Writing about culture, public life, institutions, and the social effects of technology.
We are launching a new app called Sora. This is a combination of a new model called Sora 2, and a new product that makes it easy to create, share, and view videos. This feels to many of us like the “ChatGPT for creativity” moment, and it feels fun and new....
We are past the event horizon; the takeoff has started. Humanity is close to building digital superintelligence, and at least so far it’s much less weird than it seems like it should be. Robots are not yet walking the streets, nor are most of us talking to AI all day....
Our mission is to ensure that AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) benefits all of humanity. Systems that start to point to AGI* are coming into view, and so we think it’s important to understand the moment we are in....
I’m delighted to be investing more in Helion. Helion is by far the most promising approach to fusion I’ve seen. David and Chris are two of the most impressive founders and builders (in the sense of building fusion machines, in addition to building companies!...
A lot of people want to replicate YC in some other industry or some other place or with some other strategy. In general, people seem to assume that: 1) although there was some degree of mystery or luck about how YC got going, it can’t be that hard, and 2) if y...
Almost every company and non-profit working on COVID-19 that I offered to help asked for support with clinical trials—for companies focusing on developing novel drugs, vaccines, and diagnostics, rapidly spinning up trials is one of their biggest bottlenecks....
Experts on the COVID-19 pandemic seem to think there are three ways out—that is, for life, health, and the economy to return roughly to normal....
I’m trying to fund startups/projects helping with COVID-19, because it’s basically the one thing I know how to do that can help....
Although I still hope things will go differently, the experts I’ve spoken to think we are likely to face a global tragedy—hundreds of thousands of deaths from Covid-19. I hope that society views this as a warning for the future. Covid-19 is bad, but only a warm-up....
I am pretty sure cryptocurrency is here to stay in some form (at least as a store of value, which is the only use case we have seen work at scale so far). There was possibly a time when governments could have totally stopped it, but it feels like that’s in the rearview mirror....
I made a point in this post inelegantly in a way that was easy to misunderstand, so I’d like to clarify it. I didn’t mean that we need to tolerate brilliant homophobic jerks in the lab so that we can have scientific progress....
Earlier this year, I noticed something in China that really surprised me. I realized I felt more comfortable discussing controversial ideas in Beijing than in San Francisco. I didn’t feel completely comfortable—this was China, after all—just more comfortable than at home....