Caleb Watney
@calebwatney
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co-founder @IFP // the US is the R&D lab for the world and we should act like it
Brookland, DC
Joined January 2012
How can we give defenders of critical infrastructure an advantage over attackers? @Miles_Brundage proposes Operation Patchlight: a national effort to use each jump in frontier AI capabilities to find and patch critical open-source code vulnerabilities before these AI
🚀The Launch Sequence book debut is in 11 days! Start the countdown: every day until then, I’ll post at least one short summary on each of the ideas in the book. Then we’ll start shipping the books to Congress. More details in-thread (1/3).
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def/acc Pope let's goooo
Technological innovation can be a form of participation in the divine act of creation. It carries an ethical and spiritual weight, for every design choice expresses a vision of humanity. The Church therefore calls all builders of #AI to cultivate moral discernment as a
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More abuse of permitting: The admin is now voluntarily agreeing with NIMBYs suing **the government's own permit** in order to block offshore wind. Congress needs to act so the same tactics can't be applied to every project the president doesn't like. 🧵 (1/9)👇
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How can we make science funding work for large-scale AI projects? @calebwatney proposes X-Labs: 25 independent research institutions funded at $10–50M/year to support the infrastructure-heavy, team-based work that AI-driven science requires. Current science funding mechanisms
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We’ve been heads down @ArcadiaScience for a bit but the @arenabioworks news this week caused me to dump thoughts. hard things are hard; don’t be such a fucking hater. Reflections on parallels w our own institutional experiment here
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Come help us build the frontier think tank 🛠️
🚨 NEW ROLE AT @IFP 🚨 We're hiring a Director of Operations to improve and oversee the internal systems that power IFP’s work — from finance and compliance to HR and organizational planning. This role will report to me & @calebwatney and will be the senior-most operations role
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🚨 NEW ROLE AT @IFP 🚨 We're hiring a Director of Operations to improve and oversee the internal systems that power IFP’s work — from finance and compliance to HR and organizational planning. This role will report to me & @calebwatney and will be the senior-most operations role
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NEW: Torres-Springer is co-chairing Zohran’s transition team. Want a preview of how Zohran’s team will approach City Hall? Read Statecraft.
Maria Torres-Springer has been a key player in the last three NYC mayoral administrations, including as Eric Adams’ #2. Today, she explains what it takes to manage City Hall.
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My wife just launched a wonderfully interesting new project. This idea in particular is worth paying close attention to. In moments of technological transition, many obsolete modes return in strange new ways.
What do Starlink, the trad wife, and Marshall Mcluhan have in common? Introducing the Third Oikos, a new series about how technology is reshaping the household. https://t.co/WHwCqMaqw9
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How can we detect the next pandemic before it spreads? @Simon__Grimm explains how AI and metagenomic sequencing can transform early pathogen detection in the US, catching novel pathogens that current methods would miss entirely. AI is getting good at virology, and we should use
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Everyone loves to hate big pharma, but Doctor cartels in the form of "professional associations" are some of the worst villains of healthcare.
People across the country are getting ruined by insane health insurance premiums and wondering how they’ll get by. They are not wondering who is stopping us from solving this problem, but I will tell you that it is the AMA, which has hundreds of ideas for slowing down healthcare
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Found this interesting - the NIH has their own biomedical R&D price index to measure inflation in their sector. Their estimates on biomedical R&D prices go back to 1950!
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Society if the Sunshine Protection Act of 2021 (which passed the Senate via unanimous consent!!) ever got its chance to shine in the House and become law.
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How can we incentivize AI for national priorities? @sebkrier and @zhengdongwang explain how commissioning the creation of benchmarks and evaluations can steer AI development toward important outcomes that will otherwise be neglected. Benchmarks can have a large impact: When
🚀The Launch Sequence book debut is in 11 days! Start the countdown: every day until then, I’ll post at least one short summary on each of the ideas in the book. Then we’ll start shipping the books to Congress. More details in-thread (1/3).
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🚀The Launch Sequence book debut is in 11 days! Start the countdown: every day until then, I’ll post at least one short summary on each of the ideas in the book. Then we’ll start shipping the books to Congress. More details in-thread (1/3).
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I and @salonium are looking to chat to people who have worked in China on clinical trials or have some form of experience with them to understand the process and why they are faster/more efficient. If you know anyone that can help, we would greatly appreciate it.
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Reach out if you want to build awesome microsites with @IFP!
🚨We’re working on an extremely cool innovation microsite that requires some creative web dev. DM me if interested. - Likely using React + Node/TS - Knowledge of <canvas> or Motion .dev and pixel-perfect UIs - ~6-8 weeks of work - Remote, flexible hours - Starting ASAP
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Cool result here! Replication pays for itself by avoiding research investment based on incorrect results...but you only need to spend a small percentage of budget. Focus on replicating results with high impact but low-ish confidence.
How much money should the NIH spend on replication? Is it as high as 20% as RFK has suggested? Great new analysis from @jddwor suggests the ballpark answer is ~1.4% before you start hitting diminishing returns relative to just funding new science. https://t.co/Xo4ok5vSwi
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(Have a much deeper technical brief on the project that we can share on request)
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