Scott Alexander (Astral Codex Ten)

19.

Spectator.

Could AI lead to a revival of decorative beauty?

Profiles, not quite past, link in post, a startup using AI and fancy printing to make customized Delft tiles.

It's a good idea, and the tiles are very pretty.

But the tiles are sort of a best possible case, a pretty traditional object that can have a customized 2D image and be mass printed.

I think most forms of lost decorative beauty aren't bottlenecked by ability to generate 2D images of the type image models are good at, and so we'll have to wait.

20.

Some friends, including Kelsey Piper, wrote an emergency PEPFAR report collecting evidence for why PEPFAR is good-slash-effective-slash-important and deserves to be kept.

Some key points.

Quote, PEPFAR has saved between 7.5 and 30 million lives at a cost between $1,500 and $10,000 per life saved.

The US government is willing to spend at least 1,000 times this much to save an American life.

In Africa, unlike in the United States, HIV-AIDS primarily affects women and children.

One of the main goals of PEPFAR is to prevent, quote, vertical transmission, where a pregnant mother with HIV passes on her infection to her baby in utero or during delivery.

PEPFAR has prevented at least 5.5 million babies from being born with HIV.

Over time, PEPFAR is handing off its responsibilities to the governments of the countries we're helping.

But it will take decades if we want to defeat HIV-AIDS, and years if we want to not destroy the good works we've already done.

PEPFAR is a well-audited program.

The audits we spot-checked showed 0-2% rates of undocumented program expenses.

This compares extremely favourably to other government programs.