AI Snake Oil
FAQ about the book and our writing process
What's in the book and how we wrote it
3 weeks ago
What's in the book and how we wrote it
One Useful Thing
AI in organizations: Some tactics
Meet the Lab and the Crowd
3 weeks ago
Meet the Lab and the Crowd
Strange Loop Canon
Life in India is a series of bilateral negotiations
finding the new equilibrium for the next superpower
2 weeks ago
finding the new equilibrium for the next superpower
Society's Backend
AI Reading List 1: Understand Transformers, Reflection-70B Update, and LLMs Still Cannot Reason
Society's Backend Reading List 10-07-2024
3 weeks ago
Society's Backend Reading List 10-07-2024
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 088: Movie magic
October 11, 2024.
2 weeks ago
One Useful Thing
Thinking Like an AI
A little intuition can help
a week ago
A little intuition can help
One Useful Thing
When you give a Claude a mouse
Some quick impressions of an actual agent
a week ago
Some quick impressions of an actual agent
Society's Backend
AI Reading List 2: Mathematical Limitations of LLMs, A SQL Roadmap for Data Science, and...
Society's Backend Reading List 10-14-2024
2 weeks ago
Society's Backend Reading List 10-14-2024
Society's Backend
A Technical Perspective: Has Google Search Gotten Worse?
Providing a technical perspective for a more educated assessment of a complaint I hear quite...
a week ago
Providing a technical perspective for a more educated assessment of a complaint I hear quite frequently
Artificial Ignorance
How to build an AI search engine (Part 1)
Working with Claude, Brave, and streaming responses.
4 weeks ago
Working with Claude, Brave, and streaming responses.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 089: Adobe MAX
October 18, 2024.
a week ago
Artificial Ignorance
How to build an AI search engine (Part 2)
VC funding, here we come.
3 weeks ago
VC funding, here we come.
fast.ai
In defense of screen time
Pundits say my husband and I are parenting wrong.
3 days ago
Pundits say my husband and I are parenting wrong.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 087: DevDay SF
October 4, 2024.
3 weeks ago
Society's Backend
AI Reading List 3: Meta's Self-Taught Evaluator, AI for Cancer Diagnosis, and a Technical...
Society's Backend Reading List 10-21-2024
a week ago
Society's Backend Reading List 10-21-2024
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 090: Computer Use
October 25, 2024.
a week ago
Rozado’s Visual...
An Analysis of AI Political Preferences from a European Perspective
Introduction
4 days ago
Society's Backend
AI and Software Reading List 4: State of the Job Market, Apple's Private Cloud Compute Released for...
Society's Backend Reading List 10-28-2024
3 days ago
Society's Backend Reading List 10-28-2024
Artificial Ignorance
AI's invisible instructions
What meme prompts can teach us about better interface design.
a week ago
What meme prompts can teach us about better interface design.
Artificial Ignorance
What AI models really think about politics
Exploring the political biases of ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Grok.
2 days ago
Exploring the political biases of ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Grok.
One Useful Thing
What people ask me most. Also, some answers.
A FAQ of sorts
a year ago
Artificial Ignorance
10 AI predictions for 2024
Hey Siri, set a reminder for 365 days.
10 months ago
Hey Siri, set a reminder for 365 days.
One Useful Thing
Embracing weirdness: What it means to use AI as a (writing) tool
AI is strange. We need to learn to use it.
a year ago
AI is strange. We need to learn to use it.
One Useful Thing
A guide to prompting AI (for what it is worth)
A little bit of magic, but mostly just practice
a year ago
A little bit of magic, but mostly just practice
One Useful Thing
How to Use AI to Do Stuff: An Opinionated Guide
Covering the state of play as of Summer, 2023
a year ago
Covering the state of play as of Summer, 2023
One Useful Thing
What happens when AI reads a book 🤖📖
And some prompts that might be useful when it does.
a year ago
And some prompts that might be useful when it does.
One Useful Thing
AI is not good software. It is pretty good people.
A pragmatic approach to thinking about AI
a year ago
A pragmatic approach to thinking about AI
One Useful Thing
The shape of the shadow of The Thing
We can start to see, dimly, what the near future of AI looks like.
a year ago
We can start to see, dimly, what the near future of AI looks like.
One Useful Thing
On-boarding your AI Intern
There's a somewhat weird alien who wants to work for free for you. You should probably get started.
a year ago
There's a somewhat weird alien who wants to work for free for you. You should probably get started.
Artificial Ignorance
The AI research tool that saves me hours every week
And why it might revolutionize the search industry.
10 months ago
And why it might revolutionize the search industry.
The Berkeley...
Rethinking the Role of PPO in RLHF
Rethinking the Role of PPO in RLHF
TL;DR: In RLHF, there’s tension between the reward learning...
a year ago
Rethinking the Role of PPO in RLHF
TL;DR: In RLHF, there’s tension between the reward learning phase, which uses human preference in the form of comparisons, and the RL fine-tuning phase, which optimizes a single, non-comparative reward. What if we performed RL in a comparative...
Matt Mazur
Experimenting with GPT-4 Turbo’s JSON mode
One of the many new features announced at yesterday’s OpenAI dev day is better support for...
11 months ago
One of the many new features announced at yesterday’s OpenAI dev day is better support for generating valid JSON output. From the JSON mode docs: A common way to use Chat Completions is to instruct the model to always return JSON in some format that makes sense for your use case,...
One Useful Thing
What Can be Done in 59 Seconds: An Opportunity (and a Crisis)
Five analytical tasks in under a minute
9 months ago
Five analytical tasks in under a minute
One Useful Thing
An Opinionated Guide to Which AI to Use: ChatGPT Anniversary Edition
A simple answer, and then a less simple one.
10 months ago
A simple answer, and then a less simple one.
One Useful Thing
Catastrophe / Eucatastrophe
We have more agency over the future of AI than we think.
a year ago
We have more agency over the future of AI than we think.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 067: GPT-4o and Google I/O
May 17, 2024.
5 months ago
Artificial Ignorance
Tutorial: How to make and share custom GPTs
They're not going to disrupt everything (yet), but they're a ton of fun.
11 months ago
They're not going to disrupt everything (yet), but they're a ton of fun.
Artificial Ignorance
How to fine-tune ChatGPT
No GPU cluster required.
a year ago
One Useful Thing
Google's Gemini Advanced: Tasting Notes and Implications
And then there were two.
8 months ago
One Useful Thing
Everyone is above average
Is AI a Leveler, King Maker, or Escalator?
a year ago
Is AI a Leveler, King Maker, or Escalator?
One Useful Thing
Strategies for an Accelerating Future
Four questions to ask your organization.
8 months ago
Four questions to ask your organization.
Matt Mazur
Redesigning Preceden’s Pricing Page
Milan (Preceden’s designer) and I recently wrapped up a project to redesign Preceden’s pricing page....
a year ago
Milan (Preceden’s designer) and I recently wrapped up a project to redesign Preceden’s pricing page. Here’s the previous above-the-fold content: And here’s how the new design turned out: Few things to highlight: Very happy with how it turned out. Kudus to Milan for suggesting we...
Society's Backend
If You Understand Bananas, You Can Understand Machine Learning
A simplified high-level overview of primary machine learning algorithms for anyone to understand
9 months ago
A simplified high-level overview of primary machine learning algorithms for anyone to understand
Matt Mazur
Preceden’s Spam Problem
Around a year ago, I started noticing some spammy timelines being created on Preceden, my SaaS...
a year ago
Around a year ago, I started noticing some spammy timelines being created on Preceden, my SaaS timeline maker tool. I’m honestly surprised it took spammers so long: Preceden is a freemium product (meaning people can sign up and try it for free), the product makes it very easy to...
Sam Altman
GPT-4o
There are two things from our announcement today I wanted to highlight.
First, a key part of our...
5 months ago
There are two things from our announcement today I wanted to highlight.
First, a key part of our mission is to put very capable AI tools in the hands of people for free (or at a great price). I am very proud that we’ve made the best model in the world available for free in...
Matt Mazur
Exploring ChatGPT’s Knowledge Cutoff
A recurring topic of discussion on the OpenAI forums, on Reddit, and on Twitter is about what...
11 months ago
A recurring topic of discussion on the OpenAI forums, on Reddit, and on Twitter is about what ChatGPT’s knowledge cutoff date actually is. It seems like it should be straightforward enough to figure out (just ask it), but it can be confusing due to ChatGPT’s inconsistent answers...
Society's Backend
Welcome to 2024: The Year Where AI is No Longer an Option
Why everyone should learn about machine learning
10 months ago
Why everyone should learn about machine learning
Society's Backend
Weekly Backend #7: 39 Resources and Updates
GPT-4o, Google I/O, Fugaku LLM, Prep for Machine Learning Interviews, and more
5 months ago
GPT-4o, Google I/O, Fugaku LLM, Prep for Machine Learning Interviews, and more
One Useful Thing
Superhuman?
