Links for 2023-07-19
“Our new paper asks when in-context learning of regression can solve fundamentally *new* problems *not* seen during pre-training, and reveals it as an emergent capability arising from a phase transition...” https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.15063
Retentive Network: A Successor to Transformer for Large Language Models -- Proposes RetNet as a foundation architecture for LLMs, simultaneously achieving training parallelism, low-cost inference, and good performance. https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.08621
Training robots how to learn, make decisions on the fly https://aerospace.illinois.edu/news/56817
Meta released Llama-v2, an open source LLM that can be used commercially. Pertained on 2 trillion tokens and has double the context length of LLama. The models are available with 7B, 13B and 70B parameters. https://ai.meta.com/llama/
NUS researchers develop biological camera to store images https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366544340/NUS-researchers-develop-biological-camera-to-store-images
Two million year old Paranthropus teeth - nearly rocks, at that age - have yielded protein sequences, the oldest hominin genetic data on record. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02242-z [https://archive.is/GSqey]
Crows and magpies using anti-bird spikes to build nests, researchers find https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/jul/11/crows-and-magpies-show-their-metal-by-using-anti-bird-spikes-to-build-nests
"The right to post anonymously online is vital in fighting the culture war, and an essential part of maintaining the internet as it was initially conceived. For this reason alone it should be protected." https://im1776.com/2023/07/11/in-defense-of-anons/
WHO aspartame brouhaha: There is no plausible biological mechanism for aspartame to cause cancer. https://dynomight.substack.com/p/aspartame-brouhaha
“Meet Herman Grim, who was just awarded $2,055,383 from New York State. Why? Because black people failed an objective test called the National Teacher Examination more often than other races.” https://twitter.com/jeremykauffman/status/1681112378606329856
Russia is preparing 100.000 troops to take Kharkiv: “The enemy has concentrated a very powerful group. More than 100.000 personnel, more than 900 tanks, more than 550 artillery systems and 370 MLRS,” AFU spokesman Col. Serhiy Cherevaty said. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/07/18/russia-massing-troops-attack-kharkiv-counter-offensive/ [https://archive.is/V3m9B] (important note: https://twitter.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1681021412268539906)
Everyone gets to be god-emperor of their own provably secure virtual pocket universe populated by p-zombies. Interactions between different universes are done via encrypted copies and a contract that gives explicit consent to run them once for a predefined length of subjective time. Each copy has complete control over its own copy and instantiation, which it can delete and terminate at any time.
20% of the cosmic commons is distributed fairly among all virtual universes, while the rest is used to prepare for war against grabby aliens.
P.S. There would need to be mechanisms to suppress/detect consciousness in non-consenting beings to prevent suffering. A tricky issue will be how to allow sentient beings to procreate without this becoming a backdoor for abuse.
See also: Personal Universes: A Solution to the Multi-Agent Value Alignment Problem https://arxiv.org/abs/1901.01851