The Age of AI demands planetary-scale Carbon Dioxide removal. @AltCarbonIndia is using volcanic rock dust to geochemically pull carbon out of the atmosphere — and we just proved it works at scale. The world's largest issuance of carbon credits through Enhanced Rock Weathering. ~10,000 tonnes of CO₂ removed. Enough to offset a small AI data centre. India has a history of scientific breakthroughs that stun the world — across medicine, space exploration, energy, & financial inclusion.🇮🇳 Climate Change is the most significant existential threat to our species. It demands Himalayan Ambitions. We're moving mountains to make that happen. Literally.

what is even happening with Mumbai airport??? this is the 4th time in a month I’ve landed only to be ferried 25 mins away on a bus despite the aircraft being parked beside an aero bridge! This makes ZERO sense @CSMIA_Official

It was a pleasure to host Hon’ble Minister Shri @ArjunsinghWB at @AltCarbonIndia’s Darjeeling-Climate Action Labs today. He spent time with our scientists, engineers, and farm partners to understand the work we’re doing on the intersection of agriculture, climate action, and earth sciences. What was striking was that he kept emphasising the need to focus on the farming communities in Bengal and undertaking cutting edge R&D to ensure we have agricultural abundance.

wait but I thought AI was going to eat software?

and it’s a wrap what a fun time hosting @ashleevance and the @corememory team the himalayas!

adventuring in darjeeling with @ashleevance

ngl this a good list

It's going to a fun few days... @ashleevance 😊

i think this is the right direction but man is it just me or does gavin newsom looks like evil matthew mcconaughey

I'm a big believer that AI will transform the Earth Sciences, in the way it has Life Sciences. This is a very good essay by @orbuch, who has been great fun discussing this topic with Imo this is what good venture investing should look like— mobilising imagination, thought and words to articulate what the world is capable of looking like tomorrow. > The big claim underlying Ryan's thesis is that @RichardSSutton's Bitter Lesson can be applied to understanding the Earth System as well. I agree that compute and data can help us reach generalization in Earth Sciences. However, I have a minor but important disagreement-- unlike LLMs, this *will* require specialised human knowledge (given how complex & specialised Earth Systems are, its geochemistry, oceanographic complexities, geophysical quirks & more) > I like that Ryan talks about all that generalizable AIs can potentially achieve when it comes to monitoring and moulding our planet. While also making a very subtle point about the dangers of AI: that this a fundamentally new form of intelligence previously unbeknownst to the planet. They don't breathe (!) They are not part of the natural world that makes up our planet. How do we understand this from an AI Safety lens? > Liu Cixin has a brilliant short story Moonlight, about how human ingenuity that engineers the planet eventually created unintended consequences seen only decades later. I think this essay tackles that criticism head on constantly keeping in mind the sentiment of the butterfly effect, which is refreshing. > The visualisations of sensor networks shown in the essay are a very good reminder of the large difference that exists in mapping Earth Systems, between the Developed and the Developing countries. ERA5 is a good example. It's barely decent in prediction for South Asia becuase of sparse ground truthing. We will need creative ways to finance such gaps— from global philanthropic support, to multi governmental initiatives, to citizen science networks, to some potentially very profitable startup ideas. I think one great source could be frontier labs and the new windfall hitting them. > The essay talks about the Ocean being a major blind spot for us. I would propose another— the subsurface. We barely know what's beneath our feat, despite geophysical tools now finally becoming advanced enough that we could peer to the centre of the earth without having to drill (see image below for how sparse our coverage of the underground has been). > Lots of new learnings from sensor carrying seals to how somali pirates make monsoon tracking difficult! I hope this inspires a new generation of natural scientists. Taking the Gaia hypothesis seriously, studying the Earth System, making it programmable will be a remarkably difficult but also a very exciting journey. It will take us to volcanoes, forests, rivers and canyons. We will bring these natural phenomena back to the lab, and carry the labs into the planet. Along the way, we will solve & discover new mysteries about our planet, study and learn about the long geological history that has given birth to and sustained life, and maybe, just maybe, we will also understand where we as humans have come from, and how are we floating on this pale blue dot, suspended in a vast galaxy around us. If you find this exciting @AltCarbonIndia is always hiring (you can read a short note from last year about our aim to create Planetary Intelligence): altcarbon.notion.site/Alt-Ca…

in today's @the_hindu, i noticed a very sensible and sensitive piece about how to give feedback to writers using ai. on the very opposite page, a piece by a former indian diplomat which seems entirely ai generated.

what a gem

AI safety but the children are the ones saying this

I have to agree…

my girlfriend has taken her day off as bombay welcomes ganesh chathurthi watching her from my desk, i have just been taught what "girl rot" means

Good writing in Indian sciences is so rare! This book finally arrived.

I personally find it incredibly irresponsible to create this strawman: “China is very unlikely to join a global agreement, as you know, and that has to be taken into account as well.” How do we know this? Why is this obvious? It’s very much in the interest of investors in frontier labs to claim this in order to keep accelerating without regulations. Until now, China has behaved fairly responsibly when it comes to climate change, the impact of social media on children, and generally on the geopolitical sphere. I’m not a China apologist but at some point, we have to ask, on what basis are we making such assertions? I hope Xi is able to clearly and convincingly argue for a responsible bilateralism for AI research governance during their meeting later this month.

Good to see @iiscbangalore doing this! Deeptech needs exactly this kind of bridge building between Delhi & Bangalore.

Last year I had the chance of attending a satellite launch. It was so amazing to see the curiosity that was sparked in the minds of the kids attending it. To bring the local community to our labs in Darjeeling feels very special!