What does it mean for AI to be better than a human? And how can we tell?
5 months ago
What does it mean for AI to be better than a human? And how can we tell?
Society's Backend
Weekly Backend #6: 59 Resources and Updates, AI is Taking Off in Medicine
Google DeepMind releases AlphaFold 3, KANs, LLM Benchmarks are being looked at more critically,...
5 months ago
Google DeepMind releases AlphaFold 3, KANs, LLM Benchmarks are being looked at more critically, Apple is bringing their AI chips to data centers, StackOverflow partners with OpenAI, and more
Weighty Thoughts
The Real Risks of AI
Humans are really the ones to be scared of
5 months ago
Humans are really the ones to be scared of
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 064: Big Tech's small models
April 26, 2024.
6 months ago
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 066: AlphaFold 3
May 10, 2024.
5 months ago
Society's Backend
Bridging the Gap from Simple Algebra to Machine Learning
You probably know more about machine learning math than you think
9 months ago
You probably know more about machine learning math than you think
The Berkeley...
Goal Representations for Instruction Following
Goal Representations for Instruction Following
Figure title. Figure caption. This image is...
a year ago
Goal Representations for Instruction Following
Figure title. Figure caption. This image is centered and set to 50%
page width. -->
A longstanding goal of the field of robot learning has been to create generalist agents that can perform tasks for humans. Natural language has...
The Berkeley...
Modeling Extremely Large Images with $x$T
As computer vision researchers, we believe that every pixel can tell a story. However, there seems...
7 months ago
As computer vision researchers, we believe that every pixel can tell a story. However, there seems to be a writer’s block settling into the field when it comes to dealing with large images. Large images are no longer rare—the cameras we carry in our pockets and those orbiting our...
Society's Backend
Know Your Benchmarks
How the Chatbot Arena leaderboard for LLMs works and why it’s important to understand
6 months ago
How the Chatbot Arena leaderboard for LLMs works and why it’s important to understand
Weighty Thoughts
Who’s Winning the AI War?
All of us, except the AI startups and VCs—unless a real war breaks out
9 months ago
All of us, except the AI startups and VCs—unless a real war breaks out
Weighty Thoughts
Why we need AI as a society
We’re aging too fast (AKA my entire AI/robotics investment thesis)
5 months ago
We’re aging too fast (AKA my entire AI/robotics investment thesis)
Artificial Ignorance
A stroll through Google's Model Garden
What generative AI capabilities does Google offer to developers?
11 months ago
What generative AI capabilities does Google offer to developers?
Matt Mazur
The Kenya Quick Answer Goes Viral, Again
On Thursday evening Chris Ingraham, a journalist with 100k followers on Twitter, shared a screenshot...
a year ago
On Thursday evening Chris Ingraham, a journalist with 100k followers on Twitter, shared a screenshot of the now-famous “african country that starts with k” Google Quick Answer, which quickly went viral, garnering over 82k likes and 3 million views as of the time of this writing...
Artificial Ignorance
Groq, Gemini, and 10x improvements
As a programmer and CTO, I've developed a rough rule of thumb when it comes to scaling systems. When...
8 months ago
As a programmer and CTO, I've developed a rough rule of thumb when it comes to scaling systems. When you scale your inputs (users, page views, messages, etc) by 10x, something breaks. Usually, it's something pretty fundamental. And the end result is that you need to replace a...
Weighty Thoughts
What is Defensibility?
Back to basics for AI startups and others
6 months ago
Back to basics for AI startups and others
Strange Loop Canon
AI embraces its product arc
fuzzy processors are entering mass production
5 months ago
fuzzy processors are entering mass production
Rozado’s Visual...
Artificial Intelligence and Portraits of 17th Century Physicists
The case for customizable AI systems as an alternative to one-size-fits-all AI systems
8 months ago
The case for customizable AI systems as an alternative to one-size-fits-all AI systems
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 062: Data is the new oil
April 12, 2024.
6 months ago
One Useful Thing
What OpenAI did
A new model opens up new possibilities
5 months ago
A new model opens up new possibilities
One Useful Thing
Innovation through prompting
Democratizing educational technology... and more
6 months ago
Democratizing educational technology... and more
Matt Mazur
Full Time Indie Hacking: Month 5 Update
At the beginning of the year I quit consulting to focus full time on Preceden, my SaaS timeline...
a year ago
At the beginning of the year I quit consulting to focus full time on Preceden, my SaaS timeline maker tool. I also started working on a new side project, Emergent Mind, an AI-powered AI news site. My last update on how things were going was after 3 months which provides more...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 063: Llama 3
April 19, 2024.
6 months ago
Society's Backend
No One Should Be GPU Poor
For everyone to have access to AGI, everyone must also have access to the compute to use it
5 months ago
For everyone to have access to AGI, everyone must also have access to the compute to use it
Rozado’s Visual...
DepolarizingGPT
A Political Chatbot that Gives 3 Politically Diverse Answers to Every Prompt
11 months ago
A Political Chatbot that Gives 3 Politically Diverse Answers to Every Prompt
AI Snake Oil
What the executive order means for openness in AI
Good news on paper, but the devil is in the details
a year ago
Good news on paper, but the devil is in the details
Society's Backend
I Beat Newsletter Fatigue With AI
And why direct forms of communication will always be super valuable
8 months ago
And why direct forms of communication will always be super valuable
Society's Backend
Why Rust Isn't Killing C++
And a consideration for choosing a language
6 months ago
And a consideration for choosing a language
Matt Mazur
It’s Time to Build
It’s been a few months so I wanted to say hey to the 7 of you who follow this blog and share a few...
6 months ago
It’s been a few months so I wanted to say hey to the 7 of you who follow this blog and share a few updates about what I’ve been up to. Quick recap At the start of 2023 I quit consulting to go full time on Preceden, my SaaS timeline maker, after growing it on … Continue reading...
One Useful Thing
Captain's log: the irreducible weirdness of prompting AIs
Also, we have a prompt library!
8 months ago
Also, we have a prompt library!
Artificial Ignorance
From Stable Diffusion to Stable Everything
Inside Stability AI's roster of AI models.
5 months ago
Inside Stability AI's roster of AI models.
One Useful Thing
On the necessity of a sin
Why treating AI like a person is the future
7 months ago
Why treating AI like a person is the future
One Useful Thing
Signs and Portents
Some hints about what the next year of AI looks like
9 months ago
Some hints about what the next year of AI looks like
Weighty Thoughts
The Mystical Q
OpenAI Q*, Primer on Reinforcement Learning, and Implications
10 months ago
OpenAI Q*, Primer on Reinforcement Learning, and Implications
AI Snake Oil
AI safety is not a model property
Trying to make an AI model that can’t be misused is like trying to make a computer that can’t be...
7 months ago
Trying to make an AI model that can’t be misused is like trying to make a computer that can’t be used for bad things
AI Snake Oil
Generative AI’s end-run around copyright won’t be resolved by the courts
Output similarity is a distraction
9 months ago
Output similarity is a distraction
Artificial Ignorance
The AI email startup that's taking on Gmail
A conversation with Andrew Lee, CEO of Shortwave and cofounder of Firebase.
a year ago
A conversation with Andrew Lee, CEO of Shortwave and cofounder of Firebase.
The Berkeley...
The Shift from Models to Compound AI Systems
AI caught everyone’s attention in 2023 with Large Language Models (LLMs) that can be instructed to...
8 months ago
AI caught everyone’s attention in 2023 with Large Language Models (LLMs) that can be instructed to perform general tasks, such as translation or coding, just by prompting. This naturally led to an intense focus on models as the primary ingredient in AI application development,...
One Useful Thing
The Best Available Human Standard
What are the imperatives of the upside?
a year ago
What are the imperatives of the upside?
The Berkeley...
Ghostbuster: Detecting Text Ghostwritten by Large Language Models
The structure of Ghostbuster, our new state-of-the-art method for detecting AI-generated...
11 months ago
The structure of Ghostbuster, our new state-of-the-art method for detecting AI-generated text.
Large language models like ChatGPT write impressively well—so well, in fact, that they’ve become a problem. Students have begun using these models to ghostwrite assignments, leading...
AI Snake Oil
Model alignment protects against accidental harms, not intentional ones
The hand wringing about failures of model alignment is misguided
11 months ago
The hand wringing about failures of model alignment is misguided
Strange Loop Canon
Whither Utopia?
The mystery of why we don't dream of building perfect societies anymore
5 months ago
The mystery of why we don't dream of building perfect societies anymore
Andrej Karpathy blog
Self-driving as a case study for AGI
Sparked by progress in Large Language Models (LLMs), there’s a lot of chatter recently about AGI,...
