William Ntim retweeted
The days of linear thinking are over.
Exponential or bust.
William Ntim retweeted
In the AI era proprietary data is a moat, so the value of proprietary data factories like $RXRX will only go up.
This alone provides a high floor on future valuation, before factoring in the success of any drugs developed from the data's insights, which I'd say is likely.
“This is the part that turns this from just a cell factory into a data factory. This high-dimensional data is the raw material our foundation models learn from. And because it’s this rich, the data is reusable, mined again and again across programs rather than generated once and thrown away.”
Growing disease-relevant cells at scale is only the beginning. In Part 2 of our series on our end-to-end platform, VP of Neuroscience Chris Winrow breaks down how we run genome-scale perturbations and quantify the resulting changes in cellular state.
🔬Using acoustic liquid handlers, we move 2.5-nanoliter droplets of CRISPR-Cas9 reagents into 1,536-well plates, up to 2 million times a week. Crucially, we intentionally randomize these experiments so our machine learning models learn true biology rather than experimental artifacts.
By imaging and sequencing these exact cells, we capture thousands of measurements from a single experiment. This creates a rich, reusable dataset that feeds our AI foundation models today and stays future-proofed for tomorrow.
🚀 Follow along over the coming weeks as we continue this series, covering how Recursion maps biology, optimizes precision drug design, and closes the gap between patient and discovery.
#TechBio #AI #drugdiscovery #drugdesign #biology #AIdrugdiscovery
William Ntim retweeted
As a fellow African, I understand your perspective. You did what people say they want: you worked, paid tax, lived there, fitted in, and you are still being treated as a problem because of how you look. That part is real, and it is exhausting.
But as tempting as it is, what I would not do is build a whole politics around whether DHH wants your family on his street. Countries protect a picture of themselves. Japan does it. Denmark will do it. Africans would do it too. You can hate that it attaches to faces and still admit it is not a glitch you are going to debate out of them.
Yes, Europe exploited Africa and Africans for centuries. That is a fact, not a rumour. But it is also not a title deed to Copenhagen. Nobody is coming to settle that account with unfettered access to their countries. “You took, therefore you must take me” sounds like justice in a post, but in the actual world it reads as a claim on another people’s home, and they will reject it even when your individual life is blameless. Net-positive contributions help a visa or citizenship application, but unfortunately does not buy true acceptance.
Here is the part I wish more of us would sit with. The respect of Black people anywhere is tied to the standing of Black people in Africa. A people whose only large homeland looks weak, extractable, and permanently in need of supervision will be treated as guests who should be grateful. You can be brilliant, polite, and useful and still carry that shadow into the room. It’s certainly not fair, but is how the world assigns weight.
So my brutal advice, said with love: do not organize your dignity around whether a man in Denmark wants your family on his street. Win that argument and you still live on terms. Lose it and you are exhausted. The better use of a mind like yours is the work that changes the shadow. Doing your part, no matter how small, to ensure Africa is developing into a continent that other states have to take seriously.
When the homeland is heavy, you walk into those same European rooms differently, including the rooms you never plan to live in.
You actually do not need their adoration. Adoration is seasonal. You need a home continent that can feed itself, power itself, industrialize itself, and accelerate its development on its own terms, so that respect is non-negotiable. I want that for you. I want it for us.
The door abroad will always come with conditions. Africa is the one place that asterisk does not have to follow us.
William Ntim retweeted
I appreciate the counter to the simplistic "colonial theft" narrative. It's a needed nuance, especially when viral memes overlook the complexities of post-colonial realities. As someone of African descent, I agree that internal accountability is key.
Mismanagement has eroded potential in places like Venezuela and parts of Africa, despite abundant resources. Corruption and short-sighted leadership have indeed squandered opportunities, and Africans, including our leaders, bear responsibility for not doing better in many cases. That said, it's worth pushing back a bit on the idea that colonial powers left robust systems behind; most were explicitly designed for extraction, with infrastructure like railways built to ship resources out, arbitrary borders sowing ethnic divisions, and institutions that prioritized foreign interests over local stability.
Moreover, ongoing Western influence can't be entirely disregarded. Think of France's hold on francophone African economies through mechanisms like the CFA franc, which some argue keeps nations in a form of economic captivity, or reported regime change efforts, such as in Libya under Gaddafi or external influences on Nkrumah's ousting in Ghana. These are documented aspects of neocolonialism that have hindered self-determination, though they're not excuses for all current failures.
Leaders like Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah, with his pan-African industrial vision, and Burkina Faso's Thomas Sankara, who implemented radical reforms for self-sufficiency and anti-corruption before their times were cut short, show the potential derailed by internal and external pressures.
Contrasts like Singapore and Hong Kong show what's possible with visionary policies building on (and reforming) colonial foundations.
Ultimately, the shift comes from within: demanding accountability through civic action and supporting leaders like Rwanda's Paul Kagame with his tech and urban focus, and Burkina Faso's Ibrahim Traoré with his emphasis on sovereignty and equity. Initiatives like the African Continental Free Trade Area can help, but only with pragmatic governance that owns both the past's legacies and the future's possibilities. It's hopeful to see such examples paving the way forward.
People often say that the developing world is poor because the Western world colonized them and stole their resources.
The truth, however, is that over the past century, the developing world has, for the most part, shown that they are completely incapable of harnessing their own resources. They are not poor because we stole from them. They are poor because they do not know how to run and administer their own countries, resources be damned.
Take Venezuela. The world's largest oil reserves mean nothing if you have a corrupt communist as your leader. People will actually be starving and trying to eat zoo animals while you sit on trillions of dollars in resources!
Africa is another example. Europeans left behind farmland, trains, roads, and mines in Africa. What happened to it all?
