Blanca

Something I've been thinking about - I am bullish on people (empowered by AI) increasing the visibility, legibility and accountability of their governments. Historically, it is the governments that act to make society legible (e.g. "Seeing like a state" is the common reference), but with AI, society can dramatically improve its ability to do this in reverse. Government accountability has not been constrained by access (the various branches of government publish an enormous amount of data), it has been constrained by intelligence - the ability to process a lot of raw data, combine it with domain expertise and derive insights. As an example, the 4000-page omnibus bill is "transparent" in principle and in a legal sense, but certainly not in a practical sense for most people. There's a lot more like it: laws, spending bills, federal budgets, freedom of information act responses, lobbying disclosures... Only a few highly trained professionals (investigative journalists) could historically process this information. This bottleneck might dissolve - not only are the professionals further empowered, but a lot more people can participate. Some examples to be precise: Detailed accounting of spending and budgets, diff tracking of legislation, individual voting trends w.r.t. stated positions or speeches, lobbying and influence (e.g. graph of lobbyist -> firm -> client -> legislator -> committee -> vote -> regulation), procurement and contracting, regulatory capture warning lights, judicial and legal patterns, campaign finance... Local governments might be even more interesting because the governed population is smaller so there is less national coverage: city council meetings, decisions around zoning, policing, schools, utilities... Certainly, the same tools can easily cut the other way and it's worth being very mindful of that, but I lean optimistic overall that added participation, transparency and accountability will improve democratic, free societies. (the quoted tweet is half-ish related, but inspired me to post some recent thoughts)

Every entrepreneur that knows how to use AI is trying to find ways to build AI native companies that completely displace incumbents. For the incumbents, it’s the “Innovator’s AI Dilemma” If those startups get traction, and they can’t buy them, the CEOs will face multiple huge Dilemmas: 1. Do they tear down their companies and reinvent them as native AI ? 2. How do they explain it to public shareholders ? You will know AI is having a huge impact on public companies when there are two types of lawsuits: - Shareholders that sue the company for tearing down the company and crushing the stock price - Shareholders that sue the company for NOT tearing down the company and crushing the stock price I think most CEOs don’t come close to understanding AI in enough detail to even begin to consider these decisions. Hint: Asking your AI models the best paths from where you are now, to being an AI native version that can achieve the same economics has to be one of your initial steps. If asking your models questions doesn’t make sense to you, you are in deep shit

Some of the most underinvested areas in frontier biology that could accelerate civilizational progress: - Cheap, large-scale DNA synthesis (writing entire chromosomes or full organisms) - Real-time, non-destructive RNA sequencing in living cells - Highly accurate AI-powered polygenic scores for complex traits (disease risk, cognition, longevity) → enabling full genome design - Ultra-precise, multiplex genome editing (far beyond CRISPR) with minimal off-target effects, scalable across millions of cells - Safe, efficient, tissue-specific in vivo delivery systems - Safe and effective human germline engineering - Accelerated clinical trials via testing on decedents (with consent) - Next-gen human enhancement: muscle, cognition, mood — beyond GLP-1s - Ectogenesis / artificial wombs Who’s actually building in these areas? Drop names, companies, or researchers below 👇

The human body can only be pushed so far, and I think a lot of us are pushing ourselves too far, me included. We do need to worry about: 1. Sleep and exercise 2. Eating right 3. Getting off of our devices 4. Having analog experiences This AI world has sped up our lives and put a lot of pressure on us to keep our agents busy. Something on my mind this Friday afternoon.

Just saw that our healthcare premiums we're paying as a company will increase by 12.09% YOY...

Anthropic making its own splash with an acquisition today $400M for Coefficient Bio, started last fall, developing an AI drug R&D platform

The Cubs broadcast showed fans working remotely from Wrigley Field during the team's day game 💻