Links for 2021-11-25
The course of history critically depends on whether GPT-4 and GPT-5 will show diminishing performance returns. Evidence unearthed by RomanS suggests increasing returns to scale and capability spikes >=10b-parameters. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vwLxd6hhFvPbvKmBH/yudkowsky-and-christiano-discuss-takeoff-speeds?commentId=AWSj7eHKm2ELGvzSS (A presentation of the mentioned results: youtu.be/x-9KxACAPIo?t=18300)
The Arctic Ocean has been warming since around 1900, casting doubt in climate models. https://edition.cnn.com/2021/11/24/us/arctic-ocean-early-warming-climate/index.html
Facebook builds a giant speech recognition network – plans to analyze all of human speech eventually: Self-supervised speech processing for 128 languages https://ai.facebook.com/blog/xls-r-self-supervised-speech-processing-for-128-languages
Cancer cells grow nanotubes they use to absorb the mitochondria from immune cells like fucking vampires https://nature.com/articles/s41565-021-01000-4
Are Scientists Contaminating Their Own Microplastics Experiments? https://www.technologynetworks.com/applied-sciences/news/are-scientists-contaminating-their-own-microplastics-experiments-355860
“The fact that voters vote, along with the polls showing that they think their votes do matter, indicates that the premise of rational ignorance theory is false.” https://www.cato-unbound.org/2013/10/18/jeffrey-friedman/ignorance-yes-rational-no/
Ants swap spit to create a colony-wide metabolism, functioning almost like a single organism. https://elifesciences.org/articles/74005
The hidden ‘replication crisis’ of finance: Are swaths of prestigious financial academic research statistically bogus? [Financial Times] https://archive.md/8iyD2
The pandemic didn’t increase suicides. That shouldn’t be a surprise https://www.statnews.com/2021/11/16/the-pandemic-didnt-increase-suicides-that-shouldnt-be-a-surprise/
“Last year, Facebook banned all posts "in support of" Kyle Rittenhouse. They censored his legal aid funds. They censored videos of him helping injured protestors. Only comments against him were allowed. Facebook's censors have a nasty track record.” https://nypost.com/2021/11/22/how-many-times-must-facebook-be-caught-censoring-the-truth/