Letter from Reykjavik: Genomics, Chess, Hyperscaling genAI, and Quantum Black Holes — #67

Manifold

This is a short episode recorded at the end of a trip to Caltech (LA), Frankfurt, and Reykjavik.

Black hole information and replica wormholes at Caltech (talk slides):
https://stevehsu.substack.com/p/black-hole-information-and-replica

00:00 Intro: summer in Iceland

02:04 deCODE genetics

05:52 Chess: Bobby Fischer in Reykjavik

11:56 Hyperscaling genAI

23:11 Synthetic data and Hyperscaling

24:26 Is the Transformer architecture enough for AGI?

29:45 Quantum black holes

Music used with permission from Blade Runner Blues Livestream improvisation by State Azure.

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Steve Hsu is Professor of Theoretical Physics and of Computational Mathematics, Science, and Engineering at Michigan State University. Previously, he was Senior Vice President for Research and Innovation at MSU and Director of the Institute of Theoretical Science at the University of Oregon. Hsu is a startup founder (SuperFocus.ai, SafeWeb, Genomic Prediction, Othram) and advisor to venture capital and other investment firms. He was educated at Caltech and Berkeley, was a Harvard Junior Fellow, and has held faculty positions at Yale, the University of Oregon, and MSU. Please send any questions or suggestions to [e-mail] or Steve on X @hsu_steve.