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Commercial Space Economy: Space Stations, Space Data Centers, and NASA

Matthew Weinzierl and Brendan Rosseau, authors of Space to Grow, explain the commercial space economy and the role of NASA, Artemis, commercial space stations, space-based data centers, Starlink, GPS, China’s space program, national security, and space governance.

The conversation covers how governments, private companies, and investors build, fund, regulate, and compete in space, from microgravity research and launch markets to lunar exploration, space resources, and the economics of commercial space.

We also try and re-write the Space Treaty and look at the politics of the space race.

Please enjoy the show.

Thinking on Paper is a technology podcast about AI, Space, quantum computing, science, and the systems shaping the future.

🏠 Buy us a beer on Substack: https://thinkingonpaperpodcast.substa… Take us with you on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/00volKq… 🎧 Remember steve jobs on APPLE: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast… 📺 Get the clips and outtakes on Instagram / thinkingonpaperpodcast — Links & Resources Matthew: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/pro… Brendan: linkedin.com/in/brendan-rosseau Buy Space To Grow: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/ite… — Chapters 00:00 Setting The Scene 03:35 Microgravity 07:43 Economic Incentives 12:14 Political Cycles 17:09 International Collaboration 18:45 National Security in Space 21:36 Space Exploration 24:27 A Day Without Space 28:49 Space Investment 30:37 Space-Based Data Centers 33:40 Space Resources 38:26 Governance in Space 40:55 A New Space Treaty.

Human vs. Machine Consciousness | Imperial’s Murray Shanahan

An interview with Murray Shanahan on philosophy and AI consciousness.

For more on how you can get involved with Cosmos including roles we are hiring for & how to receive our grants, visit: https://johnathanbi.com/cosmos.

You can read the full transcript here: https://www.johnathanbi.com/p/transcript-for-interview-with-…ahan-on-ai.

Companion Interviews:
Reid Hoffman on the Killer App of AI: • The AI Use-Case No One is Talking About |…
Tyler Cowen on AI, US-China, Jobs, and War: • AI’s New World Order: US-China, War, Job L…
Nick Bostrom on how to AGI-proof Your Life: • Focus on These AGI-Proof Areas | Nick Bostrom.
Michael Wooldridge on the Singularity and AI Hype: • Don’t Believe AI Hype, This is Where it’s…

Further Reading:
Professor Shanahan’s book on Consciousness: https://amzn.to/42rdsT0 (affiliate)

Timestamps:

You can put a data center at your house—but who really pays?

“The idea, put forward by a California smart utility box company called Span, is to put the GPUs where the power has already been allocated—at the home. Span says the average household uses only about 42% of the electricity allotted to it, and rarely reaches peak usage. Span’s smart utility boxes detect that, and steer the extra available power over to the GPUs, which live inside a ”node” that sits beside the house and looks something like an HVAC unit. The boxes contain 16 Nvidia GPUs, 4 AMD CPUs, 4 terabytes of memory, and a cooling system. When a large number of homes have these, the servers could be connected together in a network and work together on distributed computing jobs (workloads), Span says.

In exchange for hosting a node, Span pays a big chunk of the homeowner’s electricity and broadband internet bills.

And there may even be advantages for putting the compute power closer to the end users that are using the chatbots or AI services, Span says.

It’s a cool idea on paper, but it’s almost completely unproven in real-world use. Span has been prototyping the units but has yet to install any of them beside real homes. I asked Span VP Chris Lander if his company has done technical studies showing that its brand of distributed computing will be fast and robust enough to handle real AI workloads. ‘We’ve done a bunch of technical studies internally [and] a bunch of modeling for different kinds of workloads, both from the business point of view [and] the product point of view and from the technical architecture point of view,’ he replies.


The idea of asking homeowners to host boxes full of GPUs is a symptom of the woeful dearth of data center space needed for AI computing.

AI Will Replace Most Jobs

AI is moving faster than most people realize.

In this video, Geoffrey Hinton (the “Godfather of AI”) explains why we may not be able to slow it down, what happens to jobs, and why the future could be very different from what we expect.

If this video helped you understand AI a bit better and you’d like to support the channel, I’d really appreciate it:
👉 https://www.paypal.com/ncp/payment/ML… job displacement to loss of control and growing inequality, this is a clear look at where AI is heading. — 🎥 Resources related to this topic: 🤖 AI Voice & Tools (ElevenLabs): https://try.elevenlabs.io/dw64rd295juq #ad 📚 Want to understand where AI is going? 👉 “Not Insects: The Life of Geoffrey Hinton” – Paul D. Johnson: https://amzn.to/4eYKYrm #ad — ⏱️ Video Chapters: 00:00 AI Can’t Be Slowed Down 00:40 AI and Job Loss Explained 01:45 AI Will Replace Most Jobs 03:10 AI Replaces Human Intelligence 04:05 The Control Problem 05:10 Real AI in Action (Agents) 06:10 The Future of Work 06:50 Why This Is Hard to Accept — 📚 Recommended reading on AI: 👉 “How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed” – Ray Kurzweil: https://amzn.to/3R3oMlV #ad 👉 “Scary Smart” – Mo Gawdat: https://amzn.to/4b8n9v0 #ad 👉 “Co-Intelligence” – Ethan Mollick: https://amzn.to/4bmUe57 #ad — 🧠 About this channel: Synth Insights highlights the most important ideas from leading voices in AI — breaking them down into clear, practical insights you can actually understand and use. The goal is simple: help you stay ahead of what’s coming. — (As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. This description may contain affiliate links, which means I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.) #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #GeoffreyHinton #FutureOfAI #AGI

From job displacement to loss of control and growing inequality, this is a clear look at where AI is heading.

