Links for 2023-11-20
Microsoft is currently conducting “the largest infrastructure buildout that humanity has ever seen.” Microsoft has penned in >$50 billion annual spend on datacenters for 2024 and beyond. https://www.semianalysis.com/p/microsoft-infrastructure-ai-and-cpu
Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, together with colleagues, will be joining Microsoft to lead a new advanced AI research team. https://twitter.com/satyanadella/status/1726516824597258569
Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI co-founder and board director, warned people will have a bad time if they value human intelligence above all else. Musk responds that he’s very worried and that “Ilya has a good moral compass and does not seek power. He would not take such drastic action unless he felt it was absolutely necessary.” https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1726376406785925566
Sam Altman on AI in 2024: "The model capability will have taken such a leap forward that no one expected... that much progress" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFFvqRemDv8&t=3039s
“We analyze recent trends in machine learning hardware performance, focusing on metrics such as computational performance, memory, interconnect bandwidth, price-performance, and energy efficiency across different GPUs and accelerators. The analysis aims to provide a holistic view of ML hardware capability and bottlenecks.” https://epochai.org/blog/trends-in-machine-learning-hardware
Tom Davidson on How Quickly AI Could Automate the Economy https://youtu.be/AWd-SAK300U
AI tool could help thousands avoid fatal heart attacks https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2023-11-13-ai-tool-could-help-thousands-avoid-fatal-heart-attacks
Story-to-Motion: Synthesizing Infinite and Controllable Character Animation from Long Text https://story2motion.github.io/
Altman Sought Billions For AI Chip Venture Before OpenAI Ouster. Altman was fundraising in the Middle East for new chip venture. The project, code-named Tigris, is intended to rival Nvidia. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-19/altman-sought-billions-for-ai-chip-venture-before-openai-ouster [https://archive.is/3LaJF]
“now seems as good a time as ever to remind people that the biggest breakthroughs at OpenAI came from a previously unknown researcher with a bachelors degree from olin college of engineering” https://twitter.com/jxmnop/status/1725949517940294055
A new method to extract uranium from seawater: It uses a powder composed of double-layered hydroxide of aluminium and magnesium, to which uranyl carbonate binds, without picking up sodium or other salts. Adding neodymium makes it even more effective. https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2023/YA/D3YA00154G
Biologists Unveil the First Living Yeast Cells With Over 50% Synthetic DNA https://singularityhub.com/2023/11/10/biologists-unveil-the-first-living-yeast-cells-with-over-50-synthetic-dna/
Preserved neural dynamics across animals performing similar behaviour https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06714-0
Theorema Egregium: "The Gaussian curvature of a surface does not change if one bends the surface without stretching it. Thus the Gaussian curvature is an intrinsic invariant of a surface." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theorema_Egregium
Political links:
“Ukraine‘s military said on Friday its operations had resulted in the destruction of a total of 15 Russian naval vessels in the Black Sea since the start of Russia’s invasion and that 12 other vessels had been damaged.” https://gcaptain.com/ukraine-russian-naval-vessels-destroyed/
Ukraine’s ‘Secret Weapon’ Against Russia Is a Controversial U.S. Tech Company https://time.com/6334176/ukraine-clearview-ai-russia/
“This Russian Pantsir was destroyed near Chaplynka, around 50km from the Dnipro river and deep inside Russian-occupied territory.” https://twitter.com/Tendar/status/1726222097184088415
“Over the past few days, Russia has sent an increasing number of migrants to Finland's borders. Finland has closed several border crossing points due to the authorities' threat assessment. A video surfaced of the Russian operation.” https://twitter.com/emilkastehelmi/status/1726349169869377855
Fully 70% of those 18 to 34 disapprove of Biden's handling of the Israel-Hamas war https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/poll-bidens-standing-hits-new-lows-israel-hamas-war-rcna125251
“IDF and ISA forces revealed a significant 55-meter-long terrorist tunnel, 10 meters underneath the Shifa Hospital complex during an intelligence-based operation.” https://twitter.com/IDF/status/1726284807351472556 (another video: https://twitter.com/EylonALevy/status/1726291285030707225)
CCTV footage from October 7 shows Hamas terrorists taking a hostage into the Shifa hospital https://twitter.com/manniefabian/status/1726311040072474812
Libertarian Javier Milei who just won the presidential election waves the flag of Israel. https://twitter.com/DrEliDavid/status/1726381825591804065