Nathan Lian

[Arthur MacWaters @ArthurMacwaters]

AI medicine is inevitable.

In fact, it has arrived.

We're excited about this agreement with Utah to allow our AI to prescribe psychiatric renewals.

Yes. AI prescribing medication.

This is monumental and will collapse the cost of care.

(1/

[Nathan Lian @nathanclian]

@zachmoskow Sadly no - already had an EightSleep + didn't have the energy to move the $300k

[Suchintan Singh @itssuchintan]

1/ We just raised $2.7M to give AI "hands" to do real work. 🚀

Browser automation has been broken for 20 years. If a button moves 10 pixels, your script breaks.

Meet Skyvern: The open-source agent that fixes the "maintenance tax" of automation.

[Kushal Byatnal @kushalbyatnal]

we built OCR Arena, a free playground for the community to compare leading VLMs and OCR models side-by-side!

upload any doc, run 10+ OCR models, and vote for the best ones on a public leaderboard:

[Brendan McCord 🏛️ x 🤖 @Brendan_McCord]

Every builder's first duty is philosophical: to decide what they should build for.

AI is beginning to decide what ideas reach your mind—your next action, your next job, your next relationship. It will tempt you to outsource your thinking in ways you’ve never been tempted before.

Left unchecked, this becomes autocomplete for life.

200 years ago, when mechanization was starting to transform the world, the German philosopher Wilhelm von Humboldt warned of this very dynamic: To flourish as humans, we have to be self-directed. We are the architects of our own becoming.

But if we offload our thinking—if we let AI automate what we once pursued with intention—is it still our life to live?

To build AI that advances human flourishing, we need technologists who combine technical ability with moral vision.

Silicon Valley once embodied this: Jobs and Wozniak asked what kind of creative life personal computers should enable; ARPANET's pioneers envisioned what kind of connected society networks should foster.

But today, we now see three dominant archetypes:

1. The puzzle-absorbed: Solving technical challenges without reflecting on broader ends

2. The reductionists: Collapsing morality into math

3. The dismissers: Waving off philosophy as irrelevant to progress

All three abdicate the fundamental question: What should we build for?

This is where philosophy is essential. Because the job of a builder isn’t just to ship. It’s to shape a shared world.

We need a new kind of technologist—one who builds with human flourishing in mind. Who resists centralized control. Who strengthens autonomy instead of mining attention.

We call them Philosopher-Builders.

@cosmos_inst exists to train and support them—people who translate deep thinking into systems, institutions, and infrastructure that serve human ends.

If you believe the future of AI should expand human freedom and lift human potential, read the full essay.

[Johnathan Bi @JohnathanBi]

1% of the world own 43% of the wealth.

1% of startups drive over 80% of returns.

This power law is even stronger with books:

1% of books contain all the important ideas.

My new lecture series will take you through the only books you'll ever need. Watch the launch trailer:

[Nathan Lian @nathanclian]

Well deserved @jijosunny 👏

@voicenotesai has been truly game changing and has completely reshaped my relationship with note taking (for the better). Proud to be a lifer!

[Voicenotes @voicenotesai]

No. 1 Product of the day on @ProductHunt 😻🎉

[Nathan Lian @nathanclian]

@heyblake Fellowship to fund and partner w academics working on aging and age-related diseases - https://t.co/dvd666oLW6

[Nathan Lian @nathanclian]

@SalehOfTomorrow This feels similar to the "post an incorrect answer on stack overflow" strategy and I love it. Never thought to do this with competitors before - great tip

[Nathan Lian @nathanclian]

@SchrodingrsBrat There's certainly something uniquely transcendent about transience.

[Nathan Lian @nathanclian]

Let's make a splash. $200k to fund the most ambitious moonshots in aging and age-related diseases.

Apply now: https://t.co/dvd666oLW6

[Edward Lando @edwardlando]

Today we unveil the @ParetoHoldings pH Fellowship with the goal of accelerating efforts to take on aging and age-related diseases.

We have so far backed nearly 1,000 early stage startups around the world, mostly focused on being the first to take a chance on great teams.

We will continue to do this, but with this pH Fellowship want to underline our particular interest in fundamentally reshaping what aging looks like.

Our goal is to closely partner with leading investigators and give them the resources and infrastructure to realize their most ambitious moonshots.

We believe that we are living through a turning point in human history where many of the ailments that affect us as we go through life are going to be solvable.

With this in mind, it is hard for me to imagine a worthier space to invest our efforts and funds.

Here's what you can expect:

💰 $200,000 in funding
🗓 12-months of programming
💭 Expert guidance + unfettered access to our network
📜 End-to-end oversight of all licensing and IP negotiations with your institution
✍ Fundraising support for your next round

All of this led by our very own @nathanclian

Let's extend healthy human lifespan, together. We can't wait to review your application.

Please apply here / comment the names of students and professors who should see this. Thank you.

https://t.co/F3JNlsQX0v

[Nathan Lian @nathanclian]

It can be debilitating to imagine an eternal future, but at the same time: how remarkable is it that we have this brief moment of life that allows us to think, and feel, and love, and explore, and illuminate? How wonderful is that?

[Nathan Lian @nathanclian]

On a cosmological scale, human existence will be but a brief flicker. There will be a long period of time after we’re extinct just as there was a long period of time before we ever existed.

[Nathan Lian @nathanclian]

Though human existence may be but a brief flicker and our own lives a briefer one still, they're everything. There's nothing else we'll ever experience.

[Nathan Lian @nathanclian]

@amguzzi @mauraball Check out Laxis - there's a free tier and doesn't show up as an add'l participant in a Google Meet

[David Sussillo @SussilloDavid]

1/7
For the past decade, our team at Meta Reality Labs (previously CTRL-labs) has been dedicated to developing a neuromotor interface.

Our goal is to address the Human Computer Interaction challenge of providing effortless, intuitive, and efficient input to computers.

[Nathan Lian @nathanclian]

@nic_detommaso I'll qualify this slightly: a nontrivial number of VCs are akin to employees who can regurgitate strategies and frameworks, but who can't contextualize them into tactical execution. That said, the rare few who can are truly invaluable and the best partners to have.

[Nathan Lian @nathanclian]

@jefielding 100% - though I'll caveat that for AI apps esp, sales cycles are impeded by enterprise adoption/ appetite. Unproven ROI seems to drive to "no decision" more often than "buy" (at least for now)

[Nathan Lian @nathanclian]

Marketers beware...

1./ Election year = higher paid ad CPMs/ CACs
2./ ChatGPT/ Perplexity/ etc. usage = lower search volumes/ early journey site traffic
3./ 3rd-party cookie deprecation (100% by 3Q24) = worse attribution and user targeting

...2024 is going to be quite the year.