9 months ago
Sparked by progress in Large Language Models (LLMs), there’s a lot of chatter recently about AGI, its timelines, and what it might look like. Some of it is hopeful and optimistic, but a lot of it is fearful and doomy, to put it mildly. Unfortunately, a lot of it is also very...
Artificial Ignorance
Lies, damned lies, and benchmarks
While benchmarks (and leaderboards) are useful tools, they are but a small facet when it comes to...
9 months ago
While benchmarks (and leaderboards) are useful tools, they are but a small facet when it comes to evaluating large language models. Often, they're not the best indicators of real-world utility - and I want to dig into why (and what other approaches exist).
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 065: The gpt2-chatbot mystery
May 3, 2024.
6 months ago
AI Snake Oil
Will AI transform law?
The hype is not supported by current evidence
9 months ago
The hype is not supported by current evidence
Society's Backend
Why Machine Learning Terminology is So Confusing
And definitions for the most important terms you should know
8 months ago
And definitions for the most important terms you should know
One Useful Thing
The Lazy Tyranny of the Wait Calculation
Taking AI timelines seriously
9 months ago
Taking AI timelines seriously
One Useful Thing
Reshaping the tree: rebuilding organizations for AI
Technological change brings organizational change.
11 months ago
Technological change brings organizational change.
One Useful Thing
Four Singularities for Research
The rise of AI is creating both crisis and opportunity
5 months ago
The rise of AI is creating both crisis and opportunity
Weighty Thoughts
What’s coming next for AI in 2024
A long overdue VC apocalypse and the birth of the first real AI companies
10 months ago
A long overdue VC apocalypse and the birth of the first real AI companies
Weighty Thoughts
Today’s AI critics don’t understand the history of technology
But is AI different than other technologies?
7 months ago
But is AI different than other technologies?
Matt Mazur
“Monthly Billed Annually” is Cursed Copy
There was a great discussion on Twitter recently that began with Daniel Vassallo calling out a SaaS...
a year ago
There was a great discussion on Twitter recently that began with Daniel Vassallo calling out a SaaS for not refunding an accidental annual payment he made on their service. He intended to purchase the monthly plan, but due to an unclear UI and poor copy, he unintentionally...
Society's Backend
Machine Learning Infrastructure: The Bridge Between Software Engineering and AI
What makes machine learning infra so important and why I find it so interesting
10 months ago
What makes machine learning infra so important and why I find it so interesting
Weighty Thoughts
China's AI Journey
Talking to Jordan Schneider from ChinaTalk about China's technological ascent
4 months ago
Talking to Jordan Schneider from ChinaTalk about China's technological ascent
AI Snake Oil
Evaluating LLMs is a minefield
Annotated slides from a recent talk
a year ago
Annotated slides from a recent talk
Artificial Ignorance
AI's massive cash needs are Big Tech's chance to own the future
Over the past year, AI startups have raised some impressive amounts of money. OpenAI raised $10...
8 months ago
Over the past year, AI startups have raised some impressive amounts of money. OpenAI raised $10 billion, Anthropic did $6 billion, Inflection AI raised $1.3 billion, and dozens of companies closed rounds in the hundreds of millions.
Artificial Ignorance
AI and the workplace
How employees and CEOs alike can plan for the future.
5 months ago
How employees and CEOs alike can plan for the future.
Matt Mazur
Screw it, I’m Keeping Emergent Mind
A few months ago I announced I was going to try to sell Emergent Mind, my AI news aggregator, so I...
a year ago
A few months ago I announced I was going to try to sell Emergent Mind, my AI news aggregator, so I could focus on Preceden, my SaaS timeline maker. I wound up having a lot of discussions with potential buyers, but in the end the offers I received were either too low to be worth...
AI Snake Oil
On the Societal Impact of Open Foundation Models
Adding precision to the debate on openness in AI
8 months ago
Adding precision to the debate on openness in AI
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 068: The ScarJo thing
May 24, 2024.
5 months ago
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 058: Devin and SIMA
March 15, 2023.
7 months ago
AI Snake Oil
Is the future of AI open or closed? Watch today’s Princeton-Stanford workshop
By Sayash Kapoor, Rishi Bommasani, Percy Liang, Arvind Narayanan Perhaps the biggest tech policy...
a year ago
By Sayash Kapoor, Rishi Bommasani, Percy Liang, Arvind Narayanan Perhaps the biggest tech policy debate today is about the future of AI, especially foundation models and generative AI. Will AI be open or closed? Will we be able to download and modify these models, or will a few...
Society's Backend
What Apple Intelligence Means for You
"We think you're gonna LOVE it"
4 months ago
"We think you're gonna LOVE it"
Society's Backend
Updates to Society's Backend
New benefits for paid subscribers, support Society's Backend for just $1/mo, a referral program, and...
8 months ago
New benefits for paid subscribers, support Society's Backend for just $1/mo, a referral program, and more
Artificial Ignorance
Dealing with AI fatigue
Notes for myself, and maybe you too.
8 months ago
Notes for myself, and maybe you too.
One Useful Thing
I, Cyborg: Using Co-Intelligence
How I used AI in my book about AI
7 months ago
How I used AI in my book about AI
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 043: Happy birthday, ChatGPT
December 1, 2023.
11 months ago
Society's Backend
Mastering the Art of Documentation
Documentation is really just glorified dog sitting
11 months ago
Documentation is really just glorified dog sitting
Society's Backend
Alignment: Understanding the Multi-Billion Dollar Opportunity within Machine Learning
A glimpse into the biggest challenge in the world of AI, why it matters to you, and why it's worth...
8 months ago
A glimpse into the biggest challenge in the world of AI, why it matters to you, and why it's worth so much
One Useful Thing
What just happened, what is happening next
The tasks AI can do well are expanding rapidly
6 months ago
The tasks AI can do well are expanding rapidly
Society's Backend
Things Everyone Should Understand About the Stanford AI Index Report
And my notes on why they’re important
6 months ago
And my notes on why they’re important
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 060: Another CEO gone
March 29, 2024.
7 months ago
Society's Backend
Run Your Own Race
What Bluey can teach us about machine learning
7 months ago
What Bluey can teach us about machine learning
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 056: Data deals
March 1, 2024.
8 months ago
Artificial Ignorance
The State of AI Engineering
Notes from the first AI Engineer Summit.
a year ago
Notes from the first AI Engineer Summit.
Rozado’s Visual...
The Political Preferences of LLMs
Substantial political homogeneity in Large Language Models (LLMs) responses to questions with...
9 months ago
Substantial political homogeneity in Large Language Models (LLMs) responses to questions with political connotations
AI Snake Oil
AI scaling myths
Scaling will run out. The question is when.
4 months ago
Scaling will run out. The question is when.
Artificial Ignorance
The Industrial Content Revolution
A fundamental change in the structure the internet.
11 months ago
A fundamental change in the structure the internet.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 061: The AI innovator's dilemma
April 5, 2024.
6 months ago
Society's Backend
Clarifying DEI
What makes DEI important and where it fails
9 months ago
What makes DEI important and where it fails
One Useful Thing
Assigning AI: Seven Ways of Using AI in Class
Also prompts! And things to watch out for!
a year ago
Also prompts! And things to watch out for!
Daniel Miessler
Would You Put AI Art In Your House?
I’ve been thinking for a couple of weeks about making and hanging some AI art in my house. But I...
a year ago
I’ve been thinking for a couple of weeks about making and hanging some AI art in my house. But I immediately faced some internal resistance. Like, I wasn’t (and still am not) sure whether this is the right way to “do” art. And that got me thinking what that really means. What...
One Useful Thing
The future of education in a world of AI
A positive vision for the transformation to come
a year ago
A positive vision for the transformation to come
Rozado’s Visual...
Northern Awokening: Social-justice and prejudice-signifying language in Canadian news media
I have recently published a report with Aaron Wudrick from the Macdonald-Laurier Institute about...
a year ago
I have recently published a report with Aaron Wudrick from the Macdonald-Laurier Institute about changes in the language that the news media in Canada use. I have documented previously how in American news media mentions of terms that signify distinct forms of prejudice have...
One Useful Thing
Setting time on fire and the temptation of The Button
We used to consider writing an indication of time and effort spent on a task. That isn't true...
a year ago
We used to consider writing an indication of time and effort spent on a task. That isn't true anymore.
Weighty Thoughts
News Roundup: May 15, 2024
Open AI announcements, DeepSeek-v2, and TSMC Arizona
5 months ago
Open AI announcements, DeepSeek-v2, and TSMC Arizona
Artificial Ignorance
Who in their right mind would do an AI hardware startup
From megaFLOPS to mega flops.
6 months ago
From megaFLOPS to mega flops.
AI Snake Oil
A safe harbor for AI evaluation and red teaming
An argument for legal and technical safe harbors for AI safety and trustworthiness research
8 months ago
An argument for legal and technical safe harbors for AI safety and trustworthiness research
AI Snake Oil
Tech policy is only frustrating 90% of the time
That’s what makes it worthwhile
7 months ago
That’s what makes it worthwhile
The Berkeley...
