Artificial Ignorance
I gave ChatGPT access to my Gmail
I'm sure this will end well.
a year ago
I'm sure this will end well.
Weighty Thoughts
Who’s Winning the AI War?
All of us, except the AI startups and VCs—unless a real war breaks out
a year ago
All of us, except the AI startups and VCs—unless a real war breaks out
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...
over 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...
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...
Daniel Miessler
News & Analysis | NO. 352
over a year ago
AI Snake Oil
AI companies are pivoting from creating gods to building products. Good.
Turning models into products runs into five challenges
5 months ago
Turning models into products runs into five challenges
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?
Weighty Thoughts
The Real Risks of AI
Humans are really the ones to be scared of
8 months ago
Humans are really the ones to be scared of
Matt Mazur
Indie Hacking Week 1 Recap: Starting TimelineGPT, Ending LearnGPT
Today marks the end of my first week of full-time indie hacking. I feel like I’m getting in a good...
over a year ago
Today marks the end of my first week of full-time indie hacking. I feel like I’m getting in a good groove as far as my daily routine, but I don’t think it’s quite sunk in yet how much flexibility I have in terms of my daily schedule. For example, I’m still waking up early to […]
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 046: AI has a CSAM problem
December 22, 2023.
a year ago
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
a year ago
What makes machine learning infra so important and why I find it so interesting
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 063: Llama 3
April 19, 2024.
9 months ago
Artificial Ignorance
Looking a gift llama in the mouth
How Llama 3.1 uniquely leverages Meta's business model (and why we should be a little bit cynical...
6 months ago
How Llama 3.1 uniquely leverages Meta's business model (and why we should be a little bit cynical about it)
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 089: Adobe MAX
October 18, 2024.
3 months ago
Artificial Ignorance
Jevons Paradox and the future of programming
Supply and demand in the Age of AI.
10 months ago
Supply and demand in the Age of AI.
Sam Altman
American Equity
I’d like feedback on the following idea.
I think that every adult US citizen should get an annual...
over a year ago
I’d like feedback on the following idea.
I think that every adult US citizen should get an annual share of the US GDP.
I believe that owning something like a share in America would align all of us in making the country as successful as possible—the better the country does, the...
Sam Altman
Idea Generation
The most common question prospective startup founders ask is how to get ideas for startups. The...
over a year ago
The most common question prospective startup founders ask is how to get ideas for startups. The second most common question is if you have any ideas for their startup.
But giving founders an idea almost always doesn’t work. Having ideas is among the most important qualities for...
Weighty Thoughts
What I got Right or Wrong in 2020
Reflecting on the Past Year
over a year ago
Reflecting on the Past Year
IEEE Spectrum
In 2025, People Will Try Living in This Underwater Habitat
The future of human habitation in the sea is taking shape in an abandoned quarry on the border of...
3 weeks ago
The future of human habitation in the sea is taking shape in an abandoned quarry on the border of Wales and England. There, the ocean-exploration organization Deep has embarked on a multiyear quest to enable scientists to live on the seafloor at depths up to 200 meters for weeks,...
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...
Society's Backend
OpenAI’s Blunder is a Loss for the ML Community
The timeline and why OpenAI’s actions are a big deal
8 months ago
The timeline and why OpenAI’s actions are a big deal
Artificial Ignorance
OpenAI’s DevDay: The biggest announcements
New models, new products, and new pricing.
a year ago
New models, new products, and new pricing.
Strange Loop Canon
The mystery of the garage
11 months ago
Society's Backend
Would You Build the Manhattan Project in the UAE?
Thoughts on AI national security threats
7 months ago
Thoughts on AI national security threats
Andrej Karpathy blog
Short Story on AI: Forward Pass
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text-align: justify;
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background-color:...
over a year ago
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text-align: justify;
}
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background-color: #eee;
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The inspiration for this short story came to me while reading Kevin Lacker’s Giving GPT-3 a Turing Test. It is probably worth it (though not required) to skim this post to get...
fast.ai
nbdev+Quarto: A new secret weapon for productivity
Our favorite tool for software engineering productivity–nbdev, now re-written with Quarto
over a year ago
Our favorite tool for software engineering productivity–nbdev, now re-written with Quarto
Society's Backend
OpenAI's Strawberry May Enhance AI Reasoning, Optimization of Vision Language Models, Info on...
Weekly updates and resources 7/15/24
6 months ago
Weekly updates and resources 7/15/24
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
9 months ago
What artificial intelligence can do, what it can't, and how to tell the difference
Matt Mazur
Exploring ChatGPT’s Knowledge Cutoff
A recurring topic of discussion on the OpenAI forums, on Reddit, and on Twitter is about what...
a year 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...
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...
a year 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...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 101: Strange bedfellows
January 17, 2025.
5 days ago
Sam Altman
PG and Jessica
A lot of people want to replicate YC in some other industry or some other place or with some other...
over a year ago
A lot of people want to replicate YC in some other industry or some other place or with some other strategy. In general, people seem to assume that: 1) although there was some degree of mystery or luck about how YC got going, it can’t be that hard, and 2) if you can get it off...
IEEE Spectrum
This Inventor Is Molding Tomorrow’s Inventors
This article is part of our special report, “Reinventing Invention: Stories from Innovation’s...
2 months ago
This article is part of our special report, “Reinventing Invention: Stories from Innovation’s Edge.”
Marina Umaschi Bers has long been at the forefront of technological innovation for kids. In the 2010s, while teaching at Tufts University, in Massachusetts, she codeveloped the...
AI Snake Oil
Four more things we worked on in 2022
We had a busy 2022. Here are a few things we worked on but didn’t cover here.
over a year ago
We had a busy 2022. Here are a few things we worked on but didn’t cover here.
Society's Backend
One Year of Society's Backend
The lessons I've learned along the way
5 months ago
The lessons I've learned along the way
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...
Prevalence in News Media of Two Competing Hypotheses about COVID-19 Origins
Published article Quick Twitter summary Introduction As of August 2021, the origins of the...
over a year ago
Published article Quick Twitter summary Introduction As of August 2021, the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic remain a mystery. This essay summarizes a recent article I published about the prevalence in news media articles of two popular hypotheses...
