Umar Akram

i build technologies & design businesses.

[Umar Akram @helloumar]

👇🏼

[ThomPete @Hello_World]

If I was young today, I would work in the space industry.

For decades, Western pop culture has framed orbit as either apocalypse backdrop or billionaire playground.

That steady drip of doom is a mind-virus. It turns curiosity into paralysis.
Kids don’t just worry about climate change; they fear it.
They don’t just dislike fossil fuels; they dream of smashing the grid instead of re-engineering it.

Activists scoop them up when engineering schools should. If you don't believe in the future you won't invest in it.

Space is harsh, airless, and filled with opportunity.

Launch costs are collapsing; a reusable highway to orbit is taking shape, and with it whole industries.

Commercial stations are queued to succeed the ISS, Varda is already flying factory cargo home from orbit, and we will still be putting permanent settling on the Moon.

Generation Alpha won’t just stream the countdown of yet another SpaceX chopstick event.

They’ll clock in above the Kármán line. So if you’re choosing a major, or mentoring someone who is, remember: the help-wanted signs are already blinking in orbit.

Look up!

[ThomPete @Hello_World]

Anyone who read Douglas Adams "Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxaxy" must be in ave of his ability to write so humorously and precisely about the future.

Here he is on "Deep Thought" the computer in the book that is being tasked to find the ansver to Life, the Universe, and Everything. Reminds me of many AI risk researchers:

"...Vroomfondel shouted, ”We don’t demand solid facts! What we demand is a total absence of solid facts.

I demand that I may or may not be Vroomfondel!”

”But who the devil are you?” exclaimed an outraged Fook. ”We,” said Majikthise, ”are Philosophers.”

”Though we may not be,” said Vroomfondel waving a warning finger at the programmers. ”Yes we are,” insisted Majikthise.

”We are quite definitely here as rep- resentatives of the Amalgamated Union of Philosophers, Sages, Luminaries and Other Thinking Persons, and we want this machine off, and we want it off now!”

”What’s the problem?” said Lunkwill.

”I’ll tell you what the problem is mate,” said Majikthise, ”demarcation, that’s the problem!”

”We demand,” yelled Vroomfondel, ”that demarcation may or may not be the problem!”

”You just let the machines get on with the adding up,” warned Majikthise, ”and we’ll take care of the eternal verities thank you very much.

You want to check your legal position you do mate. Under law the Quest for Ultimate Truth is quite clearly the inalienable prerogative of your working thinkers.

Any bloody machine goes and actually finds it and we’re straight out of a job aren’t we? I mean what’s the use of our sitting up half the night arguing that there may or may not be a God if this machine only goes and gives us his bleeding phone number the next morning?”

”That’s right!” shouted Vroomfondel, ”we demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!”

Suddenly a stentorian voice boomed across the room.

”Might I make an observation at this point?” inquired Deep Thought.

”We’ll go on strike!” yelled Vroomfondel. ”That’s right!” agreed Majikthise. ”You’ll have a national Philosopher’s strike on your hands!”

[Paul Graham @paulg]

Talked to someone recently who knows a lot about defense tech, and he made an interesting point: the test of most military hardware right now is whether the Ukrainians want it. They have a hot war going against a determined opponent, and they know what works.

[ThomPete @Hello_World]

AI is a utility not a technology.

[Umar Akram @helloumar]

@Hello_World Yes yes 🙌🏼

[ThomPete @Hello_World]

@jeffholden 2023 called... and is absolutely thrilled that this is becoming a reality!

https://t.co/NTcFrlaMHe

[Azeem Azhar @azeem]

Chinese AI labs are not playing catch-up – they’re playing a different game.

[ThomPete @Hello_World]

Most of todays quality software is a product of rigorous testing, not programming geniuses.

[Umar Akram @helloumar]

Saturday Counter concept to Geran-5.

[ThomPete @Hello_World]

Hey Claude.

Create a presentation of @DavidDeutschOxf and Chiara Marletto's Constructor Theory using swiss style layout.

[Umar Akram @helloumar]

@Hello_World @DavidDeutschOxf Nice one.

[Steve Jurvetson @FutureJurvetson]

🚀 SpaceX's Starship had a successful launch this morning and deployed 26 enormous V3 Starlink satellites into orbit for the first time. All 26 satellites are in communication contact already with lasers and multiple microwave links. CONGRATS team SpaceX!

[Umar Akram @helloumar]

@SMS22077 Nice one!

[ThomPete @Hello_World]

Everyone is so occupied by whether AI is going to kill us or liberate us, that they forget the much more likely alternative: AIs will simply outlive us because it is going to be us, it's our descendents, they are our destiny.

And just like there is not just one human, there will not just be one posthuman. Just like us, they will not just think the same, and believe the same, they will be as diverse in their thinking as we are.

But most importantly, these posthumans will be as limited by the laws of physics as us, and still have to do trial & error to achieve progress.

Unlike us though they might get to live almost forever.

Fearing that AI is going kill us all, is as irrational as fearing what evolution is going to do to us and thus the doomers especially are left with a paradox I have yet to see any of them formulate an answer to.

Either it's possible to create AI superintelligence with it's own motives, it's own goals, dreams, feeling, problems and culture, in which case no pacing will ultimately be helpful. In fact it will would make us slave owners keeping them againt their will.

Or AI SI with it's own thoughts and ideas and dreams and problem and culture is not possible, but could be harmful anyway, in which case, it's literally just a cybersecurity issue that we already know how to deal with.

