Pseudonyms Wrote the US Constitution. Exxon Gets Redpilled. Write by Thinking.
Future Forward. March 30, 2022 edition.
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Hey folks – Welcome to Future Forward, a newsletter about the future and how to build it. I’m Pseudo1984, the official OASIS pseudonym.
Each week, I share the most important news in Web3, AI, the pseudonymous economy & the forces shaping the future of humanity.
The Pseudonymous Past
📜 Pseudonyms Wrote the US Constitution
America's founding fathers used pseudonyms to debate and ratify the United States Constitution during the 1880s.
Wikipedia lists 47 different "important" pseudonyms, including Publius publisher of the Federalist Papers, an alt identity collective comprised of:
Alexander Hamilton – 1st Secretary of the US Treasury, founder of the US financial system and now pop culture meme 💵
James Madison – 4th President of the United States 🇺🇸
John Jay – 1st chief justice of the US Supreme Court 🏛
Power over a man’s subsistence amounts to a power over his will.
- Publius, The Federalist Papers
This is the same argument made by Punk6529 in his “Freedom to Transact” epic. If you haven’t read the thread already, pls do. Defintely worth your time.
The similarity is uncanny. I wonder if Punk6529 has read the Federalist Papers?
If you are friends with 6529, pls share this with him.
Interestingly, Publius’s great intellectual rival was another pseudonym named Brutus, who was the 1880s version of a decentralization maxi. History rhymes, doesn’t it?
Vitalik is reviving this 250 year old debate, now in the Web3 context, with some incredible essays:
All I gotta say is… What an incredible time to be alive! 🔥
Artificial Intelligence
🤯 Neural Implant Allows Paralyzed Patient to Communicate by Composing Words with His Thoughts
This is wild! Researchers got a guy who couldn’t even move his eyes to communicate by spelling out words in his mind one letter at a time . Shocking that it worked and even more shocking was how much the guy had to say! 🧠
🦾 Stratechery Interview with Nvidia CEO about “Manufacturing Intelligence”
None of these capabilities were remotely possible a decade ago. Accelerated computing, at data center scale, and combined with machine learning, has sped up computing by a million-x. Accelerated computing has enabled revolutionary AI models like the transformer, and made self-supervised learning possible.
AI has fundamentally changed what software can make, and how you make software. Companies are processing and refining their data, making AI software, becoming intelligence manufacturers. Their data centers are becoming AI factories.
The first wave of AI learned perception and inference, like recognizing images, understanding speech, recommending a video, or an item to buy.
The next wave of AI is robotics: AI planning actions. Digital robots, avatars, and physical robots will perceive, plan, and act.
- Jensen Huang, NVIDIA CEO
Jensen & I are on the same wavelength. His vision is spot-on. Inside of OASIS, we explain what we do as “AI manufacturing” and HUMAN-1 as our “factory.” Before now, I’d never heard anyone else use this metaphor. Wild!
Note: While Jensen’s vision is spot on, NVIDIA and OASIS are very different businesses. OASIS’s HUMAN-1 uses 10,000x less compute than NVIDIA’s Maxine avatar technology. Why? Maxine exists to help sell NVIDIA sell hardware; HUMAN-1 exists to sell AI video avatars to actual end-users as utility NFTs. NVIDIA’s goal is to maximize the compute need, OASIS’s is to minimize it.
💻 Nvidia teases ‘world’s fastest AI supercomputer
This will make AI research faster. The result will be more experiments, more discoveries, more breakthroughs. 👩💻
Web3
⛽️ Exxon is partnering with Crusoe to mine bitcoin in North Dakota as part of its plan to slash emissions
Crusoe pioneered the “use off gassing to power a data center” model and is expanding into the data center space (OASIS AI research is one of the first beta users.) It’s a brilliant model to transform waste. This is the way. 🔥
If I was Exxon, I’d just drop $3B and buy Crusoe. But they shouldn’t sell. 💰
💸 Crypto investor Katie Haun raises $1.5 billion, the largest debut fund ever by a female VC
Katie started off as federal prosecutor. Here’s her 2015 TED talk about being baptized into crypto:
👁 Sam Altman’s Worldcoin to Raise $100M at $3B Token Valuation
The technology looks legit, but their consumer marketing needs work. Bearish atm. 🌎
🙊 Yuga Labs Raises $450M from a16z, Google, Samsung
These guys are really running the table. Brilliant execution. 🚀
📱 LG Electronics adds blockchain and crypto as new areas of business
Probably too early, but who knows? 🧪
Want to hear about these stories in real-time? Join me on Discord or follow me on Twitter.
In the meantime… What’s the coolest thing you’ve seen this week?
-Pseudo1984
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