Adam Gamwell

Imagine if we could somehow show the people of the eighteenth century a simple child’s toy from today — say, a speaking doll.

The common folk would marvel at its ability to speak its few stock phrases. The scientists and engineers would marvel even more at its innards; at the minutely detailed silicon; at the bewildering complexity soon to be within... See more

He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion... Nor is it enough that he should hear the... See more

For me, that means limiting that amount that I do, even if that disappoints people; sharing my needs as an autistic person at the start of all event bookings; setting aside specific times for publicity, and closely guarding my writing time; and saying ‘no’ to opportunities that are not a great fit for me (for example, events in noisy, crowded... See more

Our “small giants” approach optimized for mojo over growth. We wanted a small, talent-dense team with a focus on craft, autonomy, and quality of life for all team members. We banished the term “founder” in favor of “partner” and tried to be transparent with all business matters across the team.

We took some capital from investors in order to invest... See more

By definition, you will likely succeed a vanishingly-small percentage of the time, but—as the saying goes—that’s a feature, not a bug. The point is to venture—fistfuls of money in hand—at the furthest extremes of capitalism, hoping to stumble upon that rare, proper intersection of technology and commerciality.By design, most investments will miss... See more

People worried about AI taking their jobs and taking control are competing with a myth. Instead, people should train themselves to be better humans even as they develop better AI. People are still in control, but they need to use that control wisely, ethically and carefully.

Humanity is waking up to the challenges and opportunities of artificial intelligence, but we don’t yet understand our role. People talk about unexplainable AI when they should be more concerned about the unexplainable humans running the companies that develop the AI. (Hiya, Sam!) People worried about AI taking their jobs and taking control are... See more

If AI starts to generate intelligence by itself, there’s no guarantee that it will be human-like. Rather than humans teaching machines to think like humans, machines might teach humans new ways of thinking.