Sparks and surprises from last week...
Exploring the edges of our awareness to uncover the unevenly distributed future that most of us can barely imagine.
📚 Key reads
Sam Altman argues that the coming AI revolution will create phenomenal wealth but also exacerbate inequality. He proposes a new social contract and economic system to distribute this wealth more fairly.
A new study from researchers at Allen AI and Stanford found that while LLMs rarely exhibit overt racism, such as directly stating "Black people are bad," they display significant covert racism when responding to queries embedded with African American English prompts.
cars: where, not when" by Benedict Evans provides a nuanced perspective on the development and deployment of autonomous vehicles. The key insight from Evans is that the deployment of AVs will not be uniform across all geographies or situations.
a16z investor, Andrew Chen, on referral programs and incentivizing users.
💡 Ideas
Project CETI is a $33 million effort to communicate with sperm whales using AI to understand their language. If successful, humans could be able to initiate a conversation with whales. This would open the doors to humans and animals being able to talk with one another.
Lionel Messi’s upcoming $200MM fund and incubation studio lays the groundwork for a modern approach to capitalizing on singular talent.
Researchers have identified a set of proteins in the blood that can reveal if someone is at risk of developing Alzheimers years before symptoms appear. This could allow for much earlier diagnosis and intervention.
Conceptual frameworks and examples to understand the intersection of artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency/blockchain technologies.
📊 Market data
There is growing tension between companies pushing for more in-office work and employees who have grown accustomed to remote work during the pandemic. Two thirds of the U.S. thinks that the subject has become unnecessarily politicized, and 74% believe that employees need to stop complaining about having to go back in office.
There is a $1.49 trillion funding shortfall in U.S. public pension funds as of June 2023, putting the retirement benefits of millions at risk. Bitcoin is emerging a potential alternative investment with The Fairfax County police and employee pension funds first investing in bitcoin in 2018 at around $6,000 per bitcoin. Those pension funds are now up over 10x on their bitcoin investment. If all state pension funds had allocated 1% to bitcoin in 2018, over 10 more would now be fully funded.
State of Private Markets: venture deal count was down 24% year-over-year in 2023, while cash raised fell by 50%. Seed activity slumped, with just 462 seed deals in Q4, down 27% year-over-year.