Links for 2024-05-17
AI:
Chameleon: Mixed-Modal Early-Fusion Foundation Models — matches or exceeds the performance of much larger models, including Gemini Pro and GPT-4V… https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.09818
OpenAI strikes Reddit deal to train ChatGPT on its posts https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/16/24158529/reddit-openai-chatgpt-api-access-advertising
Waymo says its robotaxis are now making 50,000 paid trips every week. If the company is getting 50,000 rides a week, that means it receives an average of 300 bookings every hour, or five bookings every minute. https://www.engadget.com/waymo-says-its-robotaxis-are-now-making-50000-paid-trips-every-week-130005096.html
Google presents CAT3D: Create Anything in 3D with Multi-View Diffusion Models https://cat3d.github.io/
More examples of Google Project Astra: "Early in my career, as a machine learning engineer, I spent many months training a model for a very specific task that still only ended up working ~80% of the time. It still blows me away that in only a few years, we have general purpose vision / video understanding that just works!" https://x.com/OfficialLoganK/status/1791124108828409915
Neuroscience and Psychology:
Most neurons in the cortex remain silent, even during sensory stimulation and behavior. What are these silent neurons good for? This is known as the “dark matter problem” of the brain. https://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(24)00276-9
What you learn and how you learn it can lead to important differences in neural activity structure. These differences play an important role in later adaptation. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-48008-7
Spurious reconstruction from brain activity https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.10078
"IQ has both a direct effect on the probability of inventing which is almost five times as large as that of having a high-income father, and an indirect effect through education" [PDF] https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w24110/w24110.pdf
Ukraine:
“On @Maxar imagery, two MiG-31s and one Su-27 have been completely destroyed, and a MiG-29 damaged, at the Russian Air Force's Belbek Airbase in occupied Crimea.” https://x.com/trbrtc/status/1791243531362734584
“The Russian city of Novorossiysk was hit harder than initial seen. This footage from local citizens documents several explosions of the oil depot, with strong secondary explosions. Ukrainian UAVs just kept on coming.” https://x.com/Tendar/status/1791405776835059830
Massive overnight Ukrainian drone attack on Russia’s Novorossiysk port and the northern Caucasus, as well we Sevastopol in Crimea. https://x.com/yarotrof/status/1791339392700706911
“Fast and agile. The Ukrainian Lyutyi drone roaming the Russian sky before it hits its target.” https://x.com/NOELreports/status/1791351376498278500
[Warning: Burning people] “The 🇺🇦Ukrainian 28th Mechanised Brigade uses a night bomber drone «Vampire» to remotely mine the road with TM-62 anti-tank mines. Same area and both times, 🇷🇺Russians blew up on the mine there.” https://x.com/GloOouD/status/1791134483338445187
Russians pulled up tanks in the Kursk region near the border with Sumy. They were noticed early and two were destroyed immediately after detection by the 103rd Territorial Defense Brigade. https://x.com/sternenko/status/1791427293899878458
Analysis thread on Kharkiv Front https://x.com/Inkvisiit/status/1791206900198957166
“The Kharkiv offensive has been ongoing for a week. Russia had some initial success, but Ukraine has been able to restrain Russian forces from advancing deeper.” https://x.com/emilkastehelmi/status/1791471761055228149