Rozado’s Visual...
El sesgo político de ChatGPT
A la izquierda del centro político
over a year ago
A la izquierda del centro político
Artificial Ignorance
Milestones, motivations, and miscellany
Some thoughts on the future of this newsletter.
7 months ago
Some thoughts on the future of this newsletter.
Society's Backend
Weekly Backend #4: 62 Total Resources
Apple’s LLM OpenELM, GPT-4-Turbo, Phi-3, Grok-1.5 Vision, and more
9 months ago
Apple’s LLM OpenELM, GPT-4-Turbo, Phi-3, Grok-1.5 Vision, and more
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.
Frank’s Ramblings
Hierarchical Navigable Small Worlds (HNSW)
(Note: A version of this post has been cross-published to the Zilliz blog)
In a previous blog, we...
a year ago
(Note: A version of this post has been cross-published to the Zilliz blog)
In a previous blog, we took a look at scalar quantization and product quantization - two indexing strategies which are used to reduce the overall size of the database without reducing the scope of a...
Made by Ollin
Acapella Extraction with ConvNets
A working prototype
over a year ago
AI Snake Oil
Tech policy is only frustrating 90% of the time
That’s what makes it worthwhile
9 months ago
That’s what makes it worthwhile
Society's Backend
A Privacy Review: TikTok
You should stick to Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts
a year ago
You should stick to Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts
Artificial Ignorance
States are racing ahead of Congress to regulate deepfakes
Several states just banned deepfakes in political ads and porn.
10 months ago
Several states just banned deepfakes in political ads and porn.
IEEE Spectrum
Fish-Inspired Sensor "Touches" Using Electric Fields
The ability to detect a nearby presence without seeing or touching it may sound fantastical—but it’s...
a month ago
The ability to detect a nearby presence without seeing or touching it may sound fantastical—but it’s a real ability that some creatures have. A family of African fish known as Mormyrids are weakly electric, and have special organs that can locate a nearby prey, whether it’s in...
Marcus on AI
“LLMs amplify existing security risks and introduce new ones”
also: “the work of securing AI systems will never be complete”
6 days ago
also: “the work of securing AI systems will never be complete”
Marcus on AI
AI still lacks “common” sense, 70 years later
What’s obvious to people still isn’t always obvious to machines
2 weeks ago
What’s obvious to people still isn’t always obvious to machines
Sam Altman
The United Slate
I would like to find and support a slate of candidates for the 2018 California elections, and also...
over a year ago
I would like to find and support a slate of candidates for the 2018 California elections, and also to find someone to run a ballot initiative focused on affordable housing in the state. A team of aligned people has a chance to make a real change.
I believe in creating prosperity...
Weighty Thoughts
CUDA is Still a Giant Moat for NVIDIA
Despite everyone’s focus on hardware, the software of AI is what protects NVIDIA
10 months ago
Despite everyone’s focus on hardware, the software of AI is what protects NVIDIA
The Berkeley...
The Berkeley Crossword Solver
We recently published the Berkeley Crossword Solver (BCS), the current state of the art for solving...
over a year ago
We recently published the Berkeley Crossword Solver (BCS), the current state of the art for solving American-style crossword puzzles. The BCS combines neural question answering and probabilistic inference to achieve near-perfect performance on most American-style crossword...
Artificial Ignorance
A stroll through Google's Model Garden
What generative AI capabilities does Google offer to developers?
a year ago
What generative AI capabilities does Google offer to developers?
Daniel Miessler
News & Analysis | NO. 353
over a year ago
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...
Matt Mazur
When you ship a major bug before signing off for the day
For better or worse, I still handle all of Preceden’s support requests. At one I did have help...
a year ago
For better or worse, I still handle all of Preceden’s support requests. At one I did have help (thanks Liesl!), but these days support takes at most an hour per week, and all requests fall into two buckets: As a result, there hasn’t been a pressing need to outsource support. But...
The Gradient
A Brief Overview of Gender Bias in AI
A brief overview and discussion on gender bias in AI
9 months ago
A brief overview and discussion on gender bias in AI
Sam Altman
US Digital Currency
I am pretty sure cryptocurrency is here to stay in some form (at least as a store of value, which is...
over a year ago
I am pretty sure cryptocurrency is here to stay in some form (at least as a store of value, which is the only use case we have seen work at scale so far). There was possibly a time when governments could have totally stopped it, but it feels like that’s in the rearview mirror.
...
Marcus on AI
An epidemic of weirdly precise AI butt facts
The parade of made-up numbers never stops
2 months ago
The parade of made-up numbers never stops
fast.ai
A new old kind of R&D lab
Answer.AI is a new kind of AI R&D lab which creates practical end-user products based on...
a year ago
Answer.AI is a new kind of AI R&D lab which creates practical end-user products based on foundational research breakthroughs.
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....
over 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...
Marcus on AI
Casey (Newton) Strikes Out
His continued skepticism of AI skepticism continues to miss the mark
a month ago
His continued skepticism of AI skepticism continues to miss the mark
Rozado’s Visual...
Mentions of Political Extremism in English Wikipedia
A data-driven exploration uncovers disparities. Are they shaped by editorial choices or broader...
a month ago
A data-driven exploration uncovers disparities. Are they shaped by editorial choices or broader societal/historical dynamics?
Society's Backend
What you need to understand about LLM creativity
An simple overview of temperature and its effect on LLM output
8 months ago
An simple overview of temperature and its effect on LLM output
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
8 months ago
For everyone to have access to AGI, everyone must also have access to the compute to use it
Rozado’s Visual...
Mentions of Prejudice in Academic Papers: A Declining Trend Amidst Ongoing DEI Growth?
Prejudice-denoting terms in academic research have recently decreased while some DEI-related terms...
4 months ago
Prejudice-denoting terms in academic research have recently decreased while some DEI-related terms continue to rise—what does this shift reveal?
Strange Loop Canon
I wrote a book!
