A Month on the Road

In which our protagonist crosses the Pacific, labors in the fields of AI, visits mom, meets the P(doomers), and the oligarchs

I recently completed a month of travel. I can barely remember all the stuff I did on the trip, so I’m making some notes here while my memories are relatively fresh. A lot of this appeared on my X feed.

SF+SV

PE+VC in the Marina

Meetup dinner in Bayes Valley. Stem cells, DNA editing, founders galore

James Cham takes me to Samo Bruja’s house for cocktails and intellectual salon, bumped into Luke & Nicole Nosek and many others.

Show me the Waymo

Dinner with Dwarkesh + DeepMind. Even at the high-profile AI labs it’s the engineers that are willing to grind at cleaning data, evaluating responses, etc. that are the most valuable.

OAI Dinner - hints of things to come!

Brunch with Jaan Tallinn in Palo Alto. Jaan knows everyone in SG government! Jaan’s joy of exploring new AI advances is tempered by his forbodings of existential risk. Lucky for him he can still get out and dance!

Roaming with Ron. Coffee and a walk. Bemused at the “holes in reality” he has discovered, late in life. Frustrated that they are hidden from all but a few.

Singapore

Brutal AC inside, tropical heat outside

Govt officials: WhatsApp scheduling, mtgs galore. Chief AI Officer, GIC, etc. Young and earnest. Bringing AI companies to SG is a top priority.

Global CX company - AI demos, opening new labs in Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai. The pace of AI in CX/BPO is limited more by inertia at large corporations than by technology or AI capabilities.

Meetup lunch in Little India: hedge fund traders, crypto guys, analytic philosophers, Atlantic writer, and more

Manila

Installing the AIs. It’s happening! 10% of Philippines GDP from CX/BPO (call center, back office) work - $40B per annum.

CX, BPO, lots of Japanese food.

Bar at Shangri La full of buzz cut mil-spooks. Prep for South China Sea missile war.

Berkeley

Lighthaven: Gene Smith, Aella, RATionalists, Tucker’s CTO, pleased to have access to Concept row/cycle/ski ergs for HIIT

RATs are high Openness, high g, and on the spectrum.

RAT and EA institutions still adjusting to post-SBF universe. Huge sums of money flowed into their world from SBF.

Huel and Soylent tests

Visit to the Berkeley Physics department

SLO to see my mom ❤️

Secret Oligarch meeting in the desert

Can’t talk about this. GP babies galore. Bryan Johnson looks different.

Israel and total defeat.

Home, Sweet Home!