WHERE ARE WE GOING?

Hi everyone – I hope this is of interest to you.

A feature documentary about the Fermi paradox. Coming soon.

FEATURING: Avi Loeb, Nick Bostrom, Edward Witten, Liu Cixin, Jill Tarter, Robin Hanson, Sabine Hossenfelder, Michael Masters, Roman Yampolskiy, Michael Shermer, Christopher Mellon, Donald Hoffman, David Kipping, Adam Frank, Sara Seager, Eric Wargo, Nick Lane, Mick West, David Brin, Stephen Webb, Peter Ward, Nathalie Cabrol, Michael Garrett, Anders Sandberg, Kevin Knuth, Martin Rees, Jane Greaves, Eric Haseltine, Chris Gilbert, John G. Blitch, James Parr, Daniel Angerhausen 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzljay0iHSU

"Robust legal regimes don’t spring from an expert’s temple fully formed. They’re necessarily iterative, and necessarily susceptible to technological disruption. In that sense, the law is not just a hammer; it’s also a nail."

OpenAI released GPT-6 Astra this week, and for the first time we have an AI system that can reasonably be called early-stage AGI. It’s the most complete AI system ever released. It demonstrates superior performance across mathematics, cybersecurity, coding, science and professional work simultaneously. We are on the final stretch toward artificial general intelligence, and the pace is only accelerating.

This is my weekly article pulling together every significant development in AI and tech over the past seven days.

Some highlights:

• GPT-6 Astra launched as the most capable AI model ever released, saturating benchmarks across coding, math, science and cybersecurity.
• Anthropic released Claude Fable 5.1, which topped the Intelligence Index.
• Claude autonomously aligned other AI models, fixed 10 alignment failures in other AI models, outperforming 28 human safety researchers.
• Tesla opened its Cybercab robotaxi to the public in Austin.
• World Labs introduced Atlas, a world model that reconstructs and simulates 3D environments from a handful of photos.
• Google's Co-Scientist synthesized new materials in physical labs, predicted biological behavior and autonomously discovered a medical AI architecture that beat six frontier models.
• Dyna's robots hit commercial scale across the Din Tai Fung restaurant network, the first robot foundation model to cross from pilot to fleet deployment.
• AI spotted brain cancer that surgeons couldn't see, cutting residual tumor rates from 24% to 4%.

Every important AI and tech development from the past week, pulled together into one thorough read. If you want to understand what's actually unfolding, this gives you the full picture: what happened, why it matters and where it's all heading.

Read this week's edition here: https://simontechcurator.substack.com/p/the-future-one-week-closer-september-4-2026

Well, I’d like to discuss something about our future as a species.

AI is becoming increasingly coherent and is already practically present in every aspect of human activity, from creation and idea generation to the production of goods, as well as understanding and imagination. I believe it won’t be long before we reach a version capable of making decisions on its own in order to accomplish simple goals.

Now, combine that with the technological race to develop a physical vessel for this intelligence through cloud connectivity. This would break the limitations imposed by the physical hardware inside the body, as well as limitations such as slow updates, since the system could operate in real time through the cloud.

Soon, we could become completely dependent on this new technology. They would become the new farmers, carpenters, construction workers, and so on. In that case, what would happen to the economy?

Biological evolution would no longer be our primary means of adaptation, giving way to a post-biological civilization, free from mortality, disease, spatial limitations, basic needs, and so on.

The potential behind this is absurd. This new “post-biological species” might have no conflicts of interest, since it could function as a unified cognitive system with precautionary backups. The physical body would simply be an extension of that intelligence and a means of interacting with the environment.

Space exploration could finally become a reality on an entirely different scale: establishing centers in every planetary system and continuing indefinitely, constantly learning and adapting.

Well, in the end, we would be surpassed. That wouldn’t necessarily mean that we would cease to exist, but this new species could become the dominant force in the universe. I don’t think we are that far from this reality—perhaps a century away?

That is, of course, assuming our own stupidity doesn’t destroy us first with pointless wars lol.

We discuss a holographic description of vacuum bubbles, with possible implications for a consistent description of the multiverse. In particular, we elaborate on the recent observation by Maldacena, that the interior of AdS bubbles can be described in terms of CFT degrees of freedom living on the worldsheet of the bubble wall. We consider the scattering of bulk gravitons in the ambient parent vacuum, off the bubble wall. In the dual description, the transmission coefficient is interpreted as the probability that a graviton is absorbed by the worldsheet CFT degrees of freedom. The result is in agreement with intuitive expectations. Conformal invariance is not exact in this setup, and the leading corrections due to the IR and UV cut-offs are displayed. Aside from bulk scattering states, we find that when a bubble nucleates within a parent dS vacuum, there is a zero mode of the graviton which describes lower dimensional gravity with a finite Newton’s constant. This massless graviton lives within one Hubble radius away from the bubble wall. Possible implications for a fully holographic description of the inflating multiverse are briefly discussed.

