Oil Demand Peaks by 2030, Gas Demand Rises Onward
Yes. This has been my model for a decade. Oil is approaching peak demand. Perhaps 2030. Natural gas demand will continue to grow well beyond oil.
Scaling Alone Won’t Fix LLM Limitations, Need New Algorithms
At least part of the answer is that scaling isn't all that matters. There are real limitations and deficits that LLMs have that require algorithmic changes to address.
Algorithms Shape Perception, Fueling Misinformation and Polarization
The algorithm is the biggest driver of misinformation, and perhaps of polarization. The selection of what people see, even if the individual articles are narrowly true, distorts perception of the overall landscape of reality.
Current AI Limits Keep Humans Essential, Slowing ASI Takeoff
So far, the below seems true. I don't think that's a fundamental characteristic of AI, but it seems be how the current architecture leans. That's one reason I believe that humans will continue to be vital to progress, and...
Brief 5‑MeO‑DMT Trip Yields Month‑Long Antidepressant Boost
One of the most remarkable things about 5-meo-DMT as an antidepressant is that the psychoactive experience is so brief. 10 minute peak, perhaps. 20 min total. And people seldom remember it well. Yet it has possibly the largest anti-depressant effect...
Ukraine's Military Outpaces US and Israel in Modernization
Ukraine's military is moving into the future faster than any other on earth. Faster than the US. Faster than Israel.
Ukraine's Home‑grown Weapons Prove Funding Will Secure Victory
Ukraine have now demonstrated they can design and build the weapons to cripple Russia and win this war. They deserve the funding to see this through to completion. Fund Ukraine, and they will win.
Littlebird AI Raises Funds for Proactive Personal Assistant
Delighted for my friends at @LittlebirdAI for their raise. This is a personal agent that gets to know you and what you're doing across your computer, and uses that knowledge to help you out, often proactively. Been using it for...
Helium Shortage From Iran War Won’t Halt AI Chips
Helium supply shortages due to the Iran war don't seem to be a threat to AI chip production right now. https://t.co/x0EWX4XCg7
Debating AI May Dismantle Conspiracy Beliefs
AI could actually help improve our disinfo and conspiracy-filled public sphere. [And yes, the opposite, LLMs for hyperpersuasion and disinfo, remains a concern.]
Ukraine Launches Kinetic Sanctions on Russian Oil Exports
Ukraine imposes kinetic sanctions on Russian oil exports. They increasingly have the ability to do this at scale, and to destroy refineries and factories crucial to the Russian war effort. This particular port is further from Ukraine than Moscow is.
Ukrainian Flamingo Beats Tomahawk in Range, Warhead, Cost
To be fair the Ukrainian Flamingo does have longer range and a larger warhead than the Tomahawk at a much lower cost. https://t.co/yfGe0ZD0GM
EV Owners Forget Gas Stations Offer Instant, Universal Refueling
What's a gas station? I just plug my car in at home. You mean you have to ... go somewhere special to add range to your car? How interesting.
User Praises New Notification Sorting, Wants Android Sync
Hey @nikitabier - A compliment and two feature requests: 1. Compliment: The way per-post notifications are sorted on web is so much better than it was a year ago. I love that it's sorted by some sense of how much...
The Final 1% of AI Accuracy Costs Exponential Effort
Under-discussed point. The scaling laws aren't quite constant across scales. As AI models get better (as loss approaches zero, or the entropy floor), improvements get harder and harder. You hit even worse than logarithmic diminishing returns. Ultra high accuracy...
Create New Alliance, Excluding US and Hungary
No brainer. Honestly just create a new alliance and everyone but Hungary and the US can join it. They'll ask to join later.
AI Becomes Useful Fast, Reliability Takes Ages
Lots of lessons here for expectations about how fast AI capabilities take off. One thing I learned from watching self driving: Driving down AI error rates to near zero is a looooong process. You get to something useful fast. You...
