According to MIT Technology Review, researchers are now treating massive, opaque large language models like alien biology, using techniques from neuroscience to understand these “city-size xenomorphs” in our midst. In a separate story, Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero, who caused a stir in 2017 with head-swap experiments on corpses, claims the concept of head or brain transplants is getting fresh interest from life-extension enthusiasts and stealth Silicon Valley startups. This week also sees major tech firms like Meta, TikTok, and YouTube facing their first jury trials over social media addiction claims from parents. Meanwhile, a winter storm is straining Virginia’s power grid, partly due to record electricity demand from data centers, and TikTok has begun collecting more precise user location data.
The AI is an Alien. Now What?
Here’s the thing: we’ve built systems so complex that their own creators don’t fully grasp their inner workings. That’s a terrifying and fascinating position to be in. So, scientists are borrowing from biology and neuroscience, a field called mechanistic interpretability, to try and dissect these digital beasts. But what happens when the “creature” is weirder than we imagined? The analogy is powerful because it frames our ignorance appropriately. We’re not just debugging code; we’re trying to communicate with, or at least comprehend, an intelligence that operates on a scale and in a way that’s fundamentally foreign. It makes the push for understanding feel less like engineering and more like a first-contact mission.
The Head Transplant’s Unlikely Second Act
This story is wild. Sergio Canavero’s ideas were largely dismissed by the medical establishment as outlandish, even grotesque. But the report that Silicon Valley’s life-extension crowd is taking a look changes the calculus entirely. It’s no longer just about a rogue surgeon; it’s about a convergence of extreme capital, a terror of death, and a belief that any biological limit is just an engineering problem. I think this is a perfect example of how fringe science can get a second life when it aligns with the ambitions of the ultra-wealthy who want to live forever. The ethical and practical hurdles are still, frankly, monstrous. But you can’t ignore the momentum that kind of funding and ideology can create.
A Week of Tech Reckonings
This is a big week for accountability, or at least the attempt at it. Social media giants finally facing a jury over addiction claims is a milestone, even if the legal path is long. Simultaneously, the physical toll of our digital world is showing in Virginia’s power grid. We talk about AI and data centers in the abstract, but here they are, literally straining infrastructure during a winter storm. And then there’s TikTok, quietly ramping up data collection. It all paints a picture of an industry whose societal impacts—on mental health, on resources, on privacy—are moving from theoretical debates to tangible, courtroom and real-world crises.
The Recursive AI and Returning Tubes
The note about new AI companies using AI to make better AI is the perfect ouroboros for our moment. It sounds efficient, but doesn’t it also risk creating an inbred, closed loop? If the training data starts eating its own tail, where does the genuine novelty come from? On a completely different note, the piece on pneumatic tubes coming back is a wonderful reminder that tech doesn’t always move in a straight line. Sometimes, an “obsolete” solution is the perfect, reliable fit for a specific niche—like hospitals. It’s a good antidote to the idea that everything new completely replaces the old. Sometimes, the old just finds a new home.
