of Linux. This is like late 90s. I
S1: was messing with Linux. this must have been like 97,
S1: 98 or something. I'm messing with Linux and I'm clicking
S1: around because I had started with windows and I'm like, oh,
S1: it opens windows and it opens things that I could
S1: click and navigate. Then I'm like, it's it's just like
S1: on Windows Explorer. And this like, blew me away. It
S1: absolutely blew me away that this was just a different
S1: way of doing the same thing. And that underneath this,
S1: there's a universal thing of you need to be able
S1: to browse files, you need to be able to open windows,
S1: you need to be able to close windows. And that
S1: clicked for me. And I'm like, oh, I guess like
S1: all operating systems are going to do this differently. It's
S1: the same with aliens. It's the same with like they
S1: might think differently, but whatever. They have to think, right.
S1: So why would we expect this synthetic intelligence that we've
S1: birthed to do it exactly the same way that we
S1: way that we do? We should not expect that we
S1: got here accidentally stumbling through time due to evolution. And
S1: we've got this version that we have and it's awesome, obviously.
S1: But like that's way different than we invented this thing
S1: five years ago or whenever that was 2017, six years ago.
S1: And I know it goes further back than that. But
S1: you know what I'm saying? Transformers. All right. So that's that.
S1: And this this is becoming a long thing. But whatever
S1: we'll go with it. So yeah, basically we have no
S1: idea how early all of this is. We're likely to
S1: find ten, 20 or 200 more of these holy crap
S1: optimizations like this thinking thing before we start hitting any
S1: limits for neural network architecture or the transformer transformer like.
S1: Plus we could just find something better than a transformer.
S1: You realize how how lucky we were to find the transformer.
S1: Like the people who made that paper. They're like, hey,
S1: this is this is a cool way. We think this
S1: is a cool way of doing something. They didn't know
S1: what they had. Okay. You should watch a Karpathy talk
S1: about the transformer. He's like, this thing is a general
S1: purpose computer. This thing is insanely good at learning. He
S1: talks about different ways that it's better than humans at learning. Okay.
S1: Some some people randomly found this thing, and it shot
S1: us off. Okay. So. So check this out. This is
S1: another example of finding tricks or slack in the rope
S1: just lying on the ground. So we stumble through AI
S1: for decades and decades and decades. And then someone's like, hey,
S1: this is kind of cool about this attention mechanism. Hey,
S1: what do you think about this architecture for a neural net? Boom,
S1: now we have this take off. There's nothing saying somebody
S1: isn't going to be like, I like what you did
S1: with that transformer architecture. What if it looked like this instead?
S1: It might be 20 times better. It might be 2000
S1: times better. It might be 4% better. It doesn't matter.
S1: Like we have only just begun. We have only just begun.
S1: I can absolutely guarantee you that assuming we don't kill
S1: ourselves off as a result of this, like that would
S1: set things back. But I'm trying to get you to
S1: think about things in this way, because it's insane what's
S1: about to happen. And yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna have
S1: more examples here. I'm working on an example right here
S1: on this other screen. Uh, pretty cool thing I'm building
S1: with it. Um, okay, so that was that. All right,
S1: now back to the show. Okay. We are adding a
S1: whole bunch more content to the podcast. So if you
S1: have not been listening to the podcast, I used to
S1: do this really dry thing. Um, and sometimes I'm still dry,
S1: so whatever. I'm an intellectual guy. Sometimes I just like,
S1: talk about the idea. I'm not overly excited, like the
S1: way I was just now, and it could be a
S1: little boring. I mean, I started this thing back in
S1: 2015 and I was literally like, welcome to the Take
S1: One Security podcast. The podcast where I do everything and
S1: take 1 in 1 take. That's all I do. I
S1: just read the news. Okay. First news. Now that was fire.
S1: The podcast blew up. Why? Because no one had a podcast. Well,
S1: there was Risky Biz. There was like GRC. What's his name?
S1: Steve Gibson. There was that there was a couple, but very,
S1: very few. And actually mine was dry and to the point.
S1: So it was like super exciting. Anyway, that that is
S1: the old version that is no longer interesting. People got
S1: tired of that and I lost interest in it because
S1: I just didn't want to talk about the news anymore.
