Gary Marcus makes some specific, falsifiable forecasts about artificial general intelligence (AGI) https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/dear-elon-musk-here-are-five-things?s=r [My current intuition is that the first two and the last one will have been cracked by 2029 and that the "competent cook" one is the most difficult. I am not as confident about the coding prediction. I further suspect that an AI needs to be significantly less capable than this to undergo recursive self-improvement.]
Jewish lasers: “Bennett added that, until now, an Iron Dome interceptor cost tens of thousands of dollars each to intercept a single incoming enemy projectile. With the laser system, “the enemy will invest tens of thousands of dollars and we will invest just two dollars of electricity,” he said.” https://www.jpost.com/business-and-innovation/article-708261
Mind-blowing DALL-E thread https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1531506455714492416.html
"Physicists in the Netherlands have shown for the first time that quantum information can be reliably teleported between network nodes that are not directly connected to each other... the work marks a further step towards a scalable quantum Internet." https://physicsworld.com/a/quantum-teleportation-expands-beyond-neighbouring-nodes/
Smallest-ever remote-control walking robot uses shape-memory alloy https://newatlas.com/robotics/tiny-crab-robot/
How Computer Scientists Learned to Reinvent the Proof https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-computer-scientists-learned-to-reinvent-the-proof-20220523/
Dive Into a Hyper-Realistic Metaverse Built on Unreal Engine — “Being a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), Victoria VR offers users a fair economy where they have control over the policies they wish to impose. All the assets in the platform are created by the users themselves and are registered on the blockchain.” https://arpost.co/2022/05/24/hyper-realistic-metaverse-victoria-vr/
‘China is all-out against us’: an interview with Lithuania’s foreign minister https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/china-is-allout-against-us-an-interview-with-lithuanias-foreign-minister
Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement Engineering Award (OAE) is Now Open for Pre-Proposals https://www.additionalventures.org/news/announcing-the-ocean-alkalinity-enhancement-engineering-award/
Scientists CRISPR’d Tomatoes to Make Them Full of Vitamin D https://gizmodo.com/crispr-tomatoes-vitamin-d-1848975640
The claim that personality is more important than intelligence in predicting important life outcomes has been greatly exaggerated https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289622000125?via%3Dihub
Mexico's Spend On Fuel Subsidy Is Double Its Oil Exports Revenue https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Mexicos-Spend-On-Fuel-Subsidy-Is-Double-Its-Oil-Exports-Revenue.html
A new optical illusion: “Expanding hole” illusion deceives our pupils to expand in anticipation of expected decrease in light. https://scitechdaily.com/this-new-optical-illusion-is-strong-enough-to-trick-our-reflexes/
"Have a look at this image. Do you perceive that the central black hole is expanding, as if you’re moving into a dark environment, or falling into a hole? If so, you’re not alone: a new study shows that this ‘expanding hole’ illusion, which is new to science, is perceived by approximately 86% of people."
Suppose China was to succeed in invading Taiwan while managing to keep the chip fabs unscathed. How much would they be able to learn without the help of the TSMC engineers and the blueprints? What I mean is, how much value would the chip plants themselves be? Would they just be giant technological artifacts or could they actually learn enough from studying them to produce their own state-of-the-art semiconductors?
And even if they managed to keep the blueprints and get the TSMC engineers to work for the CCP, how much use would all that be if the Dutch ASML sanctions them?
I am just wondering whether capturing TSMC is a major spoil the CCP expects to make by invading Taiwan or whether that is unrealistic.
But yes, this is likely a moot point because they would be destroyed.
In a recent interview, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky admitted that Ukraine is losing 60-100 soldiers per day. To put this into perspective:
1. During the Second Punic War, within just three campaign seasons (20 months), Rome had lost one-fifth (150,000) of the entire population of male citizens over 17 years of age. Many of Rome's Italian allies, notably Capua, defected to Carthage, giving Hannibal's allies control over much of southern Italy.
2. The heaviest loss of life for a single day occurred on July 1, 1916, during the Battle of the Somme, when the British Army suffered 57,470 casualties.
Sources:
1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cannae
2. https://www.britannica.com/event/World-War-I/Killed-wounded-and-missing
Thanks for sharing an author who disagrees with you!