April 2023 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To
What I Am Reading:
The secret history of Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and OpenAI
After three years, Elon Musk was ready to give up on the artificial intelligence research firm he helped found, OpenAI.
The nonprofit had launched in 2015 to great fanfare with backing from billionaire tech luminaries like Musk and Reid Hoffman, who had as a group pledged $1 billion. It had lured some of the top minds in the field to leave big tech companies and academia.
But in early 2018, Musk told Sam Altman, another OpenAI founder, that he believed the venture had fallen fatally behind Google, people familiar with the matter said.
And Musk proposed a possible solution: He would take control of OpenAI and run it himself.
Altman and OpenAI’s other founders rejected Musk’s proposal. Musk, in turn, walked away from the company — and reneged on a massive planned donation. The fallout from that conflict, culminating in the announcement of Musk’s departure on Feb 20, 2018, would shape the industry that’s changing the world, and the company at the heart of it.
Sam Altman invested $180 million into a company trying to delay death
Can anti-aging breakthroughs add 10 healthy years to the human life span? The CEO of OpenAI is paying to find out.
As a competitor, you can’t avoid the hurt of losing. But you can learn ways to bounce back stronger and more motivated
What I am Watching:
How scientists measured the shortest time ever
Scientists have pushed the boundary of how short of a time we can measure. They achieved this through a combination of x-ray radiation from a synchrotron, hydrogen molecules, and an electron interference pattern. Here I explain each of these components and how they used these to measure an unimaginably short period of time, 247 zeptoseconds. The results build off previous work that earned a Nobel prize and is a great cross-section of multidisciplinary work involving, physics, chemistry, engineering, and quantum mechanics. Interestingly this measurement is very similar to young's double-slit experiment, just that the slit gap is now hydrogen molecules.
At the time this was the shortest time to ever be measured.
Can Cuba's innovative lung cancer vaccines give new hope to patients across the world?
What I am Listening To:
The Art of the Good Life : 52 Surprising Shortcuts to Happiness, Wealth, and Success
The Art of the Good Life is a toolkit designed for practical living. Here you'll find 52 happiness hacks - from guilt-free shunning of technology to gleefully paying your parking tickets - that are certain to optimize your happiness. These tips may not guarantee you a good life, but they'll give you a better chance (and that's all any of us can ask for).