Links for 2024-06-21

AI:

1. Anthropic releases Claude 3.5 Sonnet. Sonnet now outperforms competitor models on key evaluations, at twice the speed of Claude 3 Opus and one-fifth the cost: https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-3-5-sonnet (Try it for free: https://claude.ai/)

2. OpenPipe Mixture of Agents: Outperform GPT-4 at 1/25th the Cost https://openpipe.ai/blog/mixture-of-agents

3. Tree Search for Language Model Agents — It is the first tree search algorithm for LLM agents that shows effectiveness on realistic and complex web environments. https://jykoh.com/search-agents

4. DigiRL: Training In-The-Wild Device-Control Agents with Autonomous Reinforcement Learning https://digirl-agent.github.io/

5. Major research into ‘hallucinating’ generative models advances reliability of artificial intelligence. Detecting hallucinations in large language models using semantic entropy. https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2024-06-20-major-research-hallucinating-generative-models-advances-reliability-artificial

6. A general graph neural network based implicit solvation model for organic molecules in water https://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2024/SC/D4SC02432J

7. Andrew Ng on using OpenDevin, an open-source agentic coding framework, to design practice problems for his daughter. https://x.com/AndrewYNg/status/1803835964604977663

8. Connecting the Dots: LLMs can Infer and Verbalize Latent Structure from Disparate Training Data — “We finetune an LLM on just (x,y) pairs from an unknown function f. Remarkably, the LLM can: a) Define f in code b) Invert f c) Compose f —without in-context examples or chain-of-thought. So reasoning occurs non-transparently in weights/activations!” https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.14546

9. “Transformers really do learn world models, but they’re thickly fouled by incoherence, and this makes them behave unreliably, especially out-of-distribution.” — davidad https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.03689

10. Mira Murati: GPT-3 was toddler-level, GPT-4 was a smart high schooler and the next-gen, to be released in a year and a half, will be PhD-level https://youtu.be/yUoj9B8OpR8?si=d2XrrGPy56KPy8qL&t=836

Miscellaneous:

1. New Study Suggests Universal Laws Govern Brain Structure From Mice to Men https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2024/06/brains-structure-hangs-in-a-delicate-balance/

2. 82,000-year-old shell beads from North Africa and implications for the origins of modern human behavior https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.0703877104

"We totally failed to see that solar would come down so much,” he says. “In 2008 we were thinking that capital costs would come down 19% by 2020. When we got to 2020 they were down 95%.” https://www.economist.com/interactive/essay/2024/06/20/solar-power-is-going-to-be-huge [no paywall: https://archive.is/WiYho]

Politics:

1. Hezbollah flies a drone over one of Israel's best-protected military facilities. https://x.com/gbrumfiel/status/1803850062809960801 (more here: https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-806889)

Ukraine:

1. “Ukraine hit three oil depot/refineries in Russia overnight. UAVs visited the Afipsky refinery in the Krasnodar region and the Enem oil depot in Adygea. Another refinery in the Tambov region was also hit by at least 3 UAVs.” https://x.com/NOELreports/status/1803667970620625340

2. “This evening, multiple Ukrainian attack drones successfully hit Russia's Yeysk Airbase, home to the 859th Naval Aviation Training Center and multiple Russian strike aircraft, starting a large fire. Multiple secondary explosions could be seen emerging from the blaze at the base.” https://x.com/Osinttechnical/status/1803958796282109969

3. “Imagery from a few days after Ukraine's drone attack on Morozovsk air base in Russia shows the remnants of the damaged maintenance hangar have been removed.” https://x.com/bradyafr/status/1804132157704618229

4. U.S. will boost Ukraine’s air defense by pausing exports to allies https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/06/20/ukraine-patriot-air-defense/ [no paywall: https://archive.is/1a0ue]

5. Romania agrees to donate Patriot air defense system to Ukraine https://www.politico.eu/article/romania-agrees-to-donate-patriot-air-defense-system-to-ukraine/

6. The Netherlands, together with another country, will supply Ukraine with a Patriot system, Dutch Defense Minister Kajsa Ollongren confirmed. https://www.nd.nl/varia/varia/1229126/nederland-levert-oekraine-samen-met-ander-land-patriot-systeem

7. South Korea to reconsider providing weapons to Ukraine https://www.reuters.com/world/south-korea-says-will-reconsider-providing-weapons-ukraine-yonhap-says-2024-06-20/

8. Putin warns South Korea against arming Ukraine https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1ee8x221lno

9. Germany just increased its long-term contract for 155mm artillery shells from the German arms manufacturing giant Rheinmetall by over 700%, from 1.2 billion to 8.5 billion euros. https://breakingdefense.com/2024/06/rheinmetall-announces-155mm-ammunition-mega-order-from-germany/

10. Russia: "The ratio of UAVs at the front is now approximately 1 to 6 - not in our favor...." https://x.com/sambendett/status/1804163171474653263