S1: I wanted to move on to other things. So it
S1: is now what it is. The point is, the thing
S1: that I just did about I about the release of strawberry,
S1: that is now a piece which will be cut out
S1: by the team. The team will put that on YouTube
S1: and the team will put out that out on the podcast.
S1: And when I do little clips like that, I don't
S1: know that I'm in a clip in the moment. But
S1: what happens is they take that and put it into
S1: its own piece. They name it, they do a thumbnail maybe.
S1: I'm not sure about that, but they put it out
S1: there and now that's a piece of content, and oftentimes
S1: it's way easier to listen to those. I would prefer
S1: to listen to those. Again, I'm building the thing that
S1: I believe needs to exist because it's what I wish
S1: I was getting from other people. Right? So Alex Hormozi,
S1: Chris Williamson, all these different people, I love the fact
S1: that I can get a single discrete piece of content,
S1: and I don't mean like a YouTube short, like 30s
S1: or a minute. I mean something like, I don't care
S1: if it's 30s or if it's like 3 or 4 minutes.
S1: I just want a discrete idea labeled as that discrete idea.
S1: So that's what I've been doing. I've been taking content
S1: either making it independently or if it happens to come
S1: out like it just did. Talking about strawberry inside of
S1: a big episode that is then brought out and turned
S1: into a full thing. Now, the advantage here is that
S1: the podcast is now going to be full of content.
S1: There's now going to be three, four, five, six pieces
S1: of hopefully decent pieces of content inside the podcast feed.
S1: So if you're a subscriber to the podcast, which you
S1: should definitely go do on Apple or Spotify or whatever
S1: your client, um, you will not only have this big episode, which,
S1: when I mess around and start ranting like this, could
S1: end up being 30 minutes long, right? But in addition
S1: to those, you're going to have these really clean little
S1: pieces of content that's like a single idea. So bottom
S1: line is get back on the podcast, whether that's on
S1: YouTube or on, um, Audio? Definitely. Please go subscribe on
S1: the audio version so Apple Podcasts, Spotify, whatever, Android. And uh, yeah,
S1: tune in because you're probably going to like it a lot. Okay,
S1: new keyboard I'm using. Okay. How do I type without
S1: messing anything up? Um, let's see here. Okay, I'll just do. Okay.
S1: I'm going to type fast. I don't know if you
S1: can hear this. I got a Sennheiser here listening. Okay.
S1: This keyboard is called the Aleph 75. I love this keyboard.
S1: And it's actually super cheap. It's like 70 bucks. I've
S1: purchased so many expensive keyboards that are sitting over there
S1: and I don't use them. I was using this one
S1: for a while, but I heard this sound on a
S1: YouTube video in a review and I was like, ooh,
S1: I like that sound. Hope it sounds like that in person.
S1: And yeah, it does. It sounds like that in person.
S1: Hopefully the post-production will not take out that sound, but, um,
S1: I love the sound of this thing. Um, this particular
S1: one has no key. Uh, has no labels on the
S1: top of the keys. They're actually on the bottom of
S1: the keys, and they're backlit, so it's pretty cool. So
S1: the whole keyboard looks kind of gray. It's really heavy.
S1: I like it, but mostly I like the sound and
S1: the feel. So combine that with Neovim config text based world.
S1: I'm happy. I'm a happy person. Okay, continue to be
S1: blown away by the idea of encapsulating what people think
S1: the biggest problem in the world is using extract. Primary
S1: problem I love this thing. So echo Viktor Frankl's work,
S1: pipe that into extract primary problem and look what it
S1: brings back. The lack of meaning in life leads to
S1: suffering and existential despair. That is beautiful, that is beautiful.
S1: And I'm taking someone's entire body of work and pulling
S1: out what they think the biggest problem in the world is.
