Recently, a Neros instructor embedded with @USArmy 7ID for a two-day combined arms live fire exercise, camping alongside operators in the field the entire 48 hours to make sure they had the support they needed. A 1-2SBCT team leader said our instructor “provided epic support (per usual)” and was with them “every step of the way” to the point he’s now known as their “Strike Team Mascot”. Proud of our Business Development team for always going the extra mile to keep end users lethal with our drones.

>be me >discover effective altruism >apparently normal charity is inefficient >why donate to random sad thing when spreadsheet can tell you optimal sad thing >fair enough >buy mosquito nets >save lives >numbers look good >feel powerful >couple years later >someone asks an innocent question >why only count people alive today >huh >future people matter too >obviously >my grandchildren shouldn't matter less just because they haven't spawned yet >reasonable.jpg >keep following logic >what about their grandchildren >also yes >what about people in 500 years >sure >5000 years >why not >500 million years >starting to get weird but morality is morality >open calculator >humanity could survive for an astronomically long time >could colonize galaxy >could have trillions upon trillions of descendants >maybe digital people too >maybe simulated civilizations >maybe dyson spheres full of happy uploaded minds >calculator starts smoking >realize currently living humans are rounding error >8 billion people suddenly looking extremely beta >future contains potentially 10^something people >can't even fit beneficiaries in google sheets >new moral priority unlocked >protect the long-term future >stop thinking in units of "people helped" >start thinking in "fraction of cosmic endowment preserved" >malaria? >terrible >but only kills existing humans >AI extinction could delete the entire light cone >nuclear war could permanently derail civilization >bad institutions could lock in terrible values for ten million years >someone invents wrong constitution in 2140 >quadrillions suffer >better fund governance workshop now >friend says maybe we should improve hospitals >explain opportunity cost >friend says hospitals are full of actual sick people >explain scope sensitivity >friend stops inviting me to dinner >need to decide what to fund >easy >expected value >suppose project has one in a million chance of preventing extinction >sounds tiny >but extinction destroys 10^50 future lives >multiply >mother of god >$10 million project has expected value of several galaxies >charity evaluation complete >someone asks where the one-in-a-million number came from >expert judgement >which expert >us >how calibrated >extremely thoughtfully >reduce estimate to one in ten million to be conservative >still beats curing cancer by 38 orders of magnitude >epistemic robustness achieved >someone says maybe project doesn't work >assign 20% chance >still astronomical >maybe project makes problem worse >assign 5% chance >still astronomical >why 5 >because 30 felt pessimistic >publish 46-page report >contains seventeen sensitivity analyses >every sensitivity analysis begins after assuming intervention has positive sign >critic says you're multiplying enormous hypothetical stakes by extremely uncertain probabilities >yes >that's literally why it's important >critic says the uncertainty might be structural rather than numerical >make probability smaller >critic says no, I mean maybe your model is wrong >make probability smaller again >critic begins rubbing temples >discover AI safety >perfect longtermist cause >AI might kill everyone >or create utopia >or seize galaxy >or tile universe with paperclips >or create billions of conscious software minds >finally a problem with numbers big enough for me >start AI safety nonprofit >mission: prevent dangerous AI >hire smartest people available >smartest people immediately start building better AI to understand dangerous AI >interesting >we must understand capabilities to understand safety >we must scale models to study alignment >we must race ahead so less responsible actors don't get there first >we must deploy systems to learn how deployment can go wrong >we must build the thing quickly because building the thing quickly is dangerous >outsider asks why the people most worried about AI apocalypse all work at AI companies >complicated field >company releases stronger model >very concerned >company begins training even stronger model >extremely concerned >company raises $14 billion >concern reaches unprecedented levels >need to influence government >future is at stake >normal democratic process too slow >politicians don't understand exponential curves >public doesn't understand x-risk >experts must guide them >who counts as expert >people who understand x-risk >who understands x-risk >our friends >someone objects that this seems politically convenient >explain we're representing future generations >future generations unavailable for comment >develop concept of value lock-in >terrifying possibility that one ideology controls civilization forever >therefore extremely important that civilization adopts correct values before lock-in >whose values >let's circle back >begin with impartial morality >end with small group of people deciding what quadrillions of hypothetical beings would want >beautiful arc >meanwhile actual humans keep doing annoying things >voting wrong >having parochial attachments >loving family more than strangers >caring about local community >getting upset when told their suffering is cosmically negligible >evolutionary biases everywhere >explain that moral intuition cannot be trusted >except intuition that future digital people count >and intuition that extinction is uniquely bad >and intuition that our probability estimates are sane >and intuition that our institutional choices improve the future >those intuitions survived peer review >someone donates $5k to local homeless shelter >inefficient >could have funded 0.0000000000003% of an AI governance researcher >think of all the simulated people you just killed >okay maybe don't phrase it that way publicly >PR team says "future generations deserve a voice" >much better >journalist asks what longtermism means >say "future people matter" >everyone agrees >great >journalist asks what follows from that >well technically we should redirect enormous resources toward low-probability interventions affecting astronomical futures >journalist raises eyebrow >return to "future people matter" >motte has entered the chat >critic: of course future people matter >me: glad we agree >critic: I don't agree that your institute knows how to help them >me: why do you hate our grandchildren >eventually notice uncomfortable implication >if future value dominates everything >then helping people today mostly matters through effects on future >education matters because future institutions >health matters because future productivity >democracy matters because future trajectory >human beings slowly become instrumental variables in their own moral philosophy >see starving child >feel compassion >check spreadsheet >child's direct welfare contribution negligible >but perhaps childhood nutrition improves national institutional quality >compassion restored >tell myself this is impartial altruism >one day assistant asks obvious question >"how do you know your intervention actually improves the far future?" >silence >open spreadsheet >increase column width >add confidence interval >assistant asks again >"no, I mean how do you know the sign is positive?" >stare into cosmic light cone >10^50 people staring back >none of them exist >none of them can tell me >none of them can falsify my assumptions >realize I have invented the perfect constituency >infinitely important >completely silent >and always represented by me

