Riskgaming

Connections are the key ingredient for careers, society and AI neural networks to boot. Sometimes those connections arise spontaneously and other times they’re planned, but the most interesting ones tend to be planned that go in unexpected directions. That’s the story of David Ha, the co-founder and CEO of Sakana, a world-class generative AI research lab in Tokyo, Japan. We previously announced that Lux led a $30 million founding seed round in the company a few weeks ago on the podcast, but we didn’t dive deeper into the ricochets of David’s peripatetic career. Studying computer science and machine learning at the University of Toronto, he worked down the hall from now-famous AI researcher Geoffrey Hinton. He ultimately headed to Goldman Sachs in Tokyo doing derivatives trading, but on the side, he published a shadow and anonymous blog where he posted random experiments in artificial intelligence. A decade later of serendipitous connections later, and he is now leading one of the emerging national AI leaders for Japan.We talk through the stochastic moments that defined David’s career, why complex systems knowledge would ultimately turn out to be so valuable, the unique features and benefits of Japan, why openly communicating ideas and particularly interactive demos can spawn such serendipitous connections, why industry has produced more innovation in AI than academia, and why Google’s creativity should never be discounted. Produced by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Christopher Gates⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Music by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠George Ko⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ & Suno

The construction of Boston’s Big Dig highway tunnels has gone down in history as one of the most infamously delayed and over-budgeted infrastructure projects in the sorry annals of U.S. growth and progress. But Ian Coss sees the project radically different. In hindsight, he argues, the Big Dig was a steal: the good kind. Far from being a gargantuan boondoggle, the project resuscitated downtown Boston and ushered in urban economic benefits and spillovers that dwarf the costs of the project, however one might calculate them. Ian interviewed more than 100 people connected with the Big Dig and spent months editing a nine-episode podcast series titled “The Big Dig” for GBH News, Boston’s National Public Radio affiliate. Through the series, he covers everything from the environmental consciousness of the 1960s and colorful yet idealistic local political figures to the Department of Transportation’s inflation estimate policy and ultimately the decades it took to bring the dream of burying Boston’s unsightly Central Artery freeway. On today’s “Securities” podcast with host Danny Crichton, Danny and Ian debate the merits of the Big Dig megaproject, the complicated construction policies that made the project seem like a loser in front of the public, and just how hard it is to measure the true impact of a project that forever transformed one of America’s founding cities. Produced by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Christopher Gates⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Music by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠George Ko⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Impulse Labs is rethinking home appliances, aiming to upgrade the user experience. They discuss the lack of innovation in appliances, the potential of electrifying appliances, and their successful experience at CES. They also explore misconceptions about induction stoves, marketing challenges, and the difficulties of upgrading homes in San Francisco.

Colonizing Mars has gone from the speculative fiction section of the bookstore right into the halls of Congress. Entrepreneurs led by Elon Musk have made “Occupy Mars” a tagline, and companies the Earth over are exploring the logistics of settling humans across the Moon and Mars. But what’s the true viability of a Mars settlement plan? Do we have the technology and legal systems in place to make this one-time fiction a reality? Popular cartoonist and author, Zach Weinersmith, wrote “A City On Mars” alongside his wife Kelly Weinersmith to explore that very question. Starting with an optimistic lens, they eventually conceded in the book that the project is one of extraordinary difficulty and are pessimistic at its chances. “A City On Mars” won a slew of best-of awards in 2023 for its delightfully engaging and humorous breakdown of complex physical and biological topics. In this first part of a two-part series, host Danny Crichton and Lux’s scientist in residence Sam Arbesman discuss with Zach the biological and psychological challenges of inter-planetary settlement and why every astronaut lies about their health in outer space. We also explore the challenges of reproduction in space, and what a second generation of settlers might have to endure in the far reaches of our solar system. Produced by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Christopher Gates⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Music by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠George Ko⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

The current drive for a Mars colony revolves around two central axes: one is a fear of existential risk and the other is a search for existentialism. On the former, philosophers and probabilists remain deeply concerned about humanity’s Achilles heel: that our entire existence depends on the sustenance of a single blue dot in the Milky Way. Humanity’s fate is fundamentally tied to this single rock, which gives little redundancy from an asteroid strike, nuclear winter, or pandemic. At the same time, many entrepreneurs hear a rallying cry when they think about a Mars colony, arguing that a bold and long-term project is precisely what is needed to galvanize humanity to work together, overlook our internecine differences and find transcendence amidst the celestial cosmos. Even if outside our lifetime, a drive toward a space colony could be an existentialism that offers meaning and sustenance to our lives. In this second and final episode, Zack Weinersmith, who along with his wife Kelly Weinersmith are the authorial duo of A City on Mars, join host Danny Crichton and Lux’s scientist-in-residence Sam Arbesman to talk more about their negative prognostication for a Mars colony. Taking a more optimistic view, we also talk with Zach about what we should be doing to prep for a colony, including collecting more laboratory data and expanding science’s understanding of life under microgravity conditions.

