transdisciplinary r&d community of philosopher-builders developing tech to enhance the human condition | https://nitter.cf/t.co/lijvqwI6D3
Cambridge, MA
Joined June 2023
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augmentation lab retweeted
I restocked my Etsy shop! Signed books make great gifts :D
etsy.com/shop/DandelionStori…
First launch from our sister entity 🦾 Congrats @dunyaverse & team!
Recommendation: sound on. You're missing out on the fun otherwise.
Today we introduce Plato: the ring for near-silent speech.
We speak faster than we write. But we can’t always say out loud what we’re thinking.
Plato turns thought into action.
Dictate. Transform. Delegate.
Order now: plato.it.com. Limited supply.
augmentation lab retweeted
I admire @BernieSanders but he's wrong here. The age of intelligent machines is already here. Blocking Al advancement and introducing the strictest Al guardrails for "safety" is a defensive attitude that might actually turn the machines against us.
The machines are getting better and it's a reality we need to adapt to. Humans must evolve, and fast. This evolution is ideally guided by wise people with morals - but it won't be if these people turn their backs to technology.
Human augmentation is the offense. And it involves becoming cyborgs - integrating humans and machines in ways that are symbiotic, just like the gut bacteria in our bodies help us survive.
It is imperative for human survival to work on transhumanism. Life is about survival of the fittest and we can't sit on our slowly evolving hardware and software, demanding the world and laws of nature evolve as slowly.
We must adapt to fit in. And if done right, there is a potential for a beautiful future.
That’s why I find human augmentation is the most important area to work on. Join us at @augmentcompany and @auglab to make human evolution and human-machine symbiosis go right.
The radical anti-human views of those controlling the AI industry should alarm us all, @BernieSanders argues: “Humanity must not allow a handful of multibillionaires to recklessly attempt to replace us.” theatln.tc/c7xF4lC8
🎨: Adam Maida / The Atlantic
Can we make a cell younger without making it forget what it is?
Researchers can turn adult cells back into stem cells, resetting many signs of aging. But that also erases the cell’s specialized role. A nerve cell still needs to work as a nerve cell.
Partial epigenetic reprogramming aims to restore youthful function while preserving that role.
Animal studies have produced encouraging results, including improved vision in mice. Clinical trials must establish whether these approaches can deliver safe, lasting benefits in people.
At our Human Augmentation Summit, Doğa Yücel, a researcher at @harvardmed, and @M_S_Ringel, PhD, COO at @lifebiosciences, explored how the biology of rejuvenation can lead to treatments for age-related disease.
Watch the full talks:
Doğa: youtube.com/watch?v=3JZCkLsK…
Michael: youtube.com/watch?v=uUvv40H5…
Reading recommendation for tonight:
Andy Clark & David Chalmers (1998) - "The Extended Mind"
proposes that cognitive processes are not bounded by the skull or skin, but extend into the physical environment and external tools when they function as seamless parts of the cognitive loop
alice.id.tue.nl/references/c…
practical value: theoretical cornerstone for bio-aligned preference tuning and ambient computing interfaces that act as continuous extensions of biological cognition
augmentation lab retweeted
Every augmentation is also an amputation.
Technology extends what humans can do - but can also change what we stop doing for ourselves.
We’re opening the Human Augmentation Summit archive with Prof. Hiroshi Ishii (@ishii_mit) of the MIT Media Lab.
Every augmentation is also an amputation.
Technology extends what humans can do - but can also change what we stop doing for ourselves.
We’re opening the Human Augmentation Summit archive with Prof. Hiroshi Ishii (@ishii_mit) of the MIT Media Lab.
His four questions to the field: Who are the humans we seek to augment? Why do we augment? What exactly do we enhance? And is it truly augmentation, or is it in fact amputation?
augmentation lab retweeted
In Plato's Allegory of the Cave, prisoners chained to a wall perceive only shadows—and mistake them for reality.
