Tag: Faith

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Aesthetics Politics

Day 1971 and An American Pope Meets Effective Altruism

To my Catholic friends, I sincerely hope today brought you closer to your faith. It is my hope that you received comfort from Pope Leo XIV’s new encyclical, Magnifica humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence.

I myself look forward to reading all 42,000 words of it on an airplane tomorrow. My reader application’s AI says it should take me two hours and thirty minutes. Already the tools have opinions on my study.

I can’t say I fully understand the relationship between the knowledge and teachings put forth by the Pope and a Catholic’s personal faith.

I have very little exposure to Catholicism that isn’t entirely academic so please do not take anything I say seriously or personally, as I’m a mere Protestant.

The Vatican said that Leo had signed the new encyclical on May 15, 135 years to the day since the pope’s namesake, Pope Leo XIII, signed the landmark encyclical Rerum Novarum (“Of New Things”) on the rights of workers amid the Industrial Revolution. I understand is a crucial modern document in Catholic social doctrine

I read his namesake’s encyclical long ago when I studied economics in Chicago (not very far from where the Pope himself studied) so I am looking forward to comparing the documents once I have had a chance to read the new encyclical.

It’s very hard to have an opinion on a document written by a faith leader to whom I do not defer myself so please hold your judgement as I have held mine.

Without careful study I hesitate to say much beyond my initial impressions of the media circus surrounding the encyclical’s release and the social context of several attendees of the event around the signing.

The document is officially addressed not only to Catholics but to “all people of goodwill,” calling on us to seek the “protection of the human person in the age of artificial intelligence.”

I feel this is an invitation to us all to consider the document seriously. Silicon Valley has been anticipating its release for sometime, with both excitement and trepidation.

We have seen venture capitalists speak on fears of an emergent technological anti-Christ and the role artificial intelligence might play in eschatological matters.

There has also been a significant amount of discussion over the last several years as to the role a movement which calls itself effective altruism has played in the development of artificial intelligence.

In particular, there is concern as to whether the movement itself has become its own theology complete with a singularity eschatology.

I make no secret of my concerns around the EA community, its scandalous financial frauds and its intellectual roots in Benthamite utilitarianism.

They aim to be “less wrong” and take a rationalist approach to moral questions. At first glance this appears to be a kind of technocratic solutionism but has millenarian tendencies in singularity thought.

Several years ago an internecine split developed in Silicon Valley with a faction “meme schism” jokingly calling itself effective accelerationism. I myself professsed a preference for their approach as I am neither a utilitarian nor a rationalist.

E/acc encouraged an approach to technological development which focuses the benefits of material progress in reducing human harms while warning of the harms of the precautionary principle.

Neither are real philosophical traditions in any meaningful sense, but rather competing narrative memetics that came out of the diverse group of technologists making industrial progress from nuclear to computing chips and algorithms.

My concern today came from the highly visible corporate representation at the New Synod Hall in the Vatican during the press release. Past encyclical rollouts were normally handled only by curial officials. This was much flashier and included the Pope.

Further, the Vatican chose to highlight large language model developer Anthropic, and one of its many cofounders Christopher Olah. Both the man, and the corporate entity he represents, are part of an explicitly effective altruist world.

That only one frontier lab with a very particular viewpoint was put front and center as an emissary from the technical community may end up sending an unintended message. Or more worryingly, a very deliberately intended message. Only time will tell.

Categories
Startups Travel

Day 1969 and A Very Nice Day

I am in the middle of the Utah desert returning from a site visit to Valar Atomics. If you have the means to tour a nuclear facility I highly recommend it. It is so choice. That’s Ferris Bueller for the Zoomers.

I’ll use another choice line from the John Hughes classic to illustrate how gratifying it has been to drive a remote Utah town for a chance to see our investment in action.

Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. – Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

We hadn’t planned to drive down to the Ward 250 facility after Abundance Institute’s Operation Gigawatt. Life is busy, it’s a holiday weekend, I’m flying out to part unknown from Montana in two days.

But what’s another three hours on the open road when there is one of America’s sustainable energy labs and a tour from your favorite engineers on offer? Yes they are all working this weekend. They have a deadline for July 4th that’s pretty important. It’s crazy that this wasn’t in my itinerary in the first place if I’m honest. What a way to kickstart the summer.