AI enables us to, finally, get "soft" APIs
a year ago
AI enables us to, finally, get "soft" APIs
One Useful Thing
Not much is changing, a lot is changing
OpenAI, Microsoft, and the OpenOffspring
a year ago
OpenAI, Microsoft, and the OpenOffspring
Society's Backend
An Overview of Text Summarization Methods from Simple to Complex
We went through a bit of a rebrand. Let me know what you think about Society’s Backend’s new color...
a year ago
We went through a bit of a rebrand. Let me know what you think about Society’s Backend’s new color scheme and logo! :) - Logan I've been researching text summarization methods for a project I'm working on. Since the advent of Large Language Models (LLMs), LLMs have become a go-to...
Society's Backend
Google AI Essentials, A New LLM Benchmark, Washington's AI Task Force, and More [Top 10 ML Resource...
Top 10 Machine Learning Resources and Updates Below are the top 10 machine learning resources and...
6 months ago
Top 10 Machine Learning Resources and Updates Below are the top 10 machine learning resources and updates from the past week you don't want to miss. I share more frequent ML updates on X so don’t forget to follow me there. Support Society's Backend for just $1/mo
The Gradient
Interpretability Creationism
On “interpretability creationism” – interpretability methods that only look at the final state of...
a year ago
On “interpretability creationism” – interpretability methods that only look at the final state of the model and ignore its evolution over the course of training
One Useful Thing
Something New: On OpenAI's "Strawberry" and Reasoning
Solving hard problems in new ways
4 months ago
Solving hard problems in new ways
One Useful Thing
What OpenAI did
A new model opens up new possibilities
8 months ago
A new model opens up new possibilities
Society's Backend
Why Gemini's Struggles Aren't Straightforward
And an overview of LLM security issues
10 months ago
And an overview of LLM security issues
The Gradient
Mamba Explained
Is Attention all you need? Mamba, a novel AI model based on State Space Models (SSMs), emerges as a...
10 months ago
Is Attention all you need? Mamba, a novel AI model based on State Space Models (SSMs), emerges as a formidable alternative to the widely used Transformer models, addressing their inefficiency in processing long sequences.
Society's Backend
Stop Obsessing Over the Product and Start Thinking About the Bigger Picture
The actual takeaways from the iPhone 15 event
a year ago
The actual takeaways from the iPhone 15 event
IEEE Spectrum
Asimov's Laws of Robotics Need an Update for AI
In 1942, the legendary science fiction author Isaac Asimov introduced his Three Laws of Robotics in...
a week ago
In 1942, the legendary science fiction author Isaac Asimov introduced his Three Laws of Robotics in his short story “Runaround.” The laws were later popularized in his seminal story collection I, Robot.
First Law: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow...
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...
11 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
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Extreme Off-Road
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE...
2 months ago
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.
Humanoids 2024: 22–24 November...
AI Snake Oil
Is Avoiding Extinction from AI Really an Urgent Priority?
The history of technology suggests that the greatest risks come not from the tech, but from the...
a year ago
The history of technology suggests that the greatest risks come not from the tech, but from the people who control it
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...
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,...
over 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...
PromptArmor Blog
Announcing LASEC: LLM Application Security Executive Certification
Including a never before seen exploit from PromptArmor's cutting edge threat intelligence team.
10 months ago
Including a never before seen exploit from PromptArmor's cutting edge threat intelligence team.
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...
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Happy Holidays!
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE...
a month ago
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.
ICRA 2025: 19–23 May 2025, ATLANTA,...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 095: QwQ
November 29, 2024.
a month ago
Daniel Miessler
AI Art Will Push the Top 1% to Human Artists
One effect I think we’ll see from all this AI-generated art is magnified status for those who insist...
over a year ago
One effect I think we’ll see from all this AI-generated art is magnified status for those who insist on the opposite, i.e., manual, human art. The more manual the better. The more human the better. Ideally there’d only be one of whatever you have, and it’d only be yours. Why is...
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
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 038: Preparedness
October 27, 2023.
a year ago
Society's Backend
The Method Google Used to Reduce LLM Size by 66%
A brief overview of knowledge distillation and its capabilities
6 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
Daniel Miessler
5 Things I’m Still Waiting for With the iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods
I just camped for the new lineup of Apple products, as I have every year since 2007, and I am pretty...
over a year ago
I just camped for the new lineup of Apple products, as I have every year since 2007, and I am pretty impressed. As many have said, this year was an incremental update. The iPhones look nearly identical. And so do the AirPods Pro 2. The exception was the Apple Watch Ultra, which...
fast.ai
Qualitative humanities research is crucial to AI
Following the thread of any seemingly quantitative issue in AI ethics (such as determining if...
over a year ago
Following the thread of any seemingly quantitative issue in AI ethics (such as determining if software to rate loan applicants is racially biased or evaluating YouTube’s recommendation system) quickly leads to a host of qualitative questions. Unfortunately, there is often a large...
Weighty Thoughts
Compute is Overrated as AI’s Bottleneck
You can’t just blindly extrapolate compute requirements
a year ago
You can’t just blindly extrapolate compute requirements
Weighty Thoughts
Startup Valuation Made Simple(r) - Working Backwards
Counterintuitively, start from how much money you need
over a year ago
Counterintuitively, start from how much money you need
Weighty Thoughts
Writing, Originality, and Why Does Anyone Care What I Write About?
Musings, Insecurities, and Thoughts on Writing a Book (or Substack)
a month ago
Musings, Insecurities, and Thoughts on Writing a Book (or Substack)
Artificial Ignorance
How to build an AI search engine (Part 2)
VC funding, here we come.
3 months ago
VC funding, here we come.
Society's Backend
Why Software Engineers Need to Understand Machine Learning
And how ML helps software engineers in their daily work
7 months ago
And how ML helps software engineers in their daily work
Strange Loop Canon
People want competence, seemingly over everything else
All elections are about state capacity
2 months ago
All elections are about state capacity
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
8 months ago
And a step-by-step guide to train a machine learning model on your Mac
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 099: Apocalypse Not
January 3, 2025.
2 weeks ago
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...
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...
over 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....
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 068: The ScarJo thing
May 24, 2024.
8 months ago
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 080: Grok 2
August 16, 2024.
5 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.
