The Academy for Philosopher-Builders. Building AI for human flourishing. Writing at blog.cosmos-institute.org/
Austin, TX
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The AI age demands a new kind of technologist: The Philosopher-Builder.
Every builder's first duty is philosophical: to decide what they should build for.
AI is beginning to decide what ideas reach your mind—your next action, your next job, your next relationship. It will tempt you to outsource your thinking in ways you’ve never been tempted before.
Left unchecked, this becomes autocomplete for life.
200 years ago, when mechanization was starting to transform the world, the German philosopher Wilhelm von Humboldt warned of this very dynamic: To flourish as humans, we have to be self-directed. We are the architects of our own becoming.
But if we offload our thinking—if we let AI automate what we once pursued with intention—is it still our life to live?
To build AI that advances human flourishing, we need technologists who combine technical ability with moral vision.
Silicon Valley once embodied this: Jobs and Wozniak asked what kind of creative life personal computers should enable; ARPANET's pioneers envisioned what kind of connected society networks should foster.
But today, we now see three dominant archetypes:
1. The puzzle-absorbed: Solving technical challenges without reflecting on broader ends
2. The reductionists: Collapsing morality into math
3. The dismissers: Waving off philosophy as irrelevant to progress
All three abdicate the fundamental question: What should we build for?
This is where philosophy is essential. Because the job of a builder isn’t just to ship. It’s to shape a shared world.
We need a new kind of technologist—one who builds with human flourishing in mind. Who resists centralized control. Who strengthens autonomy instead of mining attention.
We call them Philosopher-Builders.
@cosmos_inst exists to train and support them—people who translate deep thinking into systems, institutions, and infrastructure that serve human ends.
If you believe the future of AI should expand human freedom and lift human potential, read the full essay.
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Ahead of big socioeconomic shifts, you often see the emergence of small prophetic sects. Most vanish into obscurity or purity spirals, but sometimes their members escape their narrow confines and built durable institutions.
@lawhsw and I explore how this needs to happen for AI.
"Reading METR graphs does not automatically bring with it an understanding of how specific domains will respond to agent ecologies."
@chalmermagne and @lawhsw on why AI institution-builders need to think bigger about the future they're building for.
blog.cosmos-institute.org/p/…
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"Reading METR graphs does not automatically bring with it an understanding of how specific domains will respond to agent ecologies."
@chalmermagne and @lawhsw on why AI institution-builders need to think bigger about the future they're building for.
blog.cosmos-institute.org/p/…
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Come join @GilRubinstein and me in reading texts—ancient, modern, and contemporary—to better understand the philosophical (i.e., the human) stakes of AI. Thank you to @cosmos_inst for the support, and we're excited to be piloting this experiment!
👇👇👇
If you're a student at @UChicago, we're proud to be supporting a reading group on AI, philosophy, and human autonomy – starting from the week October 4th in Hyde Park.
More information, syllabus and sign-up here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F…
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We are running an experiment here. If it works, we will spread to many more campuses
Reach out to @sienna_rothery if you are interested…
If you're a student at @UChicago, we're proud to be supporting a reading group on AI, philosophy, and human autonomy – starting from the week October 4th in Hyde Park.
More information, syllabus and sign-up here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F…
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If you're a student at @UChicago, we're proud to be supporting a reading group on AI, philosophy, and human autonomy – starting from the week October 4th in Hyde Park.
More information, syllabus and sign-up here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F…
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Cosmos Institute retweeted
A great example of (re)inventing the wheel.
AI governance is a wicked problem that can adopt / modify institutional frameworks from other areas.
Read this @lawfare by @RuneKvist, @CristianTrout, & Rajiv Dattani.
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If you're thinking about founding an educational institute for the AI age, we have the questions you need to answer and the reading list.
blog.cosmos-institute.org/p/…
Today, we’re launching an ambitious new school called The Horowitz Andreessen Academy.
Based in San Francisco, The Academy serves the most promising young high school graduates.
