Thinking On Paper

The US and China are racing to build AI systems that could lead to superintelligence before any enforceable global rules exist to inspect them, limit them or verify what they can do.

Mark and Jeremy Think On Paper about The Hard Question of AI, an essay by Planet CEO Will Marshall. Marshall argues that AI governance now needs the same kind of verification, trust and global protection as nuclear weapons.

That means more than voluntary safety tests and China and America laying down their AGI swords. And since that is unlikely, it could mean monitoring chips, tracking data-centre construction and energy use, inspecting frontier AI labs, protecting whistleblowers and agreeing international red lines around recursive self-improvement.

But the nuclear comparison has many challenges. Weapons-grade material is scarce and difficult to hide. Just ask Iran. AI software can spread quickly and cross borders. Any Tom, Dick or Harry could end up being the first to create superintelligence. 

At the centre of the episode is one question: what would AI’s Cuban Missile Crisis look like? What event would force the US and China to cooperate? Really cooperate. Lip service won’t calm existential risk. 

We also discuss Sam Altman, Dario Amodei and Demis Hassabis, the incentives behind AI safety warnings, the limits of voluntary regulation, the RAND verification framework, recursive self-improvement, the Fermi paradox and whether governments can build the institutions required to manage AI superintelligence.

Hint: they can’t.

Please enjoy the show. And don’t have nightmares.

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Thinking on Paper is a technology podcast about AI, Space, quantum computing, science, and the systems shaping your life. 
🏠 ⁠Buy us a beer on Substack⁠
🫵 C⁠hoose your own technology adventure ⁠
📺  ⁠Watch our beautiful faces on YouTube ⁠
🎧 R⁠emember Steve Jobs on APPLE⁠
📺 ⁠Get clips and exclusive videos on Instagram ⁠

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Chapters

00:00 Trailer 
01:38 AI And Existential Risk
02:40 OpenAI, Anthropic & Google
04:40 Nuclear meltdown or sharks?
05:50 Why is everyone speaking about the end of humanity
08:00 RSI - Closed loop recursive self improvement
10:00 A ghostbuster copyright interlude
19:39 Why America And China Are In An AI Race
23:51 The AI Cuban Missile Crisis
28:07 The AI Supply Chain
35:09 USA And China And The AI DeadEnd
40:36 The Nuclear Framework

AI companies are splashing billions on more GPUs before they use the ones they already have. Many sit idle, others use a fraction of their potential. 

For the hyperscalers, cloud providers and AI companies, buying more GPUs does not solve much if the GPUs already in the rack spend too much time waiting for the rest of the system.

The next battle in the AI infrastructure wars is efficiency: GPU utilization, NICs, memory movement, networking, CPUs and software that keeps expensive hardware doing useful work.
Moshe Tanach runs NeuReality AI, a company building infrastructure for AI inference. In this conversation, he explains why the next wave of AI infrastructure depends on GPU utilization, NICs, memory movement, networking and software efficiency, not just buying more chips.

This is a technical conversation about AI inference, infrastructure efficiency and the hardware layer beneath ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and the AI tools now being built into business software.

Please enjoy the show.

Thinking on Paper is a technology podcast about AI, Space, quantum computing, science, and the systems shaping your life. 
🏠 ⁠Buy us a beer on Substack⁠
🫵 C⁠hoose your own technology adventure ⁠
📺  ⁠Watch our beautiful faces on YouTube ⁠
🎧 R⁠emember Steve Jobs on APPLE⁠
📺 ⁠Get clips and exclusive videos on Instagram ⁠

--
Chapters

(00:00) The GPU challenge
(01:27) Training Vs Inference
(05:45) Memory & Keeping The GPU Busy
(07:31) Deep Seek, Blackwell & Ruben
(09:03) How Ripe Is CPU For Reinvention?
(11:03) AI Agents Run On CPUs
(12:51) Do We Need All The Computation?
(14:35) GPU Utilization Rates
(16:50) Tokens In A Context Window
(20:59) Data, Knowledge & Wisdom
(23:56) Why Are Your GPUs Busy? (A Truck Analogy)
(29:07) Hyperscalers
(31:59) The Decode Phase
(36:47) What More Efficient GPUs Means For The User

Could cultivated meat replace industrial farming without asking billions of people to change what they eat? And save all the cows on the way?

Bruce Friedrich, founder of the Good Food Institute and author of Meat, explains why the future of food may depend less on changing human behaviour and more on changing how meat is produced.
For more than 12,000 years, humans have relied on animal agriculture to produce meat. Bruce argues that this system is reaching its limits.

We explore how cultivated meat is made, why it is attracting support from governments and major food companies, and why some of the biggest meat eaters are also the most open to the technology.
Along the way, we discuss the environmental cost of livestock, antibiotic resistance, food security, infrastructure, consumer psychology, regulation, and whether this technology could become as transformative as renewable energy or electric vehicles.

We also examine what happens to farmers, why culture may be harder to change than technology, and whether cultivated meat can ever reach price parity with conventional meat.

If the next agricultural revolution is already underway, it may not begin on a farm.

Thinking on Paper is a technology podcast about AI, Space, quantum computing, science, and the systems shaping your life. 

