AI:
Open-World Mobile Manipulation System: “A full-stack approach to tackle realistic articulated object operation, e.g. real-world doors, cabinets, drawers, and refrigerators in open-ended unstructured environments. In a trial period of less than one hour, our system demonstrated significant improvement, boosting the success rate from 50% of BC pre-training to 95% of online adaptation without any human intervention.” https://open-world-mobilemanip.github.io/
legged robot scaling laws https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vZ7jTb2bxJDAKhno2/legged-robot-scaling-laws
Depth Anything: Unleashing the Power of Large-Scale Unlabeled Data https://depth-anything.github.io/
A rigorous study in how well LLMs handle continuous numeric ranges for LLM Evals https://twitter.com/aparnadhinak/status/1748368364395721128
“I literally spoke with Nvidia’s AI-powered video game NPCs” https://www.theverge.com/24031687/nvidia-ai-npcs-convai-ces-2023
“A 4-year-old child has seen 50x more information than the biggest LLMs that we have.” — Yann LeCun https://x.com/ylecun/status/1750614681209983231
Science and Technology:
“Scientists from the University of Central Lancashire in the UK have reported the discovery of a massive cosmic structure that challenges current understanding of the universe. The Great Ring, as it is called, is a nearly perfect circle of galaxies and galaxy clusters that spans approximately 1.3 billion light-years in diameter, making it larger than any known structure.” https://twitter.com/BrianRoemmele/status/1750946831281045946
NASA’s Robotic, Self-Assembling Structures Could Be the Next Phase of Space Construction https://techcrunch.com/2024/01/17/nasas-robotic-self-assembling-structures-could-be-the-next-phase-of-space-construction/
Where did blue eyes originate and what was the evolutionary benefit of them? A new study might have the answers... https://twitter.com/Tom_Rowsell/status/1749457300136300961
A new discovery in Kenya pushes back human use of tools to over three million years ago, hundreds of thousands of years older than the oldest tools so far. https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/researchers-unearth-3-million-year-old-tools [https://archive.is/gMzGa]
Politics:
“given that many progressives have any number of overtly pro-Hamas people in good standing in their circles, along with Maoists and other similarly pleasant sorts, they should realize the high ground they imagine is nowhere to be found; given their taste for restorative justice, they should understand why others are reluctant to simply dismiss people. I want to understand and address people in depth and with sympathy; that duty does not change when they have odious views.” https://twitter.com/tracewoodgrains/status/1750752522917027983
An incredibly reprehensible decision by the Biden administration. You can hear Putin cheering from the Kremlin. https://twitter.com/elidourado/status/1750876273302257760
How The U.S. Claimed Vast New Arctic Territory -- In An Unusual Way https://www.rferl.org/a/arctic-sea-claims-interactive-map/32793427.html
US Navy urges Britain to scrap cuts to the armed forces - In an unusual public intervention, the US Navy Secretary, Carlos Del Toro, has urged the United Kingdom to reconsider the scale and capabilities of its armed forces. https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/us-navy-urges-britain-to-scrap-cuts-to-the-armed-forces/
Ukraine:
Russian serviceman peeks out of his hole, the entrance to which is blocked by bodies of his comrades-in-arms. https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1750661547469197745
A flanking operation by Ukrainian units with the aim of capturing Russian soldiers in which they succeed. The operation is filmed in both first person and drone view. https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1750828726307156000
“This Russian serviceman was apparently a witness to a "flock of Ukrainian FPV drones led by a repeater drone Queen" which descended onto Russian positions and started the bombing.” https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1750821226233094480
Ukrainian ground drone detonated a bridge 4km behind enemy line https://twitter.com/markito0171/status/1750768549583311286
Ground drones deploying TM-62M anti-tank mines. https://twitter.com/Tendar/status/1750927979868311899
Spartan Brigade was able to remove these invaders from Ukraine. https://twitter.com/Teoyaomiquu/status/1750966428306448407
“The Ukrainian Khorne group released new drone footage showing the dozens of destroyed Russian armored vehicles along the route into Stepove, north of Avdiivka.” https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1751155134514528359
“Units of the 110th Mechanized Brigade repelled a Russian mechanized attack in the Avdiivka direction south of Vesele near the Dacha area. A BMP-1 hits a mine after which the crews of the following armored carriers and 2 T-80BV tanks abandon ship. One tank is visibly taken out.” https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1751177886059417728
“Pilots of FPV, attack drones and aerial reconnaissance, masterfully destroy the invaders who make daily attempts to break through the positions of the defense forces.” https://twitter.com/GloOouD/status/1751169318887309590
A positive vision for the war: “with tailored Western support, Ukraine could hold against Russian forces this year and rebuild the necessary advantage to conduct large-scale offensive operations in 2025, recreating another opportunity to deal Russia a battlefield defeat” https://warontherocks.com/2024/01/hold-build-and-strike-a-vision-for-rebuilding-ukraines-advantage-in-2024/
Question for you, Alexander: seems like mass unemployment due to AI is a distinct possibility. Does this change your views on the desirability of, e.g., a UBI?
On Science and Technology 4:
Sarcastic title: Fear of change and Ludditism held back technical progress much longer than previously thought.