Links for 2024-02-22
AI:
Neural Network Diffusion: Diffusion models can generate high-performing neural network parameters…“our diffusion process consistently generates models of comparable or improved performance over trained networks, with minimal additional cost.” https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.13144
Google presents PaLM2-VAdapter: SoTA visual understanding and multi-modal reasoning capabilities with 30∼70% fewer parameters than the SoTA VLM, marking a significant efficiency improvement https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.10896
How to Train Data-Efficient LLMs: Major gains in pretraining efficiency/quality by 1. filtering data with an LLM judge and 2. asking the judge to only keep the "informative" stuff https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.09668
A new family of lightweight LLMs (2B and 7B params): 7B model is trained 6T tokens on 4096 TPUv5e; weights available for commercial use https://blog.google/technology/developers/gemma-open-models/
NVIDIA Announces Financial Results for Fourth Quarter and Fiscal 2024: Record quarterly revenue of $22.1 billion, up 22% from Q3, up 265% from year ago; Record quarterly Data Center revenue of $18.4 billion, up 27% from Q3, up 409% from year ago; Record full-year revenue of $60.9 billion, up 126% https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-announces-financial-results-for-fourth-quarter-and-fiscal-2024
Miscellaneous:
The most exotic material ever? A 74,000,000,000,000,000,000 Tesla magnetic field could force quantum fluctuations in vacuum to transform into a superconducting superfluid 'liquid-solid' made of virtual particle vortices at the femtometer scale. https://phys.org/news/2024-01-superconductor-liquidsolid-vacuum-exatesla-strong.amp
Harvard physicists make a new phase of matter: First demonstration of non-Abelian anyons in a quantum processor https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2024/02/harvard-physicists-create-a-new-phase-of-matter/
Electrons become fractions of themselves in graphene, study finds https://news.mit.edu/2024/electrons-become-fractions-graphene-study-finds-0221
Are the natural numbers implicit in the construction of first-order logic? If so, why is this acceptable? https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1589992/are-the-natural-numbers-implicit-in-the-construction-of-first-order-logic-if-so
Farmers did a settler-colonialism in Neolithic Denmark, killing almost the entire hunter-gatherer population, only to be wiped out themselves 1,000 years later by Yamnaya invaders. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06862-3
Politics:
Apparently Google Gemini refuses to generate images of white men, even when it is historically absurd not to: https://x.com/IMAO_/status/1760093853430710557
This dystopian crap begs for some pushback. Let's start with a meme:
Ukraine:
“Another one Ukrainian missile strikes on Russian training ground near village Podo-Kalinovka, left bank of Kherson region.‼️| About SIXTY RUSSIAN SOLDIERS WERE KILLED during inspect the training of units that are preparing for useless assaults on the village of Krynky” https://x.com/GloOouD/status/1760417185619435911
Iran has provided Russia with approximately 400 ballistic missiles, including many from the Fateh-110 family, such as the Zolfaghar. https://www.reuters.com/world/iran-sends-russia-hundreds-ballistic-missiles-sources-say-2024-02-21/
“FIghting in Krynky continues. Ukrainian forces here fend off yet another assault from Russian infantry.” https://x.com/NOELreports/status/1760343134213476551
This should make it clear that there won't be any peace agreement between an elected Ukrainian government and Russia: Dmitry Medvedev says Odesa and Kyiv are Russian. https://x.com/NOELreports/status/1760565969527710071