AI:
Replit announces a program repair agent (7b) that outperforms frontier models such as GPT-4 and Claude 3 Opus. https://blog.replit.com/code-repair
Are large language models superhuman chemists? The best models outperform the best human chemists on average. https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.01475
Advancing LLM Reasoning Generalists with Preference Trees https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.02078
AI Mathematical Olympiad Progress Prize https://mathstodon.xyz/@tao/112202296143187441
Toyota’s Bubble-ized Humanoid Grasps With Its Whole Body https://spectrum.ieee.org/humanoid-robot-tri-punyo
LITA: Language Instructed Temporal-Localization Assistant — “Most existing Video LLMs struggle with the “When?” questions. In contrast, our proposed LITA can answer challenging "when" questions like “When does the girl show resilience in her performance?”” https://github.com/NVlabs/LITA
ST-LLM: Large Language Models Are Effective Temporal Learners https://github.com/TencentARC/ST-LLM
“Pre-training loss seems to be a better metric than model size or training compute for representing the scaling effect of language models and predicting their potential for emergent capabilities.” https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.15796
IBM pays the New York Times to publish an ad article about AI model drift. (Comment by gwern: “It is a pretty big deal, particularly in adversarial contexts. Like I believe Google released a paper 2 or 3 years ago, maybe, on AdSense where they mention they just retrain the entire model from scratch every few days to minimize the drift? And spam filters are similar. The Chinese giants were very proud of their real-time training infrastructure for reducing drift too.”) https://www.nytimes.com/paidpost/ibm/keeping-tabs-on-ai-drift.html
Compute:
Japan approves $3.9 billion in subsidies for chipmaker Rapidus https://www.reuters.com/technology/japan-approves-39-billion-subsidies-chipmaker-rapidus-2024-04-02/ [archived: https://archive.is/jMgDK]
Dutch Invest €2.5 Billion in Eindhoven to Keep ASML on Side https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-28/dutch-invest-2-5-billion-in-eindhoven-area-to-keep-asml-on-side [no paywall: https://archive.is/tStIP]
The Best Qubits for Quantum Computing Might Just Be Atoms https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-best-qubits-for-quantum-computing-might-just-be-atoms-20240325/
Neurotech:
“Kernel's second-generation Flow2 Time-Domain Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (TD-fNIRS) system meets the requirements of noninvasive and scalable neuroimaging” https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.03.12.584660v1
Towards a Smart Bionic Eye https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2WXEjewqho
Speaking without vocal cords, thanks to a new AI-assisted wearable device https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/speaking-without-vocal-cords-ucla-engineering-wearable-tech
Miscellaneous:
Directed Evolution of Acoustic Reporter Genes Using High-Throughput Acoustic Screening https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.03.30.587094v1
Supernovas in the year 10^1100 to 10^32000: In the frozen core of Black dwarf stars, pycnonuclear fusion reactions convert O/Ne/Mg into iron. This eventually brings them past the Chandrasenkar limit, creating some of the last light in a dark universe. https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/497/4/4357/5884975 (see also: The Last Thing To Ever Happen In The Universe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgnjdW-x7mQ)
Politics:
“It's hard to overstate how important - and strategically brilliant - @jk_rowling's power move was today, a first-move checkmate that effectively neutered Scotland's dangerous new #HateCrimeBill.” https://x.com/Rob_ThaBuilder/status/1774959860502708291
Ukraine:
“Still wild to me that the Russians take Mala Tokmachka level losses every few days right now and just keep coming.” https://x.com/CalibreObscura/status/1775507720029782457
“The numbers keep going up: Russia is now visualy confirmed to have lost at least 262 IFVs in March 2024, that's more than any of the last 17 months!” https://x.com/verekerrichard1/status/1775244022581178671
“As the number of drones rises from thousands to millions, Ukraine is replacing improvised drone bombs with custom-made munitions, but the approach is more like Amazon than a traditional weapon maker…Steel Hornets also make the even more lethal ‘flying claymore’ for FPV drones. Rather than detonating on impact, this is triggered by operator command as it approaches the target, and fires a carefully calculated spray of shrapnel over a wide area.” https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2024/04/02/steel-hornets-ukraines-amazon-for-drone-bombs/ [no paywall: https://archive.is/EwwcH]
Ukraine’s arms industry is building 8 self-propelled Bohdana artillery systems each month, and although officials will not say how many they’ve made in total, the increased output signals a potential boom in the country’s domestic weapons production. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/02/us/politics/ukraines-war-weapons-industry-russia.html [no paywall: https://archive.is/DH2qq]
“Another 1.2 million artillery shells for Ukraine? At the latest UDCG meeting, Estonia informed the coalition that they have identified €2 billion-€3 billion worth of artillery ammunition available on the global market *in addition* to the ammo sourced by Czechia.” https://x.com/ColbyBadhwar/status/1775153015701262657
The GUR thinks it can disable the Crimean Brdige soon: "We will do it in the first half of 2024, one official said, adding that Kyrylo Budanov, the head of the main directorate of intelligence, already had "most of the means to carry out this goal." https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/03/ukraine-eyes-kerch-bridge-crimea-drone-attack
"Iran has provided Russia with a large number of powerful surface-to-surface ballistic missiles, six sources told Reuters...Iran's provision of around 400 missiles includes many from the Fateh-110 family of short-range ballistic weapons" https://www.reuters.com/world/iran-sends-russia-hundreds-ballistic-missiles-sources-say-2024-02-21/ [no paywall: https://archive.is/xLCyp]
The Ukraine-Russia War, strategically, to have become a race.
Russia wants to exhaust Ukraine's supply of air defense munitions, so they can either gain local air superiority on the battlefield or (more likely) terror bomb Ukrainian cities into rubble
Ukraine wants to cripple Russia's economy by attacking its oil production and (probably soon) oil export infrastructure.
We will see who gets to their goal first.