5‑MeO‑DMT May Outperform Psilocybin as Antidepressant
I often say that psilocybin mushrooms (a single large macro dose) are the most potent anti-depressant known to science. The truth is that 5-meo-DMT, the compound Bryan tried today, actually tests even stronger. But there are only two papers on...
Tesla Secretly Uses LiDAR for Vision Training, Not Production
This is getting dunked somewhat unfairly. Tesla is using LiDAR to get training data to improve their vision-only systems. That should raise some eyebrows - LiDAR is clearly valuable in ways Elon denies. But it's not the same as using...
China No Fixed Taiwan Timeline, No 2027 Invasion Plan
The US intelligence community now assesses that China has no fixed timeline for unification with Taiwan and that no invasion of Taiwan is planned for 2027. I'm no China expert but this dovetails with how I see Xi and the upside...
AI Fact‑Checking Is Making Twitter Surprisingly Truthful
Contra my expectations, AI might just make social media better. There's obviously lots of slop, and I worry about disinfo and targeted persuasion. And every day I see Grok used for fact checking here on twitter, and it's almost always...
Marines Forced Through Hormuz, Risking Missile Attacks
Marines can't get to Kharg Island without getting through the Strait of Hormuz, which would expose Navy ships to missile and drone attacks.
AI Futures Are Uncertain; Embrace Evidence‑Based Updates
This is honest and intellectually humble. None of us know with certainty what the trajectory of AI capabilities (or impacts) is. We have suspicions, models, forecasts. But it's essential to understand that there's a distribution of possibilities. And to update...
Assess if Screenshot Faithfully Represents HamandCheese’s Comments
Read @hamandcheese's full comments to the @axios reporter below, and then see if you think this screenshot accurately or fairly reflects what he said. https://t.co/yiUivUlQpS
Humanoid Robot Demos Thrive only in Controlled Labs
This is one reason I'm suspicious of most humanoid robotics companies today. I've seen lots of canned demos in perfect or near perfect conditions. Very very few in uncontrolled settings that were even the slightest bit impressive.
Malaria Decline in Sub‑Saharan Africa Marks Progress, yet Challenges Remain
Sub-Saharan Africa has made incredible progress on Malaria. And there is still so far to go. The world really is getting better. And the work is so very far from finished. https://t.co/tTKVS5Pegh
Good AI Teams Must Outpace Bad Actors' AI
The only thing that can stop a bad guy with an AI is a good guy with an AI. Or many good guys with AI. We need to find ways to incentivize that, and build our detection, defense, and intervention capacities...
Expert Advice: Cut Power Costs, Boost Grid with Datacenters
Follow Dr. @JaneAFlegal if you want extremely well-informed takes from a legit expert on how to lower electricity prices and use datacenters to strengthen the US grid and power system.
Li‑ion Batteries Now Last Decades, Not Just Thousands of Cycles
Amazing. Lithium ion batteries were once good for maybe 1,000-2,000 full discharge cycles. Now we're reaching multi-decade lifespans.
Storage, Smart EV Charging, and Datacenters Boost Grid Efficiency
Three things that can help us get better use out of the US grid: 1. Energy storage (allows you to fill up when the grid is underutilized, and avoid hitting the grid when it's stresed). 2. Datacenters. (If done cleverly.) 3. Smart charging...
Ethanol Mandates Harm Food Security, Offer No Energy Benefit
Ethanol mandates are in direct conflict with feeding the world, have no impact on American energy security, and are at best neutral for climate (probably negative). Kill them with fire. Sink them with the Jones Act.
Texas Leads Clean Energy Thanks to Deregulated Market
Texas is the clean energy capital of the United States. And a chunk of that is because of their easy permitting, relatively ample transmission, and highly deregulated electricity market. Abundance thinking in energy works.
Fertilizer Shortage Hits Poor Nations, Rich Remain Unscathed
The fertilizer crisis brewing because of Hormuz is going to be felt predominantly by people in some of the poorest nations on earth. Americans will only barely notice. Why? 1. The US, China, Europe, and other rich regions apply so much...