🏠 Buy us a beer on Substack
🫵 Choose your own technology adventure
📺  Watch our beautiful faces on YouTube
🎧 Remember Steve Jobs on APPLE
📺 Get clips and exclusive videos on Instagram

--

Chapters

(00:00) Who Eats Cultivated Meat?
(02:37) Cultural Significance of Meat
(06:09) What Is Cultivated Meat?
(08:25) The Science Behind Cultivated Meat
(10:48) How Much Does Cultivated Meat Cost?
(14:46) What does cultivated meat taste like?
(17:10) Emerging Companies in the Lab Meat Industry
(19:08) Industry Support for Alternative Meats
(21:06) Government Role in Innovation
(24:40) The Future of Animal Agriculture
(28:25) Agricultural Policies for Sustainability
(31:41) What Are Fermented Meats?
(35:48) Meat And Antibiotic Resistance
(39:32) The Invisible Costs of Meat Production
(42:26) The Future of Cultivated Meat

Asteroid mining sounds insane until you speak to AstroForge CEO Matthew Gialich. Then it makes perfect sense.

Matthew’s team at AstroForge builds spacecraft to mine metallic M-type asteroids for platinum group metals, the unglamorous but essential metals inside phones, cars, chips, electronics and much more.

AstroForge is one of the few companies trying to make space mining real, targeting metal-rich asteroids that could contain platinum, palladium, iridium and other PGMs.

Why? Earth’s resources are getting harder, deeper and more expensive to reach. The good stuff is not sitting neatly on the surface. A lot of it is buried, depleted, regulated or uneconomic.

In this episode, Matthew explains why asteroid mining may now be technically and economically possible, why Planetary Resources may have been too early, how SpaceX changed the capital story for space startups, and why AstroForge’s first deep-space spacecraft failed after travelling nearly a million miles from Earth.

Please enjoy the show.

--
Thinking on Paper is a technology podcast about AI, Space, quantum computing, science, and the systems shaping your life. 

🏠 Buy us a beer on Substack
🫵 Choose your own technology adventure
📺  Watch our beautiful faces on YouTube
🎧 Remember Steve Jobs on APPLE
📺 Get clips and exclusive videos on Instagram

--
Chapters

(00:00) Asteroid Mining Trailer
(02:51) The Economic Necessity of Asteroid Mining
(08:37) Lessons from Planetary Resources
(10:43) Risk and Innovation
(15:26) Deep Space Two
(19:05) The Quest for Asteroid Exploration
(22:20) Aliens & Life Beyond Earth
(24:17) Ownership and Ethics in Space Mining
(26:21) The Next Challenges in Asteroid Mining
(27:56) Changing Earth's Economy
(30:13) The Role of Capital
(32:32) Matt's Vision for Space Exploration
(35:06) The Drive to Explore the Universe
(36:55) NASA's Evolution
(39:17) Inside Astroforge
(42:53) The Complexity of Space Engineering
(44:25) Data Centers in Space
(47:30) The Limitations of AI in Space Engineering

Quantum computers could change medicine, material science and AI. Unfortunately, it's impossible to know how because the industry is buried under hype.

In today’s show, Dr. Bob Sutor takes us on a masterclass through the hype and conflicting headlines to the reality of quantum technology today. 

By the end of the show you’ll know what’s fact and fiction, where the industry is heading and how to protect yourself from AI slop masquerading as insight.

We also learn about:

Why “quantum supremacy” and “quantum advantage” claims should be treated carefully

Why quantum computing is still in its prehistory

How engineering discipline is changing the field

What IBM and Cleveland Clinic’s protein simulation work shows about quantum chemistry

Why money, sovereignty and technology are driving the quantum industry

How governments are funding quantum computing in the United States, France, the UK, Finland and elsewhere

What China may be doing in quantum computing

Which industries are doing serious quantum research

Why there are many quantum hardware approaches and no clear winner yet

Whether helium-3 supply matters for quantum computing

Bob also explains why quantum computers will be useful for specific classes of difficult problems where classical computers struggle, especially once systems become larger, more reliable and fault tolerant.

The conversation ends with practical advice on separating the quantum noise from the Thinking On Paper signal.

Please enjoy the show.

--
Thinking on Paper is a technology podcast about AI, Space, quantum computing, science, and the systems shaping your life. 

🏠 Buy us a beer on Substack
🫵 Choose your own technology adventure
📺  Watch our beautiful faces on YouTube
🎧 Remember Steve Jobs on APPLE:
📺 Get clips and exclusive videos on Instagram

(00:00) AI Quantum Slop
(00:40) Welcome To The Show
(06:04) When Quantum Computers Finally Become Useful
(10:13) Why Governments Are Throwing Money at Quantum
(15:53) Is China Ahead in Quantum?
(18:48) Where Quantum Might Actually Matter
(27:11) Can Quantum Help Fix Climate Change?
(28:35) Why Battery Companies Care About Quantum
(30:31) Why Quantum Doesn’t Belong in the IT Department
(31:53) Who’s Doing the Real Work in Quantum?
(32:40) Why Quantum Companies Need Real Customers
(38:19) The Funding Problem Behind Quantum Progress
(45:22) Does Quantum Computing Need Helium-3?
(48:01) Will We Need a Quantum Computer Matchmaker?
(50:38) How to Spot Quantum Hype Before You Share It