580: AI Wonderland, congestion pricing, and Siberian neo folk
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It’s not quite spring yet in NYC, which gives me insight into what winter here is like. Whew boy that’s not fun.
I’ve been spending the days huddled around blankets and space heaters before dashing out at night straight to social events through cold, wind, and rain. But the social events do deliver, with an impressive array of thriving entertainers, professionals across industries, and drop dead gorgeous humans. Will drop the tips once I leave at the end of the month.
Technology
Amie takes meeting notes, and then acts on them! Agentic AI workflows?
This team of genAI artists made a feature film with Alice in Wonderland as the base narrative. Check out all the different styles used, and it can even replace Alice’s face with yours! The future of entertainment for sure.
The Slate Star Codex guy joined a team of forecasters who successfully predicted most of the 2025 AI developments in 2021, and they have more forecasts for you. (Keep in mind these are some of the most optimistic excited AI techies out there)
The summary: we think that 2025 and 2026 will see gradually improving AI agents. In 2027, coding agents will finally be good enough to substantially boost AI R&D itself, causing an intelligence explosion that plows through the human level sometime in mid-2027 and reaches superintelligence by early 2028. The US government wakes up in early 2027, potentially after seeing the potential for AI to be a decisive strategic advantage in cyberwarfare, and starts pulling AI companies into its orbit - not fully nationalizing them, but pushing them into more of a defense-contractor-like relationship. China wakes up around the same time, steals the weights of the leading American AI, and maintains near-parity. There is an arms race which motivates both countries to cut corners on safety and pursue full automation over public objections; this goes blindingly fast and most of the economy is automated by ~2029. If AI is misaligned, it could move against humans as early as 2030 (ie after it’s automated enough of the economy to survive without us). If it gets aligned successfully, then by default power concentrates in a double-digit number of tech oligarchs and US executive branch members; this group is too divided to be crushingly dictatorial, but its reign could still fairly be described as technofeudalism. Humanity starts colonizing space at the very end of the 2020s / early 2030s.
For a less heady perspective, the Stanford Human Centered AI group put out a 2025 trends report that is a good look at macro and institutional responses to the latest AI.
Ideologies
Climate Town has another banger of an edutainment video out exploring NYC’s congestion pricing and how well it works. The opposition here highlights the status quo reality that our taxes are subsidizing and prioritizing richer car owners and cars themselves at the cost of the rest of society.
Memes
This site lets you upload your own audio tracks that then play on users devices in a time synched fashion, allowing you to lead a group through an exercise without being physically present or facilitating. Their free dance ritual offering is fun too.
I played on the IRL Ninja Warrior course at Ferox Ninja Park in Brooklyn, which hosts tournaments regularly. Unsurprisingly its all about grip strength and swing timing. I did pretty good as a generally athletic person but eventually my hands wore out.
Indigenous Siberian neo folk music with modern music videos? Sign me up!