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Precision experimental tests of gravity: http://charliehagedorn.com

Precision force sensing and metrology: http://nanoradian.com

Errorbars are a good thing: http://measuredmass.com

Email: [email protected]

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/charliehagedorn/

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Comment · 1 month ago
Comment · 1 month ago
GP meant "own" where they stated "know". Berkshire shareholders get a discount on Berkshire's insurance.
Comment · 5 months ago
Accountability is the biggest unaddressed challenge for AI implementation.

When one person is able to do too much too quickly, they can create more liability than they can accommodate if something fails.

It is essential that a human is responsible for the utilization of any AI output in the real world, but that is not enough. For our own sakes, we must find ways to minimize the tech-debt bankruptcy blast-radius of those who would utilize (knowingly or unknowingly) AI to create flawed systems upon which others rely.

An example: Jim vibe-codes an extremely popular micropayments app. He hires a few people and sees the company as the WhatsApp of money -- a few engineers and some agentic support staff. It pulls in a few million in VC money -- enough to draw in tens of millions of users. One day, a flaw in the infrastructure causes all of the users' unsalted banking information to be released.

Agentic AI allows that entire list of customers to be exploited rapidly, so the losses for society are in the tens of billions. Jim's company is immediately bankrupt, of course, but there are only a few million dollars to go around.

Today, most of Jim's incentives are to go ahead and build that app. The same is true for his few employees and a small VC contribution. There's not much capital at risk compared with the societal exposure.

How do we ensure that AI users are accountable not just for their actions, but for the size of the risk-exposure that they create?

Comment · 6 months ago
Spaceflight requires relentless deliberate progress.

An exploding job-recruitment offer might not attract the kind of folks we want designing a system that absolutely must work after a decade in space.

I've worked with NASA and ESA employees/contractors who've made technical miracles happen in space. I don't think any of them would be drawn to this style of recruitment.

Comment · 7 months ago
A central challenge for AI is understanding how accountability flows.

The language of this article is a great example, "... thanks to an AI agent that gave an employee inaccurate technical advice ...".

It should more-correctly read, " ... thanks to the people who made it possible for an AI agent to give an employee inaccurate technical advice ... ".

It is at our peril that we deem it acceptable to blame a black box for an error, especially at scale.

Comment · 8 months ago
As noted above:

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-119publ38/pdf/PLAW-... : the Attorney General was to have produced the entirety of the Epstein files, with very narrowly-enumerated redactions, in December. She has not done so.

Furthermore, there are numerous allegations that the documents that have been released contain CSAM, which (referencing the PDF above) may fall afoul of 18 U.S.C. 2252–2252A.

In addition, one need only glance at the action in US courts to see egregious violations of the Constitution and valid court orders playing out daily.

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/26513988-trorder0128...

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mnd.230...

Comment · 8 months ago
The US administration is, at present, regularly violating the law and ignoring court orders. Indeed, these very releases are patently in violation of multiple federal laws -- they're simultaneously insufficiently-responsive to meet the requirements of the law requiring the release of the files and fall afoul of CSAM laws by being incompletely redacted.

The challenge, as we're all experiencing together, is that the law is not inherently self-enforcing.

Comment · 9 months ago
And your medical provider who will only allow you to see your online medical records after an SMS 2FA challenge?
Comment · 9 months ago
Scientists use pairs of satellites to map the small variations in Earth's gravitational field. It is possible to see groundwater depletion and changes in distribution of glacial ice, among many things.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GRACE_and_GRACE-FO

The primary challenge in determining the mass of Earth is actually measuring the gravitational constant, G, itself. Everything else involved is known at much higher precision. The product of G and Earth's mass is known to two parts in a billion, but the uncertainty in G is ~22 parts per million.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_constant

LISA is primarily sensitive to time-varying gravitational gradients on timescales of a fraction of a minute to a few hours and won't be terribly useful for determining the orbits of objects in our solar system. (but it is very, very cool).

Comment · 10 months ago
Comment · 10 months ago
The effect is so powerful, it fools professionals and the camera-operator: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fioVbt7eF8

Even when the technique is known, everyone remains susceptible (the victim team in the above video is the trickster here): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSNTfFg4XW0

Comment · 10 months ago
Comment · 10 months ago
Key Lime Air operates daily airline flights as Denver Air Connection in addition to their charter work for ICE and others.
Comment · 10 months ago
Comment · 10 months ago

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