📈 first Derivative [103]

⚖️ AI alignment—🧬 CRISPR therapy—🇻🇪 South American conflict—⚡️ electricity generation—💊 drug decriminalization—🪦 notable deaths

via Midjourney

🇯🇵 Apologies for the broken link on the Japanese workforce in the last issue. Here it is. As always, I recommend checking the website because I’ll be able to fix mistakes in the email there. And if you ever see any mistakes/typos please let me know.

🔰 I also meant to include in the last issue this piece on Georgist policies in Singapore

🤖📺 If you’re into sci-fi and AI, I highly recommend checking out Pluto on Netflix. A sort of I, Robot meets Seven + The Silence of the Lambs. One of the better shows I’ve seen in a while and it does a great job of world-building and going for similar themes as Westworld but executing them better.

📜 I’ll be publishing my year-end lists in the coming weeks, so if you have any last minute TV/movie/book recs let me know!

Good reading,

—Teddy

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🤖⚖️ Paul Bloom, professor of psychology and cognitive science at Yale, writes about the prospect and challenge of “aligning” AI to human values. Not a particularly deep examination but Bloom covers the basics well.

When asked to comment on ChatGPT, last spring, [Stuart Russell] said, “How do you maintain power over entities more powerful than you—forever? If you don’t have an answer, then stop doing the research.”

On the “human” values we’re trying to align AI with:

In the quest to align machines with human values, a first challenge is deciding whose values we mean…

L.L.M.s tend to parrot values that many readers of this article would share, because their training data come from societies that are Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic—weird. (The study has not yet been peer-reviewed.) Relative to the rest of the world, weirdos are “more individualistic, independent, and impersonally prosocial (e.g., trusting of strangers) while being less morally parochial, less respectful toward authorities, less conforming, and less loyal to their local groups,” the authors write. The less weird a society, the worse its misalignment with L.L.M.s.

Now that I think about it, I think we usually see two kinds of depictions of creators when it comes to artificial intelligence and robots:

• The Victor Frankenstein type: the dark, Romantic, passionate, flawed human who imbues his creations with his passions and faults. Think Oscar Isaac in Ex Machina or the guy in Metropolis

• The “God the father” type of creator

  • The anthropomorphized old, wrinkly man with white hair and beard who is wise and loving. Like Geppetto in Pinocchio. Maybe not a surprise that in this more paternal and healthy relationship, the creator is usually weak and cared for and passes on by the end of the story… Or you have Alfred Lanning in I, Robot who’s dead from the beginning

  • Or a more cold, distant Old Testament personality. Like Eldon Tyrell and Niander Wallace in the Blade Runner movies

The psychologist Geoffrey Miller, who is very worried about A.I., wrote on Twitter, “Funny how ‘AI alignment with human values’ often seems to boil down to ‘AI alignment with Lefty Bay Area transhumanist atheist values.’ ” And when a former graduate student at the University of British Columbia, Brent Stewart, asked Bing to fill out a psychological test known as the Moral Foundations Questionnaire, he found that it seemed to care less than most people about authority, purity, and loyalty. Delphi says that it’s morally O.K. for a woman to have an abortion; whether this is a successful alignment with human values depends on the human who is asking.

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🧬💊 The UK approved the world’s first CRISPR-based therapy, a one-time treatment for treat sickle cell disease and beta thalassemia

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is expected to approve Casgevy on or before Dec. 8. CRISPR technology’s ease of use, efficiency, and customizability make it an ideal way to treat disorders caused by genetic mutations, and Casgevy is likely to be just the first of many treatments for inherited diseases. (STAT)

The drug was developed by a Swiss company co-founded by Emmanuelle Charpentier who, along with Jennifer Doudna, won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing the gene-editing technology.

