Links for 2021-12-05
AI Training Is Outpacing Moore’s Law: “The increase in transistor density would account for a little more than doubling of performance between the early version of the MLPerf benchmarks and those from June 2021. But improvements to software as well as processor and computer architecture produced a 6.8-11-fold speedup for the best benchmark results.” https://spectrum.ieee.org/ai-training-mlperf
The sun beneath our feet: Geothermal is a clean, inexhaustible energy resource. Just 0.1% of the heat content of Earth could supply humanity’s total energy needs for 2 million years. https://www.arpa-e.energy.gov/technologies/projects/millimeter-wave-technology-demonstration-geothermal-direct-energy-drilling
Why insects are more sensitive than they seem: For decades, the idea that insects have feelings was considered a heretical joke – but as the evidence piles up, scientists are rapidly reconsidering https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20211126-why-insects-are-more-sensitive-than-they-seem
"Amazon is not only making their own containers, but is using ships with cranes on them to unload them at ports without container terminal cranes." https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/04/how-amazon-beats-supply-chain-chaos-with-ships-and-long-haul-planes.html
After-birth abortion: why should the baby live? — "...what we call ‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled." https://jme.bmj.com/content/39/5/261
"Dead Science: Most Resources Linked in Biomedical Articles Disappear in Eight Years" — An 8-year half-life for all datasets shared in open access publications. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-15742-5_16
Article about applying the Universal Distribution to anthropics, and about the weirdness and uncertainty that result. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Hcc9fopx7sRexYhhi/anthropics-and-the-universal-distribution
Results of a 2020 Survey on Reporting Requirements and Practices for Biocontainment Laboratory Accidents https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/hs.2021.0083
Stamping Bar Codes on Cells to Solve Medical Mysteries: By tracking every cell in an organism, scientists are working out why certain cancer treatments fail, which could lead to improved medicine. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/29/health/cells-bar-coding-cancer.html
Soares, Tallinn, and Yudkowsky discuss AGI cognition https://intelligence.org/2021/11/29/soares-tallinn-and-yudkowsky-discuss-agi-cognition/
An article on Omicron that brings together everything we know about it while using Metaculus forecasts and the author's own forecasts to describe what is the most likely scenario for how this plays out. https://metaculus.com/notebooks/8801/omicron-what-we-know-what-to-expect--what-to-do/ (try this archived version if the site is overloaded)
"China-based Covid disinformation operation pushed fake Swiss scientist, Facebook says. Facebook researchers said they found evidence that the person was the creation of a Chinese cybersecurity company." https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/china-based-disinformation-operation-pushed-fake-swiss-scientist-faceb-rcna7255