Causal experimentation over correlative understanding - POSIWID
I enjoy talking to and helping anyone interested in Substrate Independence for Structural AI Safety.
I am Co-Founder and President of Netholabs. We build recording systems, cross-species datasets, and foundation models of living organisms. Our systems record continuous neural and behavioural data from living mammals, including humans. We use that data to model how biological systems perceive, learn, adapt, and act over time.
Modern AI is trained on the outputs of intelligence: language, code, images, video. There is almost no data on the dynamics that produce intelligence in the first place. We are making those dynamics a training substrate. Today we apply this to the capability and safety of frontier AI and robotics. As the measurements get richer, the same path leads to functional models of whole organisms.
I came to Netholabs through mathematics and philosophy, then trading, then capital formation for frontier science. Along the way I advised family offices on emerging technology and raised money for teams working on hard problems. I still sometimes compete in optimization challenges, the latest being by Codex (Flywire). I'm equally excited by emerging applications for directed graph theory, structure-to-function and function-to-function emulation converging, and by exploring the limits of the universality hypothesis (the lesser-known sibling of the scaling hypothesis).
I write about innovation, neuroscience, and literature. Beckett is my favourite writer.
I organise small gatherings about substrate independence. Reach out if you want to be included.
Let's not spend our precious time fixing what is broken. Let us create and experience something better together.
I adhere to Crocker's Rules, so you can prioritize information when talking to me. If you want to give me feedback anonymously on anything, you can do so here.
You can contact me at: calarsenc at gmail dot com or christian at netholabs dot com
Drink from the Pierian spring. Feel the bliss, know our unity since abiogenesis.