S1: That's just astounding to me. Yeah. So the keynote at
S1: Sans went really well. Almost 30 minutes of questions afterwards
S1: was really cool for them to have me appreciate them. Yeah,
S1: I'm experimenting with some micro art fiction. And Tim from
S1: community was like, hey, what are you working on? You're
S1: working on a book? Uh, not really. Kind of. That's
S1: all I'll say about that. Not actively and fiercely, but
S1: I will say that. But yeah, some ideas out there
S1: working on a bunch of flagship content. Right now, I'm
S1: mentioning more and more about human 3.0. So I'm going
S1: to put out like a description of that, like the
S1: structure and what I'm working on there. Uh, a new
S1: piece on security asset management in AI, how to write
S1: fiction using AI. That one's going to be insane and
S1: a whole bunch of other ones. And all right, let's
S1: get into security. Chinese government backed hackers have been infiltrating
S1: US internet service providers to spy on users, according to
S1: a bunch of researchers, Halliburton confirmed a cyberattack where intruders
S1: access an exfiltrated data, and they blamed the Ransom hub Group,
S1: who also claimed responsibility. Predator spyware predator spyware is back
S1: with new features that make it even harder to track,
S1: and looks like it's showing up in Democratic Republic of
S1: Congo and Angola, and there's a lot more anonymity built
S1: into it. So the trick with this kind of malware
S1: is that it's not just the people who make it,
S1: it's the people who sell it. And the fact that
S1: there's a market for governments who want to control their populations.
S1: And that's what's especially scary about, like the CCP way
S1: of viewing the world. And if you combine that with AI,
S1: that can kind of control things and see everything and
S1: like determine who's breaking the rules and monitor and surveil
S1: and things like that, and you combine those things together
S1: And you do have a recipe for controlling populations. Latest
S1: version of NIST, CSF, which is two, introduces governance as
S1: a new step and focuses on continuous improvement to adapt
S1: to emerging threats. And it also they also released a
S1: continuous threat exposure management framework, CDM framework. Thanks to Hyper
S1: Proof for sponsoring Maltese security, researchers have been charged after
S1: discovering a flaw in an application called Free Hour. And
S1: I think they are in jail. Yeah, they're in jail
S1: waiting for trial, I believe, because they don't have like, oh, disclosure,
S1: public disclosure or, you know, good citizen or anything like that.
S1: It's like, nope, you did a bad thing. You're in jail.
S1: US Space Force is gearing up for potential conflicts in
S1: space with countries like China and Russia, and they're trying
S1: to predict the stuff in space, obviously, Satellites and other
S1: space assets. And thanks to dropzone for sponsoring as well.
S1: In the US, is offering a $10 million reward for
S1: information on the Russian hacking group called Cadet Blizzard, linked
S1: to Gru's unit 29 155, which has been particularly focused
S1: on disrupting aid to Ukraine. NASA is launching a new
S1: podcast called No Such Podcast. Good name. That's a good name. Evidently,
S1: lots of people use the I forgot My password feature
S1: as a de facto login method. Human behavior A Starlink
S1: satellite dish was used on a US Navy ship for
S1: an illicit Wi-Fi network called stinky, which was used for
S1: streaming and civilian communication. The Navy demoted the senior enlisted
S1: leader responsible for being awesome. Uh, so I didn't write that.
S1: I wrote that right. Obviously. Uh, and I got some pushback. Honestly,
S1: I got some pushback from some military people and some
S1: Navy people, and they're like, hey, this is not a
S1: laughing matter. I know it's not a laughing matter. I
S1: know you shouldn't be allowed to set up satellite receivers
S1: on a warship. I know this. I'm ex-military too. I
S1: just thought it was funny. Like they're trying to give
S1: internet to the people. They're a hero. I know it's bad. Like, sorry.
S1: Not sorry. Um. All right. I tech. Apple released their
S1: September updates yesterday, and they were decent. So I'm going
S1: to jump ahead. I'm basically getting probably I don't think
S1: I'm going to get the new AirPods. I saw a
S1: thing that basically said that the AirPods Pro two are
S1: still better because they have the silicone tip part, and
S1: I'm going to get the black 16 Pro, but not
S1: the max. I can't remember if there was some. Oh,
S1: I might get the watch as well. I might either
S1: get a black Ultra Series two or I might get
S1: the series ten because it's got a bigger screen then
S1: the ultra. I don't know which one I'm going to get.
S1: I'm going to wait and see it in person because
S1: I will be camping on the night of the 19th
S1: in Burlingame. So if anyone wants to come hang out
S1: in person, we can have like an impromptu UL meetup
S1: because I've been there for the last let's see since ten, 2010.
S1: Holy crap. I've been camping at that store for 14
S1: years and I camped the three previous times in other places.
