Links for 2024-01-03
AI:
Self-Play Fine-Tuning Converts Weak Language Models to Strong Language Models — “…we delve into the prospect of growing a strong LLM out of a weak one without the need for acquiring additional human-annotated data.” https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.01335
ByteDance announces Diffusion Model with Perceptual Loss https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.00110
“A compelling intuition is that deep learning does approximate Solomonoff induction, finding a mixture of the programs that explain the data, weighted by complexity.” https://twitter.com/johnschulman2/status/1741178475946602979
60+ Possible Futures https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/SRW9WAEEKJEgHAhSy/60-possible-futures
2023 in AI predictions https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/EZxG6ySHCEjDvL5x4/2023-in-ai-predictions
These days, some people are seriously wondering what to do when the singularity is near. Should they change their behavior? I don't think so. At least not if they haven't changed their behavior because of the possibility that we might live in an infinite multiverse, that the simulation hypothesis might be true, or that they might be dreaming.
If a giant comet was predicted to hit Earth in a year and there was a 1% chance of deflecting it and surviving, would it make sense to go into massive debt and spend all your money on sex and drugs? Does a year of hedonism really outweigh being completely fucked in the 1% of world lines that survive?
I think it almost always makes sense to pretend that the world is sane and normal and will continue to be so. If it then turns out that you're actually living in a completely insane universe full of mind-controlling superintelligences and impossible moral luck, so what? In that case, it doesn't matter what you did anyway, does it?
Technology and Science:
Is nuclear power really that slow and expensive as they say? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EsBiC9HjyQ
New Supercomputer Simulation Sheds Light on Moon’s Origin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRlhlCWplqk
How Big is YouTube? https://ethanzuckerman.com/2023/12/22/how-big-is-youtube/
An 18-hour debate on the origins of COVID, with 6 figures of money on the line. https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1741202539742429555
COVID: summary of lab-origin hypothesis https://twitter.com/R_H_Ebright/status/1741626095068172359
New study reports 309 lab acquired infections and 16 pathogen lab escapes between 2000 and 2021 https://thebulletin.org/2023/12/a-new-study-reports-309-lab-acquired-infections-and-16-pathogen-lab-escapes-between-2000-and-2021/
Psychology:
The power of social influence: A replication and extension of the Asch experiment https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0294325
Politics:
“South Korean government announced the L-SAM-I strategic air defense system will be completed within 11 months. kinda fast than i expected. Currently, Korean government invest very heavily on these systems to defeat every ballistic, hypersonic threats from all areas.” https://twitter.com/mason_8718/status/1741061585865670878
Ukraine:
Russian state media announced that their "superior" 1K148 Yastreb-AV radar complex was now being used in Ukraine. Less than 12 hours later, Ukraine released footage of one being destroyed by HIMARS. https://twitter.com/TheDeadDistrict/status/1742267832660906393
“In 2023, Ukraine called Russia's bluff by breaking maritime blockage after Russia exited the Grain Deal…As of December 30, 2023, 400 ships carrying almost 13 million tons of cargo have been sent to 24 countries…” https://twitter.com/Mylovanov/status/1741903020839891427
Using smallish sized UAV for what is essentially level bombing. https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1741940449013551394
Strong explosion of a Russian 2S1 “Gvozdika”, somewhere in the Donetsk Region.
This Russian 2S4 “Tulip” was detected by the Ukrainian “Shadow” unit and subsequently destroyed. The powerful explosion literally incinerates everything around hit. https://twitter.com/Tendar/status/1742257675495149719
Russian cruise missile was shot down using a ZU-23-2 https://twitter.com/ian_matveev/status/1742285870634291250