Links for 2024-03-12
AI:
OpenAI spinoff Covariant Announces a Universal AI Platform for Robots -- The robotics foundation model is built on tons of warehouse data https://spectrum.ieee.org/covariant-foundation-model
Algorithmic progress in language models: "...the compute required to reach a set performance threshold has halved approximately every 8 months...substantially faster than hardware gains per Moore's Law." https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.05812
“TfL's AI Tube Station experiment is amazing and slightly terrifying” — “It would be trivial from a software (if not legal) perspective to train the cameras to identify, say, Israeli or Palestinian flags – or any other symbol you don’t like. The system could be used to surveil staff, and work them even harder, by literally keeping a by-the-second count of their idle time while on shift.” https://takes.jamesomalley.co.uk/p/tfls-ai-tube-station-experiment-is
Google announces Stealing Part of a Production Language Model: “We introduce the first model-stealing attack that extracts precise, nontrivial information from black-box production language models like OpenAI's ChatGPT or Google's PaLM-2.” https://not-just-memorization.github.io/partial-model-stealing.html
Aligning Large Language Models by On-Policy Self-Judgment https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.11253
“Can hazardous knowledge be unlearned from LLMs without harming other capabilities? We’re releasing the Weapons of Mass Destruction Proxy (WMDP), a dataset about weaponization, and we create a way to unlearn this knowledge.” https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.03218
Framing value-learning as a classification significantly improves performance and scalability in deep RL. https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.03950
“We find that LLMs surpass majority baselines in MCQA benchmarks just using the choices without seeing the question” https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.12483
Miscellaneous:
Google Will Pay You $5 Million to Figure Out What the Hell Quantum Computers Do https://gizmodo.com/google-launch-competition-figure-out-quantum-computers-1851308439
1,000x Faster: Ultrafast Photonics Chip Reshapes Signal Processing https://phys.org/news/2024-02-world-microwave-photonics-chip-high.html
“A jellyfish evolved back into a single cell, doesn't need oxygen, and now lives parasitically inside the cells of other animals. Repeat: there's a single-celled jellyfish vibing O2-free INSIDE OTHER ANIMAL CELLS. Meet the hook-shaped intracellular jellyfish parasite Myxozoa 😈” https://x.com/RebeccaRHelm/status/1668350446438604820
Politics:
Beijing ratcheting the pressure and staking its claim to an Indian state larger than Scotland. Interesting timing, with an election looming in India. https://x.com/MFA_China/status/1767190019461251404
“American politics is in the midst of a racial realignment…Large numbers of non-white Americans have long held much more conservative views than their voting patterns would suggest.” https://x.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1767198788689465639
Ukraine:
“Dozens of drones attacked Russia at night. An oil depot was attacked in Oryol, a severe fire broke out. In the Nizhny Novgorod region, a drone attacked the Lukoil oil depot. In addition, at night, explosions were reported in the Bilhorod, Voronezh, Kursk and Tula regions. The mayor of Moscow said that a drone attack on Moscow was repelled.” https://x.com/NOELreports/status/1767442631263473773
Reuters article regarding the attack on Nizhny Novgorod oil facility: Industry sources told Reuters on condition of anonymity that the main crude distillation unit (AVT-6) at NORSI was damaged in the attack, which means that at least half of the refinery's production is halted. Lukoil declined to comment. NORSI refines about 15.8 million tonnes of Russian crude a year, or 5.8% of total refined crude, according to industry sources. It also refines about 4.9 million tonnes of gasoline, 11% of Russia's total, 6.4% of diesel fuel, 5.6% of fuel oil and 7.4% of the country's aviation fuel, according to industry sources. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-launches-drones-oryol-fuel-facility-other-regions-russia-says-2024-03-12/
“The Freedom of Russia Legion has likely begun an operation in Russia this morning. An increasing number of video material suggests there may be some initial success in some villages, but the situation is still unclear. Information space is filled with conflicting claims.” https://x.com/emilkastehelmi/status/1767460555260932328 (heavy fighting: https://x.com/GloOouD/status/1767447203046424909)
“A Russian S-400 AD system (reportedly accompanied by a Pantsir-S1 AD system) at work against incoming GMLRS projectiles flying in their direction. Interceptors are not able to shoot it down, after which one of the systems got hit. One of the operators was reportedly injured.” https://x.com/NOELreports/status/1767551114654732612
“It is still too early to express it in numbers but the drone attack against Russia is substantial. This is somewhere in Belgorod Region.” https://x.com/Tendar/status/1767522184002408795
“A Russian Air Force Il-76 transport aircraft crashed after taking off from Severny airfield in Ivanovo Oblast. All 15 crew and passengers were killed according to Baza.” https://x.com/RALee85/status/1767506907994972475
"Ukraine can continue to exact costs not only with the penetration strikes in Crimea but also against Russia's Black Sea Fleet, continuing the success which has resulted in 15 Russian ships sunk over the past 6 months." CIA Director Bill Burns. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJHQ18Wx8RM&t=4225s