S1: So I've been camping for the iPhone since 2007, but
S1: I've been doing it at that store like first in
S1: line for last 14 years, and I will be there
S1: again on the 19th. If anyone wants to do an
S1: impromptu UL meetup, which it won't be an actual UL meetup,
S1: it'll just be us hanging out because there's coffee shops,
S1: there's a Phil's right there so we can hang out.
S1: We could talk. Um, I usually walk a lot through
S1: the course of the night, maybe try to take a
S1: nap or whatever at night. But, uh, anyway, I'll be there.
S1: Nvidia's RTX 40 series GPUs, including the 5080 and 5090
S1: are getting ready to be finalized and potentially come out
S1: end of the year or beginning of next year. They're
S1: saying these things are going to be massively power hungry.
S1: I've got two 49 seconds in the room next to
S1: me here, and they are beasts. I'm going to have
S1: some FOMO when the 5090 comes out, but I don't
S1: think I'm going to be upgrading my system because that
S1: would be expensive and I'm not sure I need that,
S1: especially when a lot of the AI models are probably
S1: going to run better. I'd rather wait and upgrade my
S1: main desktop on Apple and see what, like the giant
S1: M4 or giant M5 systems have. When I have, let's say,
S1: half a terabyte of system on a chip memory and
S1: all of that can be used for GPU operations. I'm
S1: not sure I'm going to need a dedicated, well, maybe
S1: I'll need a dedicated one of those boxes to do I.
S1: But I'm not sure I'm going to build another dedicated
S1: PC with Nvidia chips in it, which is weird because
S1: I got a lot of Nvidia stock. Anyway, that's a
S1: separate talk show. Uh, okay. Trump is launching a crypto project,
S1: but there are concerns because 70% of the tokens are
S1: being allocated to insiders. Uh, Ilya has a new startup, SSI,
S1: and they raised $1 billion. So a lot of people
S1: have $1 billion valuations. Ilya did it differently. He has
S1: a $1 billion seed round, a $1 billion seed round. Insane.
S1: Visa is set to launch a new account to account
S1: a to a payment service in Europe. So you could
S1: make direct bank to bank transfers without using credit cards.
S1: I wonder if that's a competitor to Swift. I imagine
S1: it is. Or maybe it rides on top of Swift,
S1: I don't know. Engineers from Cornell and Florence University have
S1: developed a biohybrid robot that uses electric signals from a
S1: king trumpet mushroom to move and sense its environment. Reminds
S1: me of Neri Oxman. Neri Oxman doing her, uh, networking
S1: of nature types. Uh, stuff for 2024 annual Work Trend
S1: Index from Microsoft and LinkedIn reveals a shift in employer
S1: preferences 71% of leaders favoring candidates with AI skill over
S1: those with industry experience. Yeah, I found this one kind
S1: of interesting. Um, Wall Street Journal is highlighting a trend
S1: where small startups are increasingly influencing the US economy. So
S1: I've been thinking about this for a while, is getting
S1: ready to write a piece on it. But I want
S1: to I want to state this more forcefully. I think
S1: people are about to realize that the most medium to
S1: large companies, like the size companies, have become ineffective. They
S1: lack vision and focus, too much bureaucracy. They have giant
S1: workforces that are hired for like a worker bee mentality
S1: rather than to have them be exceptional or innovative or
S1: challenging to the structure. And I think this is another
S1: part of the essay that I wrote called The End
S1: of Work, where much of the innovation in the world
S1: moves away from big companies and towards individuals and small,
S1: dynamic startups. And this is also what Marc Andreessen talked
S1: about in his conversation with Huberman, which I thought just
S1: came out. But it turns out that was a year ago.
