A.I., Voltage, and Vocations

your Saturday roundup

Professionally, I focus on creating social benefit startups. In my Saturday morning emails I share what I’m learning and thinking. Topics range from better living and parenting to business and philosophy.

1. Intelligence Explosion. Previously, I discussed increasing AI capabilities and asked: what will it take for you to reconsider your assumptions and plans? The newly published AI 2027 outlines two plausible futures for AI: one with a happy ending, the other with catastrophic consequences. Policy suggestions include more emphasis on alignment and transparency. Their thinking is rigorous and thought-provoking. Understanding could be improved with more wargaming. For example, I wonder if they put enough emphasis on the growing role of open-source in AI. Do arms race dynamics change with open-sourced versions of pretty-good AI being available to all? If you’re interested in what else can be done to prepare for superintelligence, the Forethought institute published their suggestions. (Quick question: is the idea of intelligence explosion reaching a broader audience, or are we still hearing mostly from the same thinkers?)

2. More Energy Please! Consider this your regular reminder: we could solve many major problems with more energy. Cheap, safe energy is a key ingredient to wealth. Yes, it’s great if we can use the energy we have more efficiently. Still creating more energy capacity is worth a lot of effort. With abundant energy we can:

   1. Remove carbon dioxide from the air (see AirMiners reading list)

   2. Create clean water and move it around (desalination, decontamination, synthesis and pumps)

   3. Make more food including food made without animals (vertical farming, fabricating fertilizer and one day making cultured meat)

   4. Improve air quality both indoors and out

   5. Power thinking machines (AI) to solve other problems

   6. Potentially enable flying cars?

   7. How else might abundant energy directly improve human health?

Where will that energy come from? Solar, fission, fusion, and deep geothermal all look promising. The future may include all of them.

3. Skilled Trades. One major factor driving up construction and housing costs is the shortage of skilled trade workers. Why are we still constraining how many people we can train for these roles? States like Connecticut, for example, require aspiring tradespeople to complete lengthy apprenticeships and limit the number of trainees based on fixed trainer-to-apprentice ratios. These rules restrict workforce growth at a time when we need to scale up. Why are we emphasizing inputs—time with a journeyman, years on the job or hours in training—rather than measuring actual skills acquired? Does the current system genuinely improve safety and quality, or does it just preserve the status quo? We should also consider how new technologies could shift the paradigm. Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) can accelerate training, improve safety, and reduce hands-on time without compromising results. And how will automation and robotics fit into existing licensing regimes?

Until next time,

Miles