Links for 2022-08-09
BlenderBot 3: A 175B parameter, publicly available chatbot that improves its skills and safety over time https://ai.facebook.com/blog/blenderbot-3-a-175b-parameter-publicly-available-chatbot-that-improves-its-skills-and-safety-over-time/ (If you are located in the United States you can try it live right now:
Simon Willison has successfully used GPT-3 to explain how code works. It is amazingly good and, as Simon pointed out, works both on code that he understands, and code that he doesn’t. https://simonwillison.net/2022/Jul/9/gpt-3-explain-code/
Researchers have used reinforcement learning to build a robotic dog that learns to walk on its own in the real world (i.e., without prior training and use of a simulator). [Technology Review] https://archive.ph/ZIr5S
Brain size and intelligence: 2022 by Emil Kirkegaard. A good review of the state of the brain size and IQ literature. It seems that the true correlation is around 0.30. https://kirkegaard.substack.com/p/brain-size-and-intelligence-2022?s=r
How useful are national IQs? by Noah Carl. A nice defense of research on national IQs. Interesting point: “If the measured IQ in Sub-Saharan Africa is 80, this would mean the massive difference in environment between Sub-Saharan Africa and the US reduces IQ by only 5 points, yet the comparatively small difference in environment between black and white Americans somehow reduces it by 15 points.” https://noahcarl.substack.com/p/how-useful-are-national-iqs
Perhaps the scariest exploit in security would be a rootkit that cannot be detected or removed, even by wiping the disk and reinstalling the operating system. Such rootkits were recently discovered (one is named CosmicStrand); they have apparently been in the wild since 2016. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/07/researchers-unpack-unkillable-uefi-rootkit-that-survives-os-reinstalls/
Prompt Engineering Guide to DALL-E https://dallery.gallery/the-dalle-2-prompt-book/
A propulsively landed model rocket with a solid motor! https://youtu.be/SH3lR2GLgT0
An unexpected relationship between two of the most frequent cancer-causing factors might lead to more effective drugs. https://scitechdaily.com/cancer-breakthrough-unexpected-link-discovered-between-most-common-cancer-drivers/
gwern: "Something to think about: apparently we know of one of the closest Cold War calls because of... [scans reference to check notes] the official military coverup failed bc a historian asked an old retiree & he remembered a handwritten log entry 30 years before?
(pg23 1993 Sagan)"