S1: But that was a fantastic episode. And related to this,
S1: Paul Graham's piece, uh, his latest piece, called Founder Mode,
S1: looks at how bigger companies make the mistakes talked about above,
S1: and how this founder mode, which he didn't even define it,
S1: he just said it like it needs to be defined
S1: because it's really interesting. But, um, yeah, it basically he
S1: says it allows you to stay in a more innovation
S1: focused mindset. Uh, and great read. All this stuff is
S1: a great read. I just wish he, uh, I wish
S1: he locked it down. Yeah, I understand it's not locked
S1: down yet, but I thought he might have tried to
S1: do that. Oakland police are using Tesla's Sentry Mode footage
S1: to aid crime investigations, and if they can't find the owner,
S1: they just tow the car. They just tow the Tesla
S1: because it has the evidence. Waymo is tackling the skepticism
S1: around its autonomous vehicles by launching a new safety hub
S1: with a whole bunch of data and charts showing that
S1: they're more safe than human drivers. Oh, related story that
S1: just came out is that most of the accidents with
S1: Waymo are from human drivers hitting the Waymo. Not surprising
S1: to me. Joshua Austin's a manifesto manifesto for Radical Simplicity
S1: argues for a streamlined approach to software delivery, ditching subjective
S1: metrics like story points in favor of focusing on real
S1: dependencies and outcomes. Bluetooth 6.0 is here. Oh, by the way,
S1: the new iPhones have Wi-Fi seven. I am upgrading my
S1: whole house to Wi-Fi seven. They say it's about five
S1: times faster, so if I'm getting like 800 down right now,
S1: eight times 544 gigabits. It would be nice if I
S1: got four gigabits. I bet you I'm going to get like,
S1: two gigabits streaming to my phone and then to my
S1: laptop once laptops have Wi-Fi seven. Not sure if my
S1: current ones do. A Caritas phone was snatched in London
S1: and despite tracking it with Find My iPhone, he watched
S1: it basically travel around the city and ended up in Shenzhen. Humans.
S1: President XI Jinping has pledged to create over 1 million
S1: jobs in Africa. I cannot stand seeing Africa become an
S1: extension of China. I do not like it, but it's
S1: pretty hard for the West and anyone in the West
S1: to even notice this, given our history, which is not great.
S1: The question is, how long will we let that guilt
S1: be an obstacle to opposing China wherever they go and
S1: basically do colonialism, which is bad, but hard to talk
S1: about how bad it is when you already did it
S1: and got scolded for it, and now you feel bad
S1: about it, and now you're pointing the finger at someone
S1: else doing it. It feels kind of weird, but at
S1: the same time, it also feels weird and cowardly to
S1: not do anything about it just because you feel guilty.
S1: A whole bunch of right wing influencers receive millions of
S1: dollars from Russia in return for promoting pro-Russian talking points,
S1: which is hilarious to me since their whole narrative is like,
S1: I don't believe anything. I'm skeptical. I'm discerning. Except when
S1: it comes to obvious Russian propaganda. Here's another way to
S1: think about it. And I did some Intel in the Army.
S1: I'm not, like heavily Intel trained, but I did have
S1: a decent amount of exposure to it and worked in
S1: like the Intel Group or whatever. But think about this.
S1: Here are probably two unrelated phenomenon one. We know for
S1: absolute certain that Russia is trying to use its significant
S1: propaganda capabilities to influence the right wing in the United
S1: States to be pro-Russian into Ukraine that we know for
S1: absolute certain. Right. That's not even debatable. They are really
S1: good at this, and they are spending at least tens
S1: of millions of dollars, probably hundreds of millions of dollars,
S1: probably not billions. So I'm guessing tens of millions to
S1: hundreds of millions of dollars they are spending on doing this.
S1: And they're really good at it because it's essentially like
S1: the evolution of the KGB. Second point, which is probably unrelated.
S1: The right wing in the United States is now completely,
S1: almost completely pro-Russian Anti-ukraine. And some people reached out to
S1: me and they're like, that's not true. That's not true.
S1: I should have went and found some data and linked
S1: to it. I read the data all the time. I
S1: read the data all the time in polling, where it's like,
S1: how much of the Republican Party, when polled, are actually pro-Putin?
S1: The numbers are ridiculous. I'm sorry, I don't have the
S1: link here. I should have put it in there, but
S1: it's it's pretty easy to Google and you'll find it yourself.
S1: It's actually better if you find it yourself than if
S1: I feed you the link. Just Google that. Look for
S1: your look for the stats, the polling. It's ridiculous. And
S1: a brief political aside. So this is an example of
S1: a little breakout piece. So I already know I'm going
S1: to get hate mail about the point above, because I'm
S1: a crazy liberal and I post a lot of other
S1: stuff that's like anti-left far left and their idiocracy or idiocy.
