Links for 2022-03-27
Meta’s Yann LeCun Strives for Human-Level AI: “What is the next step toward bridging the gap between natural and artificial intelligence? …[Chief AI scientist at Meta, Yann LeCun], has been thinking and talking about self-supervised and unsupervised learning for years. But as his research and the fields of AI and neuroscience have progressed, his vision has converged around several promising concepts and trends. In a recent event held by Meta AI, LeCun discussed possible paths toward human-level AI, challenges that remain and the impact of advances in AI.” https://venturebeat.com/2022/03/21/metas-yann-lecun-strives-for-human-level-ai/
"Searching for outliers: On what I've learned about how to interact with parts of the world where the best things are orders of magnitude above average, which, it turns out, is a lot of important parts…The most important thing to remember when sampling from heavy-tailed distributions is that getting lots of samples improves outcomes a ton." https://benkuhn.net/outliers/
Where is pain in the brain? This new paper argues that, unlike other conscious sensory experiences, it's not in the cerebral cortex but rather in the brainstem. https://sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0166432822001292
The Evolving Quest for a Grand Unified Theory of Mathematics https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-evolving-quest-for-a-grand-unified-theory-of-mathematics/
More than one hominin population seems to have dispersed from Africa, with their own diverse biological & cultural adaptations. Pleistocene record of a large-bodied hominin from the Levant supports two out-of-Africa dispersal events https://nature.com/articles/s41598-022-05712-y
Psychologists uncover a novel perceptual illusion that provides insight into the nature of time perception: “The expectation that causes precede their effects is so strong that even if we reverse the order, people insist they saw the causes happen first.” https://www.psypost.org/2022/03/psychologists-uncover-a-novel-perceptual-illusion-that-provides-insight-into-the-nature-of-time-perception-62770
The Allam power cycle burns natural gas in a 300 bar combustor at 1150°C. Supercritical CO2 is the working fluid, allowing for a cycle efficiency of 60%. The exhaust is then turned into liquid CO2, so this can be called a 'zero emission' energy source. https://www.mdpi.com/2571-8797/1/1/22
The author of The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare, joins The Realignment to discuss the state of the U.S. military as it faces down peer-competitors like Russia and China. https://youtu.be/quhhrJYXaio
Self-Consistency Improves Chain of Thought Reasoning in Language Models. Finds that self-consistency yields significant accuracy improvements in a variety of datasets for arithmetic and commonsense reasoning benchmarks. https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.11171
"Whole-genome risk prediction of common diseases in human preimplantation embryos", Kumar et al 2022 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01735-0
How large would be the geoengineering effect of mandating the use of the most reflective white paint for buildings, streets, etc.?