Marcus on AI
Hard-forked! Casey Newton’s distorted portrait of Gary Marcus and AI skepticism
What Casey Newton’s new essay skewering AI skepticism does—and does not—get right
a month ago
What Casey Newton’s new essay skewering AI skepticism does—and does not—get right
Artificial Ignorance
10 of the most impactful AI stories of 2023
A quick look back on a very busy year in AI.
a year ago
A quick look back on a very busy year in AI.
Society's Backend
Weekly Backend #5: 55 Resources
The inner workings of transformers, Machine Learning Q and AI, machine learning classifies harmful...
8 months ago
The inner workings of transformers, Machine Learning Q and AI, machine learning classifies harmful viruses, and more
Society's Backend
Discussions around OpenAI's o1, Superhuman AI, When AI Should Be An App, and More
Discussions from the past week: 09/16/2024
4 months ago
Discussions from the past week: 09/16/2024
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...
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Agile Upgrade
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE...
5 days ago
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.
RoboCup German Open: 12–16 March...
The Gradient
An Introduction to the Problems of AI Consciousness
Once considered a forbidden topic in the AI community, discussions around the concept of AI...
a year ago
Once considered a forbidden topic in the AI community, discussions around the concept of AI consciousness are now taking center stage, marking a significant shift since the current AI resurgence began over a decade ago.
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...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 070: AI whistleblowers
June 7, 2024.
7 months ago
One Useful Thing
Secret Cyborgs: The Present Disruption in Three Papers
The future is already here, we just need to figure out a few details.
a year ago
The future is already here, we just need to figure out a few details.
Society's Backend
Pelosi opposes SB 1047, New LLM Training Paradigms, Prompt Caching to Save 90% of API Costs, and...
Machine learning resources and updates 8/19/2024
5 months ago
Machine learning resources and updates 8/19/2024
Society's Backend
AI Video Editing, MLX vs PyTorch, AI in Space, and More [Comprehensive ML Resource List for 6/28/24]
Here is a comprehensive list of all machine learning resources and updates from the past week. Thank...
6 months ago
Here is a comprehensive list of all machine learning resources and updates from the past week. Thank you for supporting Society's Backend! Don't forget to also follow me on X. Claude 3.5 Sonnet Can Long-Context Language Models Subsume Retrieval, RAG, SQL, and More?
Weighty Thoughts
Consider the Llama
Are closed source AI models doomed?
6 months ago
Are closed source AI models doomed?
Strange Loop Canon
Why AI hasn’t shown up in the GDP statistics yet
AI is meant to bring us closer to utopia, according to its builders.
5 months ago
AI is meant to bring us closer to utopia, according to its builders.
One Useful Thing
Working with AI: Two paths to prompting
Don't overcomplicate things
a year ago
Don't overcomplicate things
Artificial Ignorance
The subscriptionization of AI
Navigating the paid AI landscape.
10 months ago
Navigating the paid AI landscape.
AI Snake Oil
On the Societal Impact of Open Foundation Models
Adding precision to the debate on openness in AI
11 months ago
Adding precision to the debate on openness in AI
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 090: Computer Use
October 25, 2024.
2 months ago
Strange Loop Canon
Life in India is a series of bilateral negotiations
finding the new equilibrium for the next superpower
3 months ago
finding the new equilibrium for the next superpower
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 084: Strawberry / o1
September 13, 2024.
4 months ago
Jascha’s blog
Too much efficiency makes everything worse: overfitting and the strong version of Goodhart’s law
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...
over a year ago
window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [];
function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);}
gtag('js', new Date());
gtag('config', 'G-1XJMTJ5KCK');
Increased efficiency can sometimes, counterintuitively, lead to worse outcomes.
This is true almost everywhere.
We will name...
Sam Altman
Please Fund More Science
Experts on the COVID-19 pandemic seem to think there are three ways out—that is, for life, health,...
over a year ago
Experts on the COVID-19 pandemic seem to think there are three ways out—that is, for life, health, and the economy to return roughly to normal.
Either we get a vaccine good enough that R0 for the world goes below 1, a good enough treatment that people no longer need to be...
Andrej Karpathy blog
Short Story on AI: A Cognitive Discontinuity.
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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...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 048: The Robot Constitution
January 5, 2024.
a year ago
Frank’s Ramblings
Vision Transformers are Overrated
Vision transformers (ViTs) have seen an incredible rise in the past four years. They have an obvious...
a year ago
Vision transformers (ViTs) have seen an incredible rise in the past four years. They have an obvious upside: in a visual recognition setting, the receptive field of a pure ViT is effectively the entire image 1. In particular, vanilla ViTs maintain the quadratic time complexity...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 026: AudioCraft
August 4, 2023
a year ago
Weighty Thoughts
Software Engineering is Doomed
Or is it?
6 months ago
One Useful Thing
Prophecies of the Flood
What to make of the statements of the AI labs?
a week ago
What to make of the statements of the AI labs?
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?
IEEE Spectrum
Drones with Legs Can Walk, Hop, and Jump into the Air
“Whenever I encountered crows on the EPFL campus, I would observe how they walked, hopped over or...
a month ago
“Whenever I encountered crows on the EPFL campus, I would observe how they walked, hopped over or jumped on obstacles, and jumped for take-offs,” says Won Dong Shin, a doctoral student at EPFL’s Laboratory of Intelligent Systems. “What I consistently observed was that they always...
Society's Backend
What it's Like to Work in AI and Advice from 10 AI Professionals
I asked 10 AI professionals 4 questions about their work in AI and the qualifications required for...
2 months ago
I asked 10 AI professionals 4 questions about their work in AI and the qualifications required for their job
AI Snake Oil
Model alignment protects against accidental harms, not intentional ones
The hand wringing about failures of model alignment is misguided
a year ago
The hand wringing about failures of model alignment is misguided
Made by Ollin
NVIDIA Internship (2017)
Notes on my internship at NVIDIA Redmond.
over a year ago
Notes on my internship at NVIDIA Redmond.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 092: Watermarking the AI wave
November 8, 2024.
2 months ago
Society's Backend
Multimodal Biometric Authentication, Noteworthy AI Research Papers of 2024, 5 Common Mistakes to...