CRISPR is a way to change specific areas of DNA. The system was discovered in bacteria, which use it as an immune system to fend off attacks by viruses. Bacteria store parts of their enemy viruses’ DNA so they can cut the viruses’ genes and defend against them. A CRISPR editing system has two parts: a “guide RNA” sequence and a pair of molecular “scissors.” The guide sequence, like a Dewey decimal number for DNA, leads the scissors to a specific spot on the double helix and the scissors cut the strand of DNA there, inactivating that gene. More recent technologies allow CRISPR systems to insert new DNA into this site, or swap out individual nucleotides — the “letters” in the DNA sequence. (STAT)

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🇻🇪🇬🇾🛢 Venezuela is threatening to annex Essequibo, an oil-rich region that makes up two-thirds of the territory of its smaller, neighboring country Guyana (pop. 800k and active duty military of 3k). The Venezuelan government under President Nicolás Maduro recently held a successful “referendum” on the Essequibo question and now claims a mandate to act on long-asserted claims by ignoring the International Court of Justice and moving to annex the territory, in addition to ordering state companies to exploit oil deposits and mines in the region. The Maduro government followed up the referendum by ordering the arrest of top opposition leaders.

A conflict between two oil-rich nations in the Americas would be a new crisis for US President Joe Biden’s administration, which has bet on a rapprochement with Maduro in the hope that relief from Donald Trump-era economic sanctions would encourage Venezuela’s leader to move towards free and fair elections and help improve global oil supplies.

ExxonMobil discovered oil off the coast of Essequibo in 2015 and made another find nearby this October:

Oil is transforming the Guyanese economy, which grew 62 per cent last year, according to the IMF, and is projected to expand another 37 per cent this year. With around 11bn barrels in reserves and a population of just 800,000, the country has the largest amount of oil per capita in the world.

Meanwhile, Venezuela has the world’s largest proven reserves, and in its heyday at the turn of the century pumped about 3mn barrels per day, but mismanagement, corruption and sanctions led production to collapse. In September this year, it pumped 735,000 bpd. (FT)

Brazil has increased military presence on its northern border. But re: whether Venezuela will actually back up its rhetoric with military action to annex the territory:

But most experts believe military conflict is unlikely in the near term. They say the revolutionary socialist Maduro’s main motive for running a patriotic referendum campaign was to take voters’ minds off his own unpopularity and the evident support for the main opposition candidate in next year’s presidential election, María Corina Machado.

“The more likely scenario is that at some point Maduro finds it expedient to whip up the tension on the border and perhaps provoke some skirmishes with the Guyanese military,” he said. “I don’t think that will lead to a full-scale war but the problem is that once you start actually having armed conflict . . . it’s very easy for that to escalate.” (FT)

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⚡️ Cool article in the NYT about different countries’ electricity generation compositions:

💧 I never realized so many countries generated most of their electricity from hydropower: 🇦🇹 Austria, 🇨🇦 Canada, a lot of South America, and 🇳🇴 Norway (not too surprising). Norway’s almost all hydro but neighbor 🇸🇪 Sweden is about half nuclear, half hydro with a little bit of wind and solar.

☀️ Mostly solar: 🇩🇰 Denmark

🪨 Mostly coal: 🇿🇦 South Africa, 🇵🇱 Poland, 🇮🇩 Indonesia, and 🇮🇳 India

🛢 Mostly oil & gas: 🇦🇺 Australia, 🇧🇩 Bangladesh, 🇪🇬 Egypt, 🇳🇱 Netherlands, 🇸🇬 Singapore

☢️ Mostly nuclear: 🇫🇷 France, 🇸🇰 Slovakia, 🇺🇦 Ukraine

☢️ Significantly nuclear: 🇸🇪 Sweden, 🇨🇭 Switzerland, 🇰🇷 South Korea, 🇭🇺 Hungary, 🇧🇪 Belgium, 🇧🇬 Bulgaria

Worth taking a look through the charts to form a general picture

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💊 Oregon’s decriminalization of hard drugs hasn’t gone so well

The fundamental problem, according to law-enforcement officers and researchers, is that the threat of jail time hasn’t been replaced with a new incentive for people struggling with addiction to seek treatment. Some 6,000 tickets have been issued for drug possession since decriminalization went into effect in 2021, but just 92 people have called and completed assessments needed to connect them to services, according to the nonprofit that operates the helpline.

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🪦 Notable Deaths

Nov 19 - Rosalynn Carter was born in 1927 in Plains, GA and died at the age of 96. The former First Lady of the United States was an advocate for mental health, human rights, and public policy alongside her husband, President Jimmy Carter.

