Sumner L Norman

co-founder @merge

[Sumner L Norman @SumnerLN]

Ecstatic to announce Merge Labs! 🧠🚀

I’m honored to work alongside my co-founders—Tyson Aflalo, @mikhailshapiro, @sandroherbig, @alexblania, and @sama on bridging biological and artificial intelligence. They’re *the* team to take on a mission this ambitious.

We’re grateful to have partners like @OpenAI who share a long-term view on what it takes to build foundational technology.

If you want to work on hard, foundational neurotech problems, come build with us.

[Samuel Hume @DrSamuelBHume]

One of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen: a standing ovation for the full Daraxonrasib results

I feel inspired and energised, to put it mildly — we have a targeted therapy for pancreatic cancer now, and nothing is undruggable anymore

[Wojciech Zaremba @woj_zaremba]

Building AI resilience is among the most important work of our generation. We have a lot to do to get it right. At the OpenAI Foundation, this is where we’re starting:

[Anastasia Gamick @AGamick]

New FRO dropping!

[Wojciech Zaremba @woj_zaremba]

AI will transform the economy and jobs, creating opportunities while also bringing new challenges.

At OpenAI Foundation, we are launching a program to better understand shifts, support the transition, and build long-term economic security.

Starting with $250M dedicated
https://t.co/7GUw9KaA64

[Sumner L Norman @SumnerLN]

One of the most important areas of AI Safety and @hannu is just the absolute best at what he does (which includes many things!)

[Ashlee Vance @ashleevance]

An absolute thrill to speak with famed sci-fi author and all around genius @hannu about his life, visions of the future and our chances of defeating AI bioweapons via @redqueenbio https://t.co/8j9hKfkrjN

[Sumner L Norman @SumnerLN]

👇

[Nan Ransohoff @nanransohoff]

New blog post: The third wave of American philanthropy

Hundreds of billions of dollars in new philanthropic capital will soon become liquid. The OpenAI Foundation holds 26% of OpenAI, worth about $220B at today’s valuation. Anthropic’s seven co-founders have pledged to give away 80% of their wealth and have instituted the most aggressive donor matching program for employees in tech history.

How much does this all add up to? And how meaningful is that in the context of philanthropy today?

I was doing some simple napkin math to wrap my head around the scale of what’s coming, and radicalized myself in the process. I had dramatically underappreciated the scale of the philanthropic capital that’s about to become available and the corresponding gap in talent and organizations that will be needed to make the most of it.

This piece aims to directionally sketch the scale of what’s coming, the gap in operational capacity needed to absorb it, and what we can do to fill it.

(Link to full post in reply)

[Sumner L Norman @SumnerLN]

It's happening! 🚀🚀🚀

[Anastasia Gamick @AGamick]

NSF not only ran with the X-Labs concept, but committed $1.5B This is a bold and exciting opportunity. We want to find the scientists and entrepreneurs who want to make the most of this moment.

[U.S. National Science Foundation @NSF]

NSF announces $1.5B NSF X-Labs initiative to pursue generational breakthrough science efforts. NSF X-Labs will scale a new generation of transformative independent research organizations to advance breakthrough science outside of traditional institutions. https://t.co/LljEcBoBFa

[John Ennis @johnennis]

https://t.co/b89862LIqj

[Tyler Maran @TylerMaran]

venice was built on a sandbar in 421 ad

what's stopping us?

[Sumner L Norman @SumnerLN]

@VicVRad Who is "I" in this scenario? 🫨

[Sumner L Norman @SumnerLN]

If you had 10x the agency you feel you have now, what would you do?

[Tom Kalil @tkalil2050]

I am very proud of the progress that @RenPhilanthropy and its partners have made in our first two years – $533 million in funding for science and technology, launching more than 20 programs, training 45 scientists and innovators to design transformative, ARPA-style programs, partnering with the UK, German and Japanese governments, and publishing our first 10 playbooks on the “how” of innovation. Our field strategists are accelerating progress in areas such as AI for fundamental math, AI for early literacy, geologic hydrogen, stabilizing the Arctic climate, low-cost space telescopes, and open-source software for life sciences. Thanks to all the philanthropists, foundations, and governments that have supported our work – and please reach out if you’d like to collaborate. The best is yet to come!