2024 BAIR Graduate Directory
Every year, the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research (BAIR) Lab graduates some of the most...
7 months ago
Every year, the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research (BAIR) Lab graduates some of the most talented and innovative minds in artificial intelligence and machine learning. Our Ph.D. graduates have each expanded the frontiers of AI research and are now ready to embark on new...
Society's Backend
Why MLX is Important for the ML Community
And a step-by-step guide to train a machine learning model on your Mac
5 months ago
And a step-by-step guide to train a machine learning model on your Mac
Society's Backend
What you need to understand about LLM creativity
An simple overview of temperature and its effect on LLM output
6 months ago
An simple overview of temperature and its effect on LLM output
The Berkeley...
On the Stepwise Nature of <br> Self-Supervised Learning
Figure 1: stepwise behavior in self-supervised learning. When training common SSL algorithms, we...
a year ago
Figure 1: stepwise behavior in self-supervised learning. When training common SSL algorithms, we find that the loss descends in a stepwise fashion (top left) and the learned embeddings iteratively increase in dimensionality (bottom left). Direct visualization of embeddings...
Society's Backend
The Unfortunate Truth Regarding AI Regulation
And the impact it'll have for decades to come
5 months ago
And the impact it'll have for decades to come
Weighty Thoughts
CUDA is Still a Giant Moat for NVIDIA
Despite everyone’s focus on hardware, the software of AI is what protects NVIDIA
7 months ago
Despite everyone’s focus on hardware, the software of AI is what protects NVIDIA
Matt Mazur
My Indie SaaS Revenue has Grown 37% per Year for 13 Years
Unlike many indie founders, I’ve never shared revenue numbers for Preceden, my SaaS timeline maker...
9 months ago
Unlike many indie founders, I’ve never shared revenue numbers for Preceden, my SaaS timeline maker tool. Even if they were remarkable – which they are not really – I just don’t think there are many good reasons to publicly share revenue numbers, and there are lots of downsides....
AI Snake Oil
One year update: book submitted; TIME 100; Sep 21 online workshop
It's been an eventful year
a year ago
It's been an eventful year
Rozado’s Visual...
The Great Awokening as a Global Phenomenon
The striking synchronicity with which Great Awokening terminology increased in news media worldwide
a year ago
The striking synchronicity with which Great Awokening terminology increased in news media worldwide
Society's Backend
Devin Has Exposed a Major Issue with Software Engineering
And isn't that we're all going to lose our jobs
7 months ago
And isn't that we're all going to lose our jobs
Daniel Miessler
Why Apple Keeps Winning
People are blown away that Apple keeps winning while its competitors are floundering. It’s a simple...
over a year ago
People are blown away that Apple keeps winning while its competitors are floundering. It’s a simple formula. Make consistently super-high-quality products that work together as part of an ecosystem. Google and Microsoft have 20X Apple’s losses in the last year. A staggering $3...
Society's Backend
Why Machine Learning Technical Debt is Especially Bad
And effective ways to mitigate it
7 months ago
And effective ways to mitigate it
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 051: The Taylor Swift thing
January 26, 2024.
9 months ago
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 045: Google's just getting started
December 15, 2023.
10 months ago
AI Snake Oil
AI Snake Oil is now available to preorder
What artificial intelligence can do, what it can't, and how to tell the difference
6 months ago
What artificial intelligence can do, what it can't, and how to tell the difference
Weighty Thoughts
Software Engineering is Doomed
Or is it?
4 months ago
The Berkeley...
GPT-4 + Stable-Diffusion = ?: Enhancing Prompt Understanding of Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with...
TL;DR: Text Prompt -> LLM -> Intermediate Representation (such as an image layout) -> Stable...
a year ago
TL;DR: Text Prompt -> LLM -> Intermediate Representation (such as an image layout) -> Stable Diffusion -> Image.
Recent advancements in text-to-image generation with diffusion models have yielded remarkable results synthesizing highly realistic and diverse images. However,...
Artificial Ignorance
Tutorial: How to streamline your writing process with Whisper and GPT-4
These Python scripts help me write 3x faster and go from loose ideas to first draft in minutes.
6 months ago
These Python scripts help me write 3x faster and go from loose ideas to first draft in minutes.
Artificial Ignorance
Tutorial: How to narrate video with Sora, GPT-Vision, and ElevenLabs
The future of entertainment is going to be a wild ride.
8 months ago
The future of entertainment is going to be a wild ride.
Society's Backend
The Step-by-Step Guide to Becoming a Machine Learning Engineer
And other practical guides to understand machine learning
9 months ago
And other practical guides to understand machine learning
Society's Backend
The Method Google Used to Reduce LLM Size by 66%
A brief overview of knowledge distillation and its capabilities
3 months ago
A brief overview of knowledge distillation and its capabilities
AI Snake Oil
How Transparent Are Foundation Model Developers?
Introducing the Foundation Model Transparency Index
a year ago
Introducing the Foundation Model Transparency Index
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 044: Google Gemini
December 8, 2023.
10 months ago
Matt Mazur
Reflecting on My First Year as a Full Time Indie Founder
At the beginning of 2023 I went full time on Preceden, my SaaS timeline maker business, after 13...
10 months ago
At the beginning of 2023 I went full time on Preceden, my SaaS timeline maker business, after 13 years of working on it on the side. A year has passed, so I wanted to share an update on how things are going and some lessons learned. Preceden My main focus in 2023 was building AI...
One Useful Thing
Working with AI: Two paths to prompting
Don't overcomplicate things
a year ago
Don't overcomplicate things
Society's Backend
Why Software Engineers Need to Understand Machine Learning
And how ML helps software engineers in their daily work
4 months ago
And how ML helps software engineers in their daily work
Weighty Thoughts
News Roundup: May 27, 2014 🧴
Why does Google suck so much, Microsoft Co-Pilot Everywhere, and Sam Altman
5 months ago
Why does Google suck so much, Microsoft Co-Pilot Everywhere, and Sam Altman
Artificial Ignorance
GPT-4o and the illusion of AGI
Why speed and multimodality is becoming the name of the game.
5 months ago
Why speed and multimodality is becoming the name of the game.
One Useful Thing
Freeing the chatbot
Intelligence, of a sort, is going to be all around us
6 months ago
Intelligence, of a sort, is going to be all around us
Society's Backend
Positioning Myself: The Greatest Piece of Career Advice I've Ever Received
And how it changed my personal life too
10 months ago
And how it changed my personal life too
Society's Backend
Why Gemini's Struggles Aren't Straightforward
And an overview of LLM security issues
7 months ago
And an overview of LLM security issues
One Useful Thing
It is starting to get strange.
Let's talk about ChatGPT with Code Interpreter & Microsoft Copilot
a year ago
Let's talk about ChatGPT with Code Interpreter & Microsoft Copilot
AI Snake Oil
AI leaderboards are no longer useful. It's time to switch to Pareto curves.
What spending $2,000 can tell us about evaluating AI agents
6 months ago
What spending $2,000 can tell us about evaluating AI agents
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 057: Claude 3
March 8, 2024.
7 months ago
Society's Backend
OpenAI’s Blunder is a Loss for the ML Community
The timeline and why OpenAI’s actions are a big deal
5 months ago
The timeline and why OpenAI’s actions are a big deal
One Useful Thing
Gradually, then Suddenly: Upon the Threshold
Small improvements can lead to big changes
3 months ago
Small improvements can lead to big changes
Rozado’s Visual...
Pessimism in News Media Headlines
In previous work, I documented the growing emotional negativity (anger, fear, sadness, etc) of...
a year ago
In previous work, I documented the growing emotional negativity (anger, fear, sadness, etc) of American news media headlines between the years 2000 and 2019. Here, I extend that work by examining the attitudinal tone (pessimism, optimism or neutrality
Matt Mazur
Don’t Self Host Unlicensed Proxima Nova Fonts
I’m a big fan of the Proxima Nova font and have been using it on Preceden for years: For a long time...
a year ago
I’m a big fan of the Proxima Nova font and have been using it on Preceden for years: For a long time I was loading Proxima Nova on Preceden via Typekit (a hosted web font service) for $49.99/year, but at some point I decided to self-host it to avoid the third party request which...
Weighty Thoughts
Consider the Llama
Are closed source AI models doomed?
3 months ago
Are closed source AI models doomed?
Sam Altman
What I Wish Someone Had Told Me
Optimism, obsession, self-belief, raw horsepower and personal connections are how things get...
10 months ago
Optimism, obsession, self-belief, raw horsepower and personal connections are how things get started.
Cohesive teams, the right combination of calmness and urgency, and unreasonable commitment are how things get finished. Long-term orientation is in short supply; try not to worry...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 074: Amazon's Adept acquisition
July 5, 2024.
