Writing

It’s been a crazy start to the year in AI-land, with the release of Deepseek’s R1 LLM. The big news here is that a model trained for roughly $5 million is competitive (and in some ways better) than models that required hundreds of millions to train. Ars has a cursory but illuminating comparison between Deepseek… Continue reading

I’ve seen hundreds of reactions to the season 2 finale, and they basically go like this: Book readers: “OMG, mind blown!” Non-book readers: “Who sat on the remote?!” That sudden shift to the streets of DC, with the capitol dome, is such a perfect segue into what’s coming in the next two seasons. But don’t… Continue reading

I’m very excited to announce an upcoming appearance at New York City’s 92nd Street Y. On January 14th, I’m going to be chating about SILO with the inimitable Amor Towles, one of my favorite people and one of the greatest writers working today. Amor knows me a little too well, so I’m probably in store… Continue reading

David Byrne was once trapped beside me on a plane for over five hours, an ordeal he has probably blocked out of his mind if it ever registered at all. For me, it was a delightful and unforgettable experience. We spent the entire flight talking about the human brain and human behavior, a subject we… Continue reading

Let’s imagine two hypothetical scenarios: Scenario A: In order to have 100% employment, the Government of Earth decides to put all people to work and pay them money, which they will print. The jobs don’t matter, what matters is that everyone is working and everyone is getting paid. The simplest job they can think of… Continue reading