“A key capability in the 2030s will be to connect the upper ranges of our neocortices to the cloud, which will directly extend our thinking. In this way, rather than AI being a competitor, it will become an extension of ourselves. By the time this happens, the nonbiological portions”
― The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge with AI
― The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge with AI
“And that is not all: even if man really were nothing but a piano-key, even if this were proved to him by natural science and mathematics, even then he would not become reasonable, but would purposely do something perverse out of simple ingratitude, simply to gain his point. And if he does not find means he will contrive destruction and chaos, will contrive sufferings of all sorts, only to gain his point! He will launch a curse upon the world, and as only man can curse (it is his privilege, the primary distinction between him and other animals), may be by his curse alone he will attain his object--that is, convince himself that he is a man and not a piano-key! If you say that all this, too, can be calculated and tabulated--chaos and darkness and curses, so that the mere possibility of calculating it all beforehand would stop it all, and reason would reassert itself, then man would purposely go mad in order to be rid of reason and gain his point!”
― Notes from Underground
― Notes from Underground
“We are told that our choice is between free markets and state control, when most adults live their working lives under a third thing entirely: private government.”
― Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don't Talk about It)
― Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don't Talk about It)
“But by far the most important application of AI to medicine in 2020 was the key role it played in designing safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines in record time. On January 11, 2020, Chinese authorities released the virus’s genetic sequence.[11] Moderna scientists got to work with powerful machine-learning tools that analyzed what vaccine would work best against it, and just two days later they had created the sequence for its mRNA vaccine.[12] On February 7 the first clinical batch was produced. After preliminary testing, it was sent to the National Institutes of Health on February 24. And on March 16—just sixty-three days after sequence selection—the first dose went into a trial participant’s arm. Before the pandemic, vaccines typically took five to ten years to develop. Achieving this breakthrough so quickly surely saved millions of lives.”
― The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge with AI
― The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge with AI
Alexander’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Alexander’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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