3 months ago
One Useful Thing
What Apple's AI Tells Us: Experimental Models⁴
Siri versus the machine god?
4 months ago
Siri versus the machine god?
Matt Mazur
Is the ChatGPT API Refusing to Summarize Academic Papers? Not so fast.
Yesterday on X, I shared a post about some responses I was getting from the ChatGPT 3.5 API...
10 months ago
Yesterday on X, I shared a post about some responses I was getting from the ChatGPT 3.5 API indicating that it was refusing to summarize arXiv papers: There has been a lot of discussion recently about the perceived decrease in the quality of ChatGPT’s responses and seeing...
One Useful Thing
One sentence.
Prompting for maximum impact (and why that is a bad idea)
a year ago
Prompting for maximum impact (and why that is a bad idea)
One Useful Thing
Not much is changing, a lot is changing
OpenAI, Microsoft, and the OpenOffspring
11 months ago
OpenAI, Microsoft, and the OpenOffspring
Weighty Thoughts
When the AI Bubble Bursts
It’s when, not if, for these kinds of new technologies
4 months ago
It’s when, not if, for these kinds of new technologies
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 071: How do you like them AIs
June 14, 2024.
4 months ago
Society's Backend
The Metrics Machine Learning Engineers Care About That Modelers Don't
And a brief overview of TPUs in Google data centers
8 months ago
And a brief overview of TPUs in Google data centers
Artificial Ignorance
10 of the most impactful AI stories of 2023
A quick look back on a very busy year in AI.
10 months ago
A quick look back on a very busy year in AI.
Artificial Ignorance
Honey, I joined a cabal
Or: Mainstream media still isn't great at covering tech and AI ideologies
4 months ago
Or: Mainstream media still isn't great at covering tech and AI ideologies
Society's Backend
Weekly Backend #4: 62 Total Resources
Apple’s LLM OpenELM, GPT-4-Turbo, Phi-3, Grok-1.5 Vision, and more
6 months ago
Apple’s LLM OpenELM, GPT-4-Turbo, Phi-3, Grok-1.5 Vision, and more
Artificial Ignorance
What President Biden's AI executive order actually means
I read all 111 pages so you don't have to.
a year ago
I read all 111 pages so you don't have to.
Matt Mazur
Progress on TimelineGPT, Emergent Mind missteps, finding balance
Hey all 👋! It’s been a minute since my last post (for reasons I’ll get into below) so here’s...
a year ago
Hey all 👋! It’s been a minute since my last post (for reasons I’ll get into below) so here’s periodic update on what I’ve been up to: TimelineGPT About two months ago I launched an in-app tool for Preceden that provides GPT-powered event suggestions to users to help them build...
Weighty Thoughts
VC Office Hours
Talk to James Wang, author of Weighty Thoughts and General Partner of Creative Ventures
8 months ago
Talk to James Wang, author of Weighty Thoughts and General Partner of Creative Ventures
Society's Backend
The Fastest Way to Get Up to Speed on Machine Learning Fundamentals for Free
Announcing the ML Road Map-Turbo
4 months ago
Announcing the ML Road Map-Turbo
One Useful Thing
Centaurs and Cyborgs on the Jagged Frontier
I think we have an answer on whether AIs will reshape work....
a year ago
I think we have an answer on whether AIs will reshape work....
Weighty Thoughts
Apple Wins
Apple Intelligence and aggregation puts Apple in a dominant AI position
4 months ago
Apple Intelligence and aggregation puts Apple in a dominant AI position
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 072: The new new Claude
June 21, 2024.
4 months ago
Artificial Ignorance
Jevons Paradox and the future of programming
Supply and demand in the Age of AI.
7 months ago
Supply and demand in the Age of AI.
Artificial Ignorance
GPTs won't make you rich
But they'll make you more productive.
9 months ago
But they'll make you more productive.
Matt Mazur
Emergent Mind finally went viral
Last week, the Twitter account Everything Out of Context posted a screenshot showing Google’s...
a year ago
Last week, the Twitter account Everything Out of Context posted a screenshot showing Google’s incorrect response to the search query “country in africa that starts with k”: The tweet went viral, garnering over 133k likes, 6k retweets, and 1k replies. Someone eventually tagged me...
Strange Loop Canon
What can LLMs never do?
On goal drift and lower reliability. Or, why can't LLMs play Conway's Game Of Life?
6 months ago
On goal drift and lower reliability. Or, why can't LLMs play Conway's Game Of Life?
Daniel Miessler
NO. 369 | Reddit Hack, Deepfake Scams, Embracing Change…
✅ Please subscribe to and give a 17-star review to this show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Thank...
a year ago
✅ Please subscribe to and give a 17-star review to this show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Thank you! SECURITY Reddit has confirmed it was hacked, and it’s recommending users add 2FA. The attack started by phishing Reddit employees and stealing credentials and 2FA codes. After...
One Useful Thing
Almost an Agent: What GPTs can do
Also, my book has a cover (also I have a book coming out)
11 months ago
Also, my book has a cover (also I have a book coming out)
Matt Mazur
The Security Questionnaire Dilemma
About once a year I get an email from someone working in a security and compliance department at a...
a year ago
About once a year I get an email from someone working in a security and compliance department at a large organization asking that I fill out a detailed security questionnaire to help them assess the risk of their employees using Preceden. I received one recently from a large,...
One Useful Thing
Confronting Impossible Futures
We shouldn't be certain about what is next, but we should plan for it
3 months ago
We shouldn't be certain about what is next, but we should plan for it
The Berkeley...
TinyAgent: Function Calling at the Edge
The ability of LLMs to execute commands through plain language (e.g. English) has enabled agentic...
5 months ago
The ability of LLMs to execute commands through plain language (e.g. English) has enabled agentic systems that can complete a user query by orchestrating the right set of tools (e.g. ToolFormer, Gorilla). This, along with the recent multi-modal efforts such as the GPT-4o or...
The Berkeley...
Asymmetric Certified Robustness via Feature-Convex Neural Networks
Asymmetric Certified Robustness via Feature-Convex Neural Networks
TLDR: We propose the asymmetric...
11 months ago
Asymmetric Certified Robustness via Feature-Convex Neural Networks
TLDR: We propose the asymmetric certified robustness problem, which requires certified robustness for only one class and reflects real-world adversarial scenarios. This focused setting allows us to introduce...
Matt Mazur
Looking to sell Emergent Mind
I currently have two products: Preceden, a SaaS timeline maker, and Emergent Mind, an AI news site...
a year ago
I currently have two products: Preceden, a SaaS timeline maker, and Emergent Mind, an AI news site and newsletter. Emergent Mind began last December as LearnGPT, a ChatGPT examples site, and I later renamed it to Emergent Mind and transitioned it the news site that it is today:...
Daniel Miessler
How to Survive and Thrive in a World Where AI Can Do Almost Everything
Click for printable size. Here’s a quick list of things we can do to get ready for AI’s ascendance....
a year ago
Click for printable size. Here’s a quick list of things we can do to get ready for AI’s ascendance. You can click it to get the full size to print out. This is UL Member Content Subscribe Already a member? Login
Artificial Ignorance
What are logprobs?
Something to do with logs and probabilities.
9 months ago
Something to do with logs and probabilities.
One Useful Thing
Latent Expertise: Everyone is in R&D
Ideas come from the edges, not the center
4 months ago
Ideas come from the edges, not the center
One Useful Thing
Using AI to make teaching easier & more impactful
Here are five strategies and prompts that work for GPT-3.5 & GPT-4
a year ago
Here are five strategies and prompts that work for GPT-3.5 & GPT-4
Society's Backend
Always Be Networking
The things you should know about effective networking
11 months ago
The things you should know about effective networking
The Berkeley...
Are We Ready for Multi-Image Reasoning? Launching VHs: The Visual Haystacks Benchmark!
Humans excel at processing vast arrays of visual information, a skill that is crucial for achieving...
3 months ago
Humans excel at processing vast arrays of visual information, a skill that is crucial for achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI). Over the decades, AI researchers have developed Visual Question Answering (VQA) systems to interpret scenes within single images and answer...
One Useful Thing
Doing Stuff with AI: Opinionated Midyear Edition
AI systems have gotten more capable and easier to use
4 months ago
AI systems have gotten more capable and easier to use
One Useful Thing
A prosthesis for imagination: Using AI to boost your creativity
AI can already beat humans in many measures of creativity. Let's use that to our advantage.
a year ago
AI can already beat humans in many measures of creativity. Let's use that to our advantage.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 042: sama drama
November 24, 2023.
11 months ago
Daniel Miessler
NO. 367 | Hive Ransom, Anti-Google, Software 2.0…
🎙️If you’re not subscribed to the podcast version of the newsletter, please add it using with your...
a year ago
🎙️If you’re not subscribed to the podcast version of the newsletter, please add it using with your favorite client! APPLE | SPOTIFY | OTHER SECURITY NEWS The FBI infiltrated the HIVE ransomware group, stopping over $130 million in ransomware attacks. HIVE is known for going...
Artificial Ignorance
Distributing the future
A reminder that things take time.
5 months ago
A reminder that things take time.
Strange Loop Canon
Seeing Like A Network
Dark Forests, Dense Networks
4 months ago
Dark Forests, Dense Networks
Artificial Ignorance
Funding a new generation of AI companies
Listen now | A conversation with Evan Stites-Clayton, partner at HF0 and CTO of Teespring.
9 months ago
Listen now | A conversation with Evan Stites-Clayton, partner at HF0 and CTO of Teespring.
Strange Loop Canon
Strange Loop Canon Commencement Address
3 months ago
One Useful Thing
I hope you weren't getting too comfortable.
I just got access to the new Bing AI. My initial thoughts are that our assumptions about the limits...
a year ago
I just got access to the new Bing AI. My initial thoughts are that our assumptions about the limits of AI were wrong.
Rozado’s Visual...
The Political Biases of GPT-4
Things are not always what they seem
a year ago
Things are not always what they seem
AI Snake Oil
Scientists should use AI as a tool, not an oracle
How AI hype leads to flawed research that fuels more hype
5 months ago
How AI hype leads to flawed research that fuels more hype
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 075: Levels of AGI
July 12, 2024.
3 months ago
Matt Mazur
Full Time Indie Hacking: First 3 Months in Review
At the end of 2022 I stopped contracting at Help Scout to focus full time on Preceden, a SaaS...
a year ago
At the end of 2022 I stopped contracting at Help Scout to focus full time on Preceden, a SaaS timeline maker tool that I had been running mostly as a side project since 2010. It’s April now so I figured I’d share an update on how things are going. My periodic Friday updates cover...
One Useful Thing
Now is the time for grimoires
It isn't data that will unlock AI, it is human expertise
a year ago
It isn't data that will unlock AI, it is human expertise
Matt Mazur
Friday Updates: Smart Icons, Automatic Suggestions, Dealing with Spammers, Better Icon Colors
Preceden Lots of updates to Preceden this week: Improving the UX for the AI Suggestions When we...
a year ago
Preceden Lots of updates to Preceden this week: Improving the UX for the AI Suggestions When we rolled out the AI Suggestions feature last week, the typical experience for the user would go something like this: Lots of UX issues there though: To remedy this, I updated Preceden to...
Society's Backend
Would You Build the Manhattan Project in the UAE?
Thoughts on AI national security threats
4 months ago
Thoughts on AI national security threats
Andrej Karpathy blog
A from-scratch tour of Bitcoin in Python
.wrap {
max-width: 900px;
}
p {
font-family: sans-serif;
font-size: 15px;
...
over a year ago
.wrap {
max-width: 900px;
}
p {
font-family: sans-serif;
font-size: 15px;
font-weight: 300;
overflow-wrap: break-word; /* allow wrapping of very very long strings, like txids */
}
.post pre,
.post code {
background-color: #fafafa;
font-size: 13px; /*...
One Useful Thing
The practical guide to using AI to do stuff
A resource for students in my classes (and other interested people).
a year ago
A resource for students in my classes (and other interested people).
Rozado’s Visual...
The unequal treatment of demographic groups by ChatGPT/OpenAI content moderation system
Should AI systems treat different demographic groups unequally?
a year ago
Should AI systems treat different demographic groups unequally?
One Useful Thing
How to use AI to do practical stuff: A new guide
People often ask me how to use AI. Here's an overview with lots of links.
a year ago
People often ask me how to use AI. Here's an overview with lots of links.
AI Snake Oil
AI existential risk probabilities are too unreliable to inform policy
How speculation gets laundered through pseudo-quantification
3 months ago
How speculation gets laundered through pseudo-quantification
Daniel Miessler
What Made the 90’s So Awesome?
I just read a brilliant essay about the 90’s by Freddie de Boer, and it got me thinking. What made...
a year ago
I just read a brilliant essay about the 90’s by Freddie de Boer, and it got me thinking. What made the 90’s so great? Here’s GPT’s answer: Give a 90’s lover’s view of what made the 90’s awesome. Include everything from parenting, art, entertainment, games, childhood, movies, TV,...
Rozado’s Visual...
The Academic Literature and its Increasing Emphasis on Prejudice and Social Justice
Published article Twitter thread In previous scholarly work (here and here), I documented a marked...
over a year ago
Published article Twitter thread In previous scholarly work (here and here), I documented a marked increase of references to prejudice in US, UK and Spanish news media content. The work summarized here investigates the prevalence dynamics of prejudice-denoting terms in 175...
Rozado’s Visual...
New York Times Word Usage Frequency Chart – An Update
A timely update of an informative chart
a year ago
A timely update of an informative chart
One Useful Thing
In Praise of Boring AI
Automation has always been about killing tedious work. AI can do the same.
a year ago
Automation has always been about killing tedious work. AI can do the same.
Matt Mazur
Introducing Preceden’s new AI-Powered Timeline Generator
For the past few months I’ve been heads down building an AI-powered timeline generator tool for...
a year ago
For the past few months I’ve been heads down building an AI-powered timeline generator tool for Preceden, my SaaS timeline maker software: The tool – which is free to use and available on Preceden’s homepage – lets you type in a topic or detailed description of a timeline and it...
Rozado’s Visual...
Is the Great Awokening Really Winding Down? Part I: Some Multifaceted Evidence from Twitter Content
There has been some discussion lately by Eric Kaufmann, Tyler Cowen, Balaji Srinivasan, Paul Graham...
a year ago
There has been some discussion lately by Eric Kaufmann, Tyler Cowen, Balaji Srinivasan, Paul Graham and Musa Al Gharbi as to whether The Great Awokening is winding down. I’m going to write a series of blog entries about this topic to contribute to the discussion. In order to do...
Rozado’s Visual...
RightWingGPT – An AI Manifesting the Opposite Political Biases of ChatGPT
The Dangers of Politically Aligned AIs and their Negative Effects on Societal Polarization
a year ago
The Dangers of Politically Aligned AIs and their Negative Effects on Societal Polarization
Society's Backend
LLM-as-a-Judge, Instruction Pretraining, Solving Benchmarks Instead of Real-World ML Problems, and...
Weekly updates and resources 7/22/24
3 months ago
Weekly updates and resources 7/22/24
AI Snake Oil
Does ChatGPT have a liberal bias?
A new paper making this claim has many flaws. But the question merits research
a year ago
A new paper making this claim has many flaws. But the question merits research
One Useful Thing
Superhuman: What can AI do in 30 minutes?
AI multiplies your efforts. I found out by how much...
a year ago
AI multiplies your efforts. I found out by how much...
Rozado’s Visual...
Is The Great Awokening Really Winding Down? Part II: Evidence from News Media
Others (here, here and here) have argued previously that The Great Awokening might be winding down....
a year ago
Others (here, here and here) have argued previously that The Great Awokening might be winding down. I have shown before some preliminary evidence from Twitter content about how Great Awokening terminology with negative connotations are indeed down but those with positive...
One Useful Thing
Blinded by Analogies
What is this AI thing? The wrong model can lead us astray
a year ago
What is this AI thing? The wrong model can lead us astray
Rozado’s Visual...
The Increasing Prominence of Prejudice and Social Justice Rhetoric in UK News Media
I have recently published a report with Matthew Goodwin about the increasing prominence of prejudice...
over a year ago
I have recently published a report with Matthew Goodwin about the increasing prominence of prejudice and social justice rhetoric in UK news media. Recent years have seen considerable debate about the rise of political polarization in British society. Specifically, over the last...
Artificial Ignorance
Saving the world with AI and government grants
Listen now | A conversation with Helena Merk, founder and CEO of Streamline Climate.
4 months ago
Listen now | A conversation with Helena Merk, founder and CEO of Streamline Climate.
Artificial Ignorance
How to leverage long form content with AI
Specific tools and tactics for authors, podcasters, and videographers.
4 months ago
Specific tools and tactics for authors, podcasters, and videographers.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 069: Project Greymatter
May 31, 2024.
5 months ago
The Berkeley...
Koala: A Dialogue Model for Academic Research
In this post, we introduce Koala, a chatbot trained by fine-tuning Meta’s LLaMA on dialogue data...
a year ago
In this post, we introduce Koala, a chatbot trained by fine-tuning Meta’s LLaMA on dialogue data gathered from the web. We describe the dataset curation and training process of our model, and also present the results of a user study that compares our model to ChatGPT and...
The Berkeley...
Generating 3D Molecular Conformers via Equivariant Coarse-Graining and Aggregated Attention
-->
Figure 1: CoarsenConf architecture.
(I) The encoder $q_\phi(z| X, \mathcal{R})$ takes the...
a year ago
-->
Figure 1: CoarsenConf architecture.
