Entropic Apex/ The Hidden Power of The Soil/ IBM’s Future of Quantum/ Serlf-Driving Cars Hiding in Plain Sight/ How Sci-Fi Became Big Business
Massimo Portincaso
Founder & CEO at Arsenale, Industrial Romantic and Antidisciplinarian Stoic
Entropic Apex. The role of thermodynamics in the world we live in is grossly underestimated. The first and particularly the second law of thermodynamics really rule the world, be it on the biological front, but also when it comes to society and more in general.?
On the biological front, we do have to confront it (i.e. thermodynamic) if we really want to make the transition to Nature Co-Design (which I have been advocation and writing about). Most of the biological processes are ultimately steered by their thermodynamic properties, which is why a) we need to factor them in, when we look at their scaling and b) we also need a shift to electrocatalysis and not only to biology per se if we want to really enable nature co-design (because of the thermodynamic limitations). Both a) and b) warrant a separate post, and I will get back to them, as this is not what I want to write about today.
I have been writing about entropic leadership in the past, as one of the human dimensions in which entropy can play a very important role. This week, Lux Capital (one of, if not THE most enlightened Deep Tech VC) just published their quarterly letter, and, as with the previous ones, I was simply blown away by it. If you manage to get hold of it, I do encourage you to thoroughly read it, if you don’t, here is a?nice excerpt by Josh Wolfe, the deus-ex-machina of Lux Capital. It is worth every second invested in it.?
In the letter, many ideas, concepts, and recommendations are presented. Of the many, one stuck with me, the idea of “Entropic Apex”, to describe the current situation, that evolved over the last weeks/months, of seemingly never-ending chaos and turbulence, ranging from the war, to supply chain disruptions, to crypto total failures, to share index plunging to …
I agree with Lux’s diagnosis about the root causes of the situation, and also agree with their assessment of the opportunities in these “entropic apex” times. They mention three, and I think all three are worth going after now, and I cannot think of a better time to do so.
The first opportunity is the one that interests me the most. De novo company creation in science and technology inspired ventures, as one of the answers to the current “Entropic Apex”. I agree with them that this is the best time to create such a new company. It is of course easier if you have the amount of AUMs as Lux does, but the requirements to be successful do apply even for them. While the upside potential of these NewCos is extremely high, the bar to be successful is similarly extremely high. I am pretty convinced that the companies that will manage to drive the necessary re-doing of the modern economic and industrial tissue will be born during these Entropic Apex times.?
My former colleagues at BCG just published?a very good article?explaining why this is going to be the case (they have understandably big corporates in focus, but the core message still applies and is relevant)
The other two opportunities mentioned by Lux are the classical opportunities being generated when a bubble bursts, i.e. lower entry points in deals (i.e. lower valuations), and also the possibility to drive the consolidation of the market.
The Lux letter contains much more than the three opportunities, and I encourage you to read it. Undoubtedly, hard, and difficult times are ahead of us, and content like the Lux letter is a good source of inspiration during these times.?
As painful as it is going to be, the shift in perspective is needed, as the situation till a few months ago was simply not sustainable, with economic fundamentals completely decoupled from valuations. It is not going to be an easy journey, and hopefully, we will collectively leverage it to better ourselves and the systems around us.
George Monbiot?is determined that we don’t take the ground beneath our feet for granted. We depend on soil for?99% of our food, yet it “is the most neglected of major ecosystems.” In a deep dig into dirt for The Guardian, Monbiot posits that ”soil might not be as beautiful to the eye as a rainforest or a coral reef, but once you begin to understand it, it is as beautiful to the mind. Upon this understanding, our survival might hang.”
The problem we face, according to Monbiot, “could be the greatest predicament humankind has ever encountered: feeding the world without devouring the planet. Already,?farming is the world’s greatest cause?of?habitat destruction, the?greatest cause?of the global?loss of wildlife, and the?greatest cause?of the global?extinction crisis.”
“Without a radical change in the way we eat, by 2050, the world will?need to grow around 50% more grain. How could we do it without wiping out much of the rest of life on Earth?” One answer is to become less reliant on traditional agriculture and move towards biotech food production, like ?precision fermentation, which “has the?potential?to replace all livestock farming, all soya farming and plenty of vegetable oil production, while massively reducing land use and other environmental impacts.”
News items:
According to the World Bank, 90% of fish stocks are overfished. But sustainable fish farming has ?proven elusive. By building facilities much further offshore than traditional fish farming operations, ?Forever Oceans?promises to avoid the pitfalls of conventional aquaculture and produce “radically delicious, sashimi-grade fish.”
