The other day I asked my dad how a function he attended went, and he responded by saying, “Traffic, BRUTAL. Traveling by car is an agonizing experience.” He’s not wrong, and I know most of us in Toronto like to complain about it. Traffic is one of the negative externalities of a big city. But here’s the thing: we know how to solve this problem. You price congestion, as has been done in New York, London, Singapore, and many other cities, and then direct the revenue it generates to a mode of tr...

Hi! If you’re one of our many, many new subscribers, welcome. This is a hopefully fun(ish) and easy to read newsletter about the weird and wild world of frontier technology. Conversation around tech can feel impenetrable, and my goal is to make that way less so. If you’ve been here for a while, hello. As ever, please feel free to reply to this email to let me know your thoughts, I love to hear from readers! Writer: Deana Editor: Miranda Mind The Gap. I threw 1,900 queries at Chinese AI models...

Early-stage teams building on Base can apply for Batches 004 by Sept 9 to receive $100K funding and 8 weeks of mentorship.

We keep trying to embed morality into our AI systems — through rules, guardrails and written constitutions — as though virtue can be installed. But humans are law-abiding because they have grown up within a web of consequences and the regard of others. Perhaps that needs to be our approach with AI.

Very generally speaking, cities build skyscrapers because of some mix of natural market forces and symbolic prestige. In cities like New York and Hong Kong, where land is extremely scarce and valuable, the only option is to go up. Tall buildings are essential. And in cities like Dubai, I think it’s fair to say that symbolic prestige has been the greater motivator, at least at the outset of the city’s modern reinvention as a global city. Tall, over-the-top buildings helped put the city on the ...

Welcome to Dark Markets, your weekly update on the crimes and manipulations of Effective Altruists, Rationalists, Eugenicists, Singularitarians, and other Silicon Valley moonbats. I’m David Z. Morris, longtime investigator, PhD scholar, and author of Stealing the Future, a book about the fraud endemic to Effective Altruism and Silicon Valley. Quick recommendations: be sure to read Andrew Orlowski on the fraud of “rogue” AI incidents, and Nafeez Amed on the Peter Thiel-backed Cambridge-Oxford ...

The SEC proposed Regulation Crypto Assets with two registration exemptions. Sherlock launched its AI-assisted Audit Engine. And the EF ESP allocated $5.5M in Q2 grants.

Gigi and I have signed the Statement on Superintelligence, which calls for a pause on the development of superintelligence. This blog post lays out our rationale for doing so now after having previously held off on supporting other “pause AI” appeals. We have a broad set of initiatives in the Hudson Valley and beyond aimed at securing human thriving in the AI age. These include a basic income pilot, various steward ownership projects, and a community learning center. Two preconditions appear,...

Sandra reviews the new Odyssey movie adaptation, exploring how its modern dialogue and casting create a surprisingly effective and engaging cinematic experience.

Companies will not enter crypto governance because they are curious about DAOs. If they enter at all, it will start with money movement. Stablecoin settlement, cross-border payments, treasury management, tokenized deposits, and tokenized assets are easier for mature companies to understand because they map to problems they already have: speed, cost, liquidity, compliance, and market access. That part of the story is already underway. The harder part, at least for me, is what comes after money...