Society's Backend Reading List 01-17-2025
5 days ago
Society's Backend Reading List 01-17-2025
Strange Loop Canon
Strange Loop Canon Commencement Address
6 months ago
Sam Altman
Project Covalence
Almost every company and non-profit working on COVID-19 that I offered to help asked for support...
over a year ago
Almost every company and non-profit working on COVID-19 that I offered to help asked for support with clinical trials—for companies focusing on developing novel drugs, vaccines, and diagnostics, rapidly spinning up trials is one of their biggest bottlenecks.
Science remains the...
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...
10 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
Matt Mazur
Friday Updates: Shipping AI Suggestions in Preceden, EmergentMind Growth and Brainstorming
Preceden On Tuesday I shipped the v1 of Preceden’s new AI suggestions feature to 10% of new users: I...
a year ago
Preceden On Tuesday I shipped the v1 of Preceden’s new AI suggestions feature to 10% of new users: I had planned on slowly rolling it out to 100% of users over the course of a week or two, but my OpenAI costs were minimal on Tuesday so on Wednesday I said screw it and just […]
fast.ai
From Deep Learning Foundations to Stable Diffusion
We’ve released our new course with over 30 hours of video content.
a year ago
We’ve released our new course with over 30 hours of video content.
Rozado’s Visual...
A brief response to a reader regarding prejudice denoting terms in Swedish media
Regarding when Swedish media started to increase mentions of prejudice denoting terminology and a...
a month ago
Regarding when Swedish media started to increase mentions of prejudice denoting terminology and a reader comments about it, several things to note:
Artificial Ignorance
LLMs are getting dumber and we have no idea why
Five theories that could explain how chatbots are getting worse.
4 months ago
Five theories that could explain how chatbots are getting worse.
Stories by Andrej...
A Peek at Trends in Machine Learning
over a year ago
Artificial Ignorance
How Intercom is transforming customer support with AI
A conversation with Fergal Reid, VP of AI at Intercom.
9 months ago
A conversation with Fergal Reid, VP of AI at Intercom.
One Useful Thing
Thinking Like an AI
A little intuition can help
3 months ago
A little intuition can help
Weighty Thoughts
From 6 Weeks to 600 Seconds (or Less)
The revolutionary potential of utilizing AI for electronic hardware design
3 weeks ago
The revolutionary potential of utilizing AI for electronic hardware design
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...
Weighty Thoughts
Let's talk about AI power costs
It's important, but a lot of recent attention has been concern-trolling
5 months ago
It's important, but a lot of recent attention has been concern-trolling
The Gradient
What Do LLMs Know About Linguistics? It Depends on How You Ask
On the phenomenon of LLM sensitivity to prompting choices through two core linguistic tasks and...
a year ago
On the phenomenon of LLM sensitivity to prompting choices through two core linguistic tasks and categorize how specific prompting choices can affect the model's behavior.
Matt Mazur
Turning Down $7k for a Side Project I Announced Two Weeks Ago I was Shutting Down
About two weeks ago I announced I was shutting down LearnGPT. After the announcement, I received a...
a year ago
About two weeks ago I announced I was shutting down LearnGPT. After the announcement, I received a lot of interest from people interested in taking it over, so I decided to try to sell it instead of shutting it down. I wound up receiving two offers, one for $6.5k and one for $7k,...
Strange Loop Canon
AI bill vetoed; what's next?
Make AI regulations evidence based
3 months ago
Make AI regulations evidence based
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...
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
Society's Backend
Backend Biweekly #3: 97 Updates and Resources
Huge Nvidia Updates, Gemini Hackathon for Money, and more
9 months ago
Huge Nvidia Updates, Gemini Hackathon for Money, and more
Marcus on AI
On hype, and the unbearable banality of ChatGPT’s poetry
A new AI study is making the rounds, claiming that ChatGPT can write poetry that is...
2 months ago
A new AI study is making the rounds, claiming that ChatGPT can write poetry that is “indistinguishable” from William Shakespeare.
Society's Backend
Side Projects to Get a Job in ML, a Survey of Small Language Models, How to Build ML Pipelines, and...
Society's Backend Reading List 11-11-2024
2 months ago
Society's Backend Reading List 11-11-2024
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...
over 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
AI Snake Oil
AI scaling myths
Scaling will run out. The question is when.
6 months ago
Scaling will run out. The question is when.
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
Society's Backend
Ask Stupid Questions
I’m convinced that after having a fourth or fifth child exhaustion kicks in and a person’s long-term...
a year ago
I’m convinced that after having a fourth or fifth child exhaustion kicks in and a person’s long-term memory ceases to function properly. I’ve become victim to this and I’ve started taking very detailed notes during meetings. If my brain won’t store the information, something else...
The Berkeley...
Fully Autonomous Real-World Reinforcement Learning with Applications to Mobile Manipulation
Reinforcement learning provides a conceptual framework for autonomous agents to learn from...
over a year ago
Reinforcement learning provides a conceptual framework for autonomous agents to learn from experience, analogously to how one might train a pet with treats. But practical applications of reinforcement learning are often far from natural: instead of using RL to learn through trial...
Society's Backend
A Privacy Review: Google
I read Google's privacy policy for you
a year ago
I read Google's privacy policy for you
One Useful Thing
AI in organizations: Some tactics
Meet the Lab and the Crowd
3 months ago
Meet the Lab and the Crowd
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...
One Useful Thing
Which AI should I use? Superpowers and the State of Play
And then there were three...
10 months ago
And then there were three...
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
IEEE Spectrum
Robot Gets Up Close to the Seabed Without Disturbing It
Seabed observation plays a major role in safeguarding marine systems by keeping tabs on the species...
yesterday
Seabed observation plays a major role in safeguarding marine systems by keeping tabs on the species and habitats on the ocean floor at different depths. This is primarily done by underwater robots that use optical imaging to collect high quality data that can be fed into...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 052: AI, EO, DPA
February 2, 2024.
11 months ago
fast.ai
There’s no such thing as not a math person
Many cultural factors, misconceptions, stereotypes, and obstacles turn people off to math.
over a year ago
Many cultural factors, misconceptions, stereotypes, and obstacles turn people off to math.
AI Snake Oil
The LLaMA is out of the bag. Should we expect a tidal wave of disinformation?
The bottleneck isn't the cost of producing disinfo, which is already very low.
a year ago
The bottleneck isn't the cost of producing disinfo, which is already very low.
