AI:
Do multilingual LLMs trained mostly on English use English as an “internal language”? Llama2’s internal “lingua franca” is not English, but concepts — and, crucially, concepts that are biased toward English. Hence, English could still be seen as an “internal language”, but in a semantic, rather than a purely lexical, sense. https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.10588
Synthetic Data (Almost) from Scratch: Generalized Instruction Tuning for Language Models https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.13064
MVDiffusion++: A Dense High-resolution Multi-view Diffusion Model for Single to Sparse-view 3D Object Reconstruction https://mvdiffusion-plusplus.github.io/
“Sora's video quality seems impossible so I dug into how it works under the hood” https://x.com/thatguybg/status/1759935959792312461
VideoPrism: A Foundational Visual Encoder for Video Understanding https://blog.research.google/2024/02/videoprism-foundational-visual-encoder.html
Video ReCap: Recursive Captioning of Hour-Long Videos https://sites.google.com/view/vidrecap
Introducing RoboEXP, a robotic system that explores! 🤖 https://jianghanxiao.github.io/roboexp-web/
“Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, argues that we should stop saying kids should learn to code. He argues the rise of AI means we can replace programming languages with human language prompts thus enabling everyone to be a programmer.” https://x.com/Carnage4Life/status/1761483377365152234
Technology:
Electron Beam Welding: “This week Sheffield Forgemasters achieved, in 24 hours, the welding of a nuclear Small Modular Reactor RPV mockup that should have taken up to a year.” https://x.com/Jordan_W_Taylor/status/1761067648136204299
Neuroscience:
The future is here: working towards generating realistic phosphenes via brain stimulation to eventually make blind people see again! https://elifesciences.org/articles/85812
Biomimetic computer-to-brain communication enhancing naturalistic touch sensations via peripheral nerve stimulation https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-45190-6
Math
Introduction to Bayesian reasoning and hypothesis testing https://ermsta.com/posts/20240218
The laws of reasoning https://arbital.com/p/bayes_rule/
A general recipe for quantifying someone’s personal probability in a proposition based on the person's betting rate https://jonathanweisberg.org/vip/beliefs-betting-rates.html
Ukraine:
“Two years ago, multiple groups from the Russian 2nd Guard Spetsnaz attempted to charge into Kharkiv to link up with Russian agents and seize key targets in the city. One group got lost, was ambushed by a Ukrainian BTR-4, abandoned their Tigr IMVs, and fled into a school.” https://x.com/Osinttechnical/status/1761512350199206120
“Ukrainian serviceman singlehandedly held off 10 enemies while the enemy commander frantically ordered them to advance.” https://x.com/wartranslated/status/1761338156912136388
“Ukrainian-made drones will have AI!” https://x.com/AndriyYermak/status/1761427300929749046
Politics:
Poland has now warned that American allies could get nuclear weapons due to the potential failure of the U.S. to pass a supplemental bill aiding Ukraine. https://x.com/visegrad24/status/1761309766830211077 [I predicted in 2019 that this would be a consequence if the United States ever failed to signal its willingness and ability to confront its enemies: https://x.com/XiXiDu/status/1148280579806375937 But frankly, I couldn't have imagined that it would be the Republican Party and people like Musk and Carlson who would end up destroying Pax Americana. We now face a much more dangerous world.]
Taiwan’s leadership ‘extremely worried’ US could abandon Ukraine https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/23/taiwan-leadership-u-s-ukraine-00143047
“Republicans and the MAGA right have eagerly participated in Kremlin scheming to undermine Biden…The Smirnov case…shows not only that Trump and the GOP are Putin dupes; they are willing dupes.” https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/02/smirnov-biden-fbi-comer-jordan-giuliani-russia-ukraine-burisma-impeachment/
Mother Jones? Really?