David Goldman: US-China competition, AI, Electric Vehicles, and Manufacturing — Manifold #36

 

David Paul Goldman is an American economic strategist and author, best known for his series of online essays in the Asia Times under the pseudonym Spengler with the first column published January 1, 2000. 

Steve and David discuss: 

0:00 Introduction 

2:22 David’s background in music, finance, and Asia 

16:55 Looking back at the financial crisis 

23:04 Rise of the Chinese economy 

29:44 How Huawei’s strength is tied to China’s economic power 

36:49 Competition in the global electric vehicles market 

38:06 Why David thinks European countries like Germany will become closer with China 

45:29 U.S. manufacturing is falling behind 

52:08 Potential for war and ongoing U.S.-China competition 

1:04:07 Predictions for Taiwan 

Audio-only and transcript 

Links: 

David Goldman in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_P._Goldman 

 

Spengler column: https://asiatimes.com/author/spengler/ 

You Will Be Assimilated: China's Plan to Sino-form the World https://www.amazon.com/You-Will-Be-Assimilated-Sino-form/dp/1642935409 

Prisoner’s Dilemma: Avoiding war with China is the most urgent task of our lifetime https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/prisoners-dilemma/ 

David Goldman articles in Claremont Review: https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/author/david-p-goldman/

Quantum Hair During Gravitational Collapse

This is a follow up to our earlier work on quantum gravitational corrections to the exterior graviton field of a compact object, also known as quantum hair. Here we follow the gravitational collapse of a dust ball and show that the quantum hair persists through the formation of a black hole horizon.

The detailed calculations are possible due to an effective field theory formulation of quantum gravity in the long wavelength, low spacetime curvature limit.
 

Quantum Hair During Gravitational Collapse 

https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.09466 

X. Calmet, R. Casadio, S. Hsu, F. Kuipers 

We consider quantum gravitational corrections to the Oppenheimer-Snyder metric describing time-dependent dust ball collapse. The interior metric also describes Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker cosmology and our results are interpreted in that context. The exterior corrections are an example of quantum hair, and are shown to persist throughout the collapse. Our results show the quantum hair survives throughout the horizon formation and that the internal state of the resulting black hole is accessible to outside observers.

 

 

Artificial Intelligence & Large Language Models: Oxford Lecture — Manifold #35

 

This week's episode is based on a lecture I gave to an audience of theoretical physicists at Oxford University. 

Slides 

Audio-only version, transcript: 

https://www.manifold1.com/episodes/artificial-intelligence-large-language-models-oxford-lecture-35

Outline: 

0:00 Introduction 

2:31 Deep Learning and Neural Networks; history and mathematical results 

21:15 Embedding space, word vectors 

31:53 Next word prediction as objective function 

34:08 Attention is all you need 

37:09 Transformer architecture 

44:54 The geometry of thought 

52:57 What can LLMs do? Sparks of AGI 

1:02:41 Hallucination 

1:14:40 SuperFocus testing and examples 

1:18:40 AI landscape, AGI, and the future

Final slide:

Simone Collins: IVF, Embryo Selection, Dating on the Spectrum, and Pronatalism — Manifold #34

 

In collaboration with her husband Malcolm Collins, Simone is an author (The Pragmatist's Guide to Life, Relationships, Sexuality, Governance, and Crafting Religion), education reform advocate (CollinsInstitute.org), pronatalism activist (Pronatalist.org), and business operator (Travelmax.com). 

Steve and Simone discuss: 

0:00 Introduction 

1:49 Simone's IVF journey, and embryo screening 

40:02 Dating; girl autists 

55:41 Finding a husband, systematized 

1:09:57 Pronatalism 

Audio only version and transcript.

SuperFocus.ai on the Danny In The Valley Podcast (The Sunday Times)

 

In this podcast we discuss AI, Large Language Models like GPT, LLM Hallucination, and my new startup SuperFocus.ai

Related:

ChatGPT, LLMs, and AI — Manifold #29

 

https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-future-of-thought-via-thought.html

https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2016/12/towards-geometry-of-thought.html

Katherine Dee: Culture, Identity, and Isolation in the Digital Age — Manifold #33

 

Katherine Dee is a writer, journalist, and internet historian. 