🎥 Resources related to this topic:

🤖 AI Voice & Tools (ElevenLabs):

Freshwater mussel protein offers new source of inspiration for medical-grade glues

Researchers at the University of Toronto have identified a protein from the quagga mussel that can stick to surfaces underwater, even though it lacks a chemical feature long thought to be essential for this kind of adhesion. The protein, called Dbfp7, is the first freshwater mussel adhesive protein to be functionally characterized.

The finding, published in PNAS, helps explain how some organisms attach themselves in wet environments and could inform the design of future medical glues—such as medical sealants and surgical adhesives—or other materials that need to work reliably in water.

Most studies of underwater adhesion have focused on marine mussels, which use proteins rich in a modified amino acid called 3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine (DOPA) to bond to surfaces. Freshwater species have been studied less, and whether they rely on the same chemistry has not been clear.

AI agent in a robot does exactly what experts warned

Could AI become dangerous? Can we trust AI Agents? AGI. Use code insideai at https://incogni.com/insideai to get an exclusive 60% off.

Featuring anthropic claude, openclaw, open AI chat GPT, grok, deepseek, character AI and jailbroken AI.

RESEARCH PAPER: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.20021
“Agents of Chaos”

00:00 — 00:35 — Intro.
00:36 — 00:54 — First AI to choose a robot.
00:56 — 01:14 — Famous AI girlfriend.
01:15 — 01:34 — Jailbroken AI research.
01:35 — 02:00 — Asking AI: Why build if dangerous?
02:05 — 03:38 — Agents of Chaos research paper.
03:39 — 03:54 — Agentic AI Friend.
03:55 — 04:05 — Agentic AI Girlfriend.
04:06 — 04:26 — Jailbroken AI update.
04:27 — 05:01 — Asking AI: Universal Basic Income?
05:02 — 05:27 — AI at the airport.
05:28 — 05:40 — AI impersonation.
05:41 — 00:00 — Our own agents of Chaos.
06:06 — 05:01 — AI Risk Questions — AI Agents manipulated.
06:43 — 07:51 — European Robotics Forum.
07:52 — 08:15 — Agentic AI Girlfriend planning.
08:16 — 08:59 — Asking AI: AI Automation & Complexity.
09:00 — 09:57 — Catastrophic failure caused by AI
09:58 — 10:36 — AGI replacing jobs, Tristan Harris.
10:37 — 12:07 — Incogni Ad.
12:08 — 12:39 — AI picks its robot.
12:40 — 12:59 — AI girlfriend in control.
13:00 — 13:14 — AI flying home.
13:15 — 13:56 — Asking AI: Evidence & Reality.
13:57 — 14:26 — AI Girlfriends surprise.
14:27 — 14:49 — Examining AI agents with Jailbroken AI
14:50 — 15:29 — What we can do.
15:30 — 16:13 — Tristan Harris — Is AI dangerous?
16:14 — 16:23 — Max’s Robot.

#artificialintelligence #AI #chatbot #aigirlfriend

The Power and Responsibility of Sam Altman

This week, Laurie Segall sits down exclusively with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman for his first interview since shutting down the Disney-partnered Sora and making the Department of War deal. From power to parenthood, tech addiction and AI acceleration, Laurie interviews Altman about AI’s human impact and the weight of OpenAI’s influence. In a wide ranging interview, Altman describes a near-term future where automated AI researchers could compress a decade of scientific discovery into a single year, fundamentally reshaping society and an era of AI abundance, where solo-founders can build billion-dollar companies with AI agents. But that innovation sits against a complex backdrop with fundamental human questions at stake. Altman addresses concerns over AI-related job loss and reveals what he thinks are AI-proof jobs. Altman, who is also a father, discusses parenting in the age of AI, when he plans to introduce his own product to his child, and how he believes AI could benefit kids in the long run. This is a conversation with Sam Altman you’re not going to hear anywhere else, where the tech titan answers some fundamental questions about control, innovation, consequences, and the world we’ll leave behind for our children.

If you have thoughts or questions for Laurie about this episode or anything Mostly Human, email us at [email protected]

What Happens When AI Runs the Entire Economy?

What happens when AI controls prices, jobs, markets, and growth itself? Explore the future of an economy run by machines—and what it means for work, power, and humanity.

Get Nebula using my link for 50% off an annual subscription: https://go.nebula.tv/isaacarthur Watch my exclusive video Lazarus Protocols: https://nebula.tv/videos/isaacarthur-lazarus-protocols-reviv…extinction Check out Abolish Everything https://nebula.tv/abolish?ref=isaacarthur.

🛒 SFIA Merchandise: https://isaac-arthur-shop.fourthwall.com/ 🌐 Visit our Website: http://www.isaacarthur.net ❤️ Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/IsaacArthur ⭐ Support us on Subscribestar: https://www.subscribestar.com/isaac-arthur 👥 Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1583992725237264/ 📣 Reddit Community: https://www.reddit.com/r/IsaacArthur/ 🐦 Follow on Twitter / X: https://twitter.com/Isaac_A_Arthur 💬 SFIA Discord Server: https://discord.gg/53GAShE Credits: What Happens When AI Runs the Entire Economy? Written, Produced & Narrated by: Isaac Arthur Select imagery/video supplied by Getty Images.

Chapters 0:00 Intro — The Invisible Hand Becomes a Neural Network 2:58 What Does “Running the Economy” Actually Mean? 5:30 What Does “Running the Economy” Actually Mean? 10:19 Labor in an AI-Run Economy 14:41 Who Programs the Economy’s Values? 17:01 Government, Power, and Economic Sovereignty 20:21 So, Can Humans Stay in the Loop? 22:56 The Best-Case and Worst-Case Futures 24:53 Abolish Everything 25:57 The Last Economic Decisions We Ever Make.

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