Latest news with #MattLevine
Vox
5 days ago
- Business
- Vox
You can get unfathomably rich building AI. Should you?
is a senior writer at Future Perfect, Vox's effective altruism-inspired section on the world's biggest challenges. She explores wide-ranging topics like climate change, artificial intelligence, vaccine development, and factory farms, and also writes the Future Perfect newsletter. It's a good time to be a highly in-demand AI engineer. To lure leading researchers away from OpenAI and other competitors, Meta has reportedly offered pay packages totalling more than $100 million. Top AI engineers are now being compensated like football superstars. Few people will ever have to grapple with the question of whether to go work for Mark Zuckerberg's 'superintelligence' venture in exchange for enough money to never have to work again (Bloomberg columnist Matt Levine recently pointed out that this is kind of Zuckerberg's fundamental challenge: If you pay someone enough to retire after a single month, they might well just quit after a single month, right? You need some kind of elaborate compensation structure to make sure they can get unfathomably rich without simply retiring.) Future Perfect Explore the big, complicated problems the world faces and the most efficient ways to solve them. Sent twice a week. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Most of us can only dream of having that problem. But many of us have occasionally had to navigate the question of whether to take on an ethically dubious job (Denying insurance claims? Shilling cryptocurrency? Making mobile games more habit-forming?) to pay the bills. For those working in AI, that ethical dilemma is supercharged to the point of absurdity. AI is a ludicrously high-stakes technology — both for good and for ill — with leaders in the field warning that it might kill us all. A small number of people talented enough to bring about superintelligent AI can dramatically alter the technology's trajectory. Is it even possible for them to do so ethically? AI is going to be a really big deal On the one hand, leading AI companies offer workers the potential to earn unfathomable riches and also contribute to very meaningful social good — including productivity-increasing tools that can accelerate medical breakthroughs and technological discovery, and make it possible for more people to code, design, and do any other work that can be done on a computer. On the other hand, well, it's hard for me to argue that the 'Waifu engineer' that xAI is now hiring for — a role that will be responsible for making Grok's risqué anime girl 'companion' AI even more habit-forming — is of any social benefit whatsoever, and I in fact worry that the rise of such bots will be to the lasting detriment of society. I'm also not thrilled about the documented cases of ChatGPT encouraging delusional beliefs in vulnerable users with mental illness. Much more worryingly, the researchers racing to build powerful AI 'agents' — systems that can independently write code, make purchases online, interact with people, and hire subcontractors for tasks — are running into plenty of signs that those AIs might intentionally deceive humans and even take dramatic and hostile action against us. In tests, AIs have tried to blackmail their creators or send a copy of themselves to servers where they can operate more freely. For now, AIs only exhibit that behavior when given precisely engineered prompts designed to push them to their limits. But with increasingly huge numbers of AI agents populating the world, anything that can happen under the right circumstances, however rare, will likely happen sometimes. Over the past few years, the consensus among AI experts has moved from 'hostile AIs trying to kill us is completely implausible' to 'hostile AIs only try to kill us in carefully designed scenarios.' Bernie Sanders — not exactly a tech hype man — is now the latest politician to warn that as independent AIs become more powerful, they might take power from humans. It's a 'doomsday scenario,' as he called it, but it's hardly a far-fetched one anymore. And whether or not the AIs themselves ever decide to kill or harm us, they might fall into the hands of people who do. Experts worry that AI will make it much easier both for rogue individuals to engineer plagues or plan acts of mass violence, and for states to achieve heights of surveillance over their citizens that they have long dreamed of but never before been able to achieve. This story was first featured in the Future Perfect newsletter. Sign up here to explore the big, complicated problems the world faces and the most efficient ways to solve them. Sent twice a week. In principle, a lot of these risks could be mitigated if labs designed and adhered to rock-solid safety plans, responding swiftly to signs of scary behavior among AIs in the wild. Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic do have safety plans, which don't seem fully adequate to me but which are a lot better than nothing. But in practice, mitigation often falls by the wayside in the face of intense competition between AI labs. Several labs have weakened their safety plans as their models came close to meeting pre-specified performance thresholds. Meanwhile, xAI, the creator of Grok, is pushing releases with no apparent safety planning whatsoever. Worse, even labs that start out deeply and sincerely committed to ensuring AI is developed responsibly have often changed course later because of the enormous financial incentives in the field. That means that even if you take a job at Meta, OpenAI, or Anthropic with the best of intentions, all of your effort toward building a good AI outcome could be redirected toward something else entirely. So should you take the job? I've been watching this industry evolve for seven years now. Although I'm generally a techno-optimist who wants to see humanity design and invent new things, my optimism has been tempered by witnessing AI companies openly admitting their products might kill us all, then racing ahead with precautions that seem wholly inadequate to those stakes. Increasingly, it feels like the AI race is steering off a cliff. Given all that, I don't think it's ethical to work at a frontier AI lab unless you have given very careful thought to the risks that your work will bring closer to fruition, and you have a specific, defensible reason why your contributions will make the situation better, not worse. Or, you have an ironclad case that humanity doesn't need to worry about AI at all, in which case, please publish it so the rest of us can check your work! When vast sums of money are at stake, it's easy to self-deceive. But I wouldn't go so far as to claim that literally everyone working in frontier AI is engaged in self-deception. Some of the work documenting what AI systems are capable of and probing how they 'think' is immensely valuable. The safety and alignment teams at DeepMind, OpenAI, and Anthropic have done and are doing good work. But anyone pushing for a plane to take off while convinced it has a 20 percent chance of crashing would be wildly irresponsible, and I see little difference in trying to build superintelligence as fast as possible. A hundred million dollars, after all, isn't worth hastening the death of your loved ones or the end of human freedom. In the end, it's only worth it if you can not just get rich off AI, but also help make it go well. It might be hard to imagine anyone who'd turn down mind-boggling riches just because it's the right thing to do in the face of theoretical future risks, but I know quite a few people who've done exactly that. I expect there will be more of them in the coming years, as more absurdities like Grok's recent MechaHitler debacle go from sci-fi to reality. And ultimately, whether or not the future turns out well for humanity may depend on whether we can persuade some of the richest people in history to notice something their paychecks depend on their not noticing: that their jobs might be really, really bad for the world.
Yahoo
25-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
2 Reasons to Buy Shiba Inu (SHIB) Before 2026
Shiba Inu has a ton of entertainment potential. But another crypto asset is far superior for the long term. 10 stocks we like better than Shiba Inu › With a $6.6 billion market cap, Shiba Inu (CRYPTO: SHIB) is one of the biggest meme coins in the crypto universe. It has been a wild year so far, with SHIB losing roughly 50% of its value as of June 23. However, there are two compelling reasons to buy before 2025 is finished. Let's take a look at Shiba Inu's potential growth catalysts. Have some extra cash you're looking to do something fun with? Shiba Inu is the perfect fit. It has been a popular crypto token for nearly five years, showing extreme volatility at times. In 2021, SHIB's value skyrocketed by more than 1,000% over the course of just a few months. This type of run has happened several times over its trading history. Of course, the opposite has occurred as well -- this year's 50% drop is a testament to that potential. Still, there's no doubt that Shiba Inu is a fun asset to buy and sell for those with extra cash who are looking for a bit of entertainment. Is there any more lightning left in Shiba Inu's proverbial bottle? Catching the next big pop could be very lucrative. It's not just the expectation of financial profit and pure fun that makes Shiba Inu an interesting buy in 2025. Researchers have also found that meme coins and meme stocks can fuel social connections, adding another layer to their allure. "During the pandemic, people were starved for interaction and entertainment," Bloomberg columnist Matt Levine observes. "Trading GameStop became a social activity, a way to have fun and connect with others." Due to this, a recent article from the University of Pennsylvania highlighted "how social media and collective action can create an entirely new kind of valuation." Buying Shiba Inu this year can provide you with the potential for fun and social connection. There's nothing wrong with that. But if you want to build wealth in 2025, and the decades to come, there's a far better crypto asset to consider. Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) is the original crypto asset. Launched in 2009, it provided the blueprint for other coins to follow and has remained the largest crypto asset ever since, with a total market cap of roughly $2 trillion today. Like Shiba Inu, Bitcoin doesn't abide by traditional valuation standards. It doesn't represent an interest in any financial income stream, nor does it give you rights over any tangible asset like property. Instead, its value is derived simply from Bitcoin being Bitcoin. This is nothing new. Gold is very similar. Just 10% of all the gold that has been mined is used for industrial or technological purposes. The rest is largely dominated by jewelry and financial investments. Investors hold gold not because it will produce more gold, but because it has long been recognized as a safe haven asset for investors. Like fiat money itself, gold retains its value simply because everyone agrees that it's valuable. Right now, markets agree that both BTC and SHIB have value, as evidenced by their multi-billion and multi-trillion-dollar market caps. But which crypto asset will retain its value most over the long term? My bet is with the biggest: Bitcoin. As the first crypto asset, Bitcoin has a reputational advantage that can never be surpassed. Plus, its existing buy-in among both retail and institutional investors is unrivaled. So while Shiba Inu can be a fun place to park some extra cash for entertainment purposes only, Bitcoin is far more similar to gold at this point. That makes it a superior holding for long-term investors. Before you buy stock in Shiba Inu, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the for investors to buy now… and Shiba Inu wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $689,813!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $906,556!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 809% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 175% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join . See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of June 23, 2025 Ryan Vanzo has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. 2 Reasons to Buy Shiba Inu (SHIB) Before 2026 was originally published by The Motley Fool
Bloomberg
13-05-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
The War on Drugs Meets the War on High Drug Prices
This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, the unilateral disarmament of Bloomberg Opinion's opinions. Sign up here. They say all publicity is good publicity, but with UnitedHealth, that's not necessarily the case. It has been five months since the company's top insurance executive was shot and killed on a Manhattan sidewalk, for example, but plenty of people — including our very own Matt Levine — are still talking about it. Meanwhile, on Tuesday, UnitedHealth CEO Andrew Witty suddenly stepped down 'for personal reasons,' prompting some depraved potshots on social media. None of this is good for UnitedHealth's bottom line. In addition abruptly replacing its CEO, the Minnesota-based company ditched its 2025 financial outlook, citing (irony alert) 'higher-than-expected medical costs.'
Forbes
22-03-2025
- Business
- Forbes
$1 Million Weather Analysts: Business And The Data Analysis Revolution
Meteorological weather map. Weather modeling experts are being offered up to one million dollars a year in salary, Bloomberg reports. Hedge funds and commodity traders have led the charge to lure top weather quants to work. The broader implications of the data analysis trend apply across a wide range of disciplines. Data analysis will continue to grow in importance across virtually all businesses. And if one company in a field is using good data analysis, the others must match that company or lose ground. Good data analysis seems to be expensive, it is being used because it has gotten cheaper. More data are available in digital format, so old-fashioned keypunching is not needed. Computers that can handle large batches of data are trivially cheap. The software has improved tremendously, relieving the analyst of most tedious programming. The result is companies that are more dialed in to demand for their products, more able to source the materials they need at the right time and in the right volume, and better able to adjust to changing conditions. Matt Levine commented on the Bloomberg report, 'I half-seriously argued recently that the attraction of quantitative finance might have 'created conditions in which it is incredibly lucrative to get very good at statistical inference,' and thus paved the way for modern artificial intelligence models.' He wondered if riches in finance help to incentivize young people studying fields such as physics or meteorology to get good at data analysis. Or maybe it's a waste of talent for such bright people to work on commodity trading. This approach to the connection between weather and commodity prices contrasts sharply with the old way, demonstrated by a hilarious anecdote from The Money Game by 'Adam Smith' (a pseudonym for George Goodman), published in 1967. The narrator bought five cocoa futures contracts on advice from his friend The Great Winfield. When the price dropped, the narrator and the friend starting calling everyone who might know what was going on at Ghana's cocoa plantations. Old contacts and friends of friends were questioned about the weather. 