Links for 2022-06-13
“A turning point in cancer. A cluster of "un-heard of" results in multiple subtypes of advanced cancer...in recent days we are witnessing some extraordinary progress in treating and monitoring cancer.” https://erictopol.substack.com/p/a-turning-point-in-cancer?s=r
“After the neolithic, Europeans experienced evolutionary selection for greater height and intelligence and lower BMI and depression. Human evolution never stopped. It's still happening.” (via @Russwarne) https://doi.org/10.3389/fgene.2022.833190
In 2020 there were at least 72 active AGI projects. https://gcrinstitute.org/papers/055_agi-2020.pdf
Task-Agnostic Continual Reinforcement Learning: "One road towards general intelligence equips learning agents with continual learning, RL + tools to handle partial observability and lets them roam in the real world. Task-Agnostic Continual RL (TACRL) aligns with this use case." https://arxiv.org/abs/2205.14495
Convergent Evolution Has Been Fooling Us: Most of Our Evolutionary Trees Could Be Wrong https://scitechdaily.com/convergent-evolution-has-been-fooling-us-most-of-our-evolutionary-trees-could-be-wrong/
Farm Robots Will Solve Many of Our Food Worries https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-06-02/farm-robots-will-help-feed-the-world-during-climate-change
Scientists discover wild baby parrots babble like human babies https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/jun-4-baby-parrot-babbling-a-supernova-stone-buzzing-bats-mimic-hornets-and-more-1.6475227/scientists-discover-wild-baby-parrots-babble-like-human-babies-1.6476451
"when the pejorative understanding of 'conspiracy theory' is allowed to influence policy-making it can serve to legitimate policies whose effect is to impede … the kind of civic vigilance that aims to uncover malfeasance on the part of powerful actors" https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/josp.12432?campaign=woletoc
This is the worst AI ever: “GPT-4chan was trained on over 3 years of posts from 4chan's "politically incorrect" (/pol/) board.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efPrtcLdcdM (Project Website: https://gpt-4chan.com)
A massive increase in applications to join Sweden’s volunteer reserve forces. Following 24 February, 9800 people volunteered in a week; since the beginning of the year, 26000 applied. (Usually 5000/year) [German language article] https://www.nzz.ch/international/schwedens-heimwehr-erlebt-einen-boom-wegen-dem-ukraine-krieg-ld.1686396