Weighty Thoughts
Fear and Loathing in 7nm
How much does Huawei and SMIC's new chip matter? And what should the US do?
a year ago
How much does Huawei and SMIC's new chip matter? And what should the US do?
Strange Loop Canon
OpenAI's Strawberry models can reason like an expert
When models can think
4 months ago
Marcus on AI
A new AI scaling law shell game?
Scaling laws were supposed to be, well, laws.
a month ago
Scaling laws were supposed to be, well, laws.
Marcus on AI
ChatGPT, at Age Two
The bullshit just keeps on coming.
a month ago
The bullshit just keeps on coming.
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
Strange Loop Canon
Power, money and human nature
Thoughts on OpenAI, a tragedy
a year ago
Thoughts on OpenAI, a tragedy
Society's Backend
Run Your Own Race
What Bluey can teach us about machine learning
9 months ago
What Bluey can teach us about machine learning
One Useful Thing
Confronting Impossible Futures
We shouldn't be certain about what is next, but we should plan for it
6 months ago
We shouldn't be certain about what is next, but we should plan for it
Society's Backend
How to Use Benchmarks to Build Successful Machine Learning Systems
And what benchmarks mean for real-world applications
5 months ago
And what benchmarks mean for real-world applications
One Useful Thing
Automating creativity
There is now strong evidence that AI can help make us more innovative.
a year ago
There is now strong evidence that AI can help make us more innovative.
Daniel Miessler
Using Custom Searches in Safari (in 2022)
I’ve just started using Safari again after being on Chrome for a while, and one of the things I miss...
over a year ago
I’ve just started using Safari again after being on Chrome for a while, and one of the things I miss most from Chrome is custom searches. There you can search Amazon directly from the address bar by doing: You can change the search prompts to be single letters like ‘a’ for...
Weighty Thoughts
AI Reasoning—What is It?
The Significant Implications of Test-Time Compute
5 days ago
The Significant Implications of Test-Time Compute
IEEE Spectrum
This Mobile 3D Printer Can Print Directly on Your Floor
Waiting for each part of a 3D-printed project to finish, taking it out of the printer, and then...
2 months ago
Waiting for each part of a 3D-printed project to finish, taking it out of the printer, and then installing it on location can be tedious for multi-part projects. What if there was a way for your printer to print its creation exactly where you needed it? That’s the promise of...
Made by Ollin
Priors for Autonomous Vehicle Development
over a year ago
Artificial Ignorance
Getting to the top of the GPT Store (and building an AI-native search engine, too)
Listen now | A conversation with Christian Salem, founder and CPO of Consensus.
9 months ago
Listen now | A conversation with Christian Salem, founder and CPO of Consensus.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 094: Pixtral et Le Chat
November 22, 2024.
2 months ago
AI Snake Oil
OpenAI’s policies hinder reproducible research on language models
LLMs have become privately-controlled research infrastructure
a year ago
LLMs have become privately-controlled research infrastructure
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.
One Useful Thing
Superhuman?
What does it mean for AI to be better than a human? And how can we tell?
8 months ago
What does it mean for AI to be better than a human? And how can we tell?
Jascha’s blog
The hot mess theory of AI misalignment: More intelligent agents behave less coherently
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a year ago
window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [];
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Many machine learning researchers worry about risks from building artificial intelligence...
Rozado’s Visual...
The Political Preferences of LLMs
Substantial political homogeneity in Large Language Models (LLMs) responses to questions with...
11 months ago
Substantial political homogeneity in Large Language Models (LLMs) responses to questions with political connotations
Society's Backend
Artificial Intelligence: A New Paradigm Emerges
A realistic perspective of the advantages and pitfalls of artificial intelligence
a year ago
A realistic perspective of the advantages and pitfalls of artificial intelligence
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 065: The gpt2-chatbot mystery
May 3, 2024.
8 months 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
2 months ago
Society's Backend Reading List 10-28-2024
Rozado’s Visual...
The Prevalence of Prejudice-Denoting Terms in Spanish Newspapers
Published paper Twitter summary Introduction Previous scholarly literature here and here has...
over a year ago
Published paper Twitter summary Introduction Previous scholarly literature here and here has documented a pronounced increase in the prevalence of prejudice-denoting terms in American news media content. Some have referred to this shift in journalistic discourse and related...
Strange Loop Canon
Whither Utopia?
The mystery of why we don't dream of building perfect societies anymore
7 months ago
The mystery of why we don't dream of building perfect societies anymore
One Useful Thing
The Lazy Tyranny of the Wait Calculation
Taking AI timelines seriously
a year ago
Taking AI timelines seriously
Daniel Miessler
Reverse Transcription
There are dozens of reasons to be bullish on AI right now, especially in the GPT space where we have...
over 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...
Sam Altman
The Virus
Although I still hope things will go differently, the experts I’ve spoken to think we are likely to...
over a year ago
Although I still hope things will go differently, the experts I’ve spoken to think we are likely to face a global tragedy—hundreds of thousands of deaths from Covid-19.
I hope that society views this as a warning for the future. Covid-19 is bad, but only a warm-up. I think it’s...
Strange Loop Canon
LLMs have special intelligence, not general, and that's plenty.
“Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.”
10 months ago
“Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.”
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 043: Happy birthday, ChatGPT
December 1, 2023.
a year ago
Sam Altman
The Strength of Being Misunderstood
A founder recently asked me how to stop caring what other people think. I didn’t have an answer, and...
over a year ago
A founder recently asked me how to stop caring what other people think. I didn’t have an answer, and after reflecting on it more, I think it's the wrong question.
Almost everyone cares what someone thinks (though caring what everyone thinks is definitely a mistake), and it's...
Strange Loop Canon
LLMs breach a threshold
Open Source models get more powerful, and an AI system scores silver in Maths Olympiad
5 months ago
Open Source models get more powerful, and an AI system scores silver in Maths Olympiad
Society's Backend
A Fundamental Overview of Machine Learning Experimentation [Part 1]
And how it differs from the software development you're familiar with
a month ago
And how it differs from the software development you're familiar with
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 050: Synthetic Geometry
January 19, 2024.
a year ago
Rozado’s Visual...
