UL NO. 428: Reason to Fear; Reason to Build

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Unsupervised Learning is a security, AI, and meaning-focused newsletter that looks at how best to
thrive as humans in a world that’s changing faster than ever. It combines
original ideas and analysis to bring you not just what’s happening—but why it matters, and how to respond.

TOC

• NOTES

• MY WORK

• SECURITY

• TECHNOLOGY

• HUMANS

• IDEAS & ANALYSIS

• DISCOVERY

• RECOMMENDATION OF THE WEEK

• APHORISM OF THE WEEK

NOTES

Hey there,

Crazy week.

• Sorry for the late episode; a bit over-exposed to travel/humans and
  needed a couple of days to fight off viruses/funk. Seem to have avoided
  getting fully sick, which is nice.

• analyze_presentation — Added a new Fabric pattern that
  looks at the transcript of a presentation and tells you how much the
  presenter is trying to brag, vs. entertain, vs. inform. In other words, it tells you how self vs. other centered the
  presentation is, e.g., if they say “I” too often, talk about
  credentials, accomplishments, etc., vs. focusing on ideas.

• Spoke at the EQUILIBRIUM conference in NYC last week. Thanks so much to
  Rohit Sethi
  for the invite, and to
  Chris Hughes
  for his great talk and our wide-ranging conversation beforehand.
  Seriously great event.

• I finally got to attend a live UFC event, and it turned out to be one of
  the best in history! Also made some new friends in the process. What a
  tremendous weekend!

• Speaking at the
  Hardly Strictly Security
  conference soon! Looking forward to that one!

• Speaking at the Security Frontiers AI Conference tomorrow.
  MORE

• Speaking tomorrow at an AI Cyber event put on by Rain Capital, Icon
  Ventures, and J.P. Morgan at the J.P. Morgan Innovation center. Thanks
  to
  Chenxi Wang
  for the invite!
  MORE

• Gearing up for RSA already. The calendar is feeling the pressure. In a
  good way. If you’ll be around, be sure to come get a fist bump or hug,
  as per your preference.

• I just finished reading Sense of Style, by Steven Pinker, for the
  third time. I like to read it every 2-3 years. It’s my favorite
  writing/style guide.

Ok, let’s get to it…

MY WORK

analyze_presentation — Added a new Fabric pattern that
looks at the transcript of a presentation and tells you how much the
presenter is trying to brag, vs. entertain, vs. inform. In other words, it tells you how self vs. other centered the presentation
is, e.g., if they say “I” too often, talk about credentials,
accomplishments, etc., vs. focusing on ideas.

I didn’t write any essays or make any videos this week, but I did get to do
some podcasts with some smart folks, and those should come out soon.

SECURITY

Microsoft says Chinese hackers are using AI to inflame social tensions in
the US.
MORE

I seriously can’t wait to build my propaganda tracker. If someone starts
a campaign, I want to see where it spreads, becomes viral, etc. I’m
looking for VCs and permanent operators for this. And government backing.
If you know people, let me know.

PropTrak, or something.

Over 92,000 D-Link NAS devices are under attack due to an unpatched critical
RCE bug. | CRITICAL | RESPONSE: D-Link advises device retirement. Thanks
D-Link. |
MORE

SAP patches three high-severity vulnerabilities, including a
misconfiguration in SAP NetWeaver that could let users set weak passwords.
MORE

The U.S. just blacklisted four additional Chinese companies for procuring AI
chips for China’s military modernization efforts.
MORE

The U.S. and China are racing to dominate with AI-driven drone swarms, just
like Daniel Suarez’s book, Kill Decision.
MORE

Google’s contract reveals a partnership with Israel’s Defense Ministry
during the Gaza conflict, which is upsetting employees.
MORE

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TECHNOLOGY

Great NYT piece on automating finance jobs using AI.
“Some of Wall Street’s major banks are asking the same question, as they
test A.I. tools that can largely replace their armies of analysts by
performing in seconds the work that now takes hours, or a whole
weekend.” MORE

At this point if people don’t see the impact of AI on actual jobs, it’s
because they don’t read enough, or don’t want to see. This isn’t like the
dotcom boom, or like crypto. This is tech that’s instantly useful, despite
its flaws, and that we’re seeing actively replace human workers.

Yohei continues doing great work around AI agents. This one is agent log
visualization.
MORE

Despite sanctions, Russia’s is getting 89% of its chips through China.
MORE

Gary Marcus is betting $10M that we won’t have AI smarter than humans by
2025.
MORE

Mistral AI just released Mixtral 8x22B via a torrent link, which is an
interesting new way of distributing models. Makes sense. Lots of people want
them and they’re really big. Exactly what torrents are good at.
MORE

This paper says a Transformer is capable of acting like a general-purpose
computer.
MORE

OpenAI just shipped a new GPT-4 Turbo model that focuses on being more
concise.
I’ve tested it against Opus and it’s still nowhere near as good—at least
for the stuff I do.
MORE

After AI beat them, professional Go players didn’t just catch up; they
became better and more creative.
MORE

I love this narrative where we learn from AI beating us. But I don’t
think that means we’ll be able to keep up. It just means we’ll have new
ways to think about being good, which is useful and interesting.

Nanotronics is rolling out CubeFab, a modular chip fab powered by Nvidia
GPUs and AI, aiming to democratize semiconductor manufacturing.
MORE

The Humane AI Pin got flamed by MKBHD and other reviewers.
MORE

I think MKBHD can say whatever he wants on his channel. I just think it
was out of character for him to be so negative and mean about it. He could
have said the same things without the vitriol, and still made the same
points. I like him for his even temperament as much as his analysis, and
the dunking was a turnoff for me. But I still think it’s his channel and
he can do whatever he wants.

