Links for 2024-01-14
AI:
“It is only rarely that, after reading a research paper, I feel like giving the authors a standing ovation. But I felt that way after finishing Direct Preference Optimization (DPO)” — Andrew Ng https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.18290 (related: Self-Play Fine-Tuning Converts Weak Language Models to Strong Language Models https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.01335 and Human-Centered Loss Functions (HALOs) https://github.com/ContextualAI/HALOs/tree/main)
Sleeper Agents: Training Deceptive LLMs that Persist Through Safety Training https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ZAsJv7xijKTfZkMtr/sleeper-agents-training-deceptive-llms-that-persist-through (“Even as someone relatively optimistic about AI risk, working on this project was eye-opening. For example, I was almost certain that red-teaming the model for Bad Thing would stop the model from doing Bad Thing, but it just ended up making the model do Bad Thing more 🫠” https://twitter.com/jayelmnop/status/1745923943171826055)
Following up on the "Sleeper Agents" paper, Anthropic is hiring a team that is explicitly tasked with trying to prove that Anthropic's alignment techniques won't work. https://www.alignmentforum.org/posts/EPDSdXr8YbsDkgsDG/introducing-alignment-stress-testing-at-anthropic
Google announces InseRF: Text-Driven Generative Object Insertion in Neural 3D Scenes https://mohamad-shahbazi.github.io/inserf/
Open-Vocabulary SAM: Segment and Recognize Twenty-thousand Classes Interactively https://www.mmlab-ntu.com/project/ovsam/
"large-scale controlled trial … at Boston Consulting Group … found consultants using …GPT-4 … 12.2% more tasks on average, completed tasks 25.1% more quickly, & produced 40% higher quality results than those without the tool. A new paper looking at legal work done by law students found the same results" https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/signs-and-portents
Computer science:
Computer Age Statistical Inference: Algorithms, Evidence and Data Science https://hastie.su.domains/CASI/
Why numbering should start at zero (according to Dijkstra) https://youtu.be/saZnPDPyQHA
Machine Code Explained https://youtu.be/8VsiYWW9r48
Philosophy:
“Emerging at age 4, children consistently denied that God could alter fundamental moral norms, such as turning morally wrong actions into morally right ones. This [suggests] that from an early age, children view certain moral norms as unchangeable.” https://psypost.org/2024/01/children-deny-that-god-can-change-fundamental-moral-principles-study-finds-220522
A Planet of Parasites and the Problem With God https://www.joyfulpessimism.com/p/planet-of-parasites-problem-with-god
Science:
100 ancient genomes show repeated population turnovers in Neolithic Denmark https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06862-3
Huge ancient lost city found in the Amazon — 1000 years older than other discoveries. Size of cities = urbanism, landscaped garden cities rivaling the Maya, and sized like Giza Plateau. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-67940671
Newly discovered cosmic megastructure challenges theories of the universe https://amp.theguardian.com/science/2024/jan/11/newly-discovered-cosmic-megastructure-challenges-theories-of-the-universe
Politics:
“German greenhouse-gas emissions dropped 20% in 2023 to their lowest levels in 75 years primarily due to a collapse in energy-intensive manufacturing.” https://www.wsj.com/articles/davos-devotees-deindustrialize-europe-policy-energy-intensive-manufacturing-wef-4e78e385?st=3ty9x9vfzw4qacj [https://archive.is/a622s]
“85% of the KGB budget during the late Soviet Union was spent on disinformation operations. KGB agents’ annual review accounted for how many fake news stories they created and successfully propagated. The goal was to use freedom of speech to undermine enemies (i.e. the U.S.)” https://twitter.com/GaudetteRob/status/1745201519173960102
Ukraine:
“Russian corruption, labour shortages and state incompetence have done more effective damage to Russian infrastructure than Russian airstrikes have done to Ukrainian infrastructure” https://twitter.com/APHClarkson/status/1746122757509722197
Russia’s New Supersized Glide Bomb https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/russias-new-supersized-glide-bomb-our-best-look-yet
Ukrainian 30th Mechanised Brigade continues to destroy invaders in Kupyansk direction, Kharkiv region https://twitter.com/GloOouD/status/1746464720788271356