Self-driving car bets: “The update from self-driving cars, and more generally from my short lifetime of seeing things take a surprisingly long time, has tempered my AI timelines. But not enough to get me below 30% of truly crazy stuff within the next 10 years.” https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ZRrYsZ626KSEgHv8s/self-driving-car-bets
Arizona State University will allow use of AI generators for law school applications https://law.asu.edu/newsroom/asu-law-permit-use-generative-ai-applications
Waypoint-Based Imitation Learning for Robotic Manipulation https://lucys0.github.io/awe/
“I hit a bug in the Attention formula that’s been overlooked for 8+ years. All Transformer models (GPT, LLaMA, etc) are affected.” https://www.evanmiller.org/attention-is-off-by-one.html
A method for aligning LMs to follow natural language principles without using human feedback https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.12950
Causal Inference from an EM-Learned Causal Model https://www.ics.uci.edu/~dechter/publications/r275.pdf
Demonstration of a Multilayer spintronic neural networks with radiofrequency connections https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.03659
“We show that human hippocampal theta oscillations are best characterized as a memory rather than navigation-related signal” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0896627323004749
A whole new dimension for 3D printing: Self-folding origami sheets create 3D shapes quickly, cheaply and efficiently https://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/focus/en/press/z0508_00295.html
Richard Garwin: built the first hydrogen bomb; involved in birth of spy satellites, MRI, FFT, laser printers, touch-screen monitors; more awards than Titanic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Garwin
How to drill a square hole https://www.tiktok.com/@reason4math/video/7211681887666933038
Python got rid of the GIL. GIL was a limitation that prevented Python from running in parallel. https://discuss.python.org/t/a-steering-council-notice-about-pep-703-making-the-global-interpreter-lock-optional-in-cpython/30474
Ukraine links:
Ukrainian Tank Losses Diminish As Polish Technicians Save More And More Damaged Leopard 2s https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2023/07/29/ukrainian-tank-losses-diminish-as-polish-technicians-save-more-and-more-damaged-leopard-2s/ [https://archive.is/z0uj4]
“I joined the Ares battalion of the Ukrainian Volunteer Army as they and the 35th Marine Brigade assaulted and then liberated Staromaiorske. It was a bruising, infantry on infantry battle after artillery had pounded the village.” https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/on-the-front-line-of-ukraines-slow-bruising-counteroffensive-kppm5vmz9 [https://archive.is/dsqJA]
Ukrainian advance towards Staromaiorske visualized https://twitter.com/hizzo_jay/status/1685785661415067648
"The legislation enabling the Kremlin to send hundreds of thousands more men into combat reveals a sad truth: that far from seeking an off-ramp from his disastrous war in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin is preparing for an even bigger war." https://www.ft.com/content/861a8955-924e-4d3e-8c59-73a13403e191 [https://archive.is/ZjJdt]
Russian radar and BUK-M3 getting smacked. https://twitter.com/DefMon3/status/1685574644248514560
“The war is coming to Russia. Moscow you will never be safe.” https://twitter.com/SarahAshtonLV/status/1685727207035994112
The fertility decline in most countries just keeps on going: https://twitter.com/BirthGauge/status/1685053577155297281
There is no guarantee that fertility won't drop to near zero. A catastrophic, possibly existential risk.
"There is no guarantee that fertility won't drop to near zero. A catastrophic, possibly existential risk." Unless there are chemical factors preventing fertility, there's almost no risk of the birth rate becoming an existential crisis. Even if we lose 99% of the population, that leaves around 80 million people, several orders of magnitude larger than a population too small to be sustainable.