Links for 2022-10-03
"We found no support for any downside to higher [cognitive] ability and no evidence for a threshold beyond which greater [IQ] scores cease to be beneficial. Thus, greater cognitive ability is generally advantageous-and virtually never detrimental." https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33682520/
“Why I think strong general AI is coming soon” https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/K4urTDkBbtNuLivJx/why-i-think-strong-general-ai-is-coming-soon
Scientists are using AI to dream up revolutionary new proteins https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02947-7
Self-Taught AI May Have a Lot in Common With the Human Brain https://www.quantamagazine.org/self-taught-ai-shows-similarities-to-how-the-brain-works-20220811/
Posits, a New Kind of Number, Improves the Math of AI: The first posit-based processor core gave a ten-thousandfold accuracy boost https://spectrum.ieee.org/floating-point-numbers-posits-processor
"This is not just static content, but the illusion of talking to a real person. Imagine a scammer calling your grandmom who looks and sounds exactly like you." https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.01714
An ultra-efficient battery-free, wireless underwater camera that is about 100,000 times more energy-efficient than other undersea cameras. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-33223-x
No one in physics dares say so, but the race to invent new particles is pointless https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/26/physics-particles-physicists
William Eden:
I’m honestly just speechless. If there were any Justice in the world there would at least be an extremely thorough investigation, and an immediate ban on collecting samples, running infectivity assays in human cells, and storing or transporting live viruses.
At the VERY LEAST we could put a stop to Daszak getting further funding for the exact thing we are rightly worried caused the pandemic. If there’s even *any shred of doubt* this caused millions of deaths worldwide, the work should be at least paused until further notice.
I must conclude that these organizations are both shameless, and completely irredeemable. There is a failure of leadership and common sense so profound we should shut down the NIH immediately and fire anyone involved, before starting with a clean slate. I see no other way.
Take the above video and imagine that this was a drone and the weeds were enemy soldiers. Same principle. Machine learning advances will enable precision targeting. The future of war might be billions of 3D-printed bee-sized drones equipped with blinding lasers, stingers, or nebulizers that inject or spray deadly toxins like Novichok.