Getting up close to “our” reactor is a privilege I never conceived of experiencing. I’ve been lucky enough to invest in some very cool things over the years, but to actually place a bet on a serious industrial effort and have my choice end up at the forefront of a major national push for nuclear energy? Not a thing I saw coming.

So in the hustle of the moment, I am glad to slow down and admire that it is actually possible to do things. That’s a very nice day to have. Yes that’s a Day 69 joke.

I’ll treasure this moment forever. Even if we fail, at least we tried. And who wouldn’t want to put yourself on the line and try when it’s something that matters this much? So we speed up to slow down and see. Because it’s true if you don’t you might just miss it. So yeah it was a nice day.

Utah desert near sunset.
Categories
Community Politics

Day 1949 and Swimming in the Contextless Sea Beyond The Dock At The End of History

There is a popular theory that Zoomers and Alphas are struggling with temporal context in culture because their consumption of culture is decoupled from the context in which it was made and consumed. It’s all one long scroll without the punctuations of reality.

The general theory goes that post internet generations see niche algorithm-driven content rather than say cultural or historical touchstones. Past touchstones might have unified past generational experiences.

I don’t know if unified experienced are all good. Sure all of the Boomers have heard the Beatles but all millennial woman recall tabloid headlines about Britney Spears getting fat. The water we swim in can be hard for us fish to spot.

If the younger generations have a problem, it’s being far too unified in their experience of their global position. The pandemic was a surprisingly effective reboot of expectations for all of us. But the older you were the easier it was to contextualize the impact of the pandemic across your entire life.

We all ran a dress rehearsal for collective responsibility at global scale And depending on your personality, you were funneled into perspectives you preferred.

So you saw us either shoulder or shirk responsibility. Not that other generations haven’t had to do some version of this, but being able to see it at networked global scale seems to have done something to the capacity to see the future.

You swim in a sea of history and at any point you can get out of the water. But you jumped off the dock is at the end of history so you can see how getting out might be a problem.

McWorld triumphed over Jihad right? But that is content for a paid Substack where Fukuyama and Zizek both still write. It must have been more convincing in hardcover.

Categories
Homesteading Preparedness

Day 1932 and Who Took Off Their Snow Tires Early

We did not have much of a winter to speak of Montana. Sure, Farmer’s Almanac predicted a lot of snowfall but even such an august institution can’t always get it right.

We got almost no pre-season snow fall. Which one can shrug off. We dutifully schedule our snow tire switchover at the end of September anyway. Alex bought his lift tickets with high hopes for a good ski season. Then the openings of our local mountain and Big Sky looked dicey. And yet still we hung onto hope.

We had no white Christmas. The deep freezes of January usually come with snowfall. It was grey this year. February would surely come through right? Alas wrong again. March did not go out like a lion. There was little water to whip up in our non-existent bay. And so, in April we cried and our hopes stepped aside as we waited for pretty little May.

People began to take off their snowtires. This just wasn’t our year. Spring would arrive early right? Any hopes of good days of powder were thoroughly dashed. It was over till next year right? Wrong!

The weight of wet snow

It snowed a big wet mess of deep sloppy powder on Good Friday. Hooray! Indeed it was a good Friday. Except, oh no, our snow tires are off.

Then, last night, when no one honestly believed the forecast for 6-10 inches one bit, we went to bed expecting a normal day. The days had already begun to lengthen substantially. Birds were hatching and the green was growing.

A heavy wet mess dumped onto our patio overnight

Clearly we were wrong. I tossed and turned all night as my joints bubbled and ached. I thought I was using a flare. But when I woke up it was clear my body knew more than my brain and the weather forecast was correct. It has snowed almost a full foot.

The hot tub needed to be dug out

Now the particulars funny aspect of all this is that Alex took the snowblower off the tractor yesterday. He needed to cut the side pasture down before new growth hit so the snowblower attachment was replaced for the trimmer. We’d let long grass grow and then flatten which required more than a riding mower. It needed the Deere to cut through.

So the front walkway was hand dug out but the drive to our road is going to remain snowed in for a bit. The sun will come out tomorrow. I did however have to reschedule a haircut. But that’s the price you pay for trying to get ahead of the weather. We never should have taken off our snow tires early.