Jerry Chow, Director at ?IBM Quantum’s?“ultimate goal is to bring quantum computing into the modern toolbelts of scientists, academics, and industry - to turn its myriad applications from potential to reality.” This profile charts Chow’s path from student to “one of the quantum world’s most influential scientists” and spends a day with him on the floor of IBM’s quantum research lab at the ?T.J. Watson Center.
According to ?Mary Beth Rothwell, Senior Manager of Experimental Quantum Devices at IBM: “[Chow] was a very strong researcher and really key element in quantum, but now…he’s really driving the technology. I’ve been with IBM a long time—over 30 years—and this is the most exciting project I’ve worked on.”
News items:
Nanobots may soon be able to fight infections and ?cancer?in humans when traditional antibiotics and cancer treatments fail. Additional applications could include making joint implants safer and treating kidney stones. ?Douglas Dahl, Chief of Urologic Oncology at Mass General Brigham, calls the nanobots “phenomenal technology.”
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Soon, self-driving cars will be visually indistinguishable from any other vehicles on the road. A recent survey of 4800 UK citizens by UCL’s ?Driverless Futures?project found that 87% of respondents agreed that self-driving cars should be labeled and concurred with the statement, “It must be clear to other road users if a vehicle is driving itself.”
According to ?Jack Stilgoe, Professor at UCL: “This debate… cuts to the heart of the question of how novel technologies should be regulated. Developers of emerging technologies, who?often portray them?as disruptive and world-changing at first, are apt to paint them as merely incremental and unproblematic once regulators come knocking. But novel technologies do not just fit right into the world as it is. They reshape worlds. If we are to realize their benefits and make good decisions about their risks, we need to be honest about them.”
News items:
Bowery Farming?is a vertical farming network that grows 80,000 pounds of produce per week. “Using a system of light and watering technology, Bowery uses 95% less water than a traditional outdoor farm, zero pesticides and chemicals, and grows food that tastes as good as anyone else’s.”
Science fiction has long inspired technology that we now take for granted. ?Tim Berners-Lee?invented the world wide web?after being inspired as a teenager by?Arthur C. Clarke’s?short story ?Dial F for Frankenstein. More recently, ?Neal Stephenson’s?Snow Crash?“coined and described the concept of a metaverse,” apparently now ?required reading?at Meta’s Oculus.
Sci-fi writers are no longer just passively planting seeds in the minds of the tech visionaries of the future. According to Farsight: “Google, Microsoft, Apple, Visa, Ford, Pepsi, Samsung, Nike, Ford, Hershey’s, Lowe’s, and Boeing [are] now employing sci-fi writers to do ‘sci-fi prototyping’ to help them get a better sense of the kinds of futures in which their products and services might be used.”
NATO ?detailed?how “how military strategists can use science fiction to ‘discover, from the minds of professional writers, new tech, novel use of existing tech, new doctrines’ and to ‘allow open discussion, using the strength of storytelling, about the future character of war.’”
The ?sci-fi industrial complex?is becoming big business. “SciFutures?- whose clients include VISA, Ford, Colgate, Intel, and the US military - boasts a network of ‘more than 300 sci-fi writers, visionaries, and experts.’ Their prototyping comes not only in the form of short stories, but also graphic novels, motion comics, interactive web narratives, animated videos, and augmented reality content.
News items:
DeepMind’s Gato architecture. Image Credits: DeepMind
Could DeepMind’s ?Gato?open the gateway to ?Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)? According to Gato co-creator ?Scott Reed, Research Scientist at DeepMind: “Most current AI systems work on a single task or narrow domain at a time. The significance of this work is mainly that one agent with one [model] can do hundreds of very different tasks, including to control a real robot and do basic captioning and chat.”
Jake Porway , Research Fellow at ?data.org, is “working with the Ford Foundation, social-sector community leaders, ethics experts, and foundation program officers to… illuminate a third path for funders who may feel torn between capitalizing on the benefits of [AI and data] technology and risking their constituents in the process.” He outlines five ways that “help funders identify and support data and AI that is high impact while centering human flourishing.”
One principle Porway puts forward is “We’re All in This Together: Eliminate Factions.” He has found a growing divide between stakeholders who see data-driven tech’s potential to “do good” for the social sector and those who see “AI [as having] no positive benefit and only causing harm.”
According to Porway: “If we are to make progress toward a world where the social sector leads in its responsible use of data and AI, funders must start seeing themselves as allies in this fight. Technical rigor needs to be married with humility and guardrails around harms, or else we’re almost sure to create systems that are inefficient, harmful or both.”
News items:
Regulation alone won’t be sufficient to make AI equitable. Instead, “clear ways must be set out for social scientists, affected communities and developers to work together.”