Dyson’s new CleanTrace feature lets you use AR to see where you’ve vacuumed,
making sure no spot is missed.
MORE

Sequoia’s Arc Product-Market Fit Framework introduces three unique
archetypes to help startups navigate their way to market success.
MORE

Tesla just dropped the FSD subscription price to $99 a month.
MORE

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HUMANS

Right after the solar eclipse, a ton of people Googled “my eyes hurt”, which
only further diminishes my hope for humanity. It’s not so much that they
looked at the sun. It’s the two hit combo of looking at the sun and then
wondering what’s wrong.
MORE

One of the books that will absolutely change your life is the book Everybody Lies, which is about how Google searches reveal way more about reality than
surveys.

Job interviews are pretty terrible at predicting future job performance and
might even be counterproductive. Sure, but what’s the alternative?
MORE

Over half of women experience sexual harassment at work.
MORE

Homicides are on a surprising decline across major American cities.
MORE

I feel like we’re this
close (gesturing) to an Onion article where far-right people complain that
the country’s becoming feminized and is no longer into murder.

U.S. Steel is about to become a part of Japan’s Nippon Steel.
MORE

Harvard’s back to requiring SAT and ACT scores for admissions. It’s almost
like they were a good idea in the first place, which is why we had them.
MORE

I wish the Overton Pendulum had more than two settings—woke and racist.
Can we get a compassionate/logical setting please?

Dumbphones are making a comeback. You get to stay in contact, but not be
distracted.
MORE

A Dungeons & Dragons show is about to sell out Madison Square Garden.
MORE

What top performers do, and how to deal with critics and detractors
MORE

Ernest Hemingway transformed from a humble journalist to a literary
celebrity, losing himself to the fame and power that came with success.
MORE

Abraham Lincoln was shaped by Aesop’s fables more than any other book,
including the Bible.
MORE

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IDEAS & ANALYSIS

Guard Your Energy Reserves
Heard a cool thing recently that said
that if you have a great idea, and it’s creating a lot of energy within you,
you should be very careful with how you share the idea.

Basically, according to the theory, that energy you have for the idea is
limited and precious, and even telling someone about it removes its energy,
power, and specialness.

So instead of telling people about it, you should go work on it immediately.
That first energy, the raw energy, will be the most powerful form, and you
don’t want to waste it on trying to get someone else hyped on it as well.

Reason to Worry; Reason to Build
I’m worried about the world
right now. I think the next few years are likely to be the highest chance of
killing ourselves that we’ve ever seen. Maybe not counting the Cuba crisis.

• Trump could easily be re-elected, which I think will make things far
  worse for sanity and stability

• I don’t see how the Gaza war doesn’t turn into the Iran war

• Everything is getting more expensive (or at least feeling so)

• At this exact moment, AI is going to start mass-replacing jobs

• At this exact moment, the smartest/luckiest are about to be able to
  create unbelievable value and wealth

• So the K-shape is about to curve—with the top of the K hockey-sticking
  up, and the bottom of the K hockey-sticking down.

• This will empower the far-right

• It could be bad

Here’s a diagram I created about all this in 2018:

Anyway, it’s depressing.

But I’m choosing to abstain from panic. I’m saying no to despair. I’m going
to build instead. I’m going to lift people up instead. I’m going to create
stuff instead. I’m going to shoot for a distant and possible better thing. A
thing on the other side of all this.

And I honestly think AI will be a big part of that solution.

Now, if it all goes to hell, AI will be part of that too. But like I said, I
don’t care about that. I don’t plan to fail. I am not betting against the
goodness and creativity of humans.

We can make it.

We can.

And even if we can’t. We have to believe we can.

So, I ask you to join me in rejecting despair.

The world sucks. Might get worse.

Fuck it. Suit up. You’re part of the optimism force now.

Not out of ignorance. As a choice.

DISCOVERY

This Colab notebook uses Claude to turn images into Magic cards. | by
Max Woolf |
MORE

Andrej Karpathy just dropped llm.c, a sleek GPT-2 implementation in under
1000 lines of pure C. | by
Andrej Karpathy |
MORE

Shell history as a productivity tool. | by
Martin Heinz |
MORE

Aider turns your terminal into a pair programming session with AI,
editing and committing code directly in your git repo. | by
Paul Gauthier |
MORE

DNSViz is like an X-ray for your DNS, showing you exactly what’s going on
under the hood. | by
DNSViz |
MORE

Cohere’s Rerank 3 model boosts enterprise search and RAG systems with
minimal fuss. | by
Cohere
| 
MORE

Terminal Tweaks. | by
High Growth Engineer |
MORE

Udio turns your text prompts into music, matching any style you fancy.
| by
UdioMusic |
MORE

A collection of content ideas that have truly resonated on TikTok. |
MORE

Firecrawl.dev
turns entire websites into datasets ready for large language models to
digest. |
MORE

zk turns your command line into a powerful, plain text Zettelkasten or
personal wiki keeper. | by
zk-org |
MORE

RECOMMENDATION OF THE WEEK

Read the piece above in the Ideas section above.

Reject despair. Embrace the work of building the better thing.

APHORISM OF THE WEEK

❝  

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone
deeply gives you courage.

  Lao Tzu  

Thank you for reading.

UL is a personal and strange combination of security, AI, and lots of human
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