Our ROI Dwarfs Zuck’s Scale Acquihire
To be fair, this is still infinitely better ROI than Zuck has seen on his acquihire of half of Scale.
Media Exploits Our Primitive Brains with Distant Crime
IMHO distorted crime perceptions are driven by how media dissolves distance. The human brain didn't evolve to consume graphic news stories about people we'd never meet. We process a TV or social media news story of a murder as if...
Fear-Driven TV News Skews Public Perception of Crime
Fear porn also dominates local TV news. Past studies have found a correlation: The more local TV news you watch, the more you believe crime is rising. Social media amplifies this, bu the problem is old and is all about...
Profit-Driven Crime Coverage Undermines Democratic Discourse
It's not just that people are bad at this. It's that news media have consistently highlighted crime stories because they're profitable. That affects people. The news incentives are broken and toxic to democracy.
AI Policy Debate: Substitute or Augment Human Workers?
An extremely important topic. I'm more optimistic than Erik, but none of us know for sure. And as he says, "A key policy question is whether we use AI mainly to substitute for people or to augment them."
AI Pushes Back on Your BS: Benchmark Results
I love this. A benchmark of how often an AI model will push back on your BS.
Cool Buildings by Sending Waste Heat Into Space
Air conditioning is an energy hog, right? Right. But there are also incredibly low-energy ways to cool buildings - by literally sending their waste heat into space.
Warrantless Data Searches Violate 4th Amendment, Need Reform
Massie is substantially correct here and this issue is more and more important as powerful AI and tools like Palantir's gets deployed. It's not 100% as simple as he's saying, as the warrantless collection of American communications happens when a...
AI Hackers Nearing Proficiency; Defense Requires Collective AI
AI models are getting better at hacking. Surprisingly (to me) they're still not world class hackers. But on this pace they could be within a year or two. As I've said recently, the way to defend against this is at...
Real AI: Competition, Not Single-Entity Domination
Sci-fi stories of AI almost always have a single dominant AI or AI corporation that achieves a monopoly. That's a true danger to the world. The real world is hyper-competition between leading companies and open weight projects that democratize AI....
Four to Five Near‑Failure Sets Capture Most Strength Gains
Indeed. Very parallel. 4-5 intense sets of resistance training per week close to failure bring ~all the strength gains of weight lifting. After that, you get bigger muscles but no strength gains.
Humanity Overcomes Doomers: Innovation Beats Pessimism
Concur. History shows that: 1. There's a human psychological bent towards doomerism, particularly about technology. 2. In actuality humanity is remarkably innovative and resilient. We rise to challenges. Often late, but we rise. The burden of proof is on the...
Electric Fleets Will Outpace Consumer EVs on Cost per Mile
Electric trucks and other electric commercial vehicles will take over their markets faster than personal electric cars. Fleet owners and operators care about cost per mile, not just up front cost. And electric drive trains are cheaper in energy and...
AI $10T Annual CapEx by 2030 Unfeasible
This upper bound is an implied AI CapEx of ~$10 Trillion a year by 2030. That's quite implausible. Hyperscaler free cash flow is on the order of $1T / y. Even the very very rosiest AI scenarios would have AI...
Global Shift Toward China Signals US Decline
The second map (most of the world moving towards China and away from the US) is post-tariffs but pre-invasion-of-Iran. Will be interesting to see how this evolves. Probably not in a good direction for the US.
AI's Biggest Beneficiaries Are Users, Not Just Investors
The overwhelming majority of AI value accrues to users of AI and society as a whole. Founders, employees, and investors get rich, yes. And that's tiny compared to the customer value and positive externalities.
AI Self‑improvement Hinges on Breakthrough Discovery, Which Seems Unlikely Now
This is the core question in AI recursive self-improvement to me. If AI RSI is mostly about writing code, or running experiments with tweaks over current algorithms, we shouldn't expect a takeoff to ASI. But if AI models can truly...