(I) The encoder $q_\phi(z| X, \mathcal{R})$ takes the fine-grained (FG) ground truth conformer $X$, RDKit approximate conformer $\mathcal{R}$ , and coarse-grained (CG) conformer $\mathcal{C}$ as inputs (derived from $X$ and a predefined...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 076: Grand theft audio
July 19, 2024.
3 months ago
Daniel Miessler
My Philosophy and Recommendations Around the LastPass Breaches
If you follow Information Security at all you are surely aware of the LastPass breach situation. It...
a year ago
If you follow Information Security at all you are surely aware of the LastPass breach situation. It started back in August of 2022 as a fairly common breach notification on a blog, but it, unfortunately, turned into more of a blog series. The initial blog was on August 25th,...
Rozado’s Visual...
The Political Biases of Google Bard
It is probably only a matter of time until a nation state purposely builds a biased AI system...
a year ago
It is probably only a matter of time until a nation state purposely builds a biased AI system designed to advance government interests
Daniel Miessler
Reverse Transcription
There are dozens of reasons to be bullish on AI right now, especially in the GPT space where we have...
a year ago
There are dozens of reasons to be bullish on AI right now, especially in the GPT space where we have AIs producing so much extraordinary art. But I’m excited about something else that we’re naturally evolving GPT into, which I’m calling Reverse Transcription. A bit of background...
Daniel Miessler
News & Analysis | NO. 350
over a year ago
Rozado’s Visual...
Out-of-office Donald Trump still more prominent in news media content than the current U.S....
In 2019, I helped my colleague Musa al-Gharbi document the extraordinary prominence of Donald Trump...
a year ago
In 2019, I helped my colleague Musa al-Gharbi document the extraordinary prominence of Donald Trump in news media content (see here). I have recently updated that previous analysis. Briefly stated, no U.S. president in recent history has received a similar amount of media...
One Useful Thing
What AI can do with a toolbox... Getting started with Code Interpreter
Democratizing data analysis with AI
a year ago
Democratizing data analysis with AI
Artificial Ignorance
How to talk to your family about AI this Thanksgiving
A handy guide for your uncle's burning questions.
11 months ago
A handy guide for your uncle's burning questions.
One Useful Thing
My class required AI. Here's what I've learned so far.
(Spoiler alert: it has been very successful, but there are some lessons to be learned)
a year ago
(Spoiler alert: it has been very successful, but there are some lessons to be learned)
The Berkeley...
Training Diffusion Models with <br> Reinforcement Learning
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const replay = document.querySelector('.ddpo-replay');
...
a year ago
function reveal() {
const replay = document.querySelector('.ddpo-replay');
replay.style.display = 'flex';
}
window.onload = () => {
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Daniel Miessler
Unsupervised Learning NO. 364 | Reality Headset, BingPT, AI+Cyber
If you're not subscribed to the podcast version of the newsletter, please add it with your favorite...
a year ago
If you're not subscribed to the podcast version of the newsletter, please add it with your favorite client. APPLE | SPOTIFY | OTHER SECURITY NEWS The FBI is warning people to block online ads due to imposters poisoning search results. They advise users to 1) check ad URLs, 2) go...
One Useful Thing
Feats to astonish and amaze
A compendium of things I didn't think AI should be able to do
a year ago
A compendium of things I didn't think AI should be able to do
Daniel Miessler
AI Art Hack: Combining Abstract Designs with Objects
This is member content. Thank you for being a subscriber. This is UL Member Content Subscribe...
a year ago
This is member content. Thank you for being a subscriber. This is UL Member Content Subscribe Already a member? Login
One Useful Thing
Acceleration.
7 days of new AI technologies shows us that everything is happening very fast.
a year ago
7 days of new AI technologies shows us that everything is happening very fast.
One Useful Thing
"Do not fear AI, puny humans... that is not meant as a threat."
What we can learn from a completely AI written & illustrated lecture
a year ago
What we can learn from a completely AI written & illustrated lecture
Matt Mazur
Friday Updates: Prepping TimelineGPT for Launch, Viva la EmergentMind
Preceden This week consisted of Milan (Preceden’s designer) and I getting TimelineGPT (the AI...
a year ago
Preceden This week consisted of Milan (Preceden’s designer) and I getting TimelineGPT (the AI content generator we’re working on) from 80% ready to ship to 98%. Lots of small, boring tasks like: Hopefully can launch the v1 early next week, rolling it out to 25% of users and then...
Society's Backend
OpenAI's Strawberry May Enhance AI Reasoning, Optimization of Vision Language Models, Info on...
Weekly updates and resources 7/15/24
3 months ago
Weekly updates and resources 7/15/24
Daniel Miessler
My Prediction For Twitter
I’m a bit Elon and Twittered out, but I want to capture a basic prediction about all the...
a year ago
I’m a bit Elon and Twittered out, but I want to capture a basic prediction about all the shenanigans. As for my take on things, I will just say that Elon miscalculated a number of things in his handling of the transition. I think he thought his actions would be better received....
The Berkeley...
Interactive Fleet Learning
Figure 1: “Interactive Fleet Learning” (IFL) refers to robot fleets in industry and academia that...
a year ago
Figure 1: “Interactive Fleet Learning” (IFL) refers to robot fleets in industry and academia that fall back on human teleoperators when necessary and continually learn from them over time.
In the last few years we have seen an exciting development in robotics and artificial...
One Useful Thing
How to Get an AI to Lie to You in Three Simple Steps
I keep getting fooled by AI, and it seems like others are, too.
a year ago
I keep getting fooled by AI, and it seems like others are, too.
Daniel Miessler
News & Analysis | NO. 349
over a year ago
One Useful Thing
Thinking companion, companion for thinking
Some simple ways to use AI to break you out of biases
a year ago
Some simple ways to use AI to break you out of biases
Matt Mazur
LearnGPT is for sale. Contact me if you’re interested.
On Friday I announced that I intended to shut down LearnGPT to focus on Preceden, my main business....
a year ago
On Friday I announced that I intended to shut down LearnGPT to focus on Preceden, my main business. I didn’t plan to sell LearnGPT because I didn’t think a month-old, pre-revenue project like this would be able to sell for enough to warrant going through a sale. It’s been three...
The Gradient
Financial Market Applications of LLMs
The AI revolution drove frenzied investment in both private and public companies and captured the...
6 months ago
The AI revolution drove frenzied investment in both private and public companies and captured the public’s imagination in 2023. Transformational consumer products like ChatGPT are powered by Large Language Models (LLMs) that excel at modeling sequences of tokens that represent...
AI Snake Oil
Three Ideas for Regulating Generative AI
Policy input to the federal government from a Stanford-Princeton team
a year ago
Policy input to the federal government from a Stanford-Princeton team
Artificial Ignorance
YCombinator's AI boom is still going strong (W24)
Combing through all 158 YC AI startups (65% of the batch).
7 months ago
Combing through all 158 YC AI startups (65% of the batch).
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 054: Ten million tokens
February 16, 2024.
8 months ago
One Useful Thing
On giving AI eyes and ears
AI can listen and see, with bigger implications than we might realize.
a year ago
AI can listen and see, with bigger implications than we might realize.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 047: NYT v. OpenAI
Friday, December 29.
10 months ago
One Useful Thing
The Machines of Mastery
"Anyone can learn anything they want..." and how technology can help
a year ago
"Anyone can learn anything they want..." and how technology can help
Daniel Miessler
News, Analysis, and Discovery | NO. 356
SECURITY NEWS TikTok has now admitted, after denying last week, that Chinese staff can in fact read...
a year ago
SECURITY NEWS TikTok has now admitted, after denying last week, that Chinese staff can in fact read European TikTok data. Pressure is increasing across the US government to outright ban the app, but it's quickly becoming national infrastructure so many young people. MORE |...
Matt Mazur
Running Mistral 7B Instruct on a Macbook
Similar to yesterday’s post on running Mistral 8x7Bs Mixture of Experts (MOE) model, I wanted to...
10 months ago
Similar to yesterday’s post on running Mistral 8x7Bs Mixture of Experts (MOE) model, I wanted to document the steps I took to run Mistral’s 7B-Instruct-v0.2 model on a Mac for anyone else interested in playing around with it. Unlike yesterday’s post though, this 7B Instruct...
Daniel Miessler
NO. 360 | NEWS, ANALYSIS & DISCOVERY SERIES
SECURITY NEWS Security researchers found that Chinese electronics company Eufy (part of Anker) has...
a year ago
SECURITY NEWS Security researchers found that Chinese electronics company Eufy (part of Anker) has major vulnerabilities in its security cameras. The issues include uploading data to the cloud when they said they weren't, and the existence of a URL endpoint that allows an...