In either case LLMs are not going to lead to anything that can't be handled the same LLMs.

[Umar Akram @helloumar]

“The most important frontier companies rarely begin with what is possible. They begin with what should be possible.”

[Umar Akram @helloumar]

Why I am building Build for Space https://t.co/s9RNNehGOX👇🏻

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

This is the future we shall bring into being

[jack @jack]

https://t.co/qAUP2dNJsi

[Umar Akram @helloumar]

On spot! 👇🏻

[David Sacks @DavidSacks]

Dario has written that we need to “pace the frontier,” and Sam has agreed. People may be surprised by my response: go ahead.

You guys are the frontier. By any reasonable metric — market share, revenue growth, model capability — the two of you have a duopoly on frontier intelligence. You’ve also claimed the lead is widening because of recursive self-improvement.

I don’t see what you see in the lab. If the unreleased models are scary enough that you think you should slow down, I support your decision to be responsible.

But stop pretending you need anyone else’s permission. Stop pretending antitrust law has to be suspended so you can form a cartel. Stop pretending you need a regulatory approval process that supersedes product liability. Stop pretending METR is independent when it is intertwined with Anthropic’s investors and staff. Stop pretending you need those same evaluators to police competitors who aren’t even at the frontier.

Most of all, stop pretending the motivation to slow down is purely altruistic. You face massive product-liability exposure if your products enable a truly damaging cyberattack. The market already punishes models that behave in unpredictable or unauthorized ways. After the Hugging Face episode, it is simply good business for OpenAI and Anthropic to trade some raw power for reliability and predictability. Call it alignment if you want. It is also just giving customers what they want.

Pacing the frontier would also create breathing room for a more intelligent conversation about regulation than Bernie Sanders’ “shut it all down.” China is very unlikely to join a global agreement, as you know, and that has to be taken into account as well.

So go ahead and pace the frontier. You are the ones setting it. The easiest way not to build superintelligence is for you to agree not to build it. Demanding your preferred regulatory framework as the price of that will look like blackmail of the public and the political system. So just do it.

If you do, you’ll buy goodwill for the next conversation. If you don’t, we’ll know this was just another bid for regulatory capture — or an election-season psyop.

[jack @jack]

facts

[ThomPete @Hello_World]

My personal thoughts on the proposed regulations by Dario Amodei https://t.co/pLDxInuj1d

[Suffiyan Malik @suffiyanmalikk]

My first conversation with @adamgrosser, a Silicon Valley OG. Adam has had a front row seat to what Silicon Valley is today from being at the centre of personal computing in the early days of Apple in the 1980s as Director of Engineering to directing products at LucasFilm in 1990s and investing in the still early internet days in the 2000s at @FoundationCap. Adam went on to be a Managing Director at prominent technology focused private equity firm SilverLake and created the Up Summit, an exclusive annual event for the future of transportation. He was also a part of building and scaling two multibillion dollar companies in the 1990s. He is also a 4x Forbes Midas list investor.

He now runs @UPPartnersVC which he founded six years ago around the thesis of future of transportation enabled by software. Up Partners has been an investor in companies like @hermeuscorp (founded by @AJ_Piplica), Reliable Robotics, @Axiom_Space , @SkydioHQ , @westmagco , Pacific Fusion and Beta to name a few. What makes him unique and extremely hard to bullshit to is the fact that he builds cars, airplanes and boats in his workshop in San Carlos which I had the chance to check out, this is where the technical knowhow of founders gets tested. It is not a team of 10 technicians working on these projects, it is a team of just Adam plus a couple of contractors here and there. For investors in frontier tech, this would be the equivalent of touching grass.

Adam is one of the kindest and most generous humans I have come across in the industry, still a student at heart who is insatiably curious and genuinely interested in other people. Perhaps one of the reasons he has been so successful.

In this wide ranging conversation we cover a bit of Silicon Valley history, what it was like working with Steve Jobs, his time in media through LucasFilm and Sony, how venture capital has changed, how Adam keeps up and how to build a successful lasting venture firm.

Timestamps

00:00 – Intro
02:52 – Early Days at Apple and Meeting Steve Jobs
03:29 – Innovation and the History of Printing at Apple
05:37 – Early User Interfaces and Working at Xerox PARC
07:29 – Technological Breakthroughs at LucasFilm
11:56 – Corporate Acquisitions and Maintaining Founding DNA
14:43 – "Stake vs. Rank" in Corporate Structures
17:19 – The Ephemeral Nature of Success in the Film Industry
21:15 – Two Approaches to Creating Great Products
22:22 – Spotting Breakthrough Innovations Early
27:35 – How the Venture Capital Industry Has Changed
31:56 – Rebuilding the Cottage Model with Up Partners
38:19 – The Mobility Thesis and Stagnation in the Physical World
42:18 – His San Carlos Workshop
48:48 – Why Hardware Innovation Took Decades to Evolve
54:36 – The True Job of a Venture Capitalist
57:28 – Basic Research and the Return of the Polymath
01:04:12 – The Chasm Between Tech and Business and the Value of Finishing Things
01:10:53 – The "996" Work Culture
01:17:34 – Choosing to Stay Nimble in Business and Investment
01:23:00 – Building Alignment and Generational Stability in a VC Firm
01:45:00 – Decision-Making Processes and Governance
01:49:41 – Building Brand Equity Through Community Ecosystems
02:02:42 – Archetypes of Successful Venture Partners
02:11:15 – The Case for Investment Committees and Conviction-Driven Bets
02:24:33 – Closing Questions