S1: And I get tons of comments about being way too
S1: right from the left because I attack the left and whatever,
S1: and I just now attack the right and they're going
S1: to be like, oh, you're too left wing. So I
S1: asked you to consider another possibility, which is I'm actively
S1: considering each position from first principles. Not perfect. I could
S1: be wrong, but I put a lot of effort into
S1: having my own opinions that are not part of a
S1: tribe of pre-approved options. So perhaps the best way to
S1: sum me up right now is that I'm liberal in
S1: my goals and somewhat conservative in my approach for how
S1: to achieve them. So meaning, I want a planet full
S1: of lots of different colors and ethnicities of people all
S1: thriving together. A secular society that encourages any religion but
S1: doesn't allow any of them to infringe on government or
S1: the ideals listed here. Gender identity, private sexual behavior between
S1: consenting adults, all personal choices and nobody's business. Basically, the
S1: freedom for everyone to strive to be the best versions
S1: of themselves that they can be, and a society that
S1: sees that as simultaneously a matter of personal responsibility, but
S1: also helps people along that path. So free speech, the
S1: ability to offend people with difficult ideas and have those
S1: debates and be controversial and be offensive, right. The concept
S1: of meritocracy, the emphasis on personal responsibility. Okay. And those
S1: are kind of like currently those are considered like right wing. Right.
S1: But also the acknowledgement that some people in groups need
S1: help getting to this point where their personal responsibility can
S1: actually take root and help them thrive, and that it
S1: is society's responsibility to give that to them. And that's
S1: where it's liberal. So in other words, if everyone had
S1: the same opportunity, I'd be fiercely all about meritocracy. But
S1: not everyone has the same opportunity. And that's the role
S1: of society and charity and kindness to help them get
S1: to the place where their hard work can actually benefit them.
S1: So the problem right now, in my mind, is that
S1: the far right and the far left are in opposition
S1: to that model. I just laid out the far right
S1: because they actually want the wrong things, and the far
S1: left because they are so confused about how the world
S1: works that they're causing more harm than good. So anyway,
S1: that's a short version of where I currently stand. And
S1: if you ever get confused about like if I'm crazy
S1: right or crazy left, just go read that. And here's
S1: a really important point. I also consider you to make
S1: your own North Star paragraph or set of bullet points
S1: like I just did, and have that be your thing.
S1: And then realize that this this, the left narrative or
S1: the right narrative or centrist narrative with all these different narratives,
S1: they don't really matter. What matters is what is your
S1: North Star look like? Like I just laid out. And
S1: then what you'll find is, like all these different narratives
S1: and tribes and everything they might have. Venn diagram overlaps
S1: with some part of your thing, but they shouldn't be
S1: your thing. If you have a perfect Venn diagram, overlap
S1: with the extreme right or the extreme left, you don't
S1: have your own opinions. You are using someone else's opinions
S1: and that's a problem. So North Star plus First principles
S1: is far better than picking a tribe and endorsing everything
S1: they say. All right. Sweden's health authority has issued new
S1: guidelines advising the children under two should have no screen time,
S1: while teenagers should be limited to three hours a day.
S1: A lot of people are starting to say, and this
S1: is supported by a bunch of different studies, that exercise
S1: could be the most potent medical intervention that we know of.
S1: And I got a buddy who's a cardiologist named Jonathan,
S1: and he agrees with this. David Brooks discusses TEDx Goias.
S1: Gioia's essay on the decline of American culture, where art
S1: is overshadowed by entertainment. And now even entertainment is being
S1: consumed by distraction from platforms like TikTok and Instagram. Got
S1: a photographer documenting life and beauty of America's last old
S1: growth forests? Got an article here that explores the belief
S1: that there's a place for everyone, and suggesting that every
S1: person has a unique purpose and value. Marco Giancotti argues
S1: that with millions of books available, only select a few
S1: what he calls damn good books, which are truly life changing.
S1: And these are the books that transform you and not
S1: to get bogged down with, like, every book out there.
S1: And this goes along with the idea of like, you
S1: should be willing to put down bad books, just put
S1: it down. Go on to a better one. Phoenix just
S1: hit 100 consecutive days of 100 degree heat, which beats
S1: the record that was set in 1993. And discovery lmao
S1: swsh a bash wrapper around Python's ML whisper. It's basically
S1: a really fast whisper for Mac. NN term lets you
S1: browse Hacker News from your terminal and dungeon dash a
S1: remote know a command line RPG where you dive into dungeons,
S1: battle enemies, and collect loot to up level and become
S1: the ultimate hero. I want to play this a whole
S1: bunch more, and I actually want to make some of these.
