Links for 2022-11-05
Robots That Write Their Own Code: "What if when given instructions from people, robots could autonomously write their own code to interact with the world? It turns out that the latest generation of language models, such as PaLM, are capable of complex reasoning and have also been trained on millions of lines of code. Given natural language instructions, current language models are highly proficient at writing not only generic code but, as we’ve discovered, code that can control robot actions as well." https://code-as-policies.github.io/
“This post provides a literature review of some threat models of how misaligned AI can lead to existential catastrophe.” https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/wnnkD6P2k2TfHnNmt/threat-model-literature-review
Even superhuman RL agents can be exploited by adversarial policies: “Our attack achieves a >99% win-rate against KataGo without search, and a >50% win-rate when KataGo uses enough search to be near-superhuman.” https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.00241
Building with nanoparticles, from the bottom up: Researchers develop a technique for precisely arranging nanoscale particles on a surface, such as a silicon chip, that doesn’t damage the material. https://news.mit.edu/2022/nanoparticles-printing-silicon-1026
All Solid-State LiDAR Sensor that Sees 360° — “…it is made from the metasurface, which is an ultra-thin flat optical device that is only one-thousandth the thickness of a human hair strand.” https://postech.ac.kr/eng/all-solid-state-lidar-sensor-that-sees-360/?pageds=1&k=&c
horror story about a piece of jewelry that does whatever will make you happiest http://web.archive.org/web/20121008025245/http://squid314.livejournal.com/332946.html
How to escape scientific stagnation. A number of billion-dollar experiments suggest a path. [The Economist] https://archive.ph/xWP8w
A new paper shows that compilers can be used to insert undetectable backdoors into models for machine learning. https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.00108
"UFO commotion has largely been sustained by the U.S. defense establishment. Especially absurd is a situation in which unclassified reports assure us UFOs are a big mystery when the classified versions may know exactly what they are." [Wall Street Journal] https://archive.ph/FkuCi
IQ was significantly and negatively correlated with murder, assault, robbery, motor vehicle theft, theft and burglary. Additionally, regression analyses were conducted for each crime significantly related to IQ, controlling for demographic variables. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191886909005169
"First- and second-generation African immigrants, despite constituting only about 10 percent of the U.S. Black population, make up about 41 percent of all Black students in the Ivy League." https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/30/affirmative-action-supreme-court-college-admissions/
Russia is visually confirmed to have lost 1420 tanks in Ukraine https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment.html?m=1
A lawsuit that could seriously hamper machine learning in the West and leave countries like China with an undefeatable advantage: https://githubcopilotlitigation.com/