Ajay Agrawal
@professor_ajay
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Wow. I knew
@CarnegieMellon
is a driving force in robotics, but I didn't fully appreciate its impact on the region.
@CMUBlockCenter
@creativedlab
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Fascinating new study. Adoption of robots increases employment in a region, but increases the population in that region even more: so decreases the employment-to-population ratio in that region. Data from Japan. Use a shift-share IV with penetration of robots in Germany.
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So much criticism about the US in other countries yet talent votes with its feet. Well done USA.
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Private sector innovation relies on public sector science. Nearly ONE-THIRD of patented U.S. inventions rely on federally-funded science. We reduce funding for basic science at our own peril.
Should governments invest in basic research? Out today in
@sciencemagazine
: we report that nearly one-third of patented U.S. inventions rely on federally-funded science, a rate which has grown substantially over the past 90 years:
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Top 5 universities from which AI professors were poached:
#1
CMU,
#2
U Washington,
#3
UC Berkeley,
#4
Georgia Tech,
#5
U Toronto.
Causal evidence that AI faculty departures from universities reduced the creation of startups by students who then graduated from these universities - on average by 13%
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Congratulations! Well deserved, Chris. Thanks for inspiring so many of us.
@Cmdr_Hadfield
A big congrats goes out to our friend
@Cmdr_Hadfield
, who is getting inducted into Canada’s Walk of Fame today! Here’s a throwback to when we named him
@DailyPlanet
’s most interesting man on and not on this planet!
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Causal evidence that AI faculty departures from universities reduced the creation of startups by students who then graduated from these universities - on average by 13%
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WSJ on Toronto's labour market for tech: programmers earn $71,000 a year less on average than in SF...companies get around tough immigration rules (fast-track visas).. universal health-care system lowers companies' costs of providing employee benefits.
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Former Google boss announces the creation of a new university to compete with Stanford/MIT in areas like AI with one big difference: it will "produce graduates imbued with a sense of government duty"
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US: 10% fewer H-1B visas issued btwn Oct 2017-18 than year before; 335k H-1B visas approved in 2018, 373k during prior year; in 2017 CANADA reduced visa application times from 10 months to 2 weeks in IT/STEM; Immigrants-we get the job done
@BBORZYKO
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The single most urgent need for AI is in healthcare. Costs are high and rising (demographics - aging population). When care is so costly, it's not distributed as equitably as we might like. Diagnosis is prediction (well suited to AI).
@creativedlab
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Tomorrow night we kickstart the 4th online season of
@creativedlab
Reading Group with a paper that presents a new method for hypothesis generation using AI. The procedure generates novel, interpretable hypotheses from any high-dimensional dataset:
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AIs do prediction, humans do judgment: "This 2-phase process — prediction then judgement — is an abstraction of what we normally compound under one term: decision making. And this conceptual decoupling helps us see where technology can intervene to help us make better decisions"
"improvements in prediction — i.e., rather than intelligence — are at the core of the recent surge of excitement about AI" -
@professor_ajay
@joshgans
@avicgoldfarb
via
@Konigsberg
@Medium
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Startups, teams within large corporations, not-for-profits: anyone working on an invention anywhere in the world that could have a first order impact on the speed of recovery is welcome to apply
#CDLRecovery
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Today at Buckingham Palace
@RoyalFamily
His Majesty King Charles III unveiled the
#Astra
Carta seal and framework, accelerating space sustainability efforts and goals. Fully aligned with
#CDLspace
@rotmanschool
@GeorgiaTech
@HECParis
@UniofOxford
@creativedlab
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In 2018,
@creativedlab
launched CDL-Blockchain to help entrepreneurs design and launch companies predicated on the economic features of blockchain that enable novel contract and market design.
@joshgans
explains why we are a Founding Partner of Libra
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The more I work on AI policy questions and interact with policy makers in Washington, Brussels, London, and Ottawa, the more conviction I have that THE MOST CRITICAL MISSING VOICES ARE FICTION WRITERS. I've come to believe that novelists will be more important in the coming
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Wonderful to include
@UniofOxford
as part of the family
@UofT
@UBC
@DalhousieU
@nyuniversity
@UCalgary
@MBA_HECMontreal
@OxfordSBS
@rotmanschool
@NYUStern
@UBCSauderSchool
@haskayneschool
The Creative Destruction Lab is coming to the UK, delivered by Oxford Saïd beginning in September 2019. To date,
@creativedlab
has helped to nurture
#startups
worth over £2 billion in equity value. Find out more about CDL-Oxford:
#entrepreneurship
#AI
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As we hurtle towards increasingly advanced machine intelligence, it is more important than ever that we enhance our understanding of human empathy. Maintaining the intelligence/empathy balance is critical for the persistence of civilization.
