Hey everyone! Robin Hanson will be speaking on Thursday about his galaxy brain ideas on better incentive models for longevity. Plus his unique takes on prediction markets and long-term thinking. [ https://lu.ma/wzuwk1lp](https://lu.ma/wzuwk1lp)
Join us for a groundbreaking discussion with economist Robin Hanson on the future of longevity economics and city governance!
In today’s AI news, Elon Musk’s AI company, xAI, has officially launched its latest flagship AI model, Grok 3. Released late on February 17, 2025, Grok 3 introduces significant advancements over its predecessor, Grok 2, and aims to compete with leading AI models such as OpenAI’s GPT-4o and Google’s Gemini.
In other advancements, Replit has transformed non-technical employees at Zillow into software developers. The real estate giant now routes over 100,000 home shoppers to agents using applications built by team members who had never written code before. This breakthrough stems from Replit’s new partnership with Anthropic and Google Cloud, which has enabled over 100,000 applications on Google Cloud Run.
Then, Wu Yonghui, a prestigious “Google Fellow” who worked at the US tech giant for 17 years, recently joined TikTok owner ByteDance to lead foundational research on artificial intelligence (AI), as the firm seeks to “explore the upper limit of intelligence”. Wu now works at ByteDance’s Seed department, which the Beijing-based company started in early 2023.
Meanwhile, large companies are not adopting AI as quickly as start-ups, AWS managing director Tanuja Randery says. The gap is leading to a “two-tier” AI economy as startups outpace corporations. Citing a new report from AWS, Randery said that European startups had integrated AI at pace over the last year while larger enterprises in the region were falling behind.
In videos, join Sara Bacha from Converge Technology Solutions as she delves into how GraphRAG outperforms traditional RAG by leveraging knowledge graphs and LLM to enhance data relationships and accuracy. Learn the benefits in development, production, and governance, making maintenance easier with better explainability and traceability.
Elon Musk revives discussion on Mars colonization with a viral AI-generated video, amassing over 46 million views, showing an advanced Martian city. Originally predicted for 2024–2025, Musk’s vision includes direct democracy for Mars governance. The video sparked a mix of curiosity and criticism, especially regarding the absence of natural greenery.
The development of artificial intelligence has entered a pivotal phase. With groundbreaking advancements in large models such as ChatGPT and Sora, AI is approaching what has been termed as “technological singularity”.The allure of AI’s potential is undeniable, but its immense potential is accompanied by significant risks including deepfakes, frauds and autonomous weapons systems.
The complexities and interconnectedness of AI pose a new global challenge. Hence, building a coordinated global governance framework for AI is no longer optional; it is an urgent necessity.
AI transcends national boundaries, creating both global opportunities and risks that no country alone can manage. Hence, countries across the world need to work together to eliminate the risks.
WASHINGTON — As the demand for digital security grows, researchers have developed a new optical system that uses holograms to encode information, creating a level of encryption that traditional methods cannot penetrate. This advance could pave the way for more secure communication channels, helping to protect sensitive data.
“From rapidly evolving digital currencies to governance, healthcare, communications and social networks, the demand for robust protection systems to combat digital fraud continues to grow,” said research team leader Stelios Tzortzakis from the Institute of Electronic Structure and Laser, Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas and the University of Crete, both in Greece.
Optica is the leading society in optics and photonics. Quality information and inspiring interactions through publications, meetings, and membership.
As the demand for digital security grows, researchers have developed a new optical system that uses holograms to encode information, creating a level of encryption that traditional methods cannot penetrate. This advance could pave the way for more secure communication channels, helping to protect sensitive data.
“From rapidly evolving digital currencies to governance, health care, communications and social networks, the demand for robust protection systems to combat digital fraud continues to grow,” said research team leader Stelios Tzortzakis from the Institute of Electronic Structure and Laser, Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas and the University of Crete, both in Greece.
“Our new system achieves an exceptional level of encryption by utilizing a neural network to generate the decryption key, which can only be created by the owner of the encryption system.”
I was recently a co-author on a paper about anticipatory governance and genome editing. The lead author was Jon Rueda, and the others were Seppe Segers, Jeroen Hopster, Belén Liedo, and Samuela Marchiori. It’s available open access here on the Journal of Medical Ethics website. There is a short (900 word) summary available on the JME blog. Here’s a quick teaser for it:
Transformative emerging technologies pose a governance challenge. Back in 1980, a little-known academic at the University of Aston in the UK, called David Collingridge, identified the dilemma that has come to define this challenge: the control dilemma (also known as the ‘Collingridge Dilemma’). The dilemma states that, for any emerging technology, we face a trade-off between our knowledge of its impact and our ability to control it. Early on, we know little about it, but it is relatively easy to control. Later, as we learn more, it becomes harder to control. This is because technologies tend to diffuse throughout society and become embedded in social processes and institutions. Think about our recent history with smartphones. When Steve Jobs announced the iPhone back in 2007, we didn’t know just how pervasive and all-consuming this device would become. Now we do but it is hard to put the genie back in the bottle (as some would like to do).
The field of anticipatory governance tries to address the control dilemma. It aims to carefully manage the rollout of an emerging technology so as to avoid the problem of losing control just as we learn more about the effects of the technology. Anticipatory governance has become popular in the world of responsible innovation and design. In the field of bioethics, approaches to anticipatory governance often try to anticipate future technical realities, ethical concerns, and incorporate differing public opinion about a technology. But there is a ‘gap’ in current approaches to anticipatory governance.