E116: Stuck Academia, US vs China, and Why Startups Work

Today, we're re-releasing an episode from 2023 where Erik Torenberg sits down with physicist and startup founder Steve Hsu on topics including the ideological shift in academia, the impact of AI on labor, China's technological advancements and geopolitical position, and the global fertility decline.

—

📰 Be notified early when Turpentine's drops new publication: https://www.turpentine.co/exclusiveaccess 

🙏 Help shape our show by taking our quick listener survey at https://bit.ly/TurpentinePulse 

 

—

SPONSORS:

☁️ Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is a single platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, and AI needs. OCI has four to eight times the bandwidth of other clouds and offers one consistent price. Oracle is offering to cut your cloud bill in half. See if your company qualifies at oracle.com/turpentine 

🎯 Say goodbye to the headaches of out-of-home advertising. AdQuick combines technology, OOH expertise, and data to enable efficient, seamless ad buying across the globe. Visit adquick.com to start reaching your customers in the real world.

💥 Head to Squad to access global engineering without the headache and at a fraction of the cost: head to https://choosesquad.com/  and mention “Turpentine” to skip the waitlist.

—

RECOMMENDED IN THIS EPISODE:

Superfocus: https://superfocus.ai/ 

Othram: https://othram.com/index.html 

Manifold: https://www.manifold1.com/ 

Eric Kaufman’s works: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=EcCc2C4AAAAJ&hl=en

NY Times: Idaho University Murder Investigation: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/10/us/idaho-university-murder-investigation.html# 

—

X / TWITTER:

@hsu_steve

@eriktorenberg

@turpentinemedia

—

HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE EPISODE:

• Academia has shifted dramatically leftward, with around 90% of professors in social sciences being left-leaning.

• Traditional academic merit-based systems like GRE requirements are being dismantled in favor of DEI initiatives.

• Truth-seeking academics are increasingly moving to industry, particularly tech and innovation sectors.

• The University of Austin represents an attempt to create an alternative academic institution focused on traditional academic values.

• Global fertility decline is linked to fundamental changes in women's roles and societal values around family formation.

• Current demographic challenges in China won't significantly impact their economy for at least 20 years.

• AI is already capable of replacing complex customer service roles, as demonstrated in Philippines' call centers.

• Law firms are reporting 20-30% efficiency gains from current AI implementations.

• The guest views AI as humanity's descendants rather than a separate threatening entity.

• Most Westerners, including tech leaders, are poorly informed about China's actual technological and economic capabilities.

• China has built a comparable or superior tech ecosystem to the US in many areas.

• The US needs to accept a bipolar world order rather than trying to maintain sole hegemony.

• Western concerns about China's demographic collapse are often based on poor understanding of the data.

• The future of AI research should focus more on theoretical understanding rather than just building bigger models.

• The guest's company Othram has revolutionized crime-solving through advanced DNA analysis.

• The guest balances work between deep theoretical physics problems and practical startup applications.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.