Writer #JohnnyMackintosh #FutureInMinutes #50AIideas Publisher @PenguinPress Futurist, failed astronaut, independent thinker Can't blame views on anyone else
Spirit of London
Joined January 2010
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It’s one year to the day, since @QuercusBooks published my “50 AI Ideas, you really need to know” book, as part of a relaunch of the whole 50 Ideas series.
Writing about such a fast-moving target as Artificial Intelligence is a challenge, but I am very pleased that so far the book remains ahead of the curve and as relevant (and hopefully useful) now as it was a year ago. And that it’s sold well and frequently been spotted in the wild in bookshops, here in the UK and overseas.
Links in the thread below, including to buy but also to the likes of Alan Turing’s original paper which introduced the Imitation Game/Turing Test and began the study of AI, and then the 2017 paper from the Google team entitled “Attention is all you need” which introduced the world to transformer technology, which dominated the AI world we experience today.
This is the thing. Many Americans don't seem to realize China will control the future of Earth and Humanity unless Elon and the extraordinary companies he has created and built are allowed to make unobstructed progress to build a different, better, American and Western future. 🇺🇸
Ok so my Brit understanding of what’s happening in America:
- Trump got elected on promises of economic prosperity and no more forever wars, ended up starting a specific forever war that would cause fuel prices to spike. Republicans are paying at the ballot box.
- With Congress and the Presidency at odds the next 2 years will be them bickering rather than getting stuff done
- The result in Texas is a seismic shift and potentially changes the politics of the whole country
- The impact on SpaceX could be significant, as the Democrats seem intent on exercising a personal vendetta against Musk and they now have the governorship of Texas, so could obstruct Starbase.
- Likewise the Dems have leant into the anti-data centre movement and thus could use their new powers to slow US AI.
In short, the US is going to be increasingly distracted by internal fights, and shooting itself in the foot in key tech sectors. The main winner tonight is Xi Jinping, who just got a couple of years to solve his own countries problems and catch up.
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When Ray Kurzweil, decades ago, suggested the Singularity by 2029, I didn't take him seriously. But he was right.
This week we've probably seen 4 Nobel Prize-level breakthroughs. Yet AI will never again be as bad as it was this week. It's doubling in capability every 4 months.
That suggests by this time in 2029 it will be 500 times more capable. Surely the beginning of Superintelligence?
It also suggests that by 2033, a mere 7 years from now, AI will be a million times more capable than today. Think on that! We are fast-forwarding into the future.
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Fascinating to see how civilization can collapse, as we see the move from the Roman Empire to the Dark Ages.
And then, as people eventually start to recover and rebuild, it's still done on the back of old Roman technology and knowledge, centuries later.
When Anglo-Saxon and Frankish kings resumed minting coins to restart their economy, they had no working silver mines or sources, so they melted down precious Byzantine silver works accumulated at their courts to make their first coinage.
Isotope values for post-Roman coins in Northwest Europe match Byzantine silver, showing that the first Anglo-Saxon and Frankish coinage were minted from recycled Byzantine silver. "Erratic, gold content offers further confirmation that the silver did not stem from fresh mining but must have been drawn from recycled metal."
"The similarity with these Eastern Roman/Byzantine objects is sufficiently close to suggest that Byzantine silver was the dominant source of the silver powering the great seventh-century surge of minting around the North Sea. This has previously been suggested, but the results presented here offer the first physical confirmation of the use of Byzantine silver."
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There's British Summer Time (BST), Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) & Universal Time (UTC). But today is the one day of the year when everyone should use KST, "Keith's Sunday Time".
By saving the extra hour for the Monday morning, I "feel the benefit" when heading out to work tomorrow.
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This looks like an incredible use of AI for good, via @AndrewCurran_
The future of medicine is likely going to change very quickly due to artificial intelligence.
💥 Introducing Warp Sciences, a new company applying AI and robotics to help the world develop new medicines faster.
We’ve raised a $215M Series A led by @lightspeedvp to bring frontier AI out of the browser and into the lab, and build scientific capacity here in America.
I co-founded Warp with my long-time friend @dpatil, FAIR co-founder @manohar_paluri, and drug hunter Sol Reisberg. The early team is full of incredible people like @bkspears9, who helped achieve Q>1 fusion at LLNL.
