Links for 2024-08-20

AI:

1. Automated Design of Agentic Systems: Presents Meta Agent Search to demonstrate that we can use agents to invent novel and powerful agent designs by programming in code. Meta Agent Search discovers superior agents compared to the baselines in every domain. https://www.shengranhu.com/ADAS/

2. Huawei's chip design automation: AI-driven chip design — “ShortCircuit leverages AI to automate and optimize the design of these critical circuits, making them 14.61% smaller than those produced by current state-of-the-art tools.” https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.09858

3. "Demo of Qwen2-Math-72B, which achieves state-of-the-art performance in a number of math benchmark datasets. In this demo, you can ask Qwen2-Math-72B by inputting the math problem with text, but if you find it hard to input the contents by text, especially formula, you can even input an image of the scanned text! This is because Qwen2-VL stays behind the scenes and processes text recognition for Qwen2-Math-72B to reason!" https://huggingface.co/spaces/Qwen/Qwen2-Math-Demo

4. In-depth tutorial on how to build your own robot. Teach it new skills by showing it a few moves with just a laptop. Then watch your homemade robot act autonomously. https://github.com/huggingface/lerobot/blob/main/examples/7_get_started_with_real_robot.md

5. Nvidia creates smaller, accurate LLMs from much larger models using structured weight pruning and knowledge distillation. https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/how-to-prune-and-distill-llama-3-1-8b-to-an-nvidia-llama-3-1-minitron-4b-model/

6. Factorized-Dreamer: Training A High-Quality Video Generator with Limited and Low-Quality Data https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.10119

7. Memory^3: Language Modeling with Explicit Memory https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.01178

8. Unitree G1 mass production version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuNFr7V7KFQ

9. A Jellyfish Cyborg: Exploiting Natural Embodied Intelligence as Soft Robots https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.01941

10. 56 per cent of Fortune 500 companies cited AI as a “risk factor” in their most recent annual reports https://www.ft.com/content/5ee96d38-f55b-4e8a-b5c1-e58ce3d4111f [no paywall: https://archive.is/rV9RJ]

11. Deep-Live-Cam: Real time face swap and one-click video deepfake. https://github.com/hacksider/Deep-Live-Cam

12. Battle for the best LLM by the Top 7 companies, based on the Chatbot arena Elo scores https://x.com/LinusEkenstam/status/1825442212533977222

13. AMD signs $4.9 billion deal to challenge Nvidia’s AI infrastructure lead https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/08/amd-signs-4-9-billion-deal-to-challenge-nvidias-ai-infrastructure-lead/

14. Elon Musk became concerned this is a simulation, and he's one of the player characters: "…he became convinced that, yeah, he became convinced that maybe it was Larry, but even more likely Demis was another player character. And the, the, the point of the game was to get to AI AGI. Okay. And that is actually why he put in the money to create an open AI, because he was afraid that Demis was going to get too far ahead." https://www.manifold1.com/episodes/robin-hanson-prediction-markets-the-future-of-civilization-and-polymathy-66/transcript

https://x.com/OfficialLoganK/status/1825656369627935069

Neuroscience:

1. The brain finetunes on synthetic data while it sleeps. Evidence that during dream sleep your brain is simulating a world/internal model by issuing motor commands and simulating their consequences on brain representations even if your body does not execute them https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.08.13.607810v1

2. The overfitted brain: Dreams evolved to assist generalization https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666389921000647

3. The overfitted brain hypothesis https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666389921000945

4. Brain implants to treat epilepsy, arthritis, or even incontinence? They may be closer than you think https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/aug/17/brain-implants-to-treat-epilepsy-arthritis-or-even-incontinence-they-may-be-closer-than-you-think

5. Space is a sensory-motor sequence in the hippocampus https://blog.dileeplearning.com/p/space-is-a-sensory-motor-sequence