S1: These these just seem super fun and I love the terminal.
S1: If you didn't already know that NSA's national Cryptographic school
S1: television catalog from 1991 has surfaced, listing around 600 training
S1: videos on CommSec and Sigint. I love these treasure troves
S1: of old things. When I was in the Army, I
S1: got to work in a library for a certain amount
S1: of time, and I got all the Special Forces manuals
S1: and all the CommSec and Sigint and stuff like that,
S1: and I would just sit and read these things, like voraciously. Okay.
S1: List of ideas. Extraordinarily simple template you could use to
S1: orient your life. Okay. I love this thing. I believe
S1: one of the biggest issues in the world is this,
S1: which is why I'm looking to solve it using this,
S1: which is why I'm doing these projects. And I'm measuring
S1: my success using these metrics. This is how to introduce
S1: yourself at a party. This is potentially how to introduce
S1: yourself to a mate. This is how to explain yourself
S1: in an interview. It's your LinkedIn profile. Look at this.
S1: I believe this is the biggest problem which I think
S1: we should solve by doing this, which is why I'm
S1: doing this work which I am measuring using these metrics.
S1: That is purpose, that is direction, and it explains it
S1: to others. And it's done using a simple sentence like,
S1: you could turn this into one complex sentence. And if
S1: you can answer this, I would argue you're better off
S1: than most people in the workforce and most people on
S1: the planet. The more I think about it, the more
S1: I think major career for creators going forward will be
S1: building entire realities for people to live inside of. So
S1: think post, AGI or ASI and post UBI and where
S1: games are extraordinarily immersive. So I think there will be
S1: a huge market for creative people, creative people building the
S1: storylines and stat systems that look and feel like entire
S1: worlds that people will live inside of. So imagine how
S1: everyone loved Game of Thrones for all those years, except
S1: like you're actually one of the characters. In fact, you're
S1: one of the heroes and you're navigating through the the difficulty. Right?
S1: Or it could be like a superhero themed thing or
S1: like a romance themed thing or like fantasy or whatever
S1: the structure is. So imagine basically your favorite book or
S1: TV show or series or movie or whatever. We basically
S1: build fully immersive realities based on those for people to
S1: spend their time inside of. And the problem is, it
S1: can't all be entertainment because people need a purpose. They
S1: need some sort of drive. I think we're going to
S1: find ways to create that purpose inside of these realities.
S1: I have a piece from I need to go dig
S1: this thing up. It's from like 2002. And I basically
S1: said that the games of the future will be people
S1: going in and doing the work and the jobs inside there.
S1: So you'll go in there and you'll be a cop, okay?
S1: And you'll see someone coming down the thing and the
S1: music is too loud, or they're beating somebody up, and
S1: you'll go and actually engage in a fight with this person, um,
S1: to try to restrain them or whatever. Or maybe you're
S1: the bad guy and you're just going to go beat
S1: somebody up, and it's someone else's job to be the
S1: good guy, and they're actually paid or rewarded in some
S1: sort of way. So other people inside the game can
S1: give them something, or the system can reward them in
S1: a way that's good on the outside as well. Now,
S1: in most scenarios, your house and your game subscription and
S1: your game gear and everything is being paid by UBI
S1: in this world that I'm thinking of, most of the
S1: jobs are gone and people are being paid essentially to
S1: live inside these realities, which is massively dystopian. I want
S1: to be very clear about that, if that is the
S1: only option. Okay. What I'm saying is that when the
S1: jobs go away, there will be a lot of people
S1: who want to live these lives because we are creative.
S1: We read these books, we see these movies. We we
S1: know that that's on offer. That's the thing we could
S1: potentially have. So if games make it where we can
S1: actually have it, we can actually be that hero. We
S1: will want to do it, but we won't want to
S1: do it. It will be empty and weak and shallow
S1: and lame and horribly destructive. If it's nothing but just
S1: like violence and porn, which there definitely will be, that right?
S1: There will be games that are just nothing but that.
S1: But it's all entertainment. It's empty. It's hollow, it's nothing.