PHOTO: JIMMY CARTER LIBRARY

The family lived in town, about 3 miles away from the farm where her future husband grew up. Her family was poor, and her father, a mechanic, died of leukemia when Rosalynn was 13. His death forced her to help raise her three younger siblings and work part-time at a beauty shop while her mother sewed and worked at the local post office…

On the Iran hostage crisis and Carter’s loss to Reagan:

Jimmy Carter pressed for a peaceful solution, but his wife argued strongly in White House meetings for mining Iranian harbors and other military moves, according to [Stanly Godbold, Jr].

Throughout much of 1980, as Jimmy Carter was consumed with the Iranian crisis and other problems, Rosalynn Carter campaigned aggressively. After Reagan’s landslide win, a pollster told Jimmy Carter he didn’t appear bitter.

“I’m bitter enough for both of us,” Rosalynn Carter interjected, according to her memoir.

Nov 28 - Charlie Munger was born in 1924 in Omaha, NE and died at the age of 99. The billionaire investor, philanthropist, and architect known for his close partnership with Warren Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway.

I read Buffett’s biography during middle school and I think, like a lot of people who learn about Buffett at a formative age, I grew up idolizing him a bit. I’ve been exposed to a lot of Munger’s thinking and writing on investing and human psychology but I haven’t done the deep dive that the material is worth. I’m going to be going through the Munger files this month and if you want to join along, here are some links:

• Pretty exhaustive (1200+ pgs) collection of Munger’s writing

• Podcast episodes about/with Munger: Acquired, Founders, Invest Like the Best

• Two books I’ve repeatedly been recommended: Seeking Wisdom, Poor Charlie’s Almanack

🌏 Nov 29 - Henry Kissinger (NYT, WSJ) was born in 1923 in Fürth, Germany and died at the age of 100. As a youth, Kissinger fled with his family from persecution in Nazi Germany only to return after the war serving in the US Army to help with German reconstruction. The larger-than-life diplomat, political scientist, and practitioner of realpolitik served as Secretary of State and National Security Advisor under Presidents Nixon and Ford and was credited with authoring the major events of American foreign policy during that time in ways both good and bad. Among many others:

• opening diplomatic relations with China

• negotiating the end of the Vietnam War

• supporting the bombing of Cambodia and Laos during said war

• supporting the 1973 Chilean coup

• supporting the government of Pakistan during the 1971 Indo-Pakistani War

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life/Getty

Kissinger is also someone I should do a more thorough reading of. I remember reading chapters of his book, Diplomacy, in high school while writing a paper on the concert of Europe and the Congress of Vienna.

The young Kissinger was drawn less to the classic exponents of Realpolitik, such as Clausewitz and Bismarck, than to “philosophers of history” like Kant and anatomists of civilizational decay such as Arnold Toynbee and Oswald Spengler. From these thinkers, Kissinger cobbled together his own view of how history operated. It was not a story of liberal progress, or of class consciousness, or of cycles of birth, maturity, and decline; rather, it was “a series of meaningless incidents,” fleetingly given shape by the application of human will. As a young infantryman, Kissinger had learned that victors ransacked history for analogies to gild their triumphs, while the vanquished sought out the historical causes of their misfortune.

Some more Kissinger links:

• Kissinger’s 400-page undergraduate thesis titled “The Meaning of History: Reflections on Spengler, Toynbee and Kant”

• Kissinger on Firing Line with William F. Buckley, Jr. Hard not to be impressed, after watching this, with the loss of erudition in American public and political society

👩‍⚖️ Dec 1 - Sandra Day O’Connor was born in 1930 in El Paso, TX and died at the age of 93. O’Connor was a majority leader in the Arizona Senate before becoming the first woman to serve on the United States Supreme Court. During her tenure, she used her swing vote to steer the course of American jurisprudence in decisions like Planned Parenthood v. Casey¹ and Grutter v. Bollinger² (2003) where she wrote in her majority opinion that “race-conscious admissions policies must be limited in time… Court expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today”

📺 Dec 5 - Norman Lear was born in 1922 in New Haven, CT and died at the age of 101. He was a legendary television writer and producer who created groundbreaking sitcoms like All in the Family and The Jeffersons.

1. Overturned last year, along with Roe v. Wade, by Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization

2. Overturned this year by Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard