In good physicist company

Let me briefly tell you about two of my recent and quite rewarding interactions with prominent physicists.

1. On November 29, MIT physicist Max Tegmark and I coauthored and cosigned a letter to the EU Commission with feedback on their pilot assessment on Trustworthy AI. Our letter can be found here or (for those not wishing to create a login account for EU's Futurium) here.

2. Last week I had the honor of sharing the stage with a Nobel laureate. Steven Chu was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 1997 for his work on cooling and trapping atoms with laser light. On December 9, we both took part in the panel discussion on Averting the climate crisis at the 2019 Nobel Week Dialogue, together with John Hassler and Lisen Schultz. Given that he served as Secretary of Energy in President Obama's cabinet as recently as 2013, it was a pleasant surprise to learn how outspoken and radical Chu is on the urgent need for curtailing greenhouse gas emissions.

And yes, I did attend the Nobel banquet the day after. Locating me in the following photo is challenging but not impossible.