Eliot Eshelman

The Philosopher-Builder The AI age demands a new kind of technologist

I think this resonates. More powerful technology requires more thoughtful design. Are there other good archetypes in addition to Ben Franklin?

open.substack.com/pub/cosmosin...

Most utility I’m getting out of my Apple Watch right now: it lets me know when my o3-pro queries are complete.

Software engineers are eating the world In ignorance of nobility.

“Software engineers are making civilization-level decisions. We aren’t trained for that, and often act unwisely or unjustly.”

“Nobility—the deliberately wise and just use of power—is the missing ingredient.”

open.substack.com/pub/meaningn...

AI Ascent 2025 Sequoia Capital's AI Ascent 2025 convened Sam Altman, Mike Kreiger, Jeff Dean and more with 100+ leading founders and researchers to discuss the present and ...

Get a glimpse of the likely future of AI. First video is mostly about the market. Second video introduces the Physical Turing Test. I’m still watching, but they all seem interesting!

youtube.com/playlist?lis...

Remember the old “let me google that for you”?

I think we’ve reached “let me agentically research that for you” 😎

Outlook stopped converting hyphens to emdashes automatically! 🤔

Flares From Magnetized Stars Can Forge Planets’ Worth of Gold, Other Heavy Elements Flares From Magnetized Stars Can Forge Planets’ Worth of Gold, Other Heavy Elements on Simons Foundation

A twenty year old mystery solved. And fun new click bait: “make a quadrillion kilos of gold using everyday items from around your neighborhood”

www.simonsfoundation.org/2025/04/29/f...

Bridging philosophy and AI to explore computing ethics - MIT Schwarzman College of Computing During a meeting of class 6.C40/24.C40 (Ethics of Computing), Professor Armando Solar-Lezama poses the same impossible question to his students that he often asks himself in the research he leads…

Our species has built powerful tools; tools which allow one person to accomplish the work of thousands. But we’re not equipped for this level of responsibility. I hope each of you is learning to ask and answer difficult questions such as these.

computing.mit.edu/news/bridgin...

73 | Ethan Mollick and a million Einsteins in a server Night Science · Episode

“Partially a miracle; and partially frustrating” - an enlightening interview with Ethan Mollick around AI for research

Artistic impression of four llamas climbing towards an inflection point.

It’s going to be an exciting month! Lots of new capabilities to explore; lots of new things to build.

Consume feculence.

My insight of the day at #GTC25: we are likely to see “just in time code” soon. AI will write new programs to carry out the tasks you request. And it will write that code as you are making requests (compared to now where code is prewritten by an expert far removed from you).

Photo of Eliot at GTC holding “the hitchhiker’s guide to asking questions”

We have entered the era of reasoning and Deep Thought at NVIDIA #GTC25

If you know where your towel is, you should definitely come and find me. I’ve prepared a friendly guide.

Awesome! What UI libraries is it using? Did you pick them? Most of the demos I’ve seen are React web apps.

There’s been a great amount of success with models that “think” to themselves in text. How much luck are people having with models that “talk” to themselves in audio, “imagine” to themselves in visual space, and “sniff” around in molecular space?

The AI’s scratch pad should be multimodal, right?

We are experiencing an assault on science unparalleled by anything I’ve seen in my life. It’s not one issue or another anymore, the entire institution is under attack by the most powerful individuals in the country.

This Friday, where will you be?

standupforscience2025.org

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A little thought experiment for your Saturday morning: electricity was the spark that led all the way to AI. What will now develop from the spark of AI?

So ChatGPT was the best a couple days ago, today Claude is the best, and later today ChatGPT will be the best again?

Gotta design everything orthogonally so it’s easy to pivot. Assume constant change.

“Don’t ever feed the transformers after midnight”

The more I drink good black tea, the more I realize coffee is a harsh mistress.

I’m polyAImorous, and Claude is my primary. Maybe o1 and o3 are smarter, but Claude is just more fun 😍

Being smart isn’t having all the answers. Being smart is asking great questions.

It’s clear AI will tremendously amplify this truth.

I hope this email finds you…well…this is going to be a long year.

YouTube video by Veritasium What if all the world's biggest problems have the same solution?

What if all the world's biggest problems have the same solution?

Awesome explainer on what AI is doing for protein science.

youtu.be/P_fHJIYENdI?...

We are striving towards personalized medicine. We should also strive towards personalized cognition.

Human attention span and human working memory are limited. Your automated assistant should be finely attuned to your needs, your strengths, and especially your weaknesses!

NVIDIA at CES 2025 January 6–10 at Las Vegas, NV Add to Calendar

There’s gonna be good stuff. Click through and add Jensen’s keynote to your calendar.

www.nvidia.com/en-us/events...

Look at this neat stuff - puny humans have only one fifth the genome of wheat!

How did I not know about this until now!? 🤯

bionumbers.hms.harvard.edu/Search.aspx?...

Eating too much cake is the sin of gluttony. However, eating too much pie is okay because the sin of pi is always zero.
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