It's worth pointing out that practically speaking, the alternative to a sane regulatory regime isn't "no regulation." We are experiencing rapid improvements in capabilities, have multiple providers with differing levels of safe guards, and are at the point now where small things are starting to go wrong. The scope of AI capabilities are growing rapidly, and the scope of possible damage is going to grow with them. Think for a second about what happens when the first actually bad and "politically gripping" incident occurs? Not Hugging Face, but something that makes the average person really scared. This isn't about extinction, think a human initiated, AI-orchestrated cyberattack that sabotages one piece of infrastructure that results in at least one person dying. The reaction will be violent. Our political system doesn't work well at proactively handling purely theoretical problems, but reacts very fiercely and sometimes irrationally when something bad actually happens. The August 2001 CIA memo "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US" got little response, but buildings falling down changed the course of history. An industry whose wealth and power is widely resented, that resists even the most innocuous and common sense safeguards, and then causes a significant incident, will see a violent reaction. This will result in a regulatory regime designed in a moment of populist outrage by people with little understanding of what will help, whose primary goal will be crushing AI progress as an end in its own right.

1/ Listened to the YETI founders on "How I Built This" this morning, and there's a naming lesson in there that I often share with founders: Don't go with the least common denominator name everyone likes — pick the name that does the job you gave it that they can't forget.

Yesterday, the founder of a well-known, successful company called me to reference check two people he was considering for a senior role. He wasn’t looking for reassurance. He was genuinely trying to understand them, including anything that might cause him to reconsider either hire. He’s called me before about other hires, including people who wouldn’t even report directly to him. He doesn’t delegate this to others. He calls himself. I'm sure that kind of rigor is part of why his company has been so successful. The call stuck with me because it happens so rarely. Many people I’ve worked closely with have gone on to senior roles, including C-level positions, at other companies. It’s shocking how infrequently I get called. These are among the most consequential decisions a founder makes, yet companies routinely make them without talking to people who actually worked closely with the candidate. Part of the problem is timing. Most reference checks happen after the hiring manager has effectively decided to make the hire. You like the candidate, you’ve invested weeks in the process, and you’re under pressure to fill the role. You want the process to be over, so you’re looking for validation rather than truth. That defeats the purpose of doing reference checks. A real reference check should attempt to disconfirm what you already believe. What am I missing? Where is this person weaker than they appear? What will I wish I had known six months after they start? You aren’t trying to build the case for the hire. You’re trying to find the flaw in the case while you can still do something about it. I’ve learned a few rules. Start by putting limited weight on the references the candidate gives you. Nobody hands you the name of the boss or colleague who thought they were a disaster. The references that matter most are blind references, so find former bosses, peers, direct reports, and customers who aren’t on the candidate’s list. Each has seen the person from a different angle. You also have to adjust for human nature. Most people don’t like being brutally honest when they know their words could affect someone’s career. They inflate praise and soften criticism, so my rule of thumb is to discount the positive by 3x and amplify the negative by 3x. That gets you closer to a balanced view. When someone says, "He's a great leader, although some very good people struggled working for him," the second half of that sentence matters far more than the first. Who struggled, why, and where are those people now? When someone says, "She surrounds herself with people she trusts," ask whether those are the best people for the job or simply people who always agree with her. Hesitations, qualifications, and carefully chosen words often tell you more than the compliments. Ask questions that make vague answers difficult. What would their direct reports say is the hardest part of working for them? What feedback did you give them repeatedly? What was their biggest blind spot? How do they behave when things are going badly? Tell me about a serious conflict they had and how they handled it. If this hire fails, what is the most likely reason? Would you hire them again? My favorite is a forced ranking. Of everyone you’ve worked with in a similar role, where does this person rank? Top 1%? Top 10%? Top 25%? Then ask why. Adjectives can be misleading. Rankings force people to make an actual judgment and explain it. I’ve hired many exceptional people and made some bad hires. The most important lesson I’ve learned is that the goal of a reference check isn’t to prove you made the right decision. It’s to discover why you might be making the wrong one while you can still change it.

Exclusive: Inside Fortell (@fortellresearch) The $740M startup that had to waitlist billionaires and celebrities for its AI hearing aid. Their custom chip helps you "hear where you look", distinguishing voices in noisy environments - which solved a problem no hearing aid had cracked in 70 years. Now they're expanding across America to start reaching the 1.5 billion people globally who need it. Founded by four wildly impressive co-founders. Plus, backed from top VC's led by @JoshuaKushner @AntonioGracias @traestephens @wolfejosh @GavinSBaker @patrick_oshag @RobertIger @jaltma @aplusk @hbarra + more. We flew to New York, toured their factory, and tried it ourselves. To date, this is our proudest episode, truly technology at it's best. Enjoy :) 0:00 Today's Most Intelligent Hearing Aid 2:09 70 years unsolved - until now 3:34 "I'd mortgage my house for this" 4:37 Igor: A Pianist Turned Physicist 7:18 Andy + Factory Tour: "Injecting The AI" 9:00 Why they built a custom chip 10:39 Live demo: AI vs conventional 14:48 Matt: Building For His Grandparents 15:22 Cole: Can $6,800 Reach Everyone?

We have had respectful relationship & hopefully will continue but call to US Embassy was AFTER your vehicle was stopped. We had no advance notice of your trip. I go often into Judea/Samaria & visit Palestinians. I publicly condemn ALL violence whether Israeli to Palestinian or Palestinian to Israeli. You would have been well served to have spent time with Israelis who were held hostage or victims of terror to understand big picture but you only chose to come in secretly with an anti-Israel activist to hear one version of reality. Please come back. Let me know when. I will go with you & we will meet with ppl in the PA & in Israel with Jewish, Christian, & Muslims We will visit Hadassah Medical Center which will destroy any notion of “apartheid “ & will arrange a classified briefing to dispel any doubt about the ridiculous claim that Israel engaged in “genocide.” Let’s elevate the discussion. I’ll leave the light on for you!

Stuy is New York’s most prestigious high school because it admits the highest-performing students as determined entirely by scores on an objective, unbiased test. Seats at Stuy are not allocated by race. They are not given out through a subjective process that can be influenced by politics or favoritism or money. The kids who got in did the best, and the kids who did not do the best cannot get in, no matter how much rich parents or woke politicians want to corrupt the fair and objective admissions competition. People like Lincoln Restler think Stuy is prestigious for reasons other than the fact that it has a rigorous objective admissions standard. He thinks the prestige these kids earned through their excellence can be redistributed to the students who are not the best that he would prefer to pretend are the best. But these students are not prestigious because they go to Stuy; Stuy is prestigious because these students go there. And if different students — inferior students— went there, then Stuy would no longer be the school that is a magnet for the smartest kids in New York and its prestige and reputation would dissipate rapidly, just like the University of California system’s has. Or maybe Restler knows this, and he just wants to destroy Stuy, because he wants to prevent these students’ talent from being measured and identified, so they can be scattered into low-performing schools where they will languish instead of having their talent cultivated. Regardless, his ideology of racial grievance and destruction is a monstrous evil masquerading as “social justice,” and it will not be tolerated.