The cost of launching a payload into low-earth orbit has shrunk dramatically over the past two decades as SpaceX has aggressively expanded its capability to repeatedly launch payloads into orbit at cheap cost. But accessing orbits farther away from Earth, such as Medium Earth orbit (MEO) and Geostationary orbit (GEO), remain expensive endeavors. Lux’s portfolio company Impulse Space, which is building the next generation of rocket propulsion for space, unveiled the design specs of its new high performance kick stage vehicle Helios today. The vehicle will allow operators to move objects like satellites from Low Earth orbit to orbits farther away at just a fraction of today’s costs, and it’s coming soon in 2026. I talked with Impulse Space’s CEO and founder Tom Mueller about Helios, as well as the growing concerns over space junk, a recent satellite emergency over Christmas, the television show The Expanse, space traffic control and what it means to move things in space and bring them back home.

Lux announced big news today: we are leading a $30 million founding seed round into Sakana AI, a Tokyo, Japan-based AI research laboratory that uses evolutionary methods, collective intelligence and character-level training to radically accelerate the training and development of nature-inspired AI foundation models. It’s a marquee check for Lux into the Asia-Pacific region, and represents the continuing democratization of the frontiers of computer science to all regions of the world, a trend we’ve championed for years now. I, your host Danny Crichton, wanted to spend some time on the economic and technological milieu that is changing the face of startups and entrepreneurship globally in 2024. In this episode, I walk through three themes that are driving Lux’s interest in Sakana AI and other companies, including the rise of national and indigenous AI foundation models, the return of Japan’s dynamic economy after decades of stagnation, and the broader ambitions of the Asia-Pacific region as China recedes from the minds of international investors in the midst of President Xi Jinping’s crackdown on private entrepreneurship. Music composed by https://www.georgeko.co/ "Securities" is produced and edited by Chris Gates

Hey, it's Danny Crichton. 2023 was an incredibly busy year, and nowhere was there more fervent attention than on artificial intelligence. OpenAI launched ChatGPT at the very end of 2022, and its implications found purchase this year among more than one hundred million users and the regulators who serve them. Those product developments don't even get into the crazy governance crisis at OpenAI a few weeks ago, which saw Sam Altman and then the board of directors toppled in a story that likely outshone the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank as the most important tech crisis of the year. Billions of dollars of venture capital flowed into the AI space, with investors funding everything from data infrastructure and better model training to the applications that are already beginning to transform industries across the world. Governments have moved with alacrity to regulate this new technology, but progress is unabated and unstoppable. The "Securities" podcast has aggressively covered these developments throughout 2023, with interviews with more than a dozen experts in all facets of this new technology, from the corporate executives building these products and the generals using these new features for American defense, to the critics who caustically analyze AI's supposed truthful implications and the philosophers debating the theory of mind and consciousness of these systems. So as the final episode of the podcast this year, I wanted to connect all of these separate discourses around artificial intelligence together into one cohesive package. We clipped nine of the best segments from episodes across 2023 — special thanks to our producer Chris Gates on finding these treasures. A retrospective, an incitement to innovation, a warning — it's all here, so let's get started. This episode was produced, recorded and edited by Chris Gates Music by George Ko

Novelist Eliot Peper discusses his new book 'Foundry' with host Danny Crichton in this engaging podcast. They explore the geopolitical intricacies of semiconductor manufacturing, the creative process behind the book, the fascinating world of semiconductors, the power of fiction in understanding complex topics, and the prospects of time travel and the future.

Join neuroscientist and AI researcher Erik Hoel as he discusses the intriguing connection between dreams, AI, and the future of education. Explore the idea of dreams as a way to prevent cognitive overfitting and the decline of geniuses. Discover the potential for AI to revive one-on-one tutoring and reshape our understanding of consciousness.