The Increasing Frequency of Terms Denoting Political Extremism in U.S. and U.K. News Media
Published manuscript Twitter Thread Introduction I summarize here a published study co-authored with...
over a year ago
Published manuscript Twitter Thread Introduction I summarize here a published study co-authored with Eric Kaufmann where we examine longitudinally the prevalence of terms denoting far-right and far-left political extremism in more than 30 million written news and opinion articles...
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...
a year 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
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.
fast.ai
Is Avoiding Extinction from AI Really an Urgent Priority?
The history of technology suggests that the greatest risks come not from the tech, but from the...
a year ago
The history of technology suggests that the greatest risks come not from the tech, but from the people who control it
Society's Backend
MASSIVE New Model Releases from Google, OpenAI, and Meta Change the AI Landscape
Society's Backend Reading List 12-16-2024
a month ago
Society's Backend Reading List 12-16-2024
Frank’s Ramblings
My Experience Living and Working in China, Part I
In this four-part article, I’ll go over some of the lessons I learned living and doing business in...
over a year ago
In this four-part article, I’ll go over some of the lessons I learned living and doing business in China’s tech industry. During my time in China, I’ve led a team of 10+ engineers to develop a location-based IoT and sensing platform, co-founded an open-source project called...
Artificial Ignorance
10 AI stories that shaped 2024
Agents, deepfakes, Strawberries, and more.
3 weeks ago
Agents, deepfakes, Strawberries, and more.
Society's Backend
All Machine Learning Resources and Updates 06/21/2024
Below are the machine learning resources and updates from the past few days you don't want to miss....
7 months ago
Below are the machine learning resources and updates from the past few days you don't want to miss. If you want all the ML updates from X, follow me there. Mamba + Sliding Window Attention = SAMBA with Efficient Unlimited... China runs to be one of top global players in AI model...
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...
Society's Backend
Meet Devansh: Lessons Learned While Building a Community of 193,000 Subscribers
Content creation and networking lessons from a wildly successful freelance tech writer
a year ago
Content creation and networking lessons from a wildly successful freelance tech writer
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Cobot Proxie
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE...
2 months ago
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.
Humanoids Summit: 11–12 December...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 093: Diminishing returns
November 15, 2024.
2 months ago
Society's Backend
Godmother of AI Warns Against Regulation, Apple Intelligence System Prompts, Faster and Cheaper AI,...
Machine learning resources and updates 8/12/2024
5 months ago
Machine learning resources and updates 8/12/2024
Daniel Miessler
Your Experience is Your Creativity
Creativity is usually described as an external force that graces you with inspiration. Something...
over 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...
Matt Mazur
Updates: Preceden Trends, Training Help Scout’s New Analytics Engineer, Don’t Look Up, and Ray...
Preceden Recurring Revenue: In January 2021 I introduced automatically recurring annual plans to...
over a year ago
Preceden Recurring Revenue: In January 2021 I introduced automatically recurring annual plans to Preceden. Prior to that the annual plans did not renew automatically which was an intentional (but bad) choice I had made because most users did not user Preceden for more than a...
Daniel Miessler
Companies as Alaskan Fishing Boats
What if companies are supposed to be like Alaskan fishing boats? You know, the kind on The Deadliest...
over a year ago
What if companies are supposed to be like Alaskan fishing boats? You know, the kind on The Deadliest Catch. So you have this tiny crew of total badasses. Everyone is a superhero at their particular role because the crew needs to stay extremely small to protect profits. The...
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Multiple MagicBots
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE...
a month ago
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.
Humanoids Summit: 11–12 December...
Society's Backend
5 Highlights From Society's Backend in 2024
The top 5 articles and resources
2 weeks ago
The top 5 articles and resources
Matt Mazur
Running Mistral 8x7Bs Mixture of Experts on a Macbook
Below are the steps I used to get Mistral 8x7Bs Mixture of Experts (MOE) model running locally on my...
a year ago
Below are the steps I used to get Mistral 8x7Bs Mixture of Experts (MOE) model running locally on my Macbook (with its Apple M2 chip and 24 GB of memory). Here’s a great overview of the model for anyone interested in learning more. Short version: The Mistral “Mixtral” 8x7B 32k...
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...
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....
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 071: How do you like them AIs
June 14, 2024.
7 months ago
The Berkeley...
FIGS: Attaining XGBoost-level performance with the interpretability and speed of CART
FIGS (Fast Interpretable Greedy-tree Sums): A method for building interpretable models by...
over a year ago
FIGS (Fast Interpretable Greedy-tree Sums): A method for building interpretable models by simultaneously growing an ensemble of decision trees in competition with one another.
Recent machine-learning advances have led to increasingly complex predictive models, often at the cost...
Daniel Miessler
AI is About to Feel Like AGI, and You Need to Get Ready
I just wrote a piece similar to this last week, but this one drives the point home even more....
over a year ago
I just wrote a piece similar to this last week, but this one drives the point home even more. Basically, the current trajectory of AI, with all the art generation, the language models, etc., are about to become a whole lot more instruction and response based. What does that mean?...
Matt Mazur
2024 Year in Review
At the end of 2022 I wrapped up my contract work with Help Scout and took the plunge to work on my...
a week ago
At the end of 2022 I wrapped up my contract work with Help Scout and took the plunge to work on my indie software businesses full time. I’m now two years into that adventure, and wanted to share a periodic update about how things are going. Preceden on the Back Burner I made 32...
Society's Backend
The Problem with American Emergency Alerts
In a world of self-driving cars and human-like chatbots, shouldn't the best technologies would be...
a year ago
In a world of self-driving cars and human-like chatbots, shouldn't the best technologies would be used for life-saving applications?
One Useful Thing
A quick and sobering guide to cloning yourself
It took me a few minutes to create a fake me giving a fake lecture.
a year ago
It took me a few minutes to create a fake me giving a fake lecture.
Daniel Miessler
Scott Kuffer of Nucleus Security | SPONSORED INTERVIEW SERIES
In this standalone episode we’re doing a sponsored interview with Scott Kuffer, co-founder and COO...
over a year ago
In this standalone episode we’re doing a sponsored interview with Scott Kuffer, co-founder and COO of Nucleus Security. I was already excited by this vendor just based on the research I did to allow them to be a sponsor, but the conversation with them really made me think they’re...