Daniel Miessler
Twitter’s Blue Checkmark Strategy Reduces Trust in Pursuit of Revenue
When I heard that Twitter was going to open the blue checkmark up to anyone willing to pay $8/month,...
a year ago
When I heard that Twitter was going to open the blue checkmark up to anyone willing to pay $8/month, I was happy. As a legacy holder of the checkmark there’s a slight band-aid-sting of the check indicating specialness—who doesn’t want to feel special?—but I’d much rather see a...
Society's Backend
Why Machine Learning Systems Misbehave
And what makes them so difficult to work with
3 months ago
And what makes them so difficult to work with
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 048: The Robot Constitution
January 5, 2024.
10 months ago
The Berkeley...
Rethinking Human-in-the-Loop for Artificial Augmented Intelligence
How do we build and evaluate an AI system for real-world applications? In most AI research, the...
over a year ago
How do we build and evaluate an AI system for real-world applications? In most AI research, the evaluation of AI methods involves a training-validation-testing process. The experiments usually stop when the models have good testing performance on the reported datasets because...
Matt Mazur
Nick Kolenda Reviews Preceden
Nick Kolenda is an author, teacher, and consultant who specializes in the psychology of marketing...
over a year ago
Nick Kolenda is an author, teacher, and consultant who specializes in the psychology of marketing and related topics like pricing optimization, sales psychology, and website behavior. He’s also happens to be a regular in a poker game I host each week. A few months back he...
Daniel Miessler
Frontview Mirror: 2023 Edition
This is member content. Thank you for being a subscriber. This is UL Member Content Subscribe...
a year ago
This is member content. Thank you for being a subscriber. This is UL Member Content Subscribe Already a member? Login
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 070: AI whistleblowers
June 7, 2024.
4 months ago
One Useful Thing
The Homework Apocalypse
Fall is going to be very different this year. Educators need to be ready.
a year ago
Fall is going to be very different this year. Educators need to be ready.
One Useful Thing
Magic for English Majors
Programming in prose in an AI-haunted world
a year ago
Programming in prose in an AI-haunted world
Rozado’s Visual...
The Increasing Negativity and Emotionality of News Media Headlines
Published article Introduction I have recently published a paper where we describe a chronological...
over a year ago
Published article Introduction I have recently published a paper where we describe a chronological (2000–2019) analysis of sentiment and emotion in 23 million headlines from 47 news media outlets popular in the United States. We used Transformer language models fine-tuned for...
Andrej Karpathy blog
What a Deep Neural Network thinks about your #selfie
Convolutional Neural Networks are great: they recognize things, places and people in your personal...
over a year ago
Convolutional Neural Networks are great: they recognize things, places and people in your personal photos, signs, people and lights in self-driving cars, crops, forests and traffic in aerial imagery, various anomalies in medical images and all kinds of other useful things. But...
The Gradient
A Brief Overview of Gender Bias in AI
A brief overview and discussion on gender bias in AI
6 months ago
A brief overview and discussion on gender bias in AI
Strange Loop Canon
State of the Canon
Onwards
10 months ago
Rozado’s Visual...
The political orientation of the ChatGPT AI system
Applying the Pew Research Political Typology Quiz to a state-of-the-art AI Language model
a year ago
Applying the Pew Research Political Typology Quiz to a state-of-the-art AI Language model
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 059: In̶f̶l̶e̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ Microsoft AI
March 22, 2023.
7 months ago
Daniel Miessler
News & Analysis | NO. 353
over a year ago
Daniel Miessler
Custom Models Are AI’s Killer App
The killer app for AI right now is the universal “custom AI model”. Consume your whole business. Or...
a year ago
The killer app for AI right now is the universal “custom AI model”. Consume your whole business. Or your whole life experience. Every text. Every Slack. Every journal entry. Every blog post. Everything you’ve said or written publicly. All your logs. All your documentation. Turn...
Daniel Miessler
NO. 366 | T-Breach, Siri++, Conception Ages…
🎙️If you're not subscribed to the podcast version of the newsletter, please add it using with your...
a year ago
🎙️If you're not subscribed to the podcast version of the newsletter, please add it using with your favorite client! APPLE | SPOTIFY | OTHER SECURITY NEWS Another T-Mobile Breach T-Mobile has had another security breach, this one affecting at least 37 million accounts. They...
Daniel Miessler
NO. 368 | ChinaBalloons, CustomGPT, 90s++…
✅ Please add this address to your "safe senders" or equivalent within your mail client. It'll...
a year ago
✅ Please add this address to your "safe senders" or equivalent within your mail client. It'll prevent the email from occasionally descending into the void. SECURITY The US shot down a Chinese spy balloon. They gathered the debris from the water it fell into, and it's currently...
Daniel Miessler
The UL Boost Protocol
This is a member-only post. Thank you for being part of this. This is UL Member Content Subscribe...
a year ago
This is a member-only post. Thank you for being part of this. This is UL Member Content Subscribe Already a member? Login
One Useful Thing
The future, soon: what I learned from Bing's AI
We had a brief glimpse of two different types of AI. Both are significant
a year ago
We had a brief glimpse of two different types of AI. Both are significant
Daniel Miessler
UL NO. 354 | THE NEWS & ANALYSIS SERIES
SECURITY NEWS The US has implemented a number of aggressive export controls to stop China from...
over a year ago
SECURITY NEWS The US has implemented a number of aggressive export controls to stop China from attaining advanced semiconductors. And now it looks like the bans will be expanded to quantum computing and AI as well. NYTIMES | MY ANALYSIS BELOW It appears Bytedance had a plan to...
Weighty Thoughts
The EU is making itself an economic backwater
Regulation is not a real export
3 months ago
Regulation is not a real export
AI Snake Oil
New paper: AI agents that matter
Rethinking AI agent benchmarking and evaluation
4 months ago
Rethinking AI agent benchmarking and evaluation
Daniel Miessler
NO. 363 | FrontView Mirror: 2023 Edition
New Content 💡FRONTVIEW MIRROR: 2023 EDITION 💡MY PHILOSOPHY AND RECOMMENDATIONS ON THE LASTPASS...
a year ago
New Content 💡FRONTVIEW MIRROR: 2023 EDITION 💡MY PHILOSOPHY AND RECOMMENDATIONS ON THE LASTPASS BREACHES SECURITY NEWS In a bit of Deja Vu from LastPass, Okta has now revealed that attackers have stolen source code from its GitHub repositories. This comes after it was hit by...
Rozado’s Visual...
Define Wokeness! Or how you shall know a word by the company it keeps
Visualizing what words often appear in the vicinity of woke/wokeness in news media content...
a year ago
Visualizing what words often appear in the vicinity of woke/wokeness in news media content illustrates why communication is almost impossible between red and blue America
Andrej Karpathy blog
Short Story on AI: A Cognitive Discontinuity.
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text-align: justify;
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The idea of writing a collection of short stories has been on my mind...
over a year ago
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The idea of writing a collection of short stories has been on my mind for a while. This post is my first ever half-serious attempt at a story, and what better way to kick things off than with a story on AI and what that might look like if you...
The Berkeley...
Keeping Learning-Based Control Safe by Regulating Distributional Shift
To regulate the distribution shift experience by learning-based controllers, we seek a mechanism for...
over a year ago
To regulate the distribution shift experience by learning-based controllers, we seek a mechanism for constraining the agent to regions of high data density throughout its trajectory (left). Here, we present an approach which achieves this goal by combining features of density...
Rozado’s Visual...
The Political Bias of ChatGPT – Extended Analysis
On December 6th I published a preliminary analysis showing a left-leaning political bias embedded in...
a year ago
On December 6th I published a preliminary analysis showing a left-leaning political bias embedded in the first release of ChatGPT from November 30. After the December 15th update of ChatGPT, I replicated my analysis and it appeared as if the political bias had been partially...
Society's Backend
The State of AI in China
Is China winning the race to AGI?
3 months ago
Is China winning the race to AGI?
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 073: Music make you lose control
June 28, 2024.
4 months ago
Daniel Miessler
Your Experience is Your Creativity
Creativity is usually described as an external force that graces you with inspiration. Something...
a year ago
Creativity is usually described as an external force that graces you with inspiration. Something that you have to open yourself to—that you have to allow in. But creativity is more like an inner forge of your past, perspectives, and passions. It’s not something you let in; it’s...
The Berkeley...
Designing Societally Beneficial Reinforcement Learning Systems
Deep reinforcement learning (DRL) is transitioning from a research field focused on game playing to...
over a year ago
Deep reinforcement learning (DRL) is transitioning from a research field focused on game playing to a technology with real-world applications. Notable examples include DeepMind’s work on controlling a nuclear reactor or on improving Youtube video compression, or Tesla attempting...
Daniel Miessler
News & Analysis | NO. 352
over a year ago
Rozado’s Visual...
The political preferences of Grok
Elon Musk's response to ChatGPT
10 months ago
Elon Musk's response to ChatGPT
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