Links for 2024-11-19

US government commission pushes Manhattan Project-style AI initiative

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/us-government-commission-pushes-manhattan-project-style-ai-initiative-2024-11-19/ [no paywall: https://archive.is/oFSsZ]

Download the report here: https://www.uscc.gov/annual-report/2024-annual-report-congress

Discussion: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CJc5TWyg68idJ5iFr/u-s-china-economic-and-security-review-commission-pushes

AI:

1. Figure x BMW: Figure 02 is now an autonomous fleet, 400% faster with 7x higher success rate. Figure is committed to delivering millions of useful robots to companies and homes worldwide. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlUFoZstcWg

2. Mistral upgraded its chatbot with real-time web search, image generation, task agents, and launches Pixtral Large, a visual model that sets new benchmarks https://mistral.ai/news/mistral-chat/

3. Inference time search is going to be huge for agents: “Can open-weight models match frontier LLM performance on SWE-bench? They can if you equip them with search! We've been studying how guided search can improve SWE agents, and built an SWE-agent-based system that scores 40.6% on SWE-Bench Verified using only open-weight models.” https://nebius.com/blog/posts/training-and-search-for-software-engineering-agents

4. That Chip Has Sailed: A Critique of Unfounded Skepticism Around AI for Chip Design https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.10053

5. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says that rather than seeing AI Scaling Laws hit a wall, if anything we are seeing the emergence of a new Scaling Law for test-time compute. He also says the 3 capabilities needed for AI agents are now in place and improving exponentially: a universal interface of multimodality; the neural algebra of reasoning and planning; and long-term memory, rich context and tool use. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wb_uWHFJBnA

6. AI has dramatically accelerated the pace of scientific discovery, from healthcare advances to plastic-eating enzymes. https://blog.google/technology/ai/google-ai-big-scientific-breakthroughs-2024/

7. Ian Buck announces NVIDIA Alchemi, an AI-driven digital chemistry service to discover new compounds for medicine, chemistry and materials design, speeding up the discovery process by 100x https://youtu.be/eKzNKxWUeCE?si=Hgd04ukQ8BM8rwAU&t=2090

8. Generative Agent Simulations of 1,000 People —”The generative agents replicate participants' responses on the General Social Survey 85% as accurately as participants replicate their own answers two weeks later…” https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.10109

9. “If the average American picks up their phone 144 times per day & engages with an assistant, each time for four interactions every day of a month, an assistant like Her would cost about 78 cents in inference cost.” https://tomtunguz.com/the-cost-of-her/

10. Microsoft Teams will help you speak in a foreign language during meetings https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/19/24300266/microsoft-teams-ai-interpreter-speech-to-speech-translation

11. Making LLMs scalable by replacing weights with learnable tokens https://learnandburn.ai/p/making-llms-scalable-by-replacing

12. InterPLM: Discovering Interpretable Features in Protein Language Models via Sparse Autoencoders https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.11.14.623630v1

13. Chip designer mimicking brain, backed by Sam Altman, gets $25 mln funding https://www.reuters.com/technology/chip-designer-mimicking-brain-backed-by-sam-altman-gets-25-mln-funding-2022-02-02/ [no paywall: https://archive.is/u5NHG]

14. AMD Now Has More Compute On The Top500 Than Nvidia https://www.nextplatform.com/2024/11/18/amd-now-has-more-compute-on-the-top500-than-nvidia/

Miscellaneous:

1. Social Dark Matter: You know it must be out there, but you mostly never see it. (applied cognitive psychology/statistics/plain reasonableness) https://homosabiens.substack.com/p/social-dark-matter

2. Chromosome engineering to restore euploidy in cells harboring a complex rearrangement of chromosome 8 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.11.17.624023v1

3. The amount of methane in the Martian atmosphere changes with the seasons, and no one knows why. https://www.universetoday.com/169216/whats-behind-the-martian-methane-mystery/

4. A new study on the decline of the Roman Empire used a Regression analysis on the amount of lead deposited in different years in Greenland ice cores due to the Roman Empire's smelting activity showing reduced activity in times of war or when temperatures were lower. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/382800775_Economic_Dynamics_of_the_Early_Roman_Empire_Insights_from_Lead_Pollution_Coinage_Weather_and_War

Ukraine:

1. A lot of Russian armor targeted by FPVs in Kursk region https://x.com/sternenko/status/1858583612301422783

2. Footage of an epic tank battle near Kurakhove. The Ukrainian tank in front fires at the houses where the Russians were hiding, then blows a smoke screen and retreats. The second tank, which was providing cover, comes under attack from an enemy FPV. https://x.com/wartranslated/status/1858538076085104980

3. Invader films the losses suffered by his army during an attack on Ukrainian positions. https://x.com/gloooud/status/1858976872778068037

4. Ukraine has scaled up the production of R-360 Neptune cruise missiles, enhancing them for longer-range strikes, says Defense Minister Rustem Umerov. “We’re ramping up missile production. This year, the first 100 missiles have already been produced. Serial production of the R-360 has been successfully scaled with improvements for greater range." https://x.com/DefenceU/status/1858555251772846351

5. Ukrainian forces used U.S.-supplied ATACMS missiles in an overnight strike on Russia's Bryansk region, targeting ammunition storage, including North Korean supplies, according to U.S. and Ukrainian officials https://www.politico.eu/article/ukraine-struck-russia-with-american-long-range-missiles-officials-say/ [footage: https://x.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1858833551455584501]

6. Russian media reports that at least 45 UAVs are currently attacking the Belgorod and Voronezh regions of Russia: they also report a missile strike. https://x.com/wartranslated/status/1858961794154328554

7. Russian BUK air defence system destroyed on the Zaporizhzhia front. https://x.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1858895850845413477

8. “To reward its best #drone squads, Ukraine’s military introduced a points system: (…) points are scored for Russian soldiers recorded killed or wounded and for tanks, guns and other equipment destroyed. In return, new drones are on offer per point scored” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/16/a-night-with-urkaine-drone-squad-targeting-russian-forces-donetsk

9. Interview with Deputy Commander of the Missile Forces and Artillery of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Serhiy Musiyenko: The need for artillery munitions is substantial - far more than has ever been supplied to us. https://x.com/revishvilig/status/1858539614681608283

10. Russia Has Suffered Colossal Losses in Ukraine. Is Its Army Depleted? https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/19/world/europe/russia-troops-losses-ukraine.html [no paywall: https://archive.is/22zx0]

11. Russia’s Economy and Deathonomics https://conversableeconomist.com/2024/11/19/russias-economy-and-deathonomics/

https://news.gallup.com/poll/653495/half-ukrainians-quick-negotiated-end-war.aspx