6. The US government just hired a researcher who thinks we can beat aging with fresh cloned bodies and brain updates. https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/08/16/1096808/arpa-h-jean-hebert-wants-to-replace-your-brain/ [no paywall: https://archive.is/IiJ2t]

Math:

1. Timothy Gowers has a very interesting youtube playlist in which he thinks about math problems in real-time https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOft35kj95aajgXAFHKklygbpsESMQUid

2. Improving on AlphaProof: IMO 2024 Problem 2 in Lean 4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IARsdn78xE

3. How the Lean language brings math to coding and coding to math https://www.amazon.science/blog/how-the-lean-language-brings-math-to-coding-and-coding-to-math

Space:

1. “Now another moon appears to be secretly flooded. .. similar seas could be hiding in plain sight, and the outer solar system may be far more habitable than previously thought.” https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/08/space-new-ocean-mimas-saturn/679501/ [no paywall: https://archive.is/f3xeF]

2. Planets contain more water than thought https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1054813

Miscellaneous:

1. The Best Tacit Knowledge Videos on Every Subject https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/SXJGSPeQWbACveJhs/the-best-tacit-knowledge-videos-on-every-subject

2. Groundbreaking Precision in Single-Molecule Optoelectronics https://www.fhi.mpg.de/1597005/2024-08-13-Single-Molecule-Optoelectronics

3. "For face recognition memory tasks, women with IQs in the 60-80 IQs outperform men with IQs in the 121-140 range. When it comes to memorizing people's faces, women are, on average, far superior to men." https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1076/jcen.24.1.107.970

Politics:

1. If Germany had stuck with nuclear power it would have saved €350 billion and cut emissions by 73% more since 2002. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14786451.2024.2355642

2. The country led by Viktor Orbán spends 5% of GDP on trying to raise birth rates, but increases have levelled off — “In the first half of this year the fertility rate stood at 1.36 babies per woman, the lowest in a decade, said state statistical service KSH. In June, births fell to a record monthly low of barely 6,000 children in the country of 10mn…” https://www.ft.com/content/3ea257fd-e8ef-4f05-9b89-c9a03ea72af5 [no paywall: https://archive.is/PPtv8]

3. Study found that the public overwhelmingly supports anti-price gouging policies, even if they're informed about likely negative side-effects (shortages, store closures) by experts. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/20531680231194805

4. Discussion of the impacts of lead on IQs, crime, and health is riddled with issues. https://x.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/1825583588869284246

“China's population is declining at an accelerating rate. Each year will be like losing an entire small European country.” https://x.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/1824975956714406126

50% of global GDP is concentrated in those coloured areas

States with populations approximately equal to or less than Los Angeles County

Ukraine:

1. «Ukrainian forces control 1263 km^2 of the Kursk region, as well as 93 settlements.» - Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Oleksandr Syrsky on the state television channel "Rada". https://x.com/NOELreports/status/1825923702971629740

2. Ukraine's strategic bombing campaign against Russian energy infrastructure continues. The fire after the attack on the Proletarsk oil depot is out of control. https://x.com/wartranslated/status/1825620835643830568

3. Russians having trouble trying to cross the river Seym after Ukraine destroyed all bridges? https://x.com/MT_Anderson/status/1825925486511362243

4. “Russian milbloggers report that Ukrainian forces from the 95th Airborne Brigade managed to encircle parts of the Russian 18th MRD in Malaya Loknya, Kursk Oblast.” https://x.com/Osinttechnical/status/1825933494410949043

5. “Off the front areas, like 10km-15km back there should be a multitude of trenches, yet there isn’t. The pokrovsk area as an example should have had 10 times the prepared defenses it had. In 2023 when we pushed the dipshit Russians back towards the Donetsk airport l, out of neveleske and almost out of pervomaiske. The areas that became out of artillery range should have had guys digging 24/7 to have defense in depth built out.” https://x.com/RyanO_ChosenCoy/status/1824485581612568635

6. Useful info about German aid for Ukraine https://x.com/deaidua/status/1825894760931856730