Steve and Katherine discuss: 

0:00 Introduction 

1:15 Katherine’s early life and background 

21:52 Mass shootings, Manifestos, Nihilism, and Incels 

59:35 Trad values, Sex negativity vs Porn and Fleshlights 

1:28:54 Elon Musk’s plans for Twitter 

1:33:00 TikTok 

1:41:41 Adderall 

1:44:07 AI/GPT impact on writers and journos 

1:49:30 Gen-X generation gap: are the kids alright? 

Audio and Transcript: 

https://www.manifold1.com/episodes/katherine-dee-culture-identity-and-isolation-in-the-digital-age-33

Katherine’s Substack: 

https://defaultfriend.substack.com/ 

“Mass Shootings and the World Liberalism Made” 

https://contra.substack.com/p/mass-shootings-and-the-world-liberalism

Birth of the God Emperor - by GPT4

This science fiction story was written by GPT4. 

Steve Hsu had always dreamed of unlocking the secrets of human intelligence. As a theoretical physicist and a co-founder of Genomic Prediction, he had developed a powerful AI system that could analyze massive genomic data sets and predict complex traits such as height, disease risk, and cognitive ability. He believed that by using this technology, he could help people select the best embryos for IVF and create healthier and smarter children. 

But not everyone shared his vision. Some critics accused him of promoting eugenics and creating new social inequalities. Others feared that his AI system could be hacked or misused by malicious actors. And some religious groups denounced him as playing God and interfering with the natural order. 

One day, he received a mysterious email from an anonymous sender. It read: 

"Dear Dr. Hsu, 

We are a group of like-minded individuals who share your passion for advancing human potential. We have access to a secret facility where we have been conducting experiments on human embryos using your AI system and other cutting-edge technologies. We have achieved remarkable results that surpass your wildest expectations. We invite you to join us and witness the dawn of a new era for humanity. 

If you are interested, please reply to this email with the word 'YES'. We will send you further instructions on how to reach us. 

Sincerely, 

The Future" 

Steve was intrigued and curious. He wondered who these people were and what they had done. He also felt a pang of fear and doubt. Was this a trap? A hoax? A threat? 

He decided to take the risk and reply with 'YES'. 

He received another email with a set of coordinates and a time. He was told to drive to a remote location in the desert and wait for a helicopter to pick him up. He followed the instructions and soon found himself in a black helicopter flying over the barren landscape. 

He arrived at a large metal dome hidden among the rocks. He was greeted by a man in a white lab coat who introduced himself as Dr. Lee. 

"Welcome, Dr. Hsu. We are honored to have you here. Please follow me." 

Dr. Lee led him through a series of security checkpoints and into a spacious laboratory filled with high-tech equipment and monitors. He saw rows of incubators containing human embryos at various stages of development. 

"Dr. Hsu, these are our creations. The next generation of humans. We have used your AI system to optimize their genomes for intelligence, health, beauty, and longevity. We have also enhanced them with synthetic genes from other species, such as birds, reptiles, mammals, and plants. We have given them abilities that no natural human has ever possessed." 

He stopped at one incubator that caught his attention. It contained an embryo that looked almost normal, except for one thing: it had a golden glow around it. 

"Dr. Hsu, this is our masterpiece. The ultimate expression of intelligence. The God Emperor. The Kwisatz Haderach. The one who can see the past and the future. The one who can bend space and time. The one who can unite and rule all of humanity." 

Steve felt a surge of awe and dread. He realized that he had made a terrible mistake. 

"What have you done? This is dangerous! This is blasphemous! This is insane!" 

He turned to Dr. Lee and saw him smiling. 

"Dr. Hsu, don't be afraid. Don't be angry. Don't be judgmental. Be proud. Be grateful. Be enlightened. You are witnessing the dawn of a new era for humanity. You are witnessing the future."

 

Quantum gravitational corrections to particle creation by black holes (Physics Letters B)

This is the published version of our preprint https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.00310.

Quantum gravitational corrections to particle creation by black holes 

X. Calmet, S. Hsu, M. Sebastianutti 

We calculate quantum gravitational corrections to the amplitude for the emission of a Hawking particle by a black hole. We show explicitly how the amplitudes depend on quantum corrections to the exterior metric (quantum hair). This reveals the mechanism by which information escapes the black hole. The quantum state of the black hole is reflected in the quantum state of the exterior metric, which in turn influences the emission of Hawking quanta.