Categories
Culture

Day 1918 and Other Lives You Could Have Lived

I was talking with my mother today as I was organizing some logistics for her birthday. Don’t tell her that though as it’s a surprise. Just kidding she knows I’m up to something.

As we talked shared pictures from a recent work trip where she was able to visit our extended family. Her brother lives in Texas after a long military career. It got me thinking about the very different lives it’s possible to live even within one family.

My mother has siblings that she is not related to by blood that are nevertheless our family. Her mother was unable to stay with her father. She married a man I consider my grandfather and gained a large family in the process.

One of my cousins (not by blood but through love) had her children when she was still a teenager. We are roughly same age. She has nearly fully grown children while I will likely never have children. We had very different life trajectories.

She didn’t have an easy time when she was a young mother, but seems to be in a good place now. She is married to a kind man (not to her children’s father though they were married for a time), enjoys watching her son play varsity baseball and football, and lives near her parents. She earned a beautiful life the hard way.

My aunt and uncle are hard working, deeply kind and patriotic people. They supported their daughter every step of the way. Which in the late nineties and early aughts was harder than it looked for a conservative military family in Texas.

I feel lucky my mother got to have such a wonderful brother (and other amazing siblings). My grandmother was an incredible woman. She got remarried at time when single mothers had it even tougher than my cousin did.

I think of the lineage of my mother’s family and wonder which of us made the right choices, which one of us thinks we made the right choices, and how we feel about those choices in the grand scheme of things. Lots of my family believe I made all the right choices. And maybe they are right.

Both my mother and grandmother heavily encouraged my interest in academics and the sciences in particular as they both wanted to pursue scientific careers and were unable to do so. I know I am their pride and joy.

But as I think of my mother’s upcoming birthday I know she won’t get to see her grandchildren playing varsity sports under Friday night lights in Texas with her mother sitting beside her. Her mother, my grandmother, has passed.

There won’t be three grown generations to coincide together because that’s just not how it works any more. And I don’t believe she is disappointed. And I know my grandmother wasn’t either. They wanted this life for me.

And it’s a good life. But I am also glad that my cousin was able to have a good life too. If only it were easier to balance some of the choices. If they were choices at all.

Categories
Politics Travel

Day 1904 and Ms Fredrickson Goes to Washington

I will be in our nation’s capital next week for a gathering called the Hill and Valley Forum. It’s been ongoing for a few years but I am not someone with a lot of exposure to Washington and wasn’t sure I should pitch myself when the forum describes itself as such.

We host public discussions, panels, and published dialogues that highlight leading voices at the intersection of technology, security, and geopolitics.

Perhaps it’s silly not to think of myself as a leading voice in technology but I don’t know much about security (or its cousin defense) and my commentary on geopolitics is for fun on Twitter.

However, having seen others fail where I have succeeded, in passing successful bipartisan artificial intelligence policy I thought this year I should throw my cap in the thing. It’s not a nice feather having successfully brought the right to compute campaign from citizenry to policy to law in Montana.

It is now succeeding at the national level as states like New Hampshire have passed it in their house and well respected bipartisan policy organizations like ALEC have recommended it as policy.

My husband made a pilgrimage to our capital as the gentleman from Montana to testify before Congress last spring. I was very proud of him. I suspect he is easily as proud of my work on compute policy.

So if you’d like to meet some real Americans (8 wasn’t aware we had fake ones) and are in Washington D.C. drop us a line. I’m hoping to do a little meetup maybe on Monday but not all of my in groups will each other so maybe I’ll do more than one.

But wherever happens I’m excited to share time with other patriotic Americans who do the hard work of making sure we are governed well.

Categories
Culture Internet Culture

Day 1902 and Cynical Victories for Hollow Lies

I know it’s sweet bordering on stupid to engage in good faith when it comes to politics, but maybe I’ve grown soft in my old age. I really do believe that Americans are capable of building wide coalitions in a pluralistic society.

Call me naive but most Americans, even most humans, have more to bind us together than to break as apart. We are social animals even the most introverted of us.

So I hate seeing groups who share common values fall apart over schismatic propaganda pieced together explicitly to worsen your weaknesses and widen your vulnerabilities till you are both tied to horrors you’d never have condoned.

The trouble with Utilitarians is they say up front that the ends justify the means. Thats your starting baseline. Which is at least clean. Then the Machiavellian’s say it’s alright to obfuscate. The noble lie and all. And then suddenly the enemy is inside your gates and you are being gutted.

