Links for 2023-12-04
“The Pentagon’s portfolio boasts more than 800 AI-related unclassified projects, much still in testing.” https://apnews.com/article/us-military-ai-projects-0773b4937801e7a0573f44b57a9a5942
Amazon is using AI to deliver packages faster than ever this holiday season https://www.cbsnews.com/news/amazon-faster-deliveries-ai-holiday-season-cyber-monday-deals/
Dell Inks $150 Million Hardware Deal With AI Startup Imbue https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-28/dell-inks-150-million-computing-deal-with-ai-startup-imbue [https://archive.is/HuRe4]
OpenAI signed a deal to order $51M worth of “neuromorphic” AI chips in advance from a startup called Rain AI. https://www.wired.com/story/openai-buy-ai-chips-startup-sam-altman/ [https://archive.is/xUxQ9]
"Standard deep learning models can be trained to predict race from medical images with high performance across multiple imaging modalities... We demonstrate this detection is not due to trivial proxies or imaging-related surrogate covariates for race..." https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landig/article/PIIS2589-7500(22)00063-2/fulltext
Shoggoth Systems: A “peer-to-peer, anonymous network for publishing and distributing open-source code, Machine Learning models” https://shoggoth.systems/
Breakthroughs of 2023 https://twitter.com/g_leech_/status/1731263549182206291 (e.g.: “rigorous sim of a new kind of computer not limited by the usual physical constraints and close to reversible (i.e. free operations).” https://arxiv.org/abs/2202.07122)
Bees with bigger brains are better at adapting to urban environments: "[S]pecies with larger brains have enhanced behavioural plasticity, enabling them to confront and adapt to novel challenges." https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.6935821
A research roadmap: replacing brain cells to combat brain aging https://static1.squarespace.com/static/64becfbb6ea1fd445440d59d/t/656628168313873881f221d8/1701193751412/brain-aging-white-paper.pdf
What South Korea's 0.7 births per woman means in practice: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/02/opinion/south-korea-birth-dearth.html [https://archive.is/cRGQ7]
It’s worth unpacking what that means. A country that sustained a birthrate at that level would have, for every 200 people in one generation, 70 people in the next one, a depopulation exceeding what the Black Death delivered to Europe in the 14th century. Run the experiment through a second generational turnover, and your original 200-person population falls below 25. Run it again, and you’re nearing the kind of population crash caused by the fictional superflu in Stephen King’s “The Stand.”
Of course, this assumes that the birth rate doesn't collapse even further.
Many people jump on this, but if you think about it, it is a consistent definition. Sure, you could argue that it is conceptually ugly and misleading. But defining 1/0 as equal to 0 does not imply a contradiction, because it differs from saying that 0 has a multiplicative inverse.
See also: https://xenaproject.wordpress.com/2020/07/05/division-by-zero-in-type-theory-a-faq/
Even more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheel_theory
Political links:
The Ukrainian 47th Mechanized Brigade posted a video of the result of an unsuccessful attack by Russia on the outskirts of Avdiivka. The fields are littered with dead bodies. https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1731638467044470945
“Rheinmetall plans a massive increase in ammunition production capacity in 2024 at its plants in Germany, Spain, South Africa and Australia, bringing annual output capacity to around 700,000 artillery rounds.” https://www.rheinmetall.com/en/media/news-watch/news/2023/11/2023-12-04-rheinmetall-to-supply-ukraine-with-more-artillery-rounds
"Without congressional action, by the end of the year we will run out of resources to procure more weapons and equipment for Ukraine and to provide equipment from U.S. military stocks.... We are out of money—and nearly out of time." — White House https://www.ft.com/content/ca16e42d-fda9-4c1d-b2c9-410d764745b7 [https://archive.is/6GIr3]