What’s actually inside a “task”?
Building and scaling RL environments for LLM training.
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There Is No Formula: Why AI Cannot Solve What Matters Most
There is no formula for love. No formula for meaning. No formula for great art, for grief, for living a life that matters.
But we keep looking for one anyway. Increasingly, we look for it in AI.
In my new essay, I argue that this is a category error with a real cost. Some problems lend themselves to calculation: fusion, protein folding, and route optimization. With enough compute, they yield. Other problems do not bend at all. They cannot be solved. They can only be lived.
When we mistake the second category for the first, we bring what I call the Hammer of AI to questions that ask for wisdom, presence, and judgment.
Then we are surprised when the hammer keeps breaking the very thing we were trying to mend.
The piece draws on Tolkien, Vaclav Havel, Carlos Castaneda, and the Japanese art of Kyudo to argue that what we actually need in the age of AI is not another formula. It is the wisdom to know when there is no formula at all.
When complexity arrives in your life, do you reach for the hammer or for something else?
Quantum Entangles the Heavens
As the United States, Europe, and China compete to shape the future of the Earth-Moon corridor, strategic advantage will depend not only on launch capacity or lunar infrastructure, but also on advances in quantum technologies. Just as secure systems are critical on Earth, satellites and space-based systems underpin high-value, high-impact operations from financial transactions and navigation to scientific discovery and classified military missions.
Quantum technologies, which enable new levels of speed, sensitivity, and security, are emerging as critical tools to improve existing extraterrestrial systems. Modern digital communications are secured by encryption built on math problems that are extremely difficult for regular computers to solve, but that sufficiently advanced quantum computers could eventually crack. Quantum communications technologies could add a new layer of protection by making it easier to detect when someone is trying to intercept sensitive information. Quantum sensors can measure position and time with an accuracy that GPS only approximates. Lastly, quantum computers could unlock new capabilities beyond current computational limits, from designing advanced materials to optimizing increasingly complex satellite networks.
Countries are racing to match their space and quantum ambitions with national strategies. The White House is reportedly drafting an executive order to strengthen US competitiveness in quantum technologies. The rumored draft directs multiple US government bodies, including NASA, to develop a five-year roadmap to expand quantum sensing and networking capabilities. The EU’s 2025 Quantum Europe Strategy highlights “Space and Dual-Use Quantum Technologies” as one of its five strategic focuses, and China’s 15th Five-Year Plan has called for expanding the country’s ground-to-space quantum communications network.
Complex systems and the brain: From networks to dynamics and function
Olaf SpornsMay 1, 2015Annual Science Board Symposium — New Science. New Horizons.
Tech Meets Neuroscience with Adam Gazzaley
Dr. Adam Gazzaley, Cognitive Neuroscientist at the University of California San Francisco, explores the latest research on the interaction between the brain and technology.
The Thousand Brains Theory of Intelligence | Jeff Hawkins | Numenta
This presentation is clipped from a virtual keynote Jeff was invited to give on December 16.Numenta technology is built on the Thousand Brains Theory, our se…
10 Interesting Scientific Discoveries for April of 2026
An exploration of ten of the most interesting scientific discoveries for April of 2026.
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Beyond Paradox | Iain McGilchrist
“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
— Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2
The two hemispheres of our brain collaborate to produce a coherent understanding of the world—at least, that’s what they’re supposed to do. In his groundbreaking book, The Master and His Emissary, neuro-philosopher and psychiatrist, Iain McGilchrist, proposed that our culture has been captured by the left hemisphere, whose dogmatic, technical and irrational way of processing information leads it to manifestly dangerous conclusions about the way the world works. Importantly, the left hemisphere never changes its mind.
In one of the widest conversations on Planet: Critical to date, Iain explains how we came to lose sight of the bigger picture by forsaking the intuition, creativity and intelligence of the right hemisphere. We discuss how our relationship to language makes and unmakes the world, the search for meaning, human agency, relationality, morality, art and the divine, with Iain clearly spelling out a path to human fulfilment—which may very well be the only thing which can save Earth from the worst of us.
🔴 The Master and His Emissary: https://channelmcgilchrist.com/master… Platformed: Charles Foster 🌎 Support Planet: Critical: / planetcritical 🌎 Subscribe: https://planetcritical.com/ 🌎 BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/racheldonald…
🗣️ Platformed: Charles Foster
Gene Therapy Pioneers Win 2026 Breakthrough Prize
Genetic diseases impact almost 70–80 million people worldwide. Oftentimes, there are limited treatments that doctors can provide, leaving patients with few interventions to manage symptoms.
Recently, though, gene therapy has completely shifted the potential to care for many diseases. Advances in knowledge of responsible genes and nucleic acid technology have revolutionized the ability to specifically edit regions of the genome to correct mutations.
Today (April 18), the Breakthrough Prize Foundation awarded the Life Sciences prize to two teams of five researchers who pioneered gene therapies for two different types of genetic diseases. Physician scientist Jean Bennett, retinal surgeon Albert Maguire, and physician scientist Katherine High from the University of Pennsylvania developed a treatment to cure retinal blindness that is currently in use in the US, Canada, Australia, and Switzerland. Separately, clinical investigator Swee Lay Thein, now at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, tracked down the gene responsible for continued production of fetal hemoglobin in beta thalassemia and sickle cell disease and, with the help of physician scientist Stuart Orkin at Harvard University, brought this finding from the bench to the bedside.