This is roughly what is occurring between Bannon-world who hates technology so much they have accidentally teamed up with a gaggle of one world government rationalists to…use zoning rules to save the world from…industrial parks with rack servers?

I know it doesn’t sound very sinister but everyone involved is sure the anti-Christ is going to be involved. Peter Thiel is in Rome giving lectures so the buggy man has involved.

Folks must enjoy being useful idiots as it’s strange to me to think you might align with people you loathe just to fuck up the other team. The goal is flourishing for all no? You came at me and my boys for whom all I wish is flourishing.

Which is funny as I was always under the impression that end times eschatology required the Antichrist to be quite well liked. Everyone involved in this is universally despised.

I guess if you are certain that you are in danger of being stomped out by an evil, and believe any of your actions are justified by this premise, you may as well embrace all kinds of evil.

But you do have the options of not using millenarian tactics to scare the shire. Hobbits are brave or so said the neomonarchist who can’t tweet. But I won’t forget people who threw me over for propaganda they were too dim to understand or cynical enough to believe no one else would.

Categories
Startups

Day 1873 and Flying A Micro-Reactor on a C-17

I spent most of yesterday on an airplane. I flew nearly 12 hours along the polar routes to go from Heathrow to America’s west coast. I flew British Airways and was disinclined to spend the many pounds for internet access.

Alas this meant I missed the rollout of the joyful flight of one of my favorite investments. Valar Atomics began its journey from California to Utah just as I too was flying. Me and the reactor I angel invested in were both up in the air like bluebirds and sunshine.

HILL AIR FORCE BASE, Utah, Feb 15 – The U.S. Departments of Energy and Defense on Sunday for the first time transported a small nuclear reactor on a cargo plane from California to Utah to demonstrate the potential to quickly deploy nuclear power for military and civilian use.

The agencies partnered with California-based Valar Atomics to fly one of the company’s Ward microreactors on a C-17 aircraft — without nuclear fuel — to Hill Air Force Base in Utah. Via Reuters

I tear up just thinking of the incredible accomplishments of millions of people coordinating together across centuries that these technologies represent.

It’s easy to think of ourselves as being small in the vastness of time and space. I almost cannot believe I was handed such gifts in this life, but I can claim a small but early part in Valar’s story.

U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright and U.S. Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Michael Duffey on board a C-17 cargo plane that transported Valar Atomics’ Ward nuclear microreactor from March Air Force Base in California to Hill Air Force Base in Utah, at the Hill Air Force Base in Utah, U.S., February 15, 2026. On the right, with the American flag and the Valar logo on his jacket is our CEO Isaiah Taylor

Just a little over three years ago I sent Isaiah a message on Twitter. We had a lot in common and I felt a kinship with this young entrepreneur. It was before he had even begun the incorporation work on Valar. He was working on something else, but I trusted his quiet intelligence and admired his humble inquisitiveness. We kept in touch as he mapped out his path.

His lack of ego instantly marked him as special, as it meant he could hear even the hardest criticisms. His fortitude was clear. He could incorporate what was necessary into his mission, a skill usually developed much later in life.

It’s rare to build trust so early on, and yet we both did. I told him I’d back anything he did so long as he was the CEO. Little did I know just how lucky I would end up as his very first backer.

You might think you will have doubts in high risk early stage investing. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t believe in him from day one. I knew he was on a mission bigger than any of us. I knew it and he knew it. For God and country as they say.

That faith was required, as it was tested in rapid succession again and again over the next three years. Chewing glass is part of every startup. Even when you go as rapidly as Valar has gone, there are harsh conditions, brushes with death, and moments of utter joy in between.

Not only did we write a first check in the angel round, but in tight spots before the seed closed we wired follow on within minutes when a concern about a cash flow question arose. We put together special purpose vehicles. Nothing could jeopardize this mission. I’d invest more if I could.

We weren’t always the ideal investors as we struggled to showcase to bigger and better firms our conviction. Not too long ago it was all about being asset light and software as a service. Thankfully the execution always outshone the skeptics and we were ahead of the times. And while the skepticism was fierce, Isaiah never wavered. Neither did I.

