Conversation with Tim Hwang

I’m writing to share an enjoyable conversation I recently had with Tim Hwang. I think of Tim as an artist whose medium is the organization. He’s held important jobs at Google, Substack, and Inflection AI, among others, and founded many more organizations and events on the side, including ROFLCon, the Awesome Foundation, the Bay Area Infrastructure Observatory, the Pacific Social Architecting Corporation, the Trade Journal Co-operative, and the Institute for a Christian Machine Intelligence.

Video, audio, and transcript for the conversation is at: https://www.goodconversationproject.com/tim-hwang/

It’s a very exploratory conversation - we explore why Tim once ran a four-day workshop treating tarot as a design problem; why we should start far more organizations; how Tim talked his way into a nuclear power plant; and whether AI alignment could be rebuilt from Christian priors rather than rationalist ones. And we end on outsider art, private notebooks, and the ambition of making something with exactly one fan.

I would enjoy thoughtful comments in the discussion section at that earlier link!

I expect to record 5-10 conversations like this over the next year - exploratory, in-depth conversations with people I admire. I won’t announce all of them here, but rather through a separate dedicated Substack, which you can subscribe to at:

The conversations will all include video, audio, and transcripts, and a comment section for discussion.