The Ledger, every show
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks, across all 44 shows. Pick shows below, then mix any filter with any other.
shows 
every show 44 of 44
Verdon: Centralized bioweapon defense research accidentally created a damaging virus
“There was centralized research on Bio, you know, bioweapon defense. Right. And we were worried about a potential virus that could do a lot of damage. And then it was actually accidentally created through that research.”
Verdon: Big Tech ideological subversion stops government collaboration, helping adversaries
“What I saw with my own eyes was that a sort of cultural subversion within big tech more broadly was stopping a big tech from working with the government, right? Like basically ideologies that sort of were very pervasive within the middle layers of the organiza…”
Verdon: Physics predicts civilization optimizes to consume more energy
“At least from the equations of physics, if you consider the whole system of civilization, the equations predict that the system will optimize towards its growth, towards consuming more free energy.”
Verdon: Market incentives and liability will ensure AI alignment
“People wouldn't pay for an AI that's unaligned, doesn't do what you say, and is nefarious, right? They would pay for an AI that does, you know, is a good worker, let's say is aligned and is reliable, right? And if the, you know, the person or the company that …”
Verdon: Deploying advanced technology requires active cultural engineering
“Even if you can work on technologies all day, but those that get deployed and funded you know, if you don't have a sort of ideological or cultural support for what you're working on you're not gonna get to build and deploy certain technologies. And that kind o…”
Verdon: Preemptive over-regulation does more harm than technological risks
“We can preemptively do much more damage to ourselves with, let's say, over-regulation than You know, the damage that would have happened by just letting things happen.”
Verdon: Started e/acc via anonymous Twitter alt at Google X
“I think I think I started it roughly when I was towards the tail end of my stint at Google X there, obviously the baseline is secrecy. I couldn't talk much and you know, about what I do and can't, couldn't say anything too controversial. And so, you know, I st…”
Verdon: Societies must maintain startup-like adaptability to maximize growth fitness
“And so one of the sort of core tenets is to maintain variance, maintain adaptability, because, you know, it's just like an early stage startup versus a late stage company. An early stage startup, things aren't fully pinned down. You're still flexible. You're s…”
Verdon: Over-regulation, not physics, is holding back nuclear energy
“Definitely seeking forms of energy that are more potent, such as nuclear energy which right now it's not necessarily the physics that's a problems over-regulation.”
Verdon: Multi-year regulatory cycles are too slow for AI progress
“AI is moving on a timescale of month to month, week to week, and, you know, regulations are on a few-year timescale at best put together, and that's just too slow of a feedback loop, and it's too heavy-handed, and it's probably not the way forward.”
Verdon: Incumbents use fearmongering to consolidate power and entrench dominance
“Fear mongering becomes instrumental towards certain people and incumbents that are trying to gather power and crystallize their position before, you know people realize that actually the future wasn't going to be a gloom and act actually what is going to be gr…”
Verdon: Robotics Will Boom Within a Few Years to Solve Blue-Collar Intelligence
“I think robotics is gonna see a boom in, in the coming years as we, you know, cross that threshold of having sort of you know, match, being able to have synthetic white collar intelligence. I think there's a few year gap between we'll be, Until we can solve mo…”
Verdon: Operational AI Leverage Will Cause Deflation in Real-World Construction Costs
“You have intellectual leverage now with Chan GPT, but eventually you'll have operational leverage, and that's where we're gonna see serious progress in the world of atoms. We're gonna see deflation and the cost of building things in the real world”
Verdon: He pioneered the field of quantum deep learning
“I was basically a pioneer of a field called quantum deep learning. So many people are familiar with deep learning neural networks, but extending those types of notions to quantum mechanical computers and really defining what does it even mean to have a sort of…”
Verdon: Quantum Sensors and Communication Are Much Shorter-Term Than Quantum Computing
“I would say quantum sensors and quantum communication are much shorter term technology than quantum computing, and that's why I moved towards those fields after subfields after a couple years in quantum computing.”
Verdon: Quantum Sensor Prototypes Outperform Classical Sensors on Positioning and Timing
“I do think there are very solid prototypes that can resolve regions of parameter space in terms of acceleration positioning and timing. That are not possible with classical sensors. And now it's a question of miniaturizing and robustifying those systems.”
Verdon: Extropic is developing self-adaptive hardware with positive global impact
“We're working on very sophisticated, you know, self-adaptive hardware that could scare some people, but, you know, we think it's going to really impact the world positively.”
Verdon: Extropic thermodynamic compute will reach production in a couple years
“I'm, I haven't announced any prototypes yet, but you know, we have our first test chips, and we're iterating, but I think a couple years from now, we'll be able to have this in, in production.”
Google acquired Verdon's quantum TensorFlow prototype and hired his team
“During that first startup I ended up Being approached by Google to prototype, really, what would a TensorFlow for quantum computing look like? So TensorFlow at the time was the core software framework for Google to do deep learning, and we wanted to extend tha…”