Links for 2024-05-05
IntervenGen: A system for automatically generating interventional data from a small set of human interventions
Collecting human interventions is crucial to improve robot policies, but very costly. IntervenGen generates such interventions autonomously. In contact-rich tasks it increases robustness up to 39x over existing baselines. IntervenGen with 10 source interventions outperforms a policy trained with 100 human interventions by 24%, with just 12% of the data collection effort.
Project page: https://sites.google.com/view/intervengen2024
AI:
CodeIt: Self-Improving Language Models with Prioritized Hindsight Replay https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.04858
“Inexpensive token generation and agentic workflows for large language models (LLMs) open up intriguing new possibilities for training LLMs on synthetic data. Pretraining an LLM on its own directly generated responses to prompts doesn't help. But if an agentic workflow implemented with the LLM results in higher quality output than the LLM can generate directly, then training on that output becomes potentially useful.” https://www.deeplearning.ai/the-batch/issue-247/
Self-Play Preference Optimization for Language Model Alignment https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.00675
StoryDiffusion: Consistent Self-Attention for Long-Range Image and Video Generation https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.01434
ExPO, an extremely simple method to boost LLMs' alignment with human preference, via weak-to-strong model extrapolation https://arxiv.org/abs//2404.16792
NeMo-Aligner: Scalable Toolkit for Efficient Model Alignment https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.01481
A Primer on the Inner Workings of Transformer-based Language Models https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.00208
AI-controlled F-16 takes US Air Force leader for high-speed ride - as he backs tech to launch weapons https://news.sky.com/story/ai-controlled-f-16-takes-us-air-force-leader-for-high-speed-ride-as-he-backs-tech-to-launch-weapons-13128673
The Role of AI in Russia’s Confrontation with the West https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/the-role-of-ai-in-russias-confrontation-with-the-west
Tesla Optimus https://x.com/Tesla_Optimus/status/1787027808436330505
Miscellaneous:
When semiconductors were being researched at Bell Labs in the 1940s, mysterious component failures were eventually traced to researchers who had touched copper door knobs; the tiny number of copper atoms that migrated from the door to the workers hands was enough to ruin their work material. Early semiconductor manufacturers found that their processes were influenced by, among other things, the phase of the moon, whether workers had recently visited the bathroom, and female workers’ menstrual cycles.
— How to Build a $20 Billion Semiconductor Fab https://www.construction-physics.com/p/how-to-build-a-20-billion-semiconductor
S-Risks: Fates Worse Than Extinction https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bDoGbZX7Jzjr2x3Aa/s-risks-fates-worse-than-extinction
Engineering Life: Chemists Have Created the Functional Synthetic Cells That Act Like Real Ones https://research.unc.edu/2024/04/23/unc-chapel-hill-researchers-create-artificial-cells-that-act-like-living-cells/
Killer Asteroid Hunters Spot 27,500 Overlooked Space Rocks https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/30/science/killer-asteroids-algorithm.html [no paywall: https://archive.is/vNkly]
How light can vaporize water without the need for heat https://news.mit.edu/2024/how-light-can-vaporize-water-without-heat-0423
Politics:
“China is targeting a crater called “Apollo” which is named in honor of America’s great lunar achievement. Apollo’s interior and adjacent craters are named for Apollo astronauts and memorialize deceased NASA employees including the lost crew of the Space Shuttle Columbia. Chang’e 6 will literally raise a communist Chinese flag there.” https://www.forbes.com/sites/gregautry/2024/05/04/space-race-20-is-on-change-6-heads-to-the-moon/ [no paywall: https://archive.is/zTWU2]
Ukraine:
“Over the past few days, the Russian army has seized three settlements. The gradual advance of the attackers continues.” https://x.com/ian_matveev/status/1787076587697119537
Lots of Russian losses near Vuhledar https://x.com/OSINTua/status/1786794104728261014
The 47th Mechanized at work in the Avdiivka direction, destroying both Russian equipment and personnel. https://x.com/NOELreports/status/1786798815896588564
“Luhansk Oblast, a Swedish-supplied Archer Artillery system in Ukrainian service hits a Russian MSTA-S with drone-spotted counterbattery fire, destroying the self-propelled howitzer.” https://x.com/Osinttechnical/status/1786858510027776456
A Russian DRG group on the left bank receives an immediate hit. https://x.com/NOELreports/status/1787062395141058981
“In Kyiv today, during a funeral for a fallen defender, people stepped out of their cars and knelt in respect.” https://x.com/saintjavelin/status/1786454638645948478