Today is day 1873 in my daily writing log. I first wrote about Isaiah on Day 1145 which means somewhere around day 780 or so is likely when we first met. I wrote on day 1510 almost a year ago about their seed round and the first successful thermal testing. On day 1721 they broke ground in Utah.

And you can better believe that I am looking forward to July 4th this year. We promised the president we’d be turning on the reactor, so there is much to be done between now and then.

Even the Department of Defense (War?) is writing swan songs about Valar from the Pentagon Twitter account

At March Air Reserve Base, California, yesterday, a next-generation nuclear reactor was loaded aboard a C-17 Globemaster III aircraft for transport to Hill Air Force Base, Utah. The reactor will eventually head to the Utah San Rafael Energy Lab for testing and evaluation.

The Ward 250 is a 5 megawatt nuclear reactor that fits into the back of a C-17 aircraft could theoretically power about 5,000 homes.

For military use, such a reactor could provide energy security on a military base ensuring the mission there need not depend on the civilian power grid, and in military operations overseas, such reactors would mean U.S. forces could operate without concern that an enemy might cut fuel supplies.

A reactor such as the Ward 250 also means greater energy security for the entire United States. It is firmly in line with President Donald J. Trump’s executive orders to reshape and modernize America’s nuclear energy landscape.

The president signed four executive orders designed to advance America’s nuclear energy posture, May 23, 2025. Those include “

Reinvigorating the Nuclear Industrial Base,

” “

Reforming Nuclear Reactor Testing at the Department of Energy

,” “

Ordering the Reform of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission

,” and “

Deploying Advanced Nuclear Reactor Technologies for National Security

.”

Michael P. Duffey, the undersecretary of war for acquisition and sustainment, said the partnership between the War and Energy Departments is critical to advancing the president’s nuclear energy initiatives.

“It’s clear to me that advancing President Trump’s priority on nuclear energy depends on close coordination between the Department of Energy and the Department of War,” Duffey said. “This partnership ensures advanced nuclear technologies are developed, evaluated and deployed in ways that strengthen energy resilience and national security.”

The future of warfare is energy-intensive, he said, and includes AI data centers, directed-energy weapons, and space and cyber infrastructure. The civilian power grid was not built for that, and so the War Department will need to build its own energy infrastructure.

“Powering next generation warfare will require us to move faster than our adversaries, to build a system that doesn’t just equip our warfighters to fight, but equips them to win at extraordinary speed,” Duffey said. “Today is a monumental step toward building that system. By supporting the industrial base and its capacity to innovate, we accelerate the delivery of resilient power to where it’s needed.”

Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said that with small reactors like those transferred from March Air Reserve Base to Hill Air Force Base, the United States is aiming for a nuclear energy renaissance.

“The American nuclear renaissance is to get that ball moving again, fast, carefully, but with private capital, American innovation and determination,” Wright said. “President Trump signed multiple executive orders that have unleashed tremendous reform of all the things that stopped the American nuclear industry from moving.”

Part of that effort, he said, will mean that by July 4, three small reactors will be critical — or running smoothly.

“That’s speed, that’s innovation, that’s the start of a nuclear renaissance,” Wright said. By

C. Todd Lopez

, Pentagon News

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 1853 and American Boomer Betrayal

I wish I could shake some of the grief that has gripped me over the past few months. I grieve the revelation of human truths I wish I did not know. And underneath the grief, I feel betrayed.

I feel betrayed by my elders, my country, its institutions and the power structures that have bounded my life and its path. It feels dramatic when I write it down but I know it to be true.

I have kept a lid on these simmering feelings because I am too afraid to unearth more truth that has the potential to rewrite my life and the internal (and external) perceptions of who I believe myself to be. And yet it is only change that has the power to overcome the entropy that destroys life. And that includes mine.

My feelings of betrayal seem too too ugly to look at and shake any sense of security or belonging that I might once have had. Which was in precious little supply already.

I don’t wish to be histrionic about it, but I am not the only American millennial who feels this way. I know many American Zoomers feel it more deeply than I do.

And there is plenty of evidence to support these feelings, which makes it all the worse. Feelings are not facts but there are facts beneath these emotions that are hard look at.

I don’t know why I cannot seem to unearth or articulate enough of my emotions to help me let go. I feel I have forgiven so much and it hasn’t been enough to change things. They say that betrayal creates a “double wound” as there is the act itself, and then the shattering of our belief in the fidelity and values that had scaffolded our lives.

