Links for 2024-11-27

AI:

1. Interview with the founder of DeepSeek, China's top AI initiative, originally published on July 17, 2024: “We believe Chinese AI can’t stay in a perpetual following position. People often say there’s a one- or two-year gap between Chinese and American AI, but the real gap lies between originality and imitation. If this doesn’t change, China will remain a follower. Some explorations are inevitable.” https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DW5ohZWxoCEOdrUQjokKreuArHqJdtKb/view [alternative translation: https://www.chinatalk.media/p/deepseek-ceo-interview-with-chinas]

2. Another older interview with Deepseek CEO Liang Wenfeng from May 24, 2023 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gLw9jpp61ybainydNa2kXpNs0PLiICn5/view

3. Streaming Deep Reinforcement Learning Finally Works https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.14606

4. RL, but don't do anything I wouldn't do https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.06213

5. Exploring o1-like Multimodal Reasoning https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.14432

6. O1 Replication Journey -- Part 2: Surpassing O1-preview through Simple Distillation, Big Progress or Bitter Lesson? https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.16489

7. The Problem with Reasoners by Aidan McLaughin — Will o1-like models scale beyond narrow domains like math and coding? https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/BqseCszkMpng2pqBM/the-problem-with-reasoners-by-aidan-mclaughin

8. “…no amount of inference scaling of weaker models can enable them to match the single-sample accuracy of a sufficiently strong model…” https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.17501

9. “Here small molecules are simulated at 500K using a training data set made up of 0K periodic crystal structures. Absolutely wild to me that this works.” — Tim Duignan https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.22570

10. Dave Kasten's AGI-by-2027 vignette — “…the brief few months in which everyone assumed naive scaling had slowed led to a rapid grabbing of all sorts of low-hanging fruit on CoT that folks just hadn’t want to spend the time on developing.” https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/t7zd5EupH4JjcxRH4/dave-kasten-s-agi-by-2027-vignette

11. Large language models surpass human experts in predicting neuroscience results https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-024-02046-9

12. Android 16 could give Gemini the power over apps Assistant never got https://www.androidauthority.com/android-16-gemini-app-functions-3502205/

13. "Counting AGIs": how many instances could you run of a AGI-level model after finishing training? https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CH9mkk6BqASf3uztv/counting-agis

14. JPMorgan Chase and Capital One are winning at AI banking — and their lead is getting bigger https://qz.com/ai-banking-jpmorgan-chase-capital-one-evident-index-1851707238

15. These AI Minecraft characters did weirdly human stuff all on their own https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/11/27/1107377/a-minecraft-town-of-ai-characters-made-friends-invented-jobs-and-spread-religion/ [no paywall: https://archive.is/ZKUNm]

https://x.com/voooooogel/status/1860186732999901252

Neuroscience:

1. Whole-brain spatial transcriptional analysis at cellular resolution https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adn9947

2. The future of biohybrid neural interfaces https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwsQK-a7iMU

3. Neuralink to trial brain implant and robotic arm technology https://finance.yahoo.com/news/neuralink-trial-brain-implant-robotic-110127348.html

4. SIMPL: Scalable and hassle-free optimisation of neural representations from behaviour https://tomge.org/papers/simpl/

5. Why Are Our Brains So Big? Because They Excel at Damage Control https://singularityhub.com/2024/11/26/why-are-our-brains-so-big-because-they-excel-at-damage-control/

Technology:

1. Breaking the Million-Electron and 1 EFLOP/s Barriers: Biomolecular-Scale Ab Initio Molecular Dynamics Using MP2 Potentials [PDF] https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1109/SC41406.2024.00015

2. MIT spinout Electrified Thermal Solutions has developed an electrically conductive firebrick that stores heat at high enough temperatures to power industrial processes. https://news.mit.edu/2024/electrified-thermal-decarbonizes-heavy-industry-with-thermal-batteries-1126

3. A single thin film perfectly absorbs all electromagnetic waves! https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1061807

Miscellaneous:

1. You are not too "irrational" to know your preferences. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/LifRBXdenQDiX4cu8/you-are-not-too-irrational-to-know-your-preferences-1

2. “Yes, Elon should clone himself now” https://www.emilkirkegaard.com/p/yes-elon-should-clone-himself-now [I think von Neumann would be a better choice. Entrepreneurship is great, but we need more people who can work on hard technical issues, like getting ASI right.]