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From 2005, I feel this is probably U2's last great song. And also the second great song about artifical intelligence (after Hazel O'Connor's Eighth Day).
"Original of the Species", with their homage to Darwin. Where are we going? youtu.be/Pu9rQ8lkQ5c?is=lb4E…
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And just in case people don't know it here's Hazel O'Connor's Eighth Day (from the film Breaking Glass) youtu.be/O-c99rkQlV0?is=LEnK… Between this and Original of the Species, what have I missed in terms of AI classics?
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About to see an #LFF preview of Kazuo Ishiguro's AI novel Klara and the Sun. Intrigued as ever to see the process of adaptation.
Bring it on!
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I've been trying to get my head around the Tesla Roadster videos, but struggled until seeing this one.
I often say we're living in the future, but then there's the nagging question of "where is my flying car?"
Tesla: "hold my beer".
Extraordinary.
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Here's a thoughtful post from Chuck about the vision happening with Tesla here:
teapaw.org/ChuckCook/status/21110…
Very few people will ever own or drive the @Tesla Roadster, but similar to past NASA technology transfers to industry and inspiration to millions of young aspiring engineers, the Roadster just changed the world. This happens by changing what most think is impossible into the possible. Bravo Zulu to the @tesla and @SpaceX teams.
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What Reagan says. It feels such poor user-interface design to have to look in so many different places to find what you want. I would love the option of a "classic view" instead of this strange hew look.
I think it’s unnecessary to have to open 3 different feeds just to see what someone is posting- whether their own, a reply or retweet.
IMO we should have the option of going back to the way it was or after the redesign.
We should be able to see our own Likes too rather than having to Bookmark everything as reference.
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Here is the Ice Cube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole, where Belgian physicist Francis Halzen (University of Wisconsin-Madison) has built his reputation, leading to today's Nobel Prize in Physics for hunting for neutrinos from space.
BREAKING NEWS
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2026 #NobelPrize in Physics to Francis Halzen “for decisive contributions to the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and the discovery of high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin.”
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Incredible long exposure shot of twin Falcon Heavy rocket boosters returning to their landing site. Space is the future for Humanity and we are beginning to live in the future.
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Three separate periods of water have interacted with the rocks in Jezero Crater on Mars, from @NASAMars Perseverance Rover findings. Including the last being hot water which must have been the result of volcanic activity of some kind. sciencedaily.com/releases/20…
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Ever since @peterrhague posted this I've not stopped thinking about it.
Economic growth is driven by cities, and the decline of cities presages national decline. It is vital for the UK that London is a dynamic, growing city.
Yes it would be great for other smaller cities to grow too, such as Cambridge, Manchester and Edinburgh, and to build new towns such as Forest City 1 (Google it!).
But the UK succeeds or fails with London, where we’ve spent 20 years not being able to put down a strip of tarmac for more planes to land at Heathrow. And before we ever do, Starships will be landing on purpose built pads on Mars. Indeed to build cities there.
Increasingly I despair of us.
SpaceX will literally have rocket landing pads on Mars before we build a new runway at Heathrow. No exaggeration.
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Tesla Full Self Driving (FSD Supervised) is approved in:
America, Canada, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Netherlands, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Lithuania, Estonia, Slovenia, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and China. It makes driving much safer and takes the pressure off it.
Many have this same software installed UK cars, but are not allowed to implement it. In our technological backwater, Tesla drivers instead must use very old driver-assistance software that is far less safe and capable, because UK government hasn't approved modern life-saving technology.
It's extremely frustrating. Other countries are living in the future, while lives here are being lost through UK inaction.
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In the UK we have hosepipe bans, and the highest electricity prices in the developed world, seemingly at risk of blackouts.
In America, Elon is building the future for Humanity with reusable rockets, driverless cars, brain-computer interfaces, Humanoid robots and now hyperloops.
Boring Company is working on a simple, precursor Hyperloop tunnel between Austin and San Antonio (>200 mph).
Due to traffic congestion, that journey can currently take up to 2.5 hours. @BoringCompany can reduce that to a consistent <30 mins.
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SpaceX will be getting incredible data back from the recovered Flight 13 Starship. My expectation here is that they're using the info to adjust the heatshield (thermal protection system or TPS) configuration and this is what will be taking the extra time. But well worth doing. 🚀
Now targeting to launch Starship Flight 14 as early as Monday, September 28, pending regulatory approval
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