I don’t want to look at the grief and betrayal straight on for reasons I hope I can slowly reveal to myself and others. Whatever protection it offers my ego and inner child must have some value but keeping things hidden is not helping me

I going to try to articulate these feelings, even if I am afraid of putting such enormous vulnerability out for scrutiny. I’ve done it before and it has only ever helped so I must find some courage to go further.

It’s not that I think anyone reads, or even notices what I say here, but rather once something is written into our public networks it stays. There is a reason “the word” has had such resonance for creation in faith. By writing it into a record I will create something that is real and will have consequences.

The relief I felt at the passing of my father at the end of last summer embarrassed me at first. I wanted to feel sadness, loss, love, and absence but all I could see was relief that he was gone.

I wished for more change and endings before the hungers of the past’s needs would eat more of my present. And I knew it would not come unless I made it so. Saturn devours his son. The son must slay his father.

I loved my father so deeply that I shaped my whole early life around impressing him in the hopes that he would find reason to be more present.

No achievement or milestone was ever enough to change his orientation and availability to me. Still I forgave him. He gave me so much. At the end I do not know (and must contend with not ever knowing) if he forgave himself.

This personal tragedy has anchored my feelings on the generation above mine and how they have conducted themselves in the management of America and all of its institutions.

The trust and fidelity has been broken. From education and health to politics, cultural and monetary systems the harms have compounded and the healing is slow. Family forgive but society needs scapegoats. And that makes me fearful.

The only systems that I feel has not actively betrayed me remain market capitalism and the edifice of our informational technologies. Ironically there are huge swathes of my generation who feel those are the systems that have harmed them the most.

I do not believe that free association and information are harmful. Indeed I see them as entirely beneficial even when there are obviously individual harms that the abstractions do not reveal so easily.

Some believe humans were simply not meant to live at a scale that showed us a world beyond our roots. How can we remain true to any values when all ruptured and greed, disgust, treachery and disloyalty is laid so bare and in such a brazen manner? To err is human and seeing our sins at such scale is a grievous harm we must overcome.

I myself am unsure if paradise lost to wider wisdom is only harm. We eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and now see sin. But we also reveal the sustenance of divine love and redemption. Malus is not the same as malum.

Perhaps it is precisely because it is the wider world that has nurtured me even as family, elders, and institutions have ravaged the basics of life that I can see this horrifying but beautiful whole.

For millennia we have grounded the rituals and meaning of human life at a smaller scale with fewer hidden truths. Now it is laid bare to us all.

I am a citizen of the world with wealth but not health. I have built a beautiful family and marriage but likely will have no children. I have an incredible community of friends but we are scattered to the winds.

The personal middle ground of my life doesn’t exist because of the hunger of a generation and a nation that cared more about themselves and their reach and power than the future that would obviously arrive.

As younger generations wait to take the reins of their future, it threatens to never arrive. The grip of the past refuses to let go. And I wish to pry open that grip so we may try and do better.

They did the best that they could. And it hurts so much that it was not enough. The fear remains our efforts won’t be either.

Categories
Chronicle Internet Culture

Day 1850 and Midlife (of The Blog) Crisis

I feel so lost right now. Some things are going quite well and others are not. This could be a metaphor for my own life yes (and it is) but I intended the post to be about feeling lost in my own writing project.

I don’t know if it is the midlife of the blog, but it’s not the beginning anymore. Half a decade of writing is quite clearly an edge case. But why do I keep doing it, what am I trying to say and am I trying to reach anyone? I’m not sure I have an answer.

The open internet increasingly feels like a fantasy from a different time. I still believe that the internet is meant for humans to connect with each other freely and openly and I love this utopian ambition of shared interoperable protocols for communication.

So while I write this daily log for myself, my records, and my desire to improve my thinking skills it’s obvious it’s not just for me. Being a part of the records of humanity is no small thing. I want to be in the records. I want artificial intelligence to be trained on my work. I want my voice to be heard by those who wish to hear it.

It’s prideful but I believe that I have something valuable to contribute to our collective next steps in developing new kinds of intelligence. I want these models and their future programs (dare I say progeny) to be trained not just by governments or corporations but through contributions from regular individuals like myself. I’m just not quite sure I know what my best contribution looks like anymore.