Links for 2023-01-24
“Our BCI decoded speech at 62 words per minute, 3.4 times faster than the prior record for any kind of BCI and begins to approach the speed of natural conversation (160 words per minute)” https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.21.524489v1
Microsoft announces new multibillion-dollar investment in ChatGPT-maker OpenAI https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/23/microsoft-announces-multibillion-dollar-investment-in-chatgpt-maker-openai.html
“Large language models (LLMs) have been criticized due to their heavy reliance on humans to create datasets for fine-tuning and RLHF, but recent research suggests that we might not even need humans for this…” https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1616896609517817857.html
New Caledonian crows plan for specific future tool use https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2020.1490
Safety of bivalent omicron-containing mRNA-booster vaccines (a nationwide cohort study): 'Bivalent omicron-containing mRNA-booster vaccines administered as a fourth dose were not associated with an increased risk of 27 different adverse events in a general population of 50+ year-olds.' https://medrxiv.org/cgi/content/short/2023.01.21.23284855v1
Interview with Atomic Bomb crew https://youtu.be/DZiwHEPagoE
List of sieges of Gibraltar https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sieges_of_Gibraltar
In 1480 the Turks invaded Italy and captured Otranto. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_invasion_of_Otranto
Brutality of prehistoric life revealed by Europe’s bog bodies https://edition.cnn.com/2023/01/11/europe/bog-bodies-study-scn
"Pagan culture holds up a certain ideal hero — those who are genetically endowed in the realms of athleticism, intelligence and beauty. This culture looks at obesity as a moral weakness and a sign that you’re in a lower social class." [The New York Times] https://archive.is/p4hB0
Self-diagnosed mental health impairments spread virally on social media (originally Tumblr now Twitter) and become “real” through a kind of reverse-CBT. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010440X22000682
How often is a pair of individuals from one race genetically more dissimilar than two individuals chosen from two different races? If genetic similarity is measured over many thousands of loci, the answer becomes “never”. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1893020/
“preliminary findings from trying to write malware that mutates itself using AI” https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1617224310443106313.html
Just learned some interesting trivia about Lev Landau, a Soviet physicist born to Jewish parents, who led a team of mathematicians supporting Soviet atomic and hydrogen bomb development:
1. “On 27 April 1938, Landau was arrested for a leaflet which compared Stalinism to German Nazism and Italian Fascism. Pyotr Kapitsa, an experimental low-temperature physicist and the founder and head of the institute, wrote a letter to Joseph Stalin in which he personally vouched for Landau's behaviour and threatened to quit the institute if Landau was not released.”
2. “He learned differential calculus at age 12 and integral calculus at age 13...at age 14, he matriculated at the Baku State University, studying in two departments simultaneously: the Departments of Physics and Mathematics, and the Department of Chemistry.”
3. “In the '30s Lev Landau said: "I am one of the few universal physicists" And after the death of Fermi, in 1954: "I am the last universal physicist." And this was neither self-conceit, nor only his own opinion.”
Sources:
1. https://mathstodon.xyz/@VergaraLautaro/109739497519101974
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev_Landau