Smart Not Fake Innovation
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.
Deepfake Spear Fishing. I know you don’t want another password. You’re drowning in them already. Maybe you even hate passwords. Here’s the bad news: you need one more. A password between your spouse, children and parents. Or at least another plan for verification. Why? Because AI is getting good enough to fake real-time video and good enough to mimic someone’s voice on a phone call. Scammers are using these tools to steal millions of dollars. Make today the day you prepare yourself.
Big Beautiful Brains. Why are humans so intelligent and why do we have such unusually large brains? There are competing theories, each highlighting different evolutionary pressures. One compelling idea is runaway sexual selection. Darwin himself took sexual selection more seriously than many of his contemporaries. Our brains may have evolved because they were valued by mates for creative displays much like the peacock’s tail. Another view suggests our intelligence evolved to help us imitate elders more effectively and maintain complex social norms. Preserving the status quo through learning an existing culture can actually require surprising cognitive effort. Others emphasize practical survival: finding food, avoiding predators, or navigating intricate social hierarchies. If we succeed in creating AGI, what role will curiosity, economics and competitive dynamics play in this next stage of intelligence creation?
Don’t Stop Innovating. I loved the energy at the Yale Innovation Summit this week. One topic of conversation is how we can preserve higher ed’s role in innovation. Yes, there is room for improvement in freedom of speech, viewpoint diversity, prominence of demographics factors and managing growing costs. At the same time, current federal policy is too blunt, risks going too far, and endangers the engines of U.S. prosperity. There are many examples where government support was critical to inventing or scaling up innovation that created wealth and improved or lengthened lives. These examples include: mobile phone GPS, genetic understanding and engineering, better batteries, important contributions to efficient photovoltaics, and the HPV, RSV and Covid-19 vaccines. We absolutely need strong markets and bold founders. We also need long-term funders willing to absorb risk and invest in benefits that are more diffuse and long-term. That type of long-term funding primarily comes from governments. I’m all for figuring out how to better use funding and improve the practice of research. In addition, immigration plays a vital role, too: more than half of U.S. unicorn startups were founded by immigrants, and if you include first generation Americans, that number rises to two-thirds. About half of those immigrant founders originally came to the U.S. on student visas. Since 2000, immigrants have won 40% of U.S. Nobel Prizes in chemistry, medicine, and physics. Let’s maintain our ability to innovate and improve lives by continuing to attract global talent and supporting scientific research.
Until next time,
Miles