Jeremy Kahn
When I was at G--gle, well before the latest AI boom, I worked in an advanced research group experimenting with neural networks for all kinds of impractical but fun things.
(At one point, too close to getting laid off to try it, I proposed learning a joint embedding between SF book cover illustration & their back copy, & then running it through in either direction. Still wish we'd built it.)
This particular group also decided to start a "relevant SF" reading club.
1/3
Eaton
Jeremy Kahn
The local VP was in the group, and contributed (I believe without irony) SUPERINTELLIGENCE by Nick Bostrom, and — though he wanted to brag about hobnobbing with Bostrom & dozens of other rich white men on a private island — he didn't really get that this was pretty _bad_ science fiction
but he DID stop coming to the reading group after I called Bostrom's memetic hazard book "exponential-function fanfic in service of the status quo"
3/3
Jeremy Kahn
This reading group was often pretty firmly on the nose (for example, David Brin's EXISTENCE, which has alien intelligences in slick black hand-sized glass pods, trying to convince humanity to dedicate all its resources into building more pods).
We really should have called it the Torment Nexus reading group, but even that glorious phrase hadn't been coined yet
2/3
Eaton
@trochee curious if you ever read Galatea 2.2 during that stretch?
Jeremy Kahn
*bows*
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