'Tell me sir, is it raining in your country now?' 'It always rains in August.' Casual long-distance calls and telegrams were not working. 'The Great Winfield decided we must send our man to West Africa to find out if it was raining and whether the Dreaded Black Pod Disease was spreading and whether indeed there was any cocoa crop at all.' They dispatched a down-on-his-luck Brooklyn commodities trader who had never been to Africa before, who reported what he heard from other people staying at his hotel, and then got lost in the jungle. Today weather reports come from both on-the-ground meteorology stations and satellite reconnaissance. More data have led to better forecasts, including for local areas, as described by Chelsea Freas in an episode of the SailFaster podcast. (The episode is aimed at sailboat racers, but the weather forecasting discussion has broad applicability.) These stories provide a great perspective: A forecast is not just a forecast; it's a tool to make better decisions about a particular issue in a particular location. 'Our man in Africa' didn't really know what he was doing, but today's data analysts have their game down. Business leaders should spend some time wondering what they could do better if only some forecast were more accurate. After identifying a few key projections that could help the business, the data analysis effort begins by looking for analysts. Some may be available at the company already, or they can be hired or contracted for. Many people at the top of an organization don't know all the information available both in their own computers and through publicly-available databases. And most certainly don't know the techniques for of analyzing the data to create useful forecasts. But the top dogs don't need to know the raw data or how to analyze it; just how to find some people who can. And a million dollars for a top analyst may be cheap relative to the value of the person's work.
Yahoo
10-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Bottled water company reveals major upgrade to its product packaging: 'Central to our mission'
In an effort to reduce plastic waste, Chlorophyll Water will provide its products in more sustainable packaging, including a one-liter bottle made from 100% recycled plastic and a 16-ounce aluminum can, as reported by Clean the Sky. The company announced that the packaging will debut at Natural Products Expo West in Anaheim, California, from March 5-7. Chlorophyll Water produces bottled water enhanced with chlorophyll, a compound that boasts "antioxidant, detoxifying, oxygenating, and anti-inflammatory properties," according to its website. The company's new packaging furthers its commitment to both human and environmental health. It received the first Clean Label Project Certification –– which tests products for contaminants like heavy metals, pesticides, and plasticizers –– for bottled water in the United States. When you think about a product's packaging, which of these factors is more important to you? The way it looks The information it provides The waste it produces I don't think about packaging at all Click your choice to see results and speak your mind. "We launched with landfill-biodegradable bottles and transitioned to 100% recycled plastic for our 16.9 ounce bottles. With our new one liter bottles made from 100% recycled plastic and 16 ounce aluminum cans, we're reducing dependence on virgin plastic," said Chlorophyll Water founder Matt Levine. About 98% of single-use plastics –– like those used for bottled water –– are virgin plastics. Virgin plastics are made from dirty energy sources, and their production produces toxic gases. These toxic gases contribute to a changing climate, creating negative consequences for people and the planet, such as rising temperatures and more extreme weather events. Single-use plastics made from virgin plastics also produce plastic waste, and a 2024 study found about 60 companies are responsible for over 50% of global plastic waste. Plastic waste, like the toxic gases produced by its manufacturing, has health consequences. Microplastics pollute the environment and can enter the human body, yet the extent of their impact remains unknown. With its new packaging, Chlorophyll Water is joining other companies like the makers of Crystal Geyser bottled water, Kraft, and others in changing the trend of corporate plastic waste and improving human and environmental health. The new packaging will reduce dependence on virgin plastics and dirty energy by using recycled plastics and aluminum instead. "Sustainability is central to our mission," said Levine. Join our free newsletter for good news and useful tips, and don't miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet.