We've raised $200M at a $5B valuation to scale self-improving software development in the enterprise. The round brings our total funding to over $400M and more than triples our $1.5B valuation from April.

The results are in for @DIU_x Drone Gauntlet II. We’re proud to place #1# in Close Quarters Battle and #3# for Deep Strike, and to be the only drone manufacturer in the top 5 placement for both missions. These results are a testament to the adaptability of our Archer FPV system, designed from the ground up to flex to the needs of the military operator in every battlefield scenario. As the only manufacturer with Gauntlet I drone commitments fully shipped and accepted, we’re standing by and ready to fulfill against the expected 14k drone order from the Department of War. Major kudos to everyone on the Neros team for working tirelessly in support of Gauntlet II, and onward to Gauntlet III.

Every news story follows a predictable decay function- it peaks, then is soon forgotten. That is, every story except one: Israel. I analyzed 14.7 million news articles in 65 languages, cable news airtime, and social media data from X. The results were staggering. 🧵

Investors like Paul want the immigration debate to be strictly polar because it is the only way their traitorous ideas might seem reasonable. They paint one side as racist, backwards, economically illiterate absolutists and the other as enlightened, growth-minded cosmopolitian realists. Support for laws that protect American citizens can be dismissed as uneducated, anyone who hires immigrants or foreigners in any capacity a hypocrite. American law should, and does, advantage American citizens. We should not have to compete on an even playing field with billions of people who almost universally don't share our values or respect our institutions, even if they are "the most qualified" or willing to work double the hours for the same wages. The men running Operation Paperclip did not think Americans should have to compete with the entire Third World, they understood that a carefully controlled amount of highly-skilled expert immigration is net good for America even when allegience is in question. It is worth noting that even on a purely economic level, ignoring all burdens of loyalty or allegiance to your countrymen and treating America as nothing but an economic activity zone, it still doesn't make sense to say without qualification that foreigners should get any job where they are more qualified than their American counterpart. As just one easy example out of dozens, about 20% of immigrants return home after less than five years, taking all their savings and vested shares with them. Another 20% will leave within ten years, doing the same. All the while, they will wire, on average, ~15% of their wages out of the United States economy every month. Some occupations and origins average 30%! The idea that this should be completely ignored with regard to employment and immigration policy is rampant among the same people who tell you with a straight face that limits on immigrants will destroy the American economy, that the dumb rednecks need to be saved. I lean very libertarian and have strongly supported immigration to America for many years with countless public examples. That doesn't put me on the same side as the men who want to sell out America, and no amount of long-past accomplishment obliges any of us to listen to their lectures from the other side of the Atlantic.

My conversation with @dougleone, partner at @sequoia. 0:00 How to Dominate for Decades 3:17 Turning Fear Into a Tailwind 5:40 Immigrant Drive, Hard Work & the Beach Club 12:19 Simplifying Life & Choosing Discomfort 14:37 The Homeless Sequoia Partner With No Plan B 16:49 Stepping Down, Coming Back & Starting Over 20:04 Why AI Is Different From Every Previous Technology Shift 22:13 Doug's Three Investment Heuristics 23:52 The Cost of Selling Great Companies Too Early 25:39 Helping Founders Turn Products Into Businesses 28:28 David Vélez, Nubank & the Psychology of Founder Support 32:25 Why Founders Must Remain the Soul of the Company 36:13 Torturing Yourself Into Greatness 39:57 Don Valentine, Succession & the Sequoia School of Hard Knocks 44:28 Staying Grounded & Developing a Sniffer for People 47:46 Hypercompetitive With a Heart of Gold 50:13 Fred Luddy, Israeli Founders & Radical Directness 52:28 Trust Is the Accelerant of Business 59:57 Starting From Zero & Hunting for the Next Great Founder 1:05:59 Architect Your Board Like Your Product 1:10:24 Truth, Disagreement & the Art of Difficult Feedback 1:13:43 Humanity, Introversion & the Value of Relationships 1:18:18 What Doug Learned From Michael Moritz Includes paid partnerships.