Severin Matusek

For years, Yarvin was best known, to the extent that he was known at all, as the court philosopher of the Thiel-verse, the network of heterodox entrepreneurs, intellectuals, and hangers-on surrounding the tech mogul.

In other words, the push to join the AI rush comes from the sense that it’s the only game in town right now, and everyone else is already playing. The hype gets louder, and the bubble gets bigger.

In 2023, we launched an editorial series about AI called Shades of Intelligence. We learnt a lot about the way creatives were beginning to work with this new tech, harnessing it for tasks ranging from creative direction to project rollout. Since then, the needs have shifted. After two years of rapid change, Light and Shade focuses on the wider... See more

But it is far too late. Consensus reality is gone. We are blessed to live now, in the West, in a strange world without common sense.

The structural focus of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ science fiction alike – science fiction that accounts for scientific accuracy and logic in the first instance, and for social or political systems in the second – is more easily translated to policy or innovation than any other genre of media. It provides a ready-made framework that runs all the way from... See more

> be me > Alexandr Wang, born January 1997 > age 19, drop out of MIT > co-found Scale AI > "what if we label data, but mid?" > convince every LLM company that this is fine > 2016–2023 > flood the market with barely-labeled goat photos... See more