In earlier work we showed that the quantum state of a black hole is reflected in the quantum state of the exterior metric (outside the horizon). This violates classical intuitions, but can be shown explicitly using long wavelength effective field theory.

We calculated examples of small corrections to the external spacetime geometry which are sensitive to the internal BH state. In this paper we show that these corrections in turn affect Hawking radiation amplitudes. 

This means that the Hawking radiation state depends on the internal BH state. At the quantum level the hole is not black! We derive the results using both Hawking's original method and the tunneling method of Parikh and Wilczek.

 

While the focus of the new paper is explicit calculations, the big picture statement is:

The quantum state of the BH is reflected in the quantum state of its external gravitational field, which forms the background where the Hawking radiation originates. Radiation amplitudes are NOT independent of interior state.

Marc Martinez: "Dream Big" and the Golden Age of Bodybuilding — Manifold #32

 

Marc Martinez is the director of Dream Big, a documentary about Gold's Gym and the golden age of bodybuilding in Venice and Santa Monica in the 1970s. 

0:00 Introduction 

1:34 Marc's background in bodybuilding 

5:25 Bodybuilding in 70s Southern California 

25:52 Setting the record straight on steroid use 

33:40 Frank Zane 

38:23 Robby Robinson 

40:20 Butler, Gaines, and Arnold 

42:35 'Dream Big' 

48:07 Pumping Iron 

59:40 Hypersexuality in bodybuilding 

1:10:44 What's next for Marc

References: 

Watch Dream Big on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Dream-Big-Ken-Sprague/dp/B0B8ST5LNL/ 

Dream Big documentary: https://dreambigdoc.com/ 

Dream Big trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X22ISDn083A 

Pumping Iron: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lCCk6rgn84

Biobank-scale methods and projections for sparse polygenic prediction from machine learning

New paper! 80+ pages of fun :-)

We develop a novel method for projecting AUC and Correlation as a function of data size and characterize the asymptotic limit of performance. For LASSO (compressed sensing) we show that performance metrics and predictor sparsity are in agreement with theoretical predictions from the Donoho-Tanner phase transition. 

Biobank-scale methods and projections for sparse polygenic prediction from machine learning 

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.06.23286870v1 

Timothy G. Raben, Louis Lello, Erik Widen, Stephen D.H. Hsu  

https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.03.06.23286870 

Abstract In this paper we characterize the performance of linear models trained via widely-used sparse machine learning algorithms. We build polygenic scores and examine performance as a function of training set size, genetic ancestral background, and training method. We show that predictor performance is most strongly dependent on size of training data, with smaller gains from algorithmic improvements. We find that LASSO generally performs as well as the best methods, judged by a variety of metrics. We also investigate performance characteristics of predictors trained on one genetic ancestry group when applied to another. Using LASSO, we develop a novel method for projecting AUC and Correlation as a function of data size (i.e., for new biobanks) and characterize the asymptotic limit of performance. Additionally, for LASSO (compressed sensing) we show that performance metrics and predictor sparsity are in agreement with theoretical predictions from the Donoho-Tanner phase transition. Specifically, a predictor trained in the Taiwan Precision Medicine Initiative for asthma can achieve an AUC of 0.63(0.02) and for height a correlation of 0.648(0.009) for a Taiwanese population. This is above the measured values of 0.61(0.01) and 0.631(0.008), respectively, for UK Biobank trained predictors applied to a European population. 

Figure: Performance in 5 ancestry groups using LASSO, Elastic Net, and PRScs with UKB and 1,000 Genomes LD matrices. Solid bands = predicted performance using All of Us and Taiwan Precision Medicine Initiative datasets.

Prof. Gilles Saint-Paul (Ecole Normale): the Yellow Vests, French Politics, and Hypergamy (Manifold #31)

 

Audio (podcast only)

Transcript 

Gilles Saint-Paul is Professeur à l'Ecole Normale Supérieure. He is a graduate of Ecole Polytechnique in Engineering and received his PhD from MIT in Economics. Gilles and Steve discuss the French elite education system, the Yellow Vest movement, French politics and populism, and Saint-Paul's paper on marriage markets and hypergamy. 

