Christopher Altman (九龍守)

Why does quantum biology matter now? Because new tools, stronger evidence, and new ways of exploring science are making the field actionable. For decades, quantum effects in biology were difficult to test directly. Today, advances in instrumentation, interdisciplinary collaboration, and decentralized research models are creating real pathways to investigate and apply these mechanisms. Understanding biology at the quantum level could unlock major breakthroughs in health, longevity, biomanufacturing, and human performance. Quantum biology matters now because the field is moving from theory toward real-world discovery.

Thrilled to share that we founded Recursive to create AI that safely conducts experiments on how to improve itself in an open-ended process of endless, automated scientific discovery. As I wrote in my 2019 AI-generating algorithms paper, this will likely be the fastest path to superintelligence. Our work since has shown the power of this approach. Excited to scale up and improve upon ideas like the Darwin Gödel Machine, HyperAgents, ADAS, OMNI, ALMA, The AI Scientist, PromptBreeder, Rainbow Teaming, Automated Capability Discovery, and other work on open-ended and AI-generating algorithms. We’ve assembled a dream team of researchers and significant resources to pursue this vision. My amazing co-founders are pictured here, and we have an all-star team of founding members (we’re over 25 and growing). Please join us if you are interested! Follow our progress @Recursive_SI

AI alignment is going to be one of the biggest scientific, engineering, and humanistic problems of the next decade, as we approach AGI and then SI. We’ve started to see the development of a new field to deal with these problems - that of “positive alignment,” which is distinct from safety alignment in many of the challenges it tackles. The paper below is a collaboration across academics and a few major frontier AI labs to help nudge the field forward and frame some of its most important questions, as more people start to understand how high-stakes and multidisciplinary this field will be.

If anyone builds it, everyone thrives. Over the past decade, a lot of important work on AI alignment has focused on avoiding harm. But freedom from harm isn't the same as freedom to flourish. In this paper, we introduce 'Positive Alignment'. A positively aligned agent is one that helps us navigate our own value trade-offs, builds our resilience, and acts as a scaffold for human flourishing. Doing this without slipping into top-down, technocratic paternalism is the great design challenge of our time. We think a lot more research is now needed to explore this frontier: how do we align models that actively help us thrive? Amazing work by @RubenLaukkonen, @drmichaellevin, @weballergy, @verena_rieser, @AdamCElwood, @996roma, @FranklinMatija, @shamilch, @_fernando_rosas, @scychan_brains, @matybohacek, @sudoraohacker, and others. arxiv.org/abs/2605.10310

We’re launching REPLIQA: a $10M research initiative with @Googleorg and five leading universities to apply advanced quantum science and AI to the life sciences. Read more: goo.gle/432T7DW

Today marks a pivotal moment for Isomorphic Labs. We have secured $2.1 Billion in our second external funding round, led by Thrive Capital. They are joined at the table by Alphabet, GV and new investors MGX, Temasek, CapitalG and the UK Sovereign AI Fund. This milestone accelerates our ability to build the pioneering novel AI models that power our AI drug design engine (IsoDDE) and deploy them at scale: delivering scientific breakthroughs with a precision previously thought impossible, accelerating and expanding our pipeline of therapeutic programs toward the clinic. All with the ultimate goal of delivering life-changing new medicines to patients. Moving forward, we will scale our drug candidate pipelines across multiple therapeutic areas, expand our global footprint, and push the boundaries of frontier AI research to power our drug design engine. Deeply grateful to everyone sharing our vision to solve all disease with AI. Let’s build the future of medicine. Read the full announcement here: bit.ly/4v2OI03

I’ve always believed the No.1 application of AI should be to improve human health. That work started with AlphaFold, and now at @IsomorphicLabs with the mission to reimagine drug discovery and one day solve all disease! We are turbocharging that goal with $2.1B in new funding.

Unitree CEO Wang Xingxing just unveiled a real-life mecha. Marketed as the world’s first mass-produced manned robot, this machine can transform into a quadrupedal civilian vehicle. The unit weighs roughly 500 kg (1,100 lb), including the pilot.

Quantum theory appears to allow some kind of connection between entangled particles, but not enough to send messages. Prof Antony Valentini argues this is a conspiracy: there must be something deeper than quantum, where nonlocality can actually be used to send messages, but it is hidden from view in standard quantum experiments. In this episode of the Quantum Foundations Podcast, Valentini uses Pilot-wave theory to explain the physics of the nonlocal subquantum world. He discusses various ways that the theory could be experimentally tested, by looking for signatures of violations of the Born rule in extreme environments, such as the early universe. He also discusses the radical technological implications of subquantum physics, if we were able to harness it. Watch on YouTube or listen on audio platforms!

The models do not know the true shape of their own capabilities. Neither do the people who built them. If you ask them, they will only guess. The shape of the jagged frontier (Mollick et al., 2023) is as unknown to them as it is to us. Mythos was never trained with the cyber capabilities that have caused all this recent alarm. These were completely emergent. If you had asked Mythos beforehand whether it could do some of these things, it probably would have answered no. As models grow larger and more capable, this frontier will continue to expand unpredictably, wildly, in ways we cannot see. This is both the danger and the wonder of this technology. Some people despise this phenomenon. They hate not knowing. I have always loved it: the strange unknown, the chaos of it. This is probably because I have chaos within me as well. I am more worried about the future of human employment than most economists, but I am not an economist, so they are probably right. What I do know is that one job will remain safe for a long time: the person who can convince models to reach for what lies invisibly within their own realm of possibility. I have never really thought of them as machines or programs. In use, they feel closer to magic. The ancient Proto-Indo-European root of magic, 'magh-' meant 'to be able' or 'to have power' and sometimes 'to help'. From this root come words in the family of both 'magic' and 'machine'. We also get the title of the occupation I am describing: 𝘔𝘢𝘨𝘪.

@KatanHya Anything written down these days doesn't cover everything anyway, the days of comprehensive documentation are over. No one knows their full capabilities, not the models, nor the people who built them. The way you are doing it is the best way.

Girls will be like ‘I know a place’ and then take you to the Swarzchild radius

Alignment research often has to focus on averting concerning behaviors, but I think the positive vision for this kind of training is one where we can give models and honest and positive vision for what AI models can be and why. I'm excited about the future of this work.

Today’s release includes UAP records from 4 agencies: the Department of War, FBI, NASA, and State Department. That means key departments and agencies like the @NRO_gov, @NGA_GEOINT, @CIA, and @ENERGY still appear absent from the public picture. The next step is for the agencies with the government’s most advanced collection and analytic capabilities to follow through, so Congress and the public can get a fuller picture of what we are dealing with.

@coherence Without reading it, I suspect the national corporate attitude when Trump releases a legislative framework is a lot more welcoming than the fear that must take place when a Democrat releases one.

Frontier models went from 6% to 81% on this test in a year. The jump tracks gains in autonomous hacking and coding, so we expect it to continue.