Links for 2024-03-16
AI:
Quiet-STaR: Language Models Can Teach Themselves to Think Before Speaking — “Excitingly, self-teaching reasoning on diverse web text automatically improves other reasoning! Mistral self-taught by training on web data increases its zero-shot commonsense reasoning accuracy by a third and nearly doubles its zero-shot direct grade-school-math accuracy…” https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.09629
Mila presents Simple and Scalable Strategies to Continually Pre-train Large Language Models https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.08763
Google presents Cappy, a small pre-trained scorer model that enhances and surpasses the performance of large multi-task language models. https://blog.research.google/2024/03/cappy-outperforming-and-boosting-large.html
“By infusing a virtual fruit fly with artificial intelligence, Janelia and Google DeepMind scientists have created a computerized insect that can walk and fly just like the real thing. https://www.janelia.org/news/artificial-intelligence-brings-a-virtual-fly-to-life” https://www.janelia.org/news/artificial-intelligence-brings-a-virtual-fly-to-life (Code: https://github.com/TuragaLab/flybody/)
SOTOPIA-π: Interactive Learning of Socially Intelligent Language Agents https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.08715
Watch an AI Robot Dog Rock an Agility Course It’s Never Seen Before https://singularityhub.com/2024/03/14/watch-an-ai-robot-dog-rock-an-agility-course-its-never-seen-before/
Introducing CoPa, a novel framework that can autonomously complete various complex robotic manipulation tasks without any training https://copa-2024.github.io/
Nvidia’s Supercharged Investment Strategy Is About More Than Returns https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/nvidias-supercharged-investment-strategy-is-about-more-than-returns-b868e51d [no paywall: https://archive.is/IHEdg]
AI risks:
“Many arguments for AI x-risk are wrong” https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yQSmcfN4kA7rATHGK/many-arguments-for-ai-x-risk-are-wrong
“We brought together generalist forecasters and domain experts (n=22) who disagreed about the risk AI poses to humanity in the next century. The “concerned” participants (all of whom were domain experts) predicted a 20% chance of an AI-caused existential catastrophe by 2100, while the “skeptical” group (mainly “superforecasters”) predicted a 0.12% chance. We asked participants when AI will displace humans as the primary force that determines what happens in the future. The concerned group’s median date is 2045 and the skeptic group’s median date is 2450—405 years later.” https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/94K6pskgqBmuxsJLx/results-from-an-adversarial-collaboration-on-ai-risk-fri
A report commissioned by the U.S. government says advanced AI could pose an "extinction-level threat to the human species" and calls for urgent, sweeping new regulations https://time.com/6898967/ai-extinction-national-security-risks-report/
This is allegedly the most candid and well-written feature article on AI doomers. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/03/18/among-the-ai-doomsayers [no paywall: https://archive.is/8FFkP]
Politics:
‘We killed many … drones are our air force’: Myanmar’s rebels take on the junta from above https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/20/myanmar-rebels-junta-above-drones
Drone Swarms Are About to Change the Balance of Military Power https://www.wsj.com/tech/drone-swarms-are-about-to-change-the-balance-of-military-power-e091aa6f [no paywall: https://archive.is/55cbD]
Ukraine:
“Overnight, Ukrainian drones attacked two oil refineries in the Samara region in Russia. According to the governor of the region, UAVs attacked the Syzran and Novokuibyshev refineries in the Samara region. As a result, a fire broke out at the oil processing plant.” https://x.com/NOELreports/status/1768905040717111528
“On the video man mentions that “AVT-6 is done” and that “K-2 column is on fire” The capacity of the AVT-6 on the Syzran oil refinery is 6 million tons per year. That is about 70% of the capacity of the entire Syzran oil refinery 8.5 million tons of oil per year.” https://x.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1768873365836599576
Dmitry Medvedev says Latvia doesn’t exist and calls its president a “nazi bastard”. https://x.com/MedvedevRussiaE/status/1768702539006939582
Don’t rule out troops to Ukraine, Finnish FM says https://www.politico.com/newsletters/national-security-daily/2024/03/15/dont-rule-out-troops-to-ukraine-finnish-fm-says-00147374
The EU Commission announces it has mobilised €2 billion for defence projects and deals aimed on armaments production, joint purchases and research. One of its aims is to speed up deliveries to Ukraine. https://www.euractiv.com/section/defence-and-security/news/eu-commission-announces-e2-bn-defence-projects-for-armaments-production-joint-purchases-and-research/