Weekly Dose of Optimism #79
Nuclear Loan, Decarbonization, Magrathea, Neuralink, VX-548, GooGooGaG.ai
Hi friends 👋,
Happy Friday and welcome back to our 79th Weekly Dose of Optimism.
Meta is BACK — the stock rose 15% in extended trading yesterday, after the company reported 25% revenue growth and its first ever dividend. It’s now trading at 5x its November ‘22 low. You may be asking yourself, “why is Dan leading off the Weekly Dose with a gushing review of Meta?” Well, it turns out that I think a front-footed Zuck is good for the world. Let’s even put aside that he’s pledged a significant portion of his personal wealth toward “curing all diseases.” Zuck just knows how to invest in the frontier at scale — he’s proven it with mobile, AR/VR, and AI (among other things.) Very few other operators have the capabilities, control, and ambition to continue investing tens of billions of dollars in long payback projects.
Sue me: I think Zuck is good for the world.
Let’s get to it.
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(1) Biden to Offer $1.5 Billion Loan to Restart Michigan Nuclear Power Plant
Ari Natter for Bloomberg
The Biden administration is poised to lend $1.5 billion for what what would be the first restart of a shuttered US nuclear reactor, the latest sign of strengthening federal government support for the atomic industry.
Did Age of Miracles do it again or did Age of Miracles do it again? Uncle Joe must’ve really enjoyed Season 1, because this is about the most pro-nuclear thing a president has done since the 1970s!
The Biden administration plans to lend $1.5 billion to restart Holtec’s Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan, which originally closed for financial reasons. One power plant isn’t going to really move the needle on achieving the Biden Admin’s climate goals, but it is a strong signal that the administration is supporting the nuclear industry. Like any deal like this there’s a bunch of local, state, and federal politicking going on behind the scenes — how many jobs will this produce, will this get bipartisan support, etc., etc., — but overall, this initiative reflects Biden’s broader strategy of maintaining nuclear energy's role in the U.S. energy mix.
(2) Decarbonization: Stocks and flows, abundance and scarcity, net zero
From Nat Bullard
Speaking of clean energy, Nat Bullard just published his annual 200-slide presentation on Decarbonization. The impressive deck covers “the state of decarbonization told with climate, capital markets, technology, and sector data.” You should go through all 200-slides (will take 10 mins), but sharing some summary points below:
Climate is getting worse: Temperatures are warming, weather is more unpredictable, glaciers are melting.
Renewables are Exploding: Solar and wind growth is insane, energy R&D is at all-time highs, and markets respond to climate incentives.
Investment Opportunities: US Clean Tech investment is soaring, US manufacturing is booming, there is a ton of dry powder in climate tech.
Bullard captures the point of his presentation, saying, “A coherent view of the future begins with the clearest possible view of the present.” We couldn’t agree more. David Deutsch’s Principle of Optimism: “All evils are caused by insufficient knowledge.”
(2a) US Department of Defense forms $28M partnership with Magrathea
The project will bring new primary magnesium metal supply back to the United States for the first time in 40 years and is the US Government’s first major investment in magnesium since World War II.
Packy here. One of the challenges to decarbonization is mining and refining all of raw materials we’ll need to make batteries, solar panels, and nuclear reactors.
Some people believe we’ll simply run out of resources. They’re wrong. As demand increases, entrepreneurs are incentivized to come up with new ways to find, mine, and refine. Companies like Earth AI are creating more effective ways to discover and test deposits. We’re beginning to mine the 3,400 kilotons of lithium in the Salton Sea, enough to support batteries for 375 million electric vehicles. And yesterday, a startup called Magrathea announced a $28 million partnership with the DoD to produce carbon neutral magnesium from seawater and brines.
Magrathea’s website says: “We’re developing generational upgrades to magnesium production technology that radically reduces cost and environmental impact.” That’s Techno-Industrial language, and another example of my belief that the best climate companies are techno-industrials in a green disguise.
One of my most optimistic take is that “climate change is a very real challenge with very real negative impacts on people and the planet. But climate change is solvable, and by solving it, we unlock the next phase of civilization’s growth.” Magrathea is another piece of evidence that not only are all problems solvable, by solving them, we end up in a better spot than we were before.
(3) What to know about Elon Musk's Neuralink, which put an implant into a human brain
Elon Musk says his ambitious plan to let humans wirelessly connect their brains with phones and other devices has taken a new step, announcing that the first human has received a brain implant from his Neuralink company.
This story is still very much developing — all we have to go is a post from Elon Musk on X — but it may be the most important story of the year. According to Musk, Neuralink has conducted its first surgical test of a brain implant, the patient is recovering well, and the initial results are promising.
Neuralink first received FDA approval for this trial last May and said it wanted to enlist people with quadriplegia or ALS for the initial trial run. The goal of Neuralink is enable direct communication between the human brain and external devices, potentially enhancing cognitive abilities and treating neurological disorders. It’s starting with helping to treat these neurological disorders first — there are fewer ethical concerns and the therapies have more defined solution states — but it’s not hard to imagine a world in which we’re all walking around with a Neuralink implanted in our brains that hooks us up directly to an AGI supercomputer. The Singularity has never seemed so real.
(4) Experimental Drug Cuts Off Pain at the Source, Company Says
Gina Kolata for the New York Times
Vertex Pharmaceuticals of Boston announced Tuesday that it had developed an experimental drug that relieves moderate to severe pain, blocking pain signals before they can get to the brain. It works only on peripheral nerves — those outside the brain and the spinal cord — making it unlike opioids. Vertex says its new drug is expected to avoid opioids’ potential to lead to addiction.
Vertex Pharmaceuticals has developed a drug, VX-548, which relieves moderate to severe pain without the addiction risks associated with opioids. VX-548 targets peripheral nerves, blocking pain signals before reaching the brain. Early clinical trials have shown significant pain reduction in patients undergoing common surgeries. VX-548 is potential breakthrough in pain treatment, given its efficacy and non-additive qualities. The company plans to submit the drug for the FDA approval process soon — and given the opioid crisis in the U.S., that approval can’t come soon enough.
(5) This AI learnt language by seeing the world through a baby’s eyes
Elizabeth Gibney for Nature
The results suggest that AI can help us to understand how humans learn, says Wai Keen Vong, co-author of the study and a researcher in AI at New York University. This has previously been unclear, because other language-learning models such as ChatGPT learn on billions of data points, which is not comparable to the real-world experiences of an infant, says Vong. “We don’t get given the internet when we’re born.”
Call it Googoogag.ai cause this AI model was trained by a baby. The model, which was trained on a baby's headcam recordings, learned to recognize words by associating them with images. The findings challenge traditional beliefs about innate language knowledge. The study, which includes only 61 hours of footage, showed that the AI could match words like “crib” and “ball” to images with surprising accuracy, suggesting that language learning might largely be about forming sensory associations. Importantly, this finding contradicts theories proposed by linguists like Noam Chomsky, who argue that language acquisition requires specialized mechanisms beyond general learning processes.
As the old saying goes, you can’t teach and old dog new tricks but you can teach an AI by strapping a headcam to a baby.
…And that’s all for this week.
If you have some time this weekend, check out Alto.
We’ll be back in your inbox on Tuesday.
Thanks for reading,
Dan + Packy
If I'm addicted to anything, it's to positive thoughts about the future...
We are simply not going to reduce CO2 emissions by a significant amount unless we embrace the atom. The energy density of nuclear energy is unparalleled. I would be better though, if we could (finally) get fusion energy working at scale.