#Empathy
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"To invent you have to experiment, and if you know in advance that it’s going to work, it’s not an experiment. Outsized returns come from betting against conventional wisdom, but conventional wisdom is usually right." What a testimony!
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More than HALF refusing vaccine at some healthcare institutions! OH=> ~60% of nursing home staff; TX => over 50% of nurses at Houston's United Memorial Med Cntr; NY => ~55% of NY Fire Dept firefighters; CA=> over 50% of hospital workers St. Elizabeth Hosp
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investment: "Germany...to invest more than 3 billion euros by 2025 [in AI] and appoint 100 professors" catch up: "...outdated research infrastructure and restrictive data protection laws, Germany has yet to produce a world-beating AI start-up"
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Automation kills jobs, right? WRONG. New evidence from mfg in France: more automation => higher productivity; higher productivity => lower prices; lower prices => more sales; more sales => more jobs; also, wages remain stable for high AND low-skill workers
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A real treat to visit the London-based HQ of my all time favourite magazine including a tour by and interview with
@kncukier
@TheEconomist
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Startups enjoy ridiculing suits (& bus school profs!) for their focus on strategic planning rather than iterative learning, MVPs, etc... The tension betwn strategic planning and iterative learning has finally been resolved by
@joshgans
@sstern_mit
@wu_jane
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In the excellent paper "What Can Machines Learn, and What Does It Mean for Occupations and the Economy?" by
@erikbryn
@tommmitchell
@danielrock
(), their GLARING oversight was that they missed this:
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AI & Discrimination: “The Achilles’ Heel of all algorithms is the humans who build them and the choices they make.... A critical element of regulating algorithms is regulating humans.”
@m_sendhil
@profjensludwig
@CassSunstein
Kleinberg
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Hot off the press =>
@creativedlab
Chief Economist
@joshgans
just finished a book on Economics in the Age of COVID-19. I recommend this for all policy makers and anyone who has the ear of a policy maker.
#CDLRecovery
Just re-upping from last night. I have a new book coming out on COVID-19. The pre-print is available for public comment if you are interested.
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A new study inspired by our work
@creativedlab
- how can experienced mentors greatly benefit a startup? By leveraging their experience to LOWER THE COST OF EXPERIMENTS to test hypotheses to inform strategic decisions
@joshgans
@sstern_mit
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Our species is lucky that Ilya is leading research at
#OpenAI
.
#AGI
will emerge first somewhere. If it's at OpenAI, then it's important that someone like Ilya is there. There's no guarantee the ultimate outcome for human civilization is positive, but it increases the probability.
with sam and greg ousted yesterday
my initial thought yesterday was “shit they have discovered AGI” and the only person who was capable of understanding it was ilya sutskever.
now it’s seems even more an more plausible that is the case. to understand the amount of stress and
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Implications for TO? Pre-C19
@Shopify
was planning to invest heavily in
#Toronto
- would've attracted a TON of talent to the city; so, on the one hand we'll miss that, on the other locals like
@ddebow
@fnthawar
@LorenPadelford
will be global leaders in the new world - good for TO
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Nice example. AI sifts through 5 million genetic variants to find approximately 700,000 rare ones; 962 are known to cause diseases; AI identifies one as the most likely culprit; the variant is rare occurring in less than 0.01% of the population. See photo
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In a race against time,
@creativedlab
yesterday kicked off our new RECOVERY program. The program was conceived and launched in 8 weeks. Why the rush? Estimates of the MONTHLY cost of the crisis range from $350B - $1T. Either way, the costs are significant.
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Forget swabs - try spectroscopy! Israel invents 1min coronavirus breath test. Virus is like a nano-particle or quantum dot w/ diameter 100-140nm in terms of size & electrical properties; it resonates in THz frequency; spectroscopy reveals it promptly
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Looking forward to joining Dan
@ddebow
on his call-in show today. He was
@creativedlab
at the
@rotmanschool
before CDL existed. Whenever we encounter a direction-defining issue for the Lab, the first person we turn to for input is Dan. That's why I'm looking forward to this.
