Links for 2024-01-21
AI:
Altman Seeks to Raise Billions for Network of AI Chip Factories — The plan is a vast global network of fabrication plants. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-19/altman-seeks-to-raise-billions-for-network-of-ai-chip-factories [https://archive.is/OgAFe]
ReFT: Reasoning with Reinforced Fine-Tuning — “ReFT first warmups the model with SFT, and then employs on-line reinforcement learning, specifically the PPO algorithm in this paper, to further fine-tune the model, where an abundance of reasoning paths are automatically sampled given the question and the rewards are naturally derived from the ground-truth answers.” https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.08967
“What does ChatGPT know about dementia? A comparative analysis of information quality” https://neuroethicscanada.wordpress.com/2024/01/11/what-does-chatgpt-know-about-dementia/
New computer will mimic human brain https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-WZiLOxoC8
Carmaker Toyota is developing robots capable of learning to do household chores by observing how humans take on the tasks. The project is an example of robotics getting a boost from generative AI. https://www.wired.com/story/fast-forward-toyota-robots-learning-housework/ [https://archive.is/18tRs]
Total petaFLOPS used to train AI models, on a logarithmic scale: It's increased by a factor 1000 in the past 2 years, over >10 billion in the past 10 years.... by 10 quadrillion since 40 years ago! https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/artificial-intelligence-training-computation
Eyes Wide Shut? Exploring the Visual Shortcomings of Multimodal LLMs https://tsb0601.github.io/mmvp_blog/
….agency is not a discrete thing, but a continuum, which is a convergent instrumental drive / emergent capability because it is useful even for understanding “non-agentic” things.
— https://gwern.net/scaling-hypothesis#appendix
Science and Technology:
'Sudden death' of quantum fluctuations defies current theories of superconductivity https://research.princeton.edu/news/sudden-death-quantum-fluctuations-defies-current-theories-superconductivity
CRISPR-edited pig liver from eGenesis passes first test in brain-dead human, researchers say https://www.pennmedicine.org/news/news-releases/2024/january/first-successful-external-liver-perfusion-using-a-porcine-liver
Miscellaneous:
This post by Scott Alexander on "Against Learning From Dramatic Events" https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/against-learning-from-dramatic-events nicely fits with gwern's "Littlewood’s Law and the Global Media" https://gwern.net/littlewood - when you hear dramatic and surprising news should update your views much less than expected.
Using applied category theory to solve physics problems. https://topos.site/blog/2024/01/composing-springs/
“…the European military spirit is fundamentally one of cooperation in small units, as part of a larger whole, rather than individualism.” https://twitter.com/0xAlaric/status/1748449509233803472
Politics:
Trump blames Nikki Haley for January 6. https://twitter.com/RichardHanania/status/1748585590470410306
China’s stock markets have fallen sharply to start the year, driven by investor worry over a prolonged economic slowdown and crackdown on private business. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-01-18/china-stocks-investor-confidence-is-disappearing-bit-by-bit [https://archive.is/NApbO]
“If I was @elonmusk, I would simply hire a person to make a quick check of my posts, to see whether they contain easily checkable false claims. And then if they did, I would not post them, or at least later delete them.” https://twitter.com/jonatanpallesen/status/1748332321726443897
Ukraine:
Ukrainian UAVs successfully attacked the oil depot of the Sea Trade Port in the village of Ust-Luga, Leningrad Region. https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1748873538793054510
Ukrainian 79th Airborne Brigade repelling Russian attack on their positions near Novomykhailivka, Donetsk region. https://twitter.com/GloOouD/status/1748413714561200340
The 81st Airmobile Brigade shows how Russian Storm Z units are being targeted from above. https://twitter.com/Teoyaomiquu/status/1748804785065635912
“Ukraine's 110th Mechanized Brigade released a long video showing part of a battalion-sized Russian assault towards Krasnohorivka-Stepove from October. Russia deployed a large smoke screen before the four assault groups attempted to advance.” https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1748784790470262784
Video from HUR of a Warmate 3.0 loitering munition strike on a Russian Tor air defense TLAR after a near miss from a missile. https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1748634227648700786
Avdiivka.The hellscape of Russian liberation. https://twitter.com/IAPonomarenko/status/1748663927997628748
Russians captured Krokhmalne https://twitter.com/AndrewPerpetua/status/1748901514049892717
"Along current trends, Russia is winning the war of attrition. To reverse those trends, the EU and its allies need to significantly step up military assistance to Ukraine and to outproduce the Russian defence industry." https://ecfr.eu/publication/beyond-the-counter-offensive-attrition-stalemate-and-the-future-of-the-war-in-ukraine/#how-europeans-can-assist-ukraine