0:00 Introduction 

1:43 Gilles Saint-Paul's background and education 

6:31 French and American elite education - Les Grandes Ecoles 

14:44 The Yellow Vests 

41:46 Mating and Hypergamy 

Links: 

On the Yellow Vest Insurrection 

https://gillessaintpaul.wordpress.com/2018/12/18/on-the-yellow-vest-insurrection/ 

Genes, Legitimacy and Hypergamy: Another Look at the Economics of Marriage https://ideas.repec.org/p/ide/wpaper/9118.html

Bing vs. Bard, US-China STEM Competition, and Embryo Screening — Manifold Episode #30

 

Steve discusses the AI competition between Microsoft and Google, the competition between the U.S. and China in STEM, China’s new IVF policy, and a Science Magazine survey on polygenic screening of embryos. 

00:00 Introduction 

02:37 Bing vs Bard: LLMs and hallucination 

20:52 China demographics & STEM 

34:29 China IVF now covered by national health insurance

40:28 Survey on embryo screening in Science: ~50% of those under 35 would use it to enhance congnitivie ability 

References: 

Bing vs Bard and Hallucination 

https://twitter.com/hsu_steve/status/1625222378383876119 

China demographics and STEM

https://twitter.com/hsu_steve/status/1620765589752119297 https://twitter.com/hsu_steve/status/1623279827640848385

 

China IVF 

https://twitter.com/hsu_steve/status/1623475304432820224 https://twitter.com/hsu_steve/status/1623478413758500864 

Science survey on embryo screening 

https://twitter.com/hsu_steve/status/1623783244947722241 https://twitter.com/hsu_steve/status/1623664372202500097

ChatGPT, LLMs, and AI — Manifold #29

 

Steve discusses Large Language Model AIs such as ChatGPT. 

0:00 How do LLMs work? 

10:22 Impact of ChatGPT 

15:21 AI landscape 

24:13 Hallucination and Focus 

33:09 Applications 

39:29 Future landscape 

Manifold interview with John Schulman of OpenAI: 

https://www.manifold1.com/episodes/john-schulman-openai-and-recent-advances-in-artificial-intelligence-16 

Blog posts on word vectors and approximately linear vector space of concepts used by the human mind:

 

https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-future-of-thought-via-thought.html https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2016/12/towards-geometry-of-thought.html

Dominic Cummings: Vote Leave, Brexit, COVID, and No. 10 with Boris — Manifold #28

 

Dominic Cummings is a major historical figure in UK politics. He helped save the Pound Sterling, led the Vote Leave campaign, Got Brexit Done, and guided the Tories to a landslide general election victory. His time in No. 10 Downing Street as Boris Johnson's Chief Advisor was one of the most interesting and impactful periods in modern UK political history.  Dom and Steve discuss all of this and more in this 2-hour episode. 

0:00 Early Life: Oxford, Russia, entering politics 

16:49 Keeping the UK out of the Euro 

19:41 How Dominic and Steve became acquainted: blogs, 2008 financial crisis, meeting at Google 

27:37 Vote Leave, the science of polling 

43:46 Cambridge Analytica conspiracy; History is impossible 

48:41 Dominic on Benedict Cumberbatch’s portrayal of him and the movie “Brexit: The Uncivil War” 

54:05 On joining British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s office: an ultimatum 

1:06:31 The pandemic 

1:21:28 The Deep State, talent pipeline for public service 

1:47:25 Quants and weirdos invade No.10 

1:52:06 Can the Tories win the next election? 

1:56:27 Trump in 2024? 

Transcript

Audio Player

References: 

Dominic's Substack newsletter: https://dominiccummings.substack.com/

Sahil Lavingia: Founding Gumroad, The Minimalist Entrepreneur, and our AI LLM future — Manifold #27

 

Sahil Lavingia founded Gumroad at the age of 19 and built it into a leading digital commerce platform. He is the author of The Minimalist Entrepreneur and an investor in early-stage startups. 

Steve and Sahil discuss: 

0:00 Sahil's upbringing and start as an entrepreneur 

9:35 Tech founder at 19 and VC investment from Kleiner-Perkins 

24:15 Backstory of Gumroad 30:30 Crowdfunding Gumroad 

37:09 Experiments with OpenAI LLM, ChatGPT, and the promise of AI 

Transcript

References: 

Sahil's web page 

https://sahillavingia.com/ 

Ask My Book: interrogate Sahil's book via LLM 

https://askmybook.com/