217 karma · joined November 11, 2015
The Memo: https://lifearchitect.ai/memo/
About: https://lifearchitect.ai/about-alan/
'In mid-2014, IBM, one of the biggest global ICT companies was contracted to provide a relatively simple e-Census application, ensure the application was available to the public over the 8-week Census response period, provide sufficient capacity to deal with the peak response load expected on Census night of August 9 and ensure effective security for the e-Census system. The contract to IBM was worth around $10 million, within the total Census budget of around $500 million.
IBM failed to deliver the contracted service to the necessary standards, and they have provided financial recompense to cover the additional costs we and the Government have had, and will still incur as a result of this incident.' https://www.abs.gov.au/websitedbs/d3310114.nsf/home/Australi...
https://www.reuters.com/article/business/ibm-apologizes-for-...
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-11-25/ibm-to-pay-over-$30m-...
https://www.anthropic.com/threat-intelligence-report-septemb...
My early analysis of the analysis:
https://lifearchitect.substack.com/p/the-memo-special-editio...
>Externally, they sent the site director for their Florida operations, Ricky Lim, to inquire whether he might visit the roof of the United Launch Alliance building... ULA told SpaceX’s Ricky Lim to get lost when he wanted to see the roof of their building in Florida.
The FAA letter:
https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Space...
Still got mine!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Mavica#Digital_still_came...
Edit: And a related article:
https://casualphotophile.com/2025/12/30/sony-mavica-floppy-d...
China is definitely the leading EV manufacturer in the world. And they aren't mourning the smaller market in the US (sales ~16M/y).
https://lifearchitect.ai/models-table/
This one is easiest to talk to in a HF space:
Um... this is most certainly not true. Back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Ada was the language of choice at my Australian university for both computer science and software engineering degrees.
I distinctly recall my lecturer telling us a story about a fancy presentation of Ada in military tank (AFV) systems for the DoD. The story goes that during the presentation, in front of a live audience, the presenter AND the audience had to duck after the tank's turret began spinning around and around. The code had entered an infinite loop!
"
OpenAI reached out to me almost immediately to talk and they were nothing but respectful and understanding... After making it publicly known what I had done, I was quickly approached by a range of smart people with good arguments. Many of them helped me update my beliefs in light of new evidence...
The day after my announcement, I got to talk to Jack Clark, Alec Radford and Jeff Wu from OpenAI. We had a nice hour long discussion, where I explained where I was coming from, and they helped me to refine my beliefs. They didn’t come in accusing me in any way, they were very clear in saying they wanted to help me gain more important insight into the wider situation. For this open and respectful attitude I will always be grateful. Large entities like OpenAI often seem like behemoths to outsiders, but it was during this chat that it really hit me that they were people just like me, and curious hackers to boot as well.
I quickly began to understand nuances of the situation I wasn’t aware of. OpenAI had a lot more internal discussion than their blog post made it seem. And I found this reassuring. Jack in particular also gave me a lot of valuable information about the possible dangers of the model, and a bit of insight into the workings of governments and intelligence agencies.
After our discussion, I had a lot to think about. But I still wasn’t really convinced to not release. Even some people inside OpenAI were still discussing the not-release policy. So while I definitely had things to consider, I was still mostly set on releasing...
We shouldn’t be angry with OpenAI for what they did. We should applaud them for making a point before it becomes a true problem. Prophylaxis is much better than treatment. I still disagree with some of the things OpenAI did and how they communicated them, but I now understand that sending a message that it is ok, even celebrated, for a lone individual to unilaterally go against reasonable safety concerns of other researchers is not a good message to send. I want to support OpenAI’s message. So, while it might be a small, mostly symbolic gesture, I will not be releasing my model. Some day, someone like me may be in a situation just like mine, but it won’t be GPT2. It might be something much, much more dangerous. And that is the person I am trying to talk to here.
"
https://medium.com/@NPCollapse/the-hacker-learns-to-trust-62...
In 2024 (so now, one).