We think this can be an elite institution that attracts top tier talent. One that prepares students for the future rather than remaining stuck in the past.
The #1 goal is to help students learn to build, which is the most important skill in the AI era. They'll learn primarily by pursuing their own projects, either individually or in groups. There are classes and guest lectures, too, from some truly amazing people who have built modern-day Silicon Valley.
The Academy is designed as a network, since that’s the reason students go to school in the first place. Core to that network are our 10 Founding Partners: Anduril, Anthropic, Coinbase, Google, Meta, NVIDIA, OpenAI, Palantir, Replit, and Stripe. The network includes over 50 hiring partners and over 200 speakers and mentors. To join as a hiring partner or faculty member, you can apply on our website.
We raised $42M in funding led by @a16z. I'll be CEO and @pmarca and @eriktorenberg will join me on the board.
Applications are open for our Founding Class Fellowship, which will be one year and tuition-free. Eventually, pending regulatory approval, we plan to offer a two-year program that charges tuition, similar in cost to an elite private university.
We're looking for the most unusually ambitious young builders on the planet. Come join us in San Francisco:
theacademysf.com/
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Nietzsche thought liberal society was running on the flames of a Christian morality it couldn't replenish. Is something similar true for those who use AI well?
@Brendan_McCord, speaking at @AdamSmithHouse, on the coming divide between those formed in the pre-AI and AI worlds.
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On why it's a problem that no one seems to know or agree on what "pacing" means, from @chalmermagne : blog.cosmos-institute.org/p/…
pacing is the hot new word in San Francisco. no one knows what it means but it gets the people going
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"Advocates for pacing may convince governments of the exceptional character of frontier AI risk, only to lose all control over what happens next."
@chalmermagne on the dangers inherent in underspecified calls for "pacing."
blog.cosmos-institute.org/p/…
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Cosmos Institute retweeted
A large coalition of people, with diverging intuitions about AI, have come out in favour of the same poorly-defined policy intervention ("pacing").
Given the potential expansion of state power involved, we need a better debate.
Me for @cosmos_inst: blog.cosmos-institute.org/p/…
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Simulating the consequences of an experiment before running it is a holy grail of AI for biology. How can we get there?
Our new paper, “World models for biomedicine,” which I led together with @njwfish, is out now in @CellCellPress’s special issue on AI in biology. We explore how biomedical world models could help scientists navigate the enormous space of possible biological interventions. In principle, they could:
🧪 Simulate how biological systems respond to interventions never previously tested
🎯 Search for interventions that drive cells, tissues, or patients toward desired states
🧭 Plan experimental campaigns over long time horizons
🤖 Power autonomous, closed-loop AI scientists
However, realizing this vision requires much more than calling a model a “world model.” What exactly defines a biomedical world model, and what capabilities distinguish it from related models? Where do today’s models already show promise, and where do they fall short? What new data and architectures are needed? What evaluations would demonstrate that a world model works?
We tackle these and other questions in this latest paper from @marinkazitnik's lab: cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092…
More below 🧵👇🏽 1/8
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✍🏼 «Believing in multiple foundational moral values doesn’t amount to believing either that there are infinite such values, or that everything is such a value»
In a new piece at the @cosmos_inst, philosopher @RMLLowe from @mercatus makes the case for “bounded pluralism”: many things go, rather than anything goes.
blog.cosmos-institute.org/p/…
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How can a free society make room for many different ways of living while still maintaining principled boundaries?
In a new piece at the @cosmos_inst, philosopher @RMLLowe makes the case for “bounded pluralism”: many things go, rather than anything goes.
Read more: bit.ly/4gPifWL
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have been grateful to be a small part of the @cosmos_inst community — this expansion makes me very optimistic about the future of AI
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“Most generations inherit their world. Some must build it anew.”
Massive congrats to @Brendan_McCord and @_mattmandel for launching @cosmos_vc, a $77.6M fund to back philosopher-builders.