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This will help you with your digging
@shivon
- a panel conversation at the
@creativedlab
2015 conf with
@geoffreyhinton
@rsalakhu
and
@ilyasut
moderated by
@jackclarkSF
- in his intro, Jack explains to the audience that Ilya has just co-founded a non-profit that nobody has heard
Man, 2015 feels like centuries ago on the AI timeline. Gotta dig up some of what we talked about in this conference
@professor_ajay
and I hosted at
@UofT
that year.
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Hats off to Dr. Bonnie Henry - BC's top doc who the NYT calls "one of the most effective public health officials in the world" for
#COVID19
- she trained her whole life for this moment: Navy physician, urban clinic doc, Ebola in Uganda, SARS in Toronto
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A new program for ag-tech companies. What stage? Seed, of course. Apply:
Creative Destruction Lab announces
#CDLAg
- a new stream designed to help grow seed-stage science and technology-based startups in the agriculture and food space.
#BuildSomethingMassive
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If tractors offered such a big productivity boost to farming, then why did it take farmers so long to adopt them? Lessons for
#AI
: . We provide a similar example in Power & Prediction (electricity). Key point: co-invention of complements and org change.
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Last year,
@avicgoldfarb
,
@joshgans
,
@ce_tucker
and I organized a conference the economics of AI and healthcare.
The content was both exhilarating and depressing. Exhilarating because there are so many compelling applications of AI that enhance care,
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A wonderful recognition of their pioneering work:
@ylecun
, Hinton, Bengio;
@CIFAR_News
@MILAMontreal
@facebookai
@UofT
Université de Montréal
@nyuniversity
@VectorInst
I am extremely honored to be the recipient of the 2018 ACM A.M. Turing Award, and absolutely delighted to be sharing it with my friends and colleagues Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio.
NYT:...
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A remarkable display of leadership:
@Rogers
@AirCanada
@MDA_space
@Suncor
@cppib
@MagnaInt
@Genpact
@scotiabank
@MLSEPR
@loblawco
@ShopprsDrugMart
@NutrienLTD
- every team member leaving their badge at the door and working in lockstep - rapid sharing across companies astounding
Fantastic initiative to dramatically reshape testing landscape in Canada with leadership by
@professor_ajay
and
@joshgans
......if only the US will follow!
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We can all feel lucky that for the many years we were using MS products we were unwittingly contributing to Bill's fortune that would one day finance the Gates Foundation and give Bill 20 years of training for this moment in human civilization's history. He's a leader.
There are over 100 different coronavirus vaccine candidates in the works. These candidates take a variety of approaches to protecting the body against COVID-19:
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Invite text: Imagine back to 1995 when the Internet was about to become a thing. What would have happened to economic research into that revolution had the leading economists gathered to scope out a research agenda at that time? Today, we are facing the same opportunity with AI.
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Who knew? no empirical evidence of COVID19 case growth due to Tulsa rally; possibly due to offsetting behaviours like voluntary closure of restaurants/bars and increased stay-at-home - or, maybe, rallies are safe
COVID-19, indoor events, and offsetting community effects of President Trump’s Tulsa rally, from Dhaval M. Dave,
@FriedsonAndrew
,
@q_econ
,
@Drew_McNichols
, Connor Redpath, and
@SDSUCHEPS
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Thoughtfully designed smart contracts operating on a widely accessible and stable global currency platform will unlock never-seen-before gains from trade, benefiting society at a meaningful scale. A key reason why
@creativedlab
joined Libra -
@joshconstine
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CDL is an exercise in market design for commercializing science
I'll share the underlying ideas and how we implement them
@creativedlab
We're honored to have Ajay Agrawal
@professor_ajay
give the next SMS Entrepreneurship & Strategy IG webinar on ***June 17th***. Ajay will chat about the amazing work done at the Creative Destruction Lab. Please sign up here:
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A provocative point that we could free up 25% of the land on Earth by switching from animal-based meat products to plant-based alternatives that, according to some, taste just as good. I must admit that I've been surprised by how meat-like some taste!
Climate change -
@vkhosla
to
@professor_ajay
: Why investments like Impossible Foods have such carbon reduction potential.