S1: The better version of this, which I hope happens and
S1: definitely could happen with, like if we're wielding ASI or
S1: if ASI takes over and it's doing this in a
S1: benign way, it would build meaning into the system, but
S1: it wouldn't require that you do it. You could also
S1: take off the gear, put it aside, go outside, start
S1: a community, start a farm. Like, uh, till the land,
S1: toe the land. What's the name? What's the verb? Um,
S1: you know, till I think it's till anyway you tend
S1: to the land, you grow crops, you make food, people
S1: eat the food. You have families, you have kids like.
S1: So imagine this. There are societies that's kind of like Amish.
S1: They don't play the games, so they're kind of Amish.
S1: And maybe there's like more advanced technological versions of Amish
S1: where it's like, I don't know, the 1950s or something, right?
S1: In this ideal kind of world, except for it's everywhere
S1: and everyone can participate. I would argue that the actual
S1: reality is going to look like there's going to be
S1: some communities like that, some communities that are super Amish,
S1: they're like Ted Kaczynski, like tech is bad and they
S1: just do their own thing. Government should leave them alone.
S1: They are productive members of society. They have their own schools.
S1: They have their own religion. They have their own stuff.
S1: Like they're making their own food. Leave them alone. Everything's fine.
S1: They don't have to play the games. And a bunch
S1: of people like maybe some of their kids, and that'll
S1: be bad, but a bunch of people are going to
S1: be like, are you kidding me? I want to be
S1: a superhero. I want to be a princess. I want
S1: to be, you know, I want to take over the world.
S1: I want to do all these things. Fine. Go find
S1: your meaning inside the game system. Importantly here, there is
S1: going to be a period of time in which we're
S1: going to need something like this as a transition period,
S1: because so many people are going to lose their meaning,
S1: they're going to have to go into this thing. I
S1: think there's going to be a requirement for an ASI,
S1: for a government, for something to be like, look, we
S1: need to give out money and we need to give
S1: them something awesome. I think game companies, whoever it is, Ubisoft, Microsoft, Sony,
S1: all these people, they're actually going to get hired by
S1: the government to create these giant scale games that people
S1: can live inside of. There's going to be haptic gear
S1: they think of like a military push to invent the
S1: bomb or whatever, but the military push is going to
S1: be to invent really immersive technology because we need it,
S1: because guess what? It is actually a military concern. It
S1: is actually a military level requirement that we do not
S1: have hundreds of millions of people, also known as billions
S1: of people with no meaning and no money, because they
S1: will in fact light everything on fire and that will
S1: be bad. So there will be a period where we
S1: actually need to invent something like this to get us
S1: through this period. That kind of calms everyone down. But
S1: if you don't do it well, they will be satiated
S1: and they will be not violent, but it will start
S1: to rot. It will rot the human soul. Because what
S1: are they doing for creativity? What are they making? What
S1: are they building? Are they building? Are they making families?
S1: Who's making the kids? Right? I mean, the games didn't
S1: solve aging. So a bunch of people hooked into the games,
S1: they don't meet anyone. And two generations later, we don't
S1: have any people. Or actually, technically, I think everyone dies
S1: in one generation, right? If you're not reproducing. So like
S1: that is only a temporary solution to not have the
S1: world blow up. But ultimately you have to solve the
S1: meaning problem, which either happens outside the game, which I
S1: think that is going to happen and should happen, or
S1: inside the game. And I think what's most likely in
S1: a benign situation is that you'll have both recommendation of
S1: the week. I've been a bit obsessed with the problem
S1: definition lately, like I talked about with the fabric pattern.
S1: And here's my recommendation get really good at articulating and
S1: prioritizing your problems, like write them out in vast detail.
S1: Make yourself an expert in your problems. It takes away
S1: their power. Kind of like staring directly at anger when
S1: you're meditating. Like it takes the spin off the anger.
S1: If you look away, the anger hurts you again. You
S1: look directly at the anger and you're like, hmm, that's
S1: not so bad. Happens the same with your problems. They
S1: become approachable, and this also happens to be the key
S1: to brilliant I prompting because it's an extension of like
S1: know yourself and then you can articulate yourself and the
S1: aphorism of the week when I have one week to
S1: solve a seemingly impossible problem, I spend six days defining it,
S1: and then the solution becomes obvious. When I have one
S1: week to solve a seemingly impossible problem, I spend six
S1: days defining it, and then the solution becomes obvious. Albert Einstein.
S1: Unsupervised learning is produced and edited by Daniel Miessler on
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UU: We'll see you next time.