Founder, The Roots of Progress (rootsofprogress.org). Part-time tech consultant, Our World in Data. Former software engineering manager and tech startup founder.
jasoncrawford(Jason Crawford)
Karma: 6,701
Accelerating science through evolvable institutions
The origins of the steam engine: An essay with interactive animated diagrams
Did Sam threaten to take the team with him, or did the team threaten to quit and follow him? From what I saw it looked like the latter.
I was basing my (uncertain) interpretation on a number of sources, and I only linked to one, sorry.
In particular, the only substantive board disagreement that I saw was over Toner’s report that was critical of OpenAI for releasing models too quickly, and Sam being upset over it.
Thanks. I was quoting Semafor, but on a closer reading of Tallinn’s quote I agree that they might have been misinterpreting him. (Has he commented on this, does anyone know?)
Neither EA nor e/acc is what we need to build the future
Progress links digest, 2023-11-24: Bottlenecks of aging, Starship launches, and much more
Yes, but not all of it is well-understood as problem-solving ahead of time:
It feels strained to say that Henry Ford solved the problem that people couldn’t move over land faster than horses. Or that Apple solved the problem that people couldn’t carry the internet in their pockets. Or that telephones solved the problem that people couldn’t communicate in real time without being in the same room. The list of technologies that didn’t solve a problem except in retrospect is long.
https://blog.spec.tech/p/is-necessity-actually-the-mother
Thank you! That means a lot to me, especially since these posts are never the ones that go viral, so it’s good to know that someone appreciates them.
Progress links digest, 2023-11-07: Techno-optimism and more
What I’ve been reading, November 2023
Progress links digest, 2023-10-12: Dyson sphere thermodynamics and a cure for cavities
What I’ve been reading, October 2023: The stirrup in Europe, 19th-century art deco, and more
I haven’t investigated this, but there is a long essay from Eli Dourado here that is bullish on the concept.
Progress links digest, 2023-09-08: The Conservative Futurist, cargo airships, and more
I don’t think this is exactly correct: I’m pretty sure that many cities including London and Paris had sewer systems much earlier than that, although they modernized them / made major overhauls in the 19th century. (Anyway, kind of besides the point of the linked thread)
What I’ve been reading, September 2023
Progress links digest, 2023-09-01: How ancient people manipulated water, and more
Update: I’m already planning to give brief remarks at a few events coming up very soon:
Thurs, Aug 24: Recur Club founders meetup in Indiranagar. Register/apply here
Sun, Aug 27: LessWrong / Astral Codex Ten meetup at Matteo Coffea
If you’re in/near Bangalore, hope to see you there!
There is certainly no moral equivalence between the two of them; SBF was a fraud and Toner was (from what I can tell) acting honestly according to her convictions. Sorry if I didn’t make that clear enough.
But I disagree about destroying OpenAI—that would have been a massive destruction of value and very far from justified IMO.