AI:
LLM Augmented LLMs: Expanding Capabilities through Composition — “…when PaLM2-S is augmented with a code-specific model, we see a relative improvement of 40% over the base model for code generation and explanation tasks -- on-par with fully fine-tuned counterparts.” https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.02412
A new paper just identified 26 principles to improve the quality of LLM responses by 50%. https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.16171v1
Chiral Magnets Pave the Way for Energy-Efficient Brain-Like Computing https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2023/nov/twisted-magnets-make-brain-inspired-computing-more-adaptable
A Powerful AI Fact-Checker that Checks Content and Eliminates Hallucinations? https://www.novaspivack.com/technology/a-powerful-ai-fact-checker-that-checks-content-and-eliminates-hallucinations
AI’s big test: Making sense of $4 trillion in medical expenses https://www.politico.com/news/2023/12/31/ai-medical-expenses-00132557
Chief Justice Roberts Sees Promise and Danger of A.I. in the Courts https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/31/us/john-roberts-supreme-court.html [https://archive.is/iNBv3]
OpenAI will launch its GPT “app store” next week. Users will be able to make and sell artificial-intelligence agents. https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/4/24025610/openai-gpt-store-ai-agent-delay
“This is a completely fake video of me. The AI (HeyGen) used 30 seconds of me talking to a webcam and 30 seconds of my voice, and now I have an avatar that I can make say anything. Don't trust your own eyes.” https://twitter.com/emollick/status/1743146951749533897
The biggest survey of AI researchers ever! 2778 participants from six top AI venues answered questions from fourteen topics regarding the future of AI.
1. The expected time to human-level performance dropped 1-5 decades since the 2022 survey. 50% chance of unaided AI outperforming humans in every possible task by 2047.
2. Time to most narrow milestones has decreased since 2022, some by a lot. AI researchers are expected to be automatable ~25 years earlier than a year before. Time to NYT bestselling fiction dropped ~9 years.
AI researchers give a 50% chance that AI can in 5 years:
💻 make an entire payment processing site from scratch
🎤 generate a new song that sounds like it’s by Taylor Swift
🤖 autonomously download and fine-tune a large language model
3. The median artificial-intelligence researcher believes there is a 5% chance that AI will cause human extinction.
Read more: https://blog.aiimpacts.org/p/2023-ai-survey-of-2778-six-things
Miscellaneous:
Jupiter Brains? Think bigger. Anders Sandberg describes an entire star cluster, collapsed into a single 10^36 kg body of iron, storing 10^61 bits of information in quark matter and running 10^85 operations per second, with 10^39 W from black hole reactors. https://www.jetpress.org/volume5/Brains2.pdf
How often does correlation equal causation? https://gwern.net/correlation
Bets, Bonds, and Kindergarteners https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/DoHcgTvyxdorAMquE/bets-bonds-and-kindergarteners
Life in a hospital prison for an actual genius https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-67663128
Scott Alexander's Best Essays? https://near.blog/my-favorite-links/
Psychology:
The average IQ of undergraduate college students has been falling since the 1940s and has now become basically the same as the population average. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1309142/abstract
Politics:
“US lawmakers typically order two submarines and three destroyers a year; but there are only enough skilled workers & materials to build and finish one of the former and two of the latter.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/01/04/navy-houthis-ships-shipyards-sailors/ [https://archive.is/wYDFz]
Douglas Murray: If Biden wins, the US heads into a deeper decline — but if Trump wins, America burns https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/25252912/douglas-murray-trump-biden-2024-prospects/
Ukraine:
Russia has a war economy: “War-related industrial output has risen 35 per cent compared with the period leading up to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022…More than 500 light industrial companies have switched to making equipment for the military” https://www.ft.com/content/426a82ec-9344-4700-9b22-181caeed8c3a [https://archive.is/RnkjG]
Avdiivka offensive equipment loss numbers as of 05 January 2024. 441 RU losses vs. 33 UA losses https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VIyACYHfnJi8cUMWjXAXDhS419l9IHcIhGJaK1RWMFQ/edit#gid=1601170163
Battle of Krynky equipment loss numbers as of 05 January 2024: 31 UA losses vs. 152 RU losses https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15B71fIQbY5jiLAFDl1bFROhJsjYjzBNdJJxmkciBmkg/edit?usp=sharing
> Douglas Murray: If Biden wins, the US heads into a deeper decline — but if Trump wins, America burns
Sounds like Douglas Murray is suffering from TDS.