Forecasts vs. Reality:

Politics:

If a generation of 30 million people has a fertility rate of 0.68, the next generation contains only 10.2 million people.

The first generation's grandkids number only about 3.5 million, and their great-grandkids number only about 1.2 million.

Korea will disappear overnight.

— Crémieux

1. Russia’s information war against the West is a comprehensive, coordinated effort to manipulate the information ecosystems of entire societies. https://quillette.com/2024/11/24/the-kremlins-bots-trolls-and-influencers-russia-disinformation/ [archived version: https://archive.is/O6WQY]

2. Is bitcoin market a Moloch situation? https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/1gxyo5g/is_bitcoin_market_a_moloch_situation/

Human Fertility Database

Ukraine:

1. A damning indictment of President Biden's Ukraine policies. https://x.com/ColbyBadhwar/status/1861469845918765200

2. “First confirmed successful ATACMS strike on Russian soil. S-400 air defence system radar and two launchers were destroyed in the Kursk region of Russia on 23.11.2024…Five officers of the division were killed (including the commander and chief of staff)…” https://x.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1861013004600414513

3. Reportedly, the moment of the ATACMS strike on an airfield in the Kursk region. https://x.com/wartranslated/status/1861050861863964876

4. 406 Russian reconnaissance drones were already intercepted by Ukrainian anti-air FPV drones. And this is not total numbers but only the part that is financed by the Sternenko community. https://x.com/sternenko/status/1860965736778223946

5. “Ukrainian drones attacked Kaluga overnight, hitting the Kaluganaftoprodukt oil refinery. Oil tanks can be seen burning from far away. In addition to the oil tanks, Ukrainian drones reportedly also attacked the Typhoon plant, which is part of Russia's military-industrial complex.” https://x.com/NOELreports/status/1860936632184017252

6. Switchblade 600 says hello to the crew of the Russian T-90M https://x.com/JimmySecUK/status/1861073673832059188

7. “The enemy records one of the destroyed "Grads" and highlights the "road of death" on the Pokrovske direction.” https://x.com/wartranslated/status/1861397789088903554

8. Russian cannon fodder assaults in the Kursk Region continue. https://x.com/GloOouD/status/1861416928624971788

9. “Long video of FPV strikes throughout 2024 by Ukraine's 109th TDF Brigade's Muramasa unit on Russian motorcycles, Desertcross ATVs, Bukhanka, tanks, BMPs, trucks, BTRs, BM-21 Grad MLRS, BRDM-2, MRAPs, TOS-1A, Msta-S and other artillery, BREM-1, Tigr-M, MT-LB, and other vehicles.” https://x.com/RALee85/status/1861537020662968321

10. A unique case: an FPV drone strike on a Russian convoy captured from three perspectives – the FPV drone itself, an observer drone, and the convoy’s point of view. https://x.com/wartranslated/status/1861798855286890641

11. “8 soldiers of Svoboda Battalion of the 4th National Guard Rubizh Brigade defended a strongpoint near the village of Spirne near Siversk for 67 days - from July 10 to September 16. For the last three weeks, they fought in complete encirclement and fought off the last enemy assault when Russian assaultmen stormed their position and pelted their dugout with grenades.” https://x.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1861152392009380094

12. “Andrii Biletskyi: We are now facing the most difficult situation in almost three years of war” https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/articles/2024/11/22/7485754/

13. "A Ukrainian victory will serve as the most effective deterrent to future aggression," former Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen said during the Halifax International Security Forum on Nov. 23. https://www.politico.com/news/2024/11/23/taiwans-former-president-says-ukraine-needs-u-s-weapons-more-urgently-than-taipei-00191400

14. Europe must ‘wake up’ to win arms race, warns NATO commander https://www.politico.eu/article/nato-supreme-allied-commander-transformation-admiral-pierre-vandier-europe-arms-race-weapons-procurement/

15. Despite Ukraine's request for arms aid, South Koreans remain opposed to directly supplying weapons, according to recent polls. https://www.reuters.com/world/south-koreans-remain-opposed-sending-arms-ukraine-2024-11-27/ [no paywall: https://archive.is/iiKII]