BTW regarding Robin's AI progress metric, my reaction is more like Doug's (the first / most upvoted comment).
I agree with that comment that machine learning has been on a roll, but Robin's reply is important too. We can ask how machine learning shows up in the performance statistics for particular tasks to think about its relative contribution.
Kim Suozzi was a neuroscience student with brain cancer who wanted to be cryonically preserved but lacked the funds. She appealed to reddit and a foundation was set up, called the Society for Venturism. Enough money was raised, and when she died on the January 17th, she was preserved by Alcor.
I wasn't sure if I should post about this, but I was glad to see that enough money was raised and it was discussed on LessWrong here, here, and here.
Source
Edit: It looks like Alcor actually worked with her to lower the costs, and waived some of the fees.
Edit 2: The Society for Venturism has been around for a while, and wasn't set up just for her.