ai progress

Tom Scott describes trying ChatGPT to fix his Gmail labels and being unsettled by how capable it was. He argues that we cannot know where we are on the technology curve, comparing it to Napster.

Robert Miles explains instrumental convergence: why an AGI with almost any goal would tend to pursue sub-goals like self-preservation and resource acquisition. It builds on Omohundro's basic AI drives and his orthogonality thesis video.

Robert Miles gives a remastered introduction to AI safety, adapted from a talk in London. It lays out why advanced AI could go wrong and answers common objections.

Robert Miles examines whether the case for AI safety is a Pascal's mugging, a tiny probability of an enormous payoff. He argues it is not, because AI risk does not depend on vanishingly small probabilities.

Robert Miles introduces the first of several videos on the paper 'Concrete Problems in AI Safety', focusing on how AI systems can cause accidental negative side effects. It explains the problem in accessible terms.

Robert Miles goes through ten common reasons people give for dismissing AI safety, adapted from Stuart Russell's list, and answers each one. It is aimed at skeptics and newcomers.

Jon Stewart on The Daily Show satirizes the AI industry's promises of a better future while it builds technology to replace workers. It mocks executives and AI hype.

Yegor Denisov-Blanch of Stanford presents a study of nearly 100,000 developers at hundreds of companies, measuring how AI affects productivity from commit data. It finds an average boost of about 20% with wide variance by codebase, task complexity and stack.

An MTA video on communications-based train control, the system meant to replace the New York City subway's century-old signaling. It also shows the mechanical interlocks and signals in use today.

Footage of a doubleheader of locomotives crawling over badly maintained track on a former Wabash Railroad line, now the ND&W Railway. The uploader explains the track had deferred maintenance for decades.

James Mickens of Harvard gives a funny lecture at HBS's Future Assembly arguing that blockchains are a very bad idea. He covers their trust, legal and practical shortcomings for real-world problems.

CGP Grey explains split-brain patients, where severing the corpus callosum lets the two hemispheres act independently. He uses this to explore the idea of two minds in one head.

Wendover Productions explains how airlines make money from different cabin classes and why premium seats matter so much to profits. It also touches on how this shaped decisions such as the decline of supersonic travel.

3Blue1Brown shows how the uncertainty principle arises from Fourier transforms. A wave packet cannot be narrow in both position and frequency, so the principle is a property of waves rather than of measurement.

Wendover Productions explains why US passenger rail lags behind other countries. It covers freight companies owning most of the track, geography and population density, and the economics of competing with flying.

Veritasium explains why clickbait titles and thumbnails work, how he tests them, and why educational creators feel pushed to use them. He classifies types of clickbait and discusses the trade-offs.

A Wendover Productions explainer on why train tickets, especially Amtrak in the US, cost so much compared with flying. It breaks down staffing, speed and the cost components behind a ticket.

Anders Brownworth gives a basic visual introduction to blockchain using an interactive web demo, covering SHA256 hashes, blocks, chains, distribution, tokens and coinbase transactions.

A Wendover Productions explainer on how China built the world's largest high-speed rail network so quickly and why its rail strategy differs from America's. It covers politics, social benefits and the economics of unprofitable lines.

The final codec conversation from Metal Gear Solid 2, in which the AI 'Colonel' explains that the Patriots filter out junk information and curate truth for humanity. It plays as a dark meditation on information overload, manipulation and shared reality.

A Wendover Productions explainer arguing that major airlines make much of their profit from loyalty programs and co-branded credit cards rather than flying. It frames airlines as quasi-banks that sell points in bulk, using United's pandemic-era loan as a hook.

CityNerd lays out a data-driven method for deciding where high-speed rail should be built in North America and identifies 56 city pairs that justify it, based on population and distance.

A fan-made Metal Gear Solid 2 codec call using AI voice synthesis, in which the Colonel warns Raiden about using AI to censor the internet and enforce digital ID. It riffs on the game's 'Selection for Societal Sanity' conversation.

Louis Rossmann argues that Apple's Independent Repair Program is a PR stunt that misleads the public and burdens independent repair shops. He discusses parts access restrictions and program limits.

The official tour video of Miniatur Wunderland in Hamburg, the world's largest model railway. It shows the 1,300 square meter layout with trains, aircraft, cars and ships moving around.

The first part of a series on programming in Jai, Jonathan Blow's in-development language. It covers compiling, writing hello world and using code from other files.

Esther Gokhale's short TEDx talk argues that the natural human spine is curved rather than straight and teaches a 'primal posture' for sitting without back pain.

A Wendover Productions explainer on how airport security is designed, covering screening layers, x-ray scanning, and the contrast with Israel's profiling-based approach. It walks through the logic behind why security works the way it does.

Kurzgesagt examines how AI-generated content is flooding the internet, from video and music to news and books. It looks at how this makes verifying what is real harder.

A Wendover Productions explainer on how budget airlines can sell tickets for under 10 euros. It covers the costs airlines face and how low-cost carriers structure their business.

Louis Rossmann argues that reballing flip-chip GPUs is not a real fix for dead laptop GPUs. He explains why such repairs and oven reflow tricks fail and what is actually happening with failing hardware.

Louis Rossmann discusses failing keyboards on newer MacBooks, comparing a Dell keyboard repair with an Apple keyboard repair and explaining why Apple's design is costly and hard to fix.

A Motherboard documentary episode from Nebraska about farmers and mechanics fighting manufacturers like John Deere over access to the diagnostic software needed to repair modern tractors. It shows how software locks have taken away farmers' traditional self-reliance.

This Old House's Ross Trethewey explains MERV filter ratings and how air filtration works, then shows how to build a localized DIY air filter, including a box fan with multiple filters.

Psychiatrist Daniel Amen discusses lessons from 83,000 brain scans, arguing that brain activity patterns relate to psychological symptoms and that you can improve your brain.

Researcher Kamal Meattle describes how an arrangement of three common houseplants placed in specific spots can measurably clean the air in a home or office. It is a short TED talk based on his work in a plant-filled building.

Sal Khan of Khan Academy gives a TED talk on how AI could transform education, with a personal tutor for every student and a teaching assistant for every teacher. He demos Khanmigo, including features where the AI reasons before responding.

A 2014 BBC Newsnight report by Gabriel Gatehouse on the presence and influence of far-right and neo-Nazi groups in the new Ukrainian government after the Maidan. It is a short news investigation.

Sam Harris argues in a TED talk that we will build superhuman AI and have not grappled with the risk of creating something that may treat us the way we treat ants. He makes a logical case for taking AI risk seriously.

Hugh Jeffreys tears down the iPhone 13 and assesses its repairability, showing how Apple ties parts like the display and Face ID hardware to specific devices. He demonstrates that swapping parts, even genuine ones, can disable features.