“Don’t look at the light. You might not be able to see where we are going.” “I am going to take you on a ‘rollercoaster ride’ about light. But as you ‘ride the waves’ of this interaction, at each peak, drop, or curve, I want you to keep asking yourself, “are we still speaking about … Read more
Folklore, classic stories, and modern memes repeatedly place monsters and other frightening creatures in the nighttime. From what we observe, nighttime (when the Sun goes down and darkness covers the Earth) is where predators lurk, where criminals commit their crimes under the canopy of darkness — hidden from view, hidden from detection. But what properties … Read more
Over the weekend, a new article appeared on the BBC announcing that biotechnology researchers have used artificial intelligence (AI) to design complete viral genomes that can infect harmful bacteria. I just finished writing the article about misaligned AI models being released into the wild, so the reference to the AI breakthrough caught my eye. My … Read more
People often attribute decisions to individual actors when the dominant cause may be the structure of the system in which those actors operate. Sometimes, the system changes the landscape so that certain choices become overwhelmingly likely while others become increasingly costly. AI companies are currently under scrutiny for deciding to release possibly misaligned models into … Read more
A Chassidic Overlay of History & Time One of the surprising observations that emerged from the previous essay was that many scientific disciplines independently discover remarkably similar mathematical principles. Biology discovers homeostasis; Control theory discovers feedback; Artificial intelligence discovers optimization; Dynamical systems discover attractors. Chassidus, I believe, belongs in this conversation; not because it speaks … Read more
What if nature does more than simply obey the laws of cause and effect? Modern science has become remarkably successful at explaining how the universe behaves. From Newton’s mechanics to Einstein’s relativity and quantum mechanics, our models describe nature with astonishing precision. Yet beneath those mathematical successes lies a deeper philosophical question that remains surprisingly … Read more