Links for 2023-01-14
“Bitter Lesson 2.0 for robotics: we need to leverage the ongoing trend of foundation models to develop robotics pipelines that scale naturally with compute & data.” https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1612509549889744899.html
“Here are a few examples from our work in robotics that leverage bitter lesson 2.0...I'm optimistic that by riding the wave of progress in other fields and leveraging data in disguise from foundation models, we can make significant progress in robotics.” https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1613544836266885120.html
Google Research releases Muse: SOTA and efficient text-to-image model. It is significantly more efficient than diffusion models. Muse also allows for inpainting, outpainting, and mask-free editing without finetuning or inverting the model. https://muse-model.github.io/
A step-by-step tutorial on how to build a ChatGPT-like bot that can answer technical questions about any GitHub repo https://dagster.io/blog/chatgpt-langchain
Tensai, a code assistant that answers questions about your codebase and writes code and suggests PRs for you https://twitter.com/mathemagic1an/status/1610023513334878208
A Giant Leap Towards a Greener Future: Breakthrough in Sustainable Ammonia and Fertilizer Production https://scitechdaily.com/a-giant-leap-towards-a-greener-future-breakthrough-in-sustainable-ammonia-and-fertilizer-production/
A Total Amateur May Have Just Rewritten Human History With Bombshell Discovery: “a phrenological/meteorological calendar. It implies that a form of writing existed tens of thousands of years before the earliest Sumerian writing system.” https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkg95v/a-total-amateur-may-have-just-rewritten-human-history-with-bombshell-discovery
Chimpanzee risk preference seems to resemble human risk preference. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/09567976221140326
How to slow down scientific progress, according to Leo Szilard https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/knggXREQhPHM8sbwj/how-to-slow-down-scientific-progress-according-to-leo
Revolutionary Cancer Vaccine Simultaneously Kills and Prevents Brain Tumors https://scitechdaily.com/revolutionary-cancer-vaccine-simultaneously-kills-and-prevents-brain-tumors/
Shoes that use robotics to help you walk faster. https://shiftrobotics.io/
Don’t Let Your Daughter Be a Feminist with Bryan Caplan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJIIcRIGsnM
Nick Bostrom, known for his work on the risks associated with artificial superintelligence, is being attacked over an old email in which he states that some populations are on average smarter than others.
Firstly, that he holds this belief is unsurprising. I'm certain that the vast majority of smart people who are able to think out of the box secretly hold the same belief. Those who flinch away from noticing such things will also flinch away from other disruptive ideas. And he's clearly not someone who is shy about engaging with exotic ideas.
Disruptive science will by definition be politically incorrect because it challenges and undermines deeply held convictions. This is why attacking people like Bostrom for holding nonconformist beliefs is extremely harmful. Foundational progress is hampered when certain empirical questions cannot even be posed.
Take, for example, Charles Darwin's “On the Origin of Species”. From the perspective of Darwin's contemporaries, his idea was more dangerous than anything for which you can get canceled today. It was threatening to undermine the very foundation of moral conduct: religion. Would he have been able to strive in our time, a time in which people are regularly forced into conformity by online mobs?
That said, what are the alternative explanations for the many group disparities we see? Take the stratospheric achievements of Ashkenazi Jews. If you want to explain their achievements without considering a genetic component, you will need to resort to Nazi conspiracy theories. Indeed, in the absence of genetic differences, most group disparities can only be explained by extremely divisive theories involving some mistreatment of one group by another group.
Imagine the only allowed explanation for the academic underperformance of people with Down syndrome was their mistreatment by people without the condition. This would lead to massive witch hunts and a giant waste of resources used to prevent and alleviate the alleged discrimination against these people.
One could argue that engaging with the hypothesis that people with Down syndrome are less intelligent could lead to atrocities or even genocide. But that's not what is actually happening, is it? Instead of teaching them hateful stories about how all their problems are caused by normal people, they are being supported. Instead of telling them that they can be as successful as everyone else, they are getting the special education and guardianship they require to live a good life.