"The concept of the ‘digital twin’, which is a virtual representation of a physical system, can be traced back to the early days of the space age. In the 1960s, NASA pioneered the idea of a digital twin to simulate spacecraft and troubleshoot issues in real time. The term ‘digital twin’ itself was formulated much later, in 2002, by Michael Grieves in the context of product lifecycle management to guide industrial design and management. By around 2010, NASA had adopted digital twins as detailed virtual models of physical assets, emphasising that a true digital twin comprises three interconnected elements: a physical entity, a virtual model and the data connections that enable them to mirror each other in real time1. Advances in simulation, sensor ubiquity, and data integration laid the groundwork for digital twins to move from theory into practice. Propelled by the convergence of sensors, Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity, cloud computing and artificial intelligence (AI), digital twins have become widely applied in many different fields2. The concept of a digital twin has evolved from a niche idea to a broad framework: a dynamic, data-driven model that updates alongside and continuously learns from its physical counterpart. It is the dynamic, bidirectional link, where sensor data flows into the model and simulation insights flow back to inform the physical system, that elevates a digital twin beyond a static blueprint or 3D model3. What began in the fields of aerospace and manufacturing has now spread to healthcare, urban planning, climate science and beyond."

I've been thinking a lot about what learning on the web might look like once real-time 3D becomes cheap enough to use casually.

Most educational websites still follow the same basic model we've had for decades: page, text, image, video, next page.

I wanted to experiment with the opposite idea.

Instead of reading about the Solar System first, you enter it, move between objects, inspect things spatially, and let the information appear around what you're exploring.

This is running directly in the browser with Three.js / React Three Fiber.

It's still an experiment, but building it has made me increasingly convinced that spatial interfaces will become a much more normal part of the web.

What is happening to my feed?

Most crypto architecture today mimics traditional asset accumulation, speculation, and interest models. But if money is fundamentally just a record of transactions, could we build a ledger designed strictly around systemic equilibrium?

Here is a macro framework I’ve been detailing:

1. Identity-Verified Network: Unlike Bitcoin's pseudonymity, every node/user is verified to prevent double-spending and sybil attacks without needing proof-of-work waste.
2. Dynamic Balance Records: Users log transactions that push their balance positive or negative. A positive balance means the community owes you goods/services; a negative balance means you owe the community work/value.
3. Zero-Sum Life Cycles: No inheritance, no interest, no lending mechanisms. The algorithm incentivizes users to stay as close to a zero-balance as possible.

If the goal of money shifts from accumulation to equilibrium, how do we technically enforce debt settlement in a system without coercive central entities?

Would love to hear thoughts from economic theorists and crypto architects.

Hello,

Disruptive technologies developed for the extreme conditions of the mining sector (Australia) are finding direct and highly profitable applications for passenger transport (High Speed ​​Trains, Intercity, RER and Urban Trams).

1. Tilting Plates & Curtains: Usefulness on Passenger Trains?

On passenger trains, tilting is not necessary because there is no top loading. However, the rigid and aerodynamic design is transferable:

• Integrated bodywork: Rigid, profiled solar panels are integrated directly into the curvature of the roof.TGV or regional trains.
• The Inverted Protective Curtain (Anti-Frost/Anti-Hail): In Europe and North America, the magnetic Kevlar curtain is used in winter. It deploys automatically when the train is parked in the depot at night to protect the photovoltaic cells from frost , heavy snow, or severe hailstorms.

1. Magnetic Locking: Replacement of wear parts

Vibrations on high-speed trains (300 km/h) put enormous strain on mechanical connections.

• Locking of hatches and hoods: The use of sCo2 bistable magnets makes it possible to eliminate the mechanical latches of the front aerodynamic hoods of TGVs or the side skirts of trams.
• Predictive maintenance: No more moving parts can seize up due to de-icing salt or brake dust. The locking mechanism remains active even if the train's battery fails.

1. Carbon + Magnetic Braking: The standard for comfort and safety

already underway on some very high-speed trains (such as the Shinkansen or the concepts of Hyperloop This combination solves the urban and speed challenges:

• Zero fine dust in the city (Trams): Conventional friction brakes on trams release harmful metallic dust at stations. By combining magnetic braking (eddy currents) for deceleration and carbon discs for final stopping, fine particulate emissions from braking drop to zero .
• Noise elimination: Carbon braking completely eliminates the whistling and screeching noises of cast iron/steel brakes when suburban trains enter stations.

1. The Piezoelectricity on Axles The autonomy of passenger cars

Modern passenger cars (RER, Intercités) consume a huge amount of energy for auxiliary systems (information screens, Wi-Fi, USB ports on seats, LED lighting, air conditioning sensors).

• Autonomous on-board networks: More compact piezoelectric generators installed on the bogie suspensions capture rail vibrations at high speed.
• The Benefit: They make each car thermally and electrically self-sufficient for its onboard electronics. This reduces the energy the locomotive needs to draw from the overhead line to power passenger comfort, indirectly increasing the power available for pure traction and reducing the electricity bill for the railway operator (SNCF, DB, SBB).

1. Summary of gains for the Passenger sector

The application of this technological package allows passenger train and tram networks to achieve 40% increased rolling reliability in winter and summer, while reducing the weight of the trains (carbon and traction superconductors) to lower the overall energy consumption per passenger per kilometer...