We extend this concept: a shadow man, controlled by an LLM, exists in 2D and perceives only silhouettes. His singular goal is to turn off the light that defines his existence. Users place objects in his path; he kicks them away. The cycle repeats.
This mirrors the perceptual limits of AI. An LLM cannot see—it reads descriptions of sight. It processes language about the world without directly accessing the world itself. The shadow man embodies this gap. Both are confined to representations.
The piece is a meditation on AI as cave-dweller—processing patterns without grasping the higher-dimensional reality that casts them.
augmentation lab retweeted
Kalypta's beta waitlist is open now for Mac.
tinyurl.com/kalypta-beta
We're rolling out access gradually. Early users shape the features that protect us best against hidden AI.
Stay updated at: deveillance.ai
augmentation lab retweeted
Today, we’re releasing Kalypta, the first app to block AI notetakers in your meetings.
Granola? Wisprflow? Cluely? No more.
With Kalypta, you become inaudible to AI.
Your call continues normally.
Privacy is freedom. AI notetakers make it impossible to know when someone is recording us without consent. We need new tools to fight surveillance capitalism!
We're glad @be_inaudible (an auglab spinout) is working on this.
Granola, Fireflies, and Wisprflow are designed to be invisible to everyone.
Being watched changes how you act. Suspecting it does too.
It changes how we interact with each other first. Human authenticity is lost.
Then your conversations become training data for the latest AI systems that are compromising our security and privacy.
Read our deep dive.
deveillance.com/research/ai-…
@nullpxl
augmentation lab retweeted
AI transformed coding, science is next
@ReactorfieldAI makes scientists and deep tech startups AI-native
Built by me and @berkbuilds to accelerate science with frontier AI
inspired by our favorite technocapitalists, we're hosting a mafia game night tomorrow (spots limited) luma.com/nwr9xerp
We visited Augmental's garage 3 years ago during our first summer residency, thanks to @tomasmas.
Already back then, the tech was groundbreaking.
Respect for their dedication to building assistive and augmentative tech. Congrats on the public launch!
augmentation lab retweeted
SF is breaking spiritually with 3 philosophical crisis at once:
1) talent is existential - infinite options, no idea what's worth building anymore, so they either start smth or join a lab. every week i hear about another founder whose CTO left for anthropic.
2) the public is nihilistic - religion, neighborhood, family, stable couple: most sources of meaning were already stripped, the job was one of the last ones standing, and now the public feels AI is coming for the brain and robots for the body. i live near the openai office in SF, 100s of people demonstrate in front of it regularly.
3) founders are absurdist - building is a commodity, dozens of competitors appear the week you start, every model release kills hundreds of startups or forces a pivot, and the boulder rolls back down. il faut imaginer les founders heureux.
the deeper conundrum i feel: the industrial revolution freed our bodies from labor - we got fat, invented the gym (a synthetic physical activity, like fetching the ball for a dog), then GLP-1 to patch the symptom w/ unknown tail risk on a complex biological system.
the intelligence revolution is freeing our minds from labor and the same playbook is coming - a GLP-1 for the mind (i keep hearing nasal DMT sprays are close). same patch, probably worse tail risk.
and we're still biologically human, so the risk is society splitting into 3 estates: a noblesse replaying la cour du roi, bored and plotting zero-sum games all day (homo leveragus) - a clergé who logs off entirely (homo experiencus) - and a tiers-état dating AIs in second life (homo matrixus). i'm not sure how we "faire société" with that, and as a french i remember the pitchforks in the history books.
underneath all of it, civilization runs on two coordination mechanisms: it coordinates matter through engineering to build technology (we're great here), and it coordinates meaning through storytelling to build culture (we have a problem here). the intelligence revolution pours everything into the first and hollows out the second.
au travail!
augmentation lab retweeted
Today, we're introducing Spectre I, the first smart device to stop unwanted audio recordings.
We live in a world of always-on listening devices.
Smart devices and AI dominate our world in business and private conversations.
With Deveillance, you will @be_inaudible.