Links for 2022-04-29
Another step toward AGI! DeepMind is introducing Flamingo 🦩: “a generalist visual language model that can rapidly adapt its behaviour given just a handful of examples. Out of the box, it's also capable of rich visual dialog. In several cases, the same Flamingo model outperforms methods that are fine-tuned and optimised for each task independently and uses multiple orders of magnitude more task-specific data.” https://www.deepmind.com/blog/tackling-multiple-tasks-with-a-single-visual-language-model
Timothy Gowers working through a (very accessible) math problem in real time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byjhpzEoXFs
Timothy Gowers announces an automatic theorem proving project: “What is it about the proofs that mathematicians actually find that makes them findable in a reasonable amount of time?” https://gowers.wordpress.com/2022/04/28/announcing-an-automatic-theorem-proving-project/
"The pupillary light response as a physiological index of aphantasia, sensory and phenomenological imagery strength", Kay et al 2022 (an objective measurement of aphantasia?) https://elifesciences.org/articles/72484
Breakthrough Discovery of the One-Way Superconductor – Thought To Be Impossible https://scitechdaily.com/breakthrough-discovery-of-the-one-way-superconductor-thought-to-be-impossible/
TorToiSe - a true zero-shot multi-voice TTS engine https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/ucpg0u/p_tortoise_a_true_zeroshot_multivoice_tts_engine/
Are We Surprised by AI Milestones? https://www.metaculus.com/notebooks/10201/are-we-surprised-by-ai-milestones/
“Curious why activating small subcortical nuclei cause aggression? We found a line attractor in the hypothalamus that encodes an aggressive internal state!” https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.04.19.488776v1
“This is a rare example of a discovery of a new catalytic reaction, and it opens up a real wealth of new opportunities to do chemistry enabled by a reaction that never existed before,” https://news.mit.edu/2022/phosphorus-molecular-rings-0421
“Things that at first seem irrational, once you dig a little and think about what is being signaled, and ask the right questions, become a lot less puzzling.” — Erez Yoeli https://scitechdaily.com/what-lies-beneath-the-surprising-power-of-game-theory-to-explain-odd-and-irrational-human-behavior/
Biotech firm announces results from first US trial of genetically modified mosquitoes https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01070-x
“Somehow, polyester went from being the world’s most hated fabrics to one of its favorites. It reinvented itself thanks to advances in materials science, and did it so successfully that many people don’t even realize they’re wearing polyester today.” https://www.worksinprogress.co/issue/how-polyester-bounced-back/
“Elon Musk has serious flaws but he’s still our best hope to save humanity” https://inews.co.uk/news/science/elon-musk-best-hope-for-saving-planet-energy-climate-crisis-1585404
How deep does the rot in the Russian army go? — Israeli military officers who watched the Russian air force in Syria thought at one stage that Syrian involvement in air operations was the only plausible explanation for such a low level of professionalism. https://www.economist.com/briefing/how-deep-does-the-rot-in-the-russian-army-go/21808989 (archived version: https://archive.ph/ViDiO)