[Sumner L Norman @SumnerLN]

Once in a while, science expands human capabilities. This is one such case. Super cool.

"Oz enables display of colors that lie beyond the
well- known, bounded color gamut of natural human vision"

"Subjects report that olo in our proto-
type system appears blue-green of unprecedented saturation"

https://t.co/I1fP2hvjCb

[Dwarkesh Patel @dwarkesh_sp]

.@AdamMarblestone thinks it might cost ~low billions to map the human brain connectome.

The benefit is getting answers about the brain’s secret sauce: esp. why are humans so much more sample- and energy-efficient.

If labs are going to be spending trillions of dollars on compute by the end of the decade, Adam's pitch is: give him 1/100th of that to actually figure out these big questions about intelligence.

[Ilan Gur @ilangur]

We're on the precipice of massive sociotechnical transformation. In thinking about what root-level technologies will matter most, I keep coming back to two themes.

The first is Coordination. Non-linear and asymmetric technology acceleration is going to push things way out of equilibrium over the next couple of decades. We'll need counterforces that hold and pull society together. New technologies, institutions, and movements that can:
- amplify trust, connection and collaboration.
- drive collective flourishing while preserving individuality.
- get us closer to the pareto frontier of shareholder and social value creation.

The second is Neurotechnology. Neurological disorders are humanity's biggest barrier to productivity, agency, happiness, and peace. Meanwhile, powerful AI is about to challenge the very foundations of human identity and experience. Applying frontier engineering and invention to frontier neuroscience, I think we can massively shift the trajectory of human flourishing:
- understand what makes us “us.”
- gain control over psychiatric disorders, learning, cognition, and bias.
- solve alignment and symbiosis with hyperintelligent machines.
- protect, enhance & preserve the human experience.

Thrilled to explore these topics as part of @RenPhilanthropy's growing community of scientists, funders, and entrepreneurs working to slingshot humanity into a better future!

[Georgia Channing @cgeorgiaw]

Every drug × every target

📊 228 targets
💊 1,397 FDA-approved compounds
🔬 558K interactions

@EvEBiotech's largest data release ever adds 29 new GPCRs in the Gs pathway + 1 kinase (PDGFRa-D842V)

All on @huggingface 🤗

[Sumner L Norman @SumnerLN]

Sure, there's a lot of slop. But my backlog of quality content from brilliant people that I've gotten to know and trust (either in their artifacts or IRL) has never been larger.

So much incredible progress being made right now.

[Sumner L Norman @SumnerLN]

Life finds a way

[Science Magazine @ScienceMagazine]

For decades, biology textbooks have enshrined a simple rule: DNA is made by copying a template. After one enzyme unzips a DNA double helix into separate strands, another called a polymerase builds a complementary sequence, base by base, for each strand. Presto: two copies of the original DNA.

But new research into how bacteria defend themselves from viruses now shows this synthesis rule isn’t absolute.

Now, a team describes a bacterial enzyme that synthesizes DNA without a nucleic acid template, using its own structure as a guide.

Learn more: https://t.co/TeUWvyO0OD @NewsfromScience

[Ashlee Vance @ashleevance]

Tomorrow, @sama and @gdb will be on a podcast together for the first time ever. And they will give an exact date for the arrival of AGI.

New models, the trial with @elonmusk, @AnthropicAI beef, Sam personal drama, the future of compute buys, @kyliebytes and I do it all.

@corememory episode 67 hits on the Substack only. If you want the goods, it's time to sub up https://t.co/rtH5Wecqkx

The Core Memory pod is on all major platforms and brought to you by @brexHQ and @e1ventures because they have great taste.