#CDLSuperSession
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@EricTopol
much of our work on this in
#Canada
was informed and inspired by your excellent summaries and explanations of the science - so thank you. Also learned from
@michaelmina_lab
,
@dpatil
,
@eric_lander
,
@paulmromer
,
@ProfEmilyOster
and
@baselinescene
among others - thx!
"Like Wartime"
Canada's coordinated approach for mass covid testing.
Why can't the big companies in the US wake up and do this?
And where are the home, rapid antigen tests that were ready in April?
@porterthereport
w/
@joshgans
@professor_ajay
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If you are working on a 1) public health or 2) economic recovery solution in response to the COVID19 crisis and would like help in transitioning from invention to deployment-at-scale, then
#CDLRecovery
may be able to help. Applications open today.
#CDLRecovery
is focused less on immediate needs, such as the production of ventilators and PPE where many excellent initiatives are already underway, and more on needs that will rise in importance over the next 6 to 18 months. Apply now 📋
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Word: quarantine - originated 1600s Venice; comes from the root word for 40. Why? Originally lasted 40 days. In the 14th C, 1/3 of Europe’s pop (25m) succumbed to the Black Death. Scientists since discovered the plague’s infectious period lasts 37 days.
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A big THANK YOU to the mentors, faculty, students, and CDL team members who swung into action last April to launch CDL Recovery - and to
@christen_rotman
who made the effort to write this story about it
@rotmanschool
@creativedlab
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It's hard not to be inspired by these high school students. Thank you
@neildwainwright
@MrsEvaLau
@barneyp
@TheDawnBell
@SallyDaub
@richardtitus
@SuthaKamal
@Cmdr_Hadfield
@realGeordieRose
@tjpoutanen
@ddebow
@mserbinis
@ashmunshi
and the many others
@creativedlab
who do this.
I'm so proud to be part of
@creativedlab
and to be able spend time with the High School Girls that are part of the program. I can't say enough positive things about
@professor_ajay
for creating such a great avenue for these future leaders of tomorrow!
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The
@creativedlab
's mission is to enhance the commercialization of science for the betterment of humankind.
So, we were fascinated to read the new study by
@realjoshlerner
@henrymanley
@carolynstein_
@heidilwilliams_
"The Wandering Scholars: Understanding the Heterogeneity of
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Early AI applications? Where the benefits of better-faster-cheaper prediction outweigh the cost of mistakes that 1) will include some that a human would never make (not Pareto optimal) and 2) cannot be explained ex ante and often not even ex post (yes: ad placement, no: surgery)
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What evolutionary path led to this as an optimal method of locomotion?
@aneilagrawal
I can only imagine the trade-offs at work here...
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Opening chapter by
@erikbryn
@danielrock
@ChadSyverson
: they propose 4 potential explanations for the surprisingly low measured productivity growth given rapid innovation in AI: 1) false hopes, 2) mismeasurement, 3) redistribution, 4) implementation lags. Spoiler alert: it's
#4
!
I just got my copy of
@nberpubs
book "The Economics of Artificial Intelligence: An Agenda", edited by
@professor_ajay
,
@joshgans
and
@avicgoldfarb
.
So much great material in there!
#AI
#2MA
@danielrock
@ChadSyverson
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Published today: how tax credits impact R&D spending by small firms - based on data from Canada (utilizing a change in SRED rules to estimate impact)
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Ha! I suspect
@abhishekn
's suspicion is correct. "relational databases and consistent variable definitions are saving UPS $100 mil" That's why we'll never get hired to write headlines!
@oziadias
I suspect that 80% of the gains from "AI" come from simply harmonizing data collection and access, but I guess no one wants to read "relational databases and consistent variable definitions are saving UPS $100 mil". 🤷♂️
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Japan is not an outlier, it's just the first to realize this shift. The same will happen in many other countries given the birth rates. I seldom hear Japanese policy makers worrying about automation taking jobs.
#NeedMoreRobots
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This excellent book is informed by practical experience and the scholarly literature; I have personally witnessed
@AlbertoGalasso
using some of the frameworks in this book to great effect with real companies - IP and other tech strategies!
@UofT
@rotmanschool
@creativedlab
Hot off the presses. The definitive work by one of the world’s most prominent scholars in the field.
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Not only did Seattle incubate some of the greatest bands of all time
#JimiHendrix
#PearlJam
#Nirvana
, but engineering, CS, and medicine at
@UW
make this town perfect for launching our new stream to incubate startups in computational health. Welcome to The Family
#CDLSeattle
#CDLSeattle
will be a partnership with
@Microsoft
,
@uwengineering
,
@uwcse
, and
@UWCoMotion
. A partnership of investors--Artie Buerk,
@nealdempsey
, Bill McAleer, Rob Short, and Steve Singh--are helping the initiative gain early momentum.
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"If you don't get feedback, your confidence grows much faster than your accuracy."
@PTetlock
#SuperForecasting
#WhatsWrongWithBeingConfident
@OhDemi
@OurGirlDemetria
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Gartner predicts by 2025 AI will consume more energy than the human workforce; by 2030, energy needed for ML training, data storage, processing may account for up to 3.5% of global electricity consumption; Gartner argues for developing sustainable practices ASAP
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People are consuming more stuff. But where is the job growth? Not in retail. It's in warehousing! Despite growing automation by companies like
@FetchRobotics
&
@kindredai
. Fascinating new study by Choe
@aoettl
and
@robseamans
: via
@nberpubs
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From downtown Toronto to Fort McKay (along the Athabasca River, ~60 km north of Fort McMurray, Alberta) - the CDL Rapid Screening Consortium is piloting implementation protocols in a wide range of work environments
@suncor
@creativedlab
Proud to be 1 of 17 screened
@FortMcKay
today for COVID-19 antigen in partnership with
@Suncor
. Protecting our workforce, families, and community with Rapid
#COVID19
Antigen Screening Trial.😷
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Low income people servicing low income people are recovering faster than those servicing high income people. The high income population is slowest to return to pre-pandemic consumer spending, presumably because so much of it is discretionary.
#CDLRecovery
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This week I witnessed first hand the purposeful and impactful efforts of the Canadian Embassy in
#Japan
educating Japanese businesses about the virtues of trading with and investing in
#Canada
. As a central planning skeptic, I was impressed and inspired. Great work
@CanEmbJapan
!
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One of the critical keys to success here is market design; MIT professor
@ccatalini
is head economist of this project - wonderful!
@creativedlab
is developing a revised economics of blockchain curriculum for this initiative
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Unbreakable pantyhose with bulletproof fiber. It almost makes you want to wear pantyhose. Almost. Another material science project at
@creativedlab
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Yesterday at CDL-West we asked mentors (entrepreneurs, investors, scientists) whey they anticipated 1) returning to restaurants, and 2) returning to commercial air travel. Median response: 1) June, 2) October. Significant variation: A doc - 2021, 2022.
#CDLRecovery
@creativedlab
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This is an important thread by
@heidilwilliams_
It was precisely the type of activity she describes (interaction with government programs on the commercialization of science) that motivated our research and ultimately our creation of CDL eleven years ago.
@creativedlab
How can we accelerate scientific progress?
New piece from
@mattsclancy
@CorreaDan
@jddwor
@PaulFNiehaus
@calebwatney
+ me in
@nature
arguing we need more “use-inspired” science policy research.
Here are the quick highlights…
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I'm enjoying it too
@CathBornbaum
! Loved
#AlignmentProblem
by
@brianchristian
- Next up is
#Nexus
by
@ramez
- see you in Jan
@jamescham
@megandover2
@ghadfield
@SuthaKamal
@realGeordieRose
@joshgans
@itamblyn
@korymath
@JenniferFlexman
@k_mcelheran
@chandnirao_here
et al!
Despite it's many challenges, what's one thing you really loved about 2020? I'll go first -- I have loved the
@creativedlab
reading group. It's broadened my perspective on ML/AI, humanity, and life in general. Thanks for initiating this
@professor_ajay
and team!🤓
#SurpriseGuest
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On ideas with a small amount of novelty: "It's not true that there's nothing new under the sun...some domains where there's almost nothing new. But...big difference between nothing and almost nothing, when it's multiplied by the area under the sun."
@paulg
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For 3 years
@williamtp
travelled across the Atlantic and enhanced the startup community in
#Canada
as a star Fellow at
@creativedlab
. He's one of the best.
#CDL
-Oxford will be thrilled (and lucky) to welcome him until they find out he is a
@Cambridge_Uni
alum.
#GivePeaceAChance
The Creative Destruction Lab
@creativelab
is coming to the UK! As a fellow for the last three years I've helped nurture 100's of startups to £2 billion in equity value & seen expansion from Toronto to five sites in Canada, New York & now UK
#AI
#startups
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