Links for 2023-11-11
“A hardware accelerator initially developed for artificial intelligence operations successfully speeds up the alignment of protein and DNA molecules, making the process up to 10 times faster than state-of-the-art methods.” https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2023/11/processor-made-ai-speeds-genome-assembly
Silicon Valley’s Big, Bold Sci-Fi Bet on the Device That Comes After the Smartphone https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/09/technology/silicon-valleys-big-bold-sci-fi-bet-on-the-device-that-comes-after-the-smartphone.html [https://archive.is/qm74r] (video: https://twitter.com/Humane/status/1722668651705430154)
A GPU-based computational framework that bridges neuron simulation and artificial intelligence: “The team successfully developed a fine simulation algorithm for biological neural networks, realized an order of magnitude improvement in simulation efficiency, and also proved its theoretical optimality.” https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-41553-7
“Runway announces Motion Brush. The new feature always you to add movement to any image. It will soon be added to their Gen-2 model.” https://twitter.com/runwayml/status/1723033256067489937
“When summarizing facts, ChatGPT technology makes things up about 3% of the time,” https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/06/technology/chatbots-hallucination-rates.html [https://archive.ph/YNUtz]
Eric Schmidt on recursive self-improvement https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/cLC2HcQbFZ5pFAgqC/eric-schmidt-on-recursive-self-improvement
“A simple "Be My Eyes" web app with a llama.cpp/llava backend created in about an hour using ChatGPT, Copilot, and some minor help from me, @lxe. It describes what it sees using SkunkworksAI BakLLaVA-1 model via llama.cpp and narrates the text using Web Speech API.” https://github.com/lxe/llavavision
“A technical meeting on the EU’s AI regulation broke down on Friday (10 November) after large EU countries asked to retract the proposed approach for foundation models. Unless the deadlock is broken in the coming days, the whole legislation is at risk.” https://www.euractiv.com/section/artificial-intelligence/news/eus-ai-act-negotiations-hit-the-brakes-over-foundation-models/
Scientists Develop Micro Heat Engine That Challenges the Carnot Limit https://iisc.ac.in/events/cracking-an-age-old-thermodynamic-puzzle/
Researchers have identified about 200 patients with hidden autoimmune diseases that had profound psychological effects, some institutionalized for years. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/06/01/schizophrenia-autoimmune-lupus-psychiatry/ [https://archive.ph/Smlm4]
A True Story: Written in the second century AD it is the earliest known work of fiction to include travel to outer space, alien lifeforms, and interplanetary warfare. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_True_Story
Here's a reminder that we're lucky that there are people who research abstract math without knowing a use case for it. Because a lot of math ends up being very useful:
1. Logic was considered a hopelessly abstract subject with no conceivable applications until Claude Shannon turned it into a trillion-dollar business that now underlies most of our technological civilization.
2. Pythagoras could not have imagined the uses to which his equation would be put.
3. The people who formalized complex analysis did not foresee its usefulness in physics, including the branches of hydrodynamics, thermodynamics, and especially quantum mechanics.
4. Number theory was considered useless until its importance in cryptography was discovered.
5. Conic sections, developed in the 2nd century BC, had no applications until Kepler discovered that celestial bodies move on conic sections.
6. The history of fractals traces a path from mainly theoretical studies to computer graphics and fractal analysis.
7. The Radon transform, when introduced by Johann Radon in 1917, was useless until Cormack and Hounsfield developed tomography in the 1960s (Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1979).
8. Many mathematicians considered negative and complex numbers absurd and useless before the 15th century. For example, Chuquet called negative numbers "absurd numbers". Michael Stifel has a chapter on negative numbers called "numeri absurdi" in his book "Arithmetica integra". And so were complex/imaginary numbers. Gerolamo Cardano in his book "Ars Magna" calls the square root of negative numbers a completely useless object.
The universe was programmed in pure mathematics.
Political links:
The EU will not be able to deliver the promised million ammunition to Ukraine by March 2024. So far, about 30% of the promised amount of ammunition has been transferred to Ukraine. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-10/eu-says-highly-unlikely-it-will-meet-ammo-pledge-to-ukraine [https://archive.is/Iq2eC]
Commander-in-Chief Zaluzhnyi called the Russian offensive near Avdiivka distrastrous. More than 100 tanks, 250 APCs, 50+ artillery systems and 7 Su-25 fighters were either destroyed or heavily damaged. Also 10.000 fighters were killed. https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02vAoJHhB6qbLzczrdRX5ugZNpeiwR8kNFQpGDaEtWjNX9Z8YYucCx4tsS4buDRzVTl
Hypothetical: an American reporter has embedded with an enemy unit of the United States during war and they are preparing to ambush an American platoon. Do you film/report it or do you warn the American platoon of the ambush? Westmoreland, Scowcroft, Jennings, and Wallace discuss https://twitter.com/JimLaPorta/status/1568033860146831363
American Gen Z is working less than past generations, fewer have had boyfriends/girlfriends, fewer drink or smoke. 7 in 10 play video games. 1 in 3 Gen Z women are LGBT. They feel more isolated than past generations. BUT: support for same-sex marriage has declined among Gen Z from 80% in 2021 to 69% in 2023. https://www.americansurveycenter.org/research/generation-z-and-the-transformation-of-american-adolescence-how-gen-zs-formative-experiences-shape-its-politics-priorities-and-future/