the most important thinker in AI, in my opinion, is this 23 year old. leo aschenbrenner. he has been more right, both in a testable predictive sense and in a market sense than virtually anyone else. and most importantly, he's not an AI doomer, he's not an e/acc, but rather a
leo was a reseacher on the openai superalignment team before he was fired in april 2024 (and before that, he worked at FTX of all places). in june 2024 he published an astonishing essay on AI called "Situational Awareness: The Decade Ahead" https://situational-awareness....
in the 165-page essay (really, more of a book) he predicts that we will obtain recursively self-improving AI by 2027, leading to an intelligence implosion & AGI. he thinks AI will become a matter of national security and that the US has no choice but to beat China. he thinks we
daniel reeves in this post analyzes leo's predictions and finds that even though we are only 1 year in to his "decade-ahead" timeline, his predictions are holding up so far. in the last year, AI CAPEX has dramatically expanded. Stargate is a $500b planned project. halfway there
as a sidenote, one reason I really like Leo is because he maintains a kind of "pragmatic cautious optimism" around AI. he thinks it's a civilizationally important project and a matter of urgent national security. he thinks AGI and maybe ASI is possible, but he isn't a doomer. in
/ resume thread so after writing his manifesto, Leo didn't rest on his laurels. he raised approx $1b for a hedge fund focused on AGI-associated bets in H2 2024. he made bets on chip manufacturers (intel), datacenter-related businesses (broadcom, applied digital), neoclouds
notably, he had a huge intel call position in the fund. intel, ordinarily a sleep stock, skyrocketed in september when it emerged that the US government would take a stake in the company. some of his other positions absolutely printed: - IREN: 6x YTD - CRWV: 3.5x YTD - APLD:
what I like about Leo is he's doing everything in public. he wrote down his view, and then with no money management expertise, raised a fund, and put capital behind his convictions. compare this with the "AI bubble" callers. how many of them are actually net short AI? how many
sometimes in your career you just have to get one big thing very right and then apply the right amount of leverage to that idea. Leo is one of the best examples of this we've seen in some time. we'll see if he can keep up his blistering pace but either way, it's one of the most
@nic__carter its not really a secret that he's staunchly EA
@etoeth yeah. he worked at FTX after all. but he's less of a doomer than most of them
@nic__carter You know when we are close to peak when a 23 year old is sold to you as a kind of oracle just because he went all in on the biggest momentum trade.
@eye82 they were calling it a momo trade years ago. all you had to do was not be shaken out.
@nic__carter True story - I saw your post abt him 6 months ago, read his 13F and yolo’d into every position he held. Most are up 40-80%+
@userface02827 beast
@nic__carter His first paragraph mentions american power contracts and securing voltage transformers for the next decade. Has he seen this graph?
@chomskyhonk9 strategically, the USA needs to build way more power. financially, it makes sense to go long utilities (as he has done) because there's not enough of it, so it's getting way more expensive.
@nic__carter Is the 4-hour dwarkesh pod worth it
@FrankAFetter Yup or you can read his essay
@nic__carter Nic… he umm… why does he look like a vampire?
@themanbearpigV2 we think that he's a german count that is aging backwards hence why he has accumulated so much wisdom at a young age
@nic__carter Link to podcast please?
@nic__carter this crap right here is what Nikita's algorithm got us
@Rafa_Schwinger How about I block you so you get a reprieve
@nic__carter People should be able to recognize grifters. Most are not.
@mfarles he's not using his platform to make money he's not selling a course. he works with a handful of LPs like all HF guys. that's the opposite of grifting.
@nic__carter What is his hedge fund / possible to invest?
@VSarphatip89490 It’s called Situational Awareness LP
@nic__carter People absolutely love to pretend they know something others don’t. It’s in our instinct to try to impress others, to show that we know something unique. And I’m telling you, this guy doesn’t know anything that normal folks couldn’t know. It’s funny how non-technical people hear
@nic__carter I loved him in Twilight.
@nic__carter Secret third thing? Gay?