Back to the Observatory

PUBLICATIONS / REMCO VROOM

Ideas worth
staying with.

Essays and research on the possibilities ahead, and the human judgment that shapes them. Open a preview, follow a question, take your time.

Interactive essayRemco Vroom

The One Idea

Every AI you used today runs on one idea from 2017. A plain-language essay, film and interactive explorer on the Transformer, and on what it quietly traded away.

Read a previewClose preview

Every AI you used today runs on one idea from 2017.

Not a company. Not a product. A design decision in a paper about translation: stop reading one word at a time, and let every word look at every other word, all at once.

Episode one of Uncovering How AI Works. Includes a 30-second film and an illustrative attention explorer.
Read the full essay

Interactive essayRemco Vroom

The Token Gap

When machines produce language faster than people can read it, what becomes valuable? An interactive essay on speed, reasoning and human judgment.

Read a previewClose preview

You are reading this at roughly four tokens per second.

Most people have never done this arithmetic. They feel the speed as convenience. It is not convenience. It is a different physics of thought.

Author’s historical illustration. The full essay includes assumptions and source context.
Read the full essay

Research thesisRemco Vroom

The Quantum Intelligence Protocol

The full Quantum Intelligence Protocol thesis: seven principles for agent governance, persistent memory and learning across autonomous systems.

Read a previewClose preview

What if each interaction could leave the next one better informed?

Read the complete thesis: eleven chapters on governing autonomous agents, three-tier memory and intelligence that carries forward, with interactive illustrations of the proposed architecture.

Explore the thesis