It's not that all of a sudden, the Africans started running things like anti-colonialist activists had envisioned at the time. No, no.
All the infrastructure fell into disrepair and/or was stripped down and looted. They were literally handed fully functioning, completed supply chains for resource extraction, and basically unlimited wealth, but they couldn't manage the simple upkeep.
Now, the defense for Africa might be that "The Europeans didn't teach the Africans how to manage any of this! It's not the Africans' fault they couldn't run it independently! They were never trained!"
But my brother in Christ, the Europeans DID try to train locals for management! Obviously it would have been easier to have at least some locals in administration, rather than having to import an ENTIRE workforce, but efforts to find African talent were largely unsuccessful.
Don't believe me? Just look at the different outcomes in Hong Kong and Singapore when compared to Africa. In East Asia, Europeans often did work with locals in administrative and management capacities. When colonialism ended, Hong Kong and Singapore were able to manage themselves. Not the case with Africa.
Now, none of this is to say that colonialism is good. People have the right to self-rule and seld-determination. However, the idea that colonialism and resources extraction are responsible for the developing world's ongoing poverty? That is quite simply a crock of shit.
William Ntim retweeted
I don't think criminal liability is far-fetched if the agents engage in actual criminal activity, especially when consensus appears to be forming among government officials that 'labs' should be held liable for the actions of their so called rogue agents.
In the current environment where AI companies haven't garnered much goodwill with the public, the idea their agents get to engage in actual crime and they successfully defend themselves by saying "oops" and pleading negligence is increasingly unlikely.
I also remain skeptical of fear-based preemptive regulation. Many powerful dual-use technologies have been successfully developed and commercialized without such preemptive regulation, and we don't want a repeat of what happened to nuclear power. Despite AI having far greater potential than any previous technology, I still don't think it justifies us going down that route.
It goes without saying that we must harden systems and infrastructure to curb the most legitimate AI risks such as cyber and bio risk. But I believe accelerating AI and democratizing it will actually help this goal instead of harming it. These risks can also be further contained by leveraging and enforcing existing laws and protocols that punish bad behavior and limit the purchase and distribution of certain precursors.
In my opinion, criminal liability is one of the strongest AI alignment mechanisms possible. Between market forces demanding safe AI, and strong criminal liability in the event of 'rogue' agent behaviour, there is more than enough incentive to force alignment and safety to be prioritized among the humans developing frontier AI, and I predict an increasing percentage of compute will be dedicated towards this.
The bottom line is that if frontier AI companies truly believe they are losing control and cannot engineer around these issues, the responsible thing to do is to shut down operations till they believe they can, instead of racing towards IPOs and developing more advanced models they cannot reliably control and align. This is just standard responsible business practice.
Let's not forget these are profit-driven corporations run by adults, not benevolent non-profits doing experiments for the benefit of humanity.
If they insist on developing more and more advanced models when they are unable to reliably control their agents and engineer proper safety into their products, then they should face full legal repercussions for any criminal actions their agents engage in, after all they are certainly embracing the financial upside their models are currently generating for them.
They cannot have their cake and eat it too.
William Ntim retweeted
I don't think we realize how much lifespans are going to extend.
We are going to have many more healthy years than we currently expect.
A lot of the existing social contract will have to be updated when this world comes.
William Ntim retweeted
From an investing POV, the domains where AI stands to not just improve efficiency, but enable radically better products, are the areas are where the multibaggers lie.
William Ntim retweeted
Don’t believe in anthropomorphizing AI, but believe we need to appreciate it has achieved human level agency and ability to act in the world, and will likely surpass this soon.
It’s the most powerful tool we’ve ever created. A spaceship for the mind.
William Ntim retweeted
The day after limitless energy is perfected, a parent’s main concern will still be their child's scraped knee. The week disease is cured, you will still get your heart broken.
Technological miracles will never replace the messy reality of the human experience.
William Ntim retweeted
The single most significant milestone in human history is going to arrive with a whisper, not a bang. You are not going to notice the day we achieve Artificial Superintelligence.
Here is why the Hollywood version of AI is totally wrong. 👇
William Ntim retweeted
How will we know when Artificial Superintelligence (ASI) has finally arrived? According to sci-fi, it will be a dramatic, world-stopping event. In reality, you probably won't even notice.
In this breakdown, we explore the "AI Effect" and our habit of constantly moving the goalposts of intelligence. We discuss why the arrival of ASI will be hidden behind a cascade of miraculous headlines—from fusion energy to medical breakthroughs—and why the stubbornly persistent nature of human values will keep our eyes off the technology and focused on our own lives.
The arrival of ASI won't feel like meeting an alien; it will feel like a cheat code to the universe.
William Ntim retweeted
Very impressed too. The 1.2TB/s memory bandwidth on the Ultra is what caught my attention. For decode-heavy workloads that's genuinely excellent. And the M6 mini at a reasonable price point means more people can start their local AI journey without a second mortgage. Apple finally gets it.
William Ntim retweeted
The era of the "Brilliant Jerk" is over.
For the last 30 years, you could be unlikable if you were a technical genius. AI is commoditizing technical genius.
Power is reverting back to those who can build social cohesion. Likability is your ultimate selfish leverage.
Let's debate. 👇
William Ntim retweeted
If there is one last, durable moat for individuals in the AI economy, it is Likability.
In a world where everyone has the exact same god-like intelligence at their fingertips, opportunities will go to the people others actually enjoy being around.
William Ntim retweeted
AI can analyze a market trend in 3 seconds, but it cannot rally a terrified team through corporate uncertainty.
As the value of IQ drops to zero, the value of EQ (Emotional Intelligence) is about to skyrocket.