@Brendan_McCord has been building a first-of-its-kind community with @cosmos_inst - highly recommend reading his essays on AI, agency, and philosophy.
Introducing Cosmos Ventures.
@_MattMandel and I are launching Fund I with $77.6M to back philosopher-builders founding institutions for the AI age.
We’ve invested in AIUC (@aiunderwriting), @PrimeIntellect, Workshop Labs (acquired by @ThinkyMachines), and a stealth education company. Our LPs include @reidhoffman, @jliemandt, @StandTogether, @fredwilson, @mickymalka, and @AsteraInstitute.
AI is creating the biggest opening for institution-builders since the American founding. We are here to back the founders who take it.
Our thesis: Dare to Found.
nitter.net/cosmos_vc/status/21002…
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Today, @Brendan_McCord, founder of Cosmos Institute, and @_MattMandel launched Cosmos Ventures, a venture firm backing philosopher-builders founding institutions for the AI age.
Cosmos Institute explores what AI means for a free society through research, writing, grants, and a community of thinkers and builders. That work has taken different institutional forms.
Among them, we helped create Oxford’s HAI Lab and incubate the nonprofit IDAI, and through the Cosmos Fellowship and Cosmos Grants, we support about a hundred people a year turning ideas into prototypes to advance truth-seeking and human autonomy.
Some answers take the form of companies. Cosmos Ventures exists to back the founders who share this ambition.
We’re excited to see more founders, operators, and investors engage with these ideas and put them into practice.
Cosmos Ventures is a separate organization with its own funding and governance structure. At Cosmos Institute, we’ll continue to pursue our nonprofit work across research, education, grants, and fellowships.
Condere aude. Dare to found. 🫡
Introducing Cosmos Ventures.
@_MattMandel and I are launching Fund I with $77.6M to back philosopher-builders founding institutions for the AI age.
We’ve invested in AIUC (@aiunderwriting), @PrimeIntellect, Workshop Labs (acquired by @ThinkyMachines), and a stealth education company. Our LPs include @reidhoffman, @jliemandt, @StandTogether, @fredwilson, @mickymalka, and @AsteraInstitute.
AI is creating the biggest opening for institution-builders since the American founding. We are here to back the founders who take it.
Our thesis: Dare to Found.
nitter.net/cosmos_vc/status/21002…
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Once in a century, we get a discovery so unexplainable that it's thought of as magic. (Feedback-free) self-improvement is not one of them.
We exclude self-improvement that involve feedback (eg a Lean verifier). An upcoming work will discuss them in detail.
Just up on @TmlrPub!
🤔Debate, ICM, and bootstrap match golden finetuning performance, despite using no labeled data at all. WTH?
Turns out they're reducible to maximizing compressibility of model behavior wrt a pretrain prior. The latter is an optimal form of description-length regularization.🧵
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"AGI may be one of the most important technologies of our lifetime technologies of our lifetime and that's precisely why we shouldn't abandon the principles that made it possible."
Cosmos Senior Research Fellow @sebkrier on the lessons of classical liberalism.
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We're delighted to welcome @_AashishReddy, our new researcher and the latest addition to the Cosmos tweet.
Read his first essay for us – a liberal defense of markets.
blog.cosmos-institute.org/p/…
Really pleased to announce I've started as a Researcher @cosmos_inst. I think figuring out liberalism, and liberal institutions, adapt to the AI age is the most important question of our time. And I think no group is better suited to thinking through these problems than @Brendan_McCord and the team at Cosmos.
As part of this endeavour, I've written the next post in my series on liberalism for the Cosmos Substack, making the liberal case for markets. Markets let us cooperate on advancing our ends without collective agreement on how to live. They do more than just coordinate dispersed knowledge, or even discover new productive possibilities. Markets also let us discover ways of living we could not have judged in advance.
Hayekian discovery thus meets Millian experiments in living, in a recursive process — embodied in specialisation and the division of labour — that expands future productive capacity, and enables compounding growth.
Read it! blog.cosmos-institute.org/p/…
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