Jacob Trefethen's blog

Success for each technology was defined as “100,000 people have taken it” by February 2nd, 2029.

I started this blog in February 2024, with a post about February 2029.

At Open Philanthropy, we have given away $600 million in biomedical research since 2016.

Lana Del Rey’s “Young and Beautiful” starts with piano keys, church bells, violins soaring through the first verse.

I work on funding science for the sake of medical progress, but only 10% of our science funding at Open Philanthropy is related to AI.

Rapid AI progress does not automatically mean rapid medical progress.

I assume many people working in medical research fantasise about talking to Saloni Dattani.

This list consists of writing that ticked two boxes: 1) did I think about the article again more than a week after reading it?

It is always easiest to insult your own work, so let me tell you what's wrong with the piece Rafael Dib and I just published on vaccine R&D.

Why should we have to pay for projects in foreign countries with our tax dollars?

This decade brought two inventions that will prevent a million deaths in America.

The most striking fact about philanthropy to me is how little money rich people give away.

CDC 6.

Tom Kalil responded to my first blog post on 10 technologies that won’t exist in 5 years, asking: OK, how do we make them happen?

I last got strep throat the first month out of lockdown.