AI Snake Oil
Does the UK’s liver transplant matching algorithm systematically exclude younger patients?
Seemingly minor technical decisions can have life-or-death effects
2 months ago
Seemingly minor technical decisions can have life-or-death effects
Weighty Thoughts
The Fall of Data Moats
AI actually makes most data moats weaker
a year ago
AI actually makes most data moats weaker
One Useful Thing
Scaling: The State of Play in AI
A brief intergenerational pause...
4 months ago
A brief intergenerational pause...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 030: OpenAI's $1B revenue
September 1, 2023
a year ago
Marcus on AI
The Five Stages of AGI Grief
And a look at how people keep trying to redefine (or even revoke) the goalposts of what Artificial...
2 weeks ago
And a look at how people keep trying to redefine (or even revoke) the goalposts of what Artificial General Intelligence means.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 086: Llama 3.2
September 27, 2024.
3 months ago
The Gradient
Do text embeddings perfectly encode text?
'Vec2text' can serve as a solution for accurately reverting embeddings back into text, thus...
10 months ago
'Vec2text' can serve as a solution for accurately reverting embeddings back into text, thus highlighting the urgent need for revisiting security protocols around embedded data.
Marcus on AI
CONFIRMED: LLMs have indeed reached a point of diminishing returns
Science, sociology, and the likely financial collapse of the Generative AI bubble
2 months ago
Science, sociology, and the likely financial collapse of the Generative AI bubble
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 077: A good week for open-source
July 26, 2024.
5 months ago
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...
a year 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...
Strange Loop Canon
Disruption starts at the margins, but doesn't stop there
Contra Hoel on AI and its supply paradox
a year ago
Contra Hoel on AI and its supply paradox
Sam Altman
Reflections
The second birthday of ChatGPT was only a little over a month ago, and now we have transitioned into...
2 weeks ago
The second birthday of ChatGPT was only a little over a month ago, and now we have transitioned into the next paradigm of models that can do complex reasoning. New years get people in a reflective mood, and I wanted to share some personal thoughts about how it has gone so far,...
One Useful Thing
Almost an Agent: What GPTs can do
Also, my book has a cover (also I have a book coming out)
a year ago
Also, my book has a cover (also I have a book coming out)
Daniel Miessler
Napkin Ideas Around What Changes to Expect Post-ChatGPT
Work Replacement Talent Magnification Solopreneuers AI Specialists Idea Dominance Use Cases Random...
over a year ago
Work Replacement Talent Magnification Solopreneuers AI Specialists Idea Dominance Use Cases Random Thoughts If you’re reading this you already know the internet is on fire over the new GPTChatBot from OpenAI. There are people using it to create full virtual machines, to be their...
One Useful Thing
Freeing the chatbot
Intelligence, of a sort, is going to be all around us
8 months ago
Intelligence, of a sort, is going to be all around us
Sam Altman
Productivity
I think I am
at least somewhat more productive than average, and people sometimes ask me...
over a year ago
I think I am
at least somewhat more productive than average, and people sometimes ask me for
productivity tips. So I decided to just write them all down in one place.
Compound
growth gets discussed as a financial concept, but it works in careers as well,
and it is magic. A...
AI Snake Oil
ML is useful for many things, but not for predicting scientific replicability
How the veneer of AI is used to legitimize awful ideas
a year ago
How the veneer of AI is used to legitimize awful ideas
Society's Backend
Meta's New Segmentation Model, A New Open-Source Image Generation Model, Apple Intelligence Model...
Machine learning resources and updates 8/5/2024
5 months ago
Machine learning resources and updates 8/5/2024
Andrej Karpathy blog
Deep Reinforcement Learning: Pong from Pixels
-->
This is a long overdue blog post on Reinforcement Learning (RL). RL is hot! You may have...
over a year ago
-->
This is a long overdue blog post on Reinforcement Learning (RL). RL is hot! You may have noticed that computers can now automatically learn to play ATARI games (from raw game pixels!), they are beating world champions at Go, simulated quadrupeds are learning to run and leap,...
Strange Loop Canon
The age of access
the great polarisation theory, and the death of professions
a year ago
the great polarisation theory, and the death of professions
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
6 months ago
Weekly updates and resources 7/22/24
Weighty Thoughts
Most AI startups are doomed
Just because it matters doesn’t mean it’s defensible or profitable
a year ago
Just because it matters doesn’t mean it’s defensible or profitable
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
Daniel Miessler
NO. 362 | Dependency Scanner, Citrix Attacks, AI Analysis…
SECURITY NEWS Google released an open-source scanner for vulnerabilities in project dependencies....
over a year ago
SECURITY NEWS Google released an open-source scanner for vulnerabilities in project dependencies. It's a front-end to the OSV database that links a dependency list to its vulnerabilities. MORE The latest updates for Apple software fixed a new zero-day that could be used to hack...
The Berkeley...
2024 BAIR Graduate Directory
Every year, the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research (BAIR) Lab graduates some of the most...
10 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...
Daniel Miessler
Unsupervised Learning NO. 365 | China’s Decline, MicrosoftAI, Creativity Ratio…
🎙️If you're not subscribed to the podcast version of the newsletter, please add it using with your...
over 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 NYC Surveillance Amnesty International has revealed new research showing that the NYPD has over 15,000 cameras that can do...
Society's Backend
Digitizing Smell, Automatic Prompt Optimization, Targeted AI Regulation, an Intro to AI Agents, and...
Society's Backend Reading List 11-04-2024
2 months ago
Society's Backend Reading List 11-04-2024
fast.ai
1st Two Lessons of From Deep Learning Foundations to Stable Diffusion
4 videos from Practical Deep Learning for Coders Part 2, 2022 have been released as a special early...
over a year ago
4 videos from Practical Deep Learning for Coders Part 2, 2022 have been released as a special early preview of the new course.
Marcus on AI
Update re: Microsoft and training data
Relevant to the post I sent earlier today,...
a month ago
Relevant to the post I sent earlier today, https://www.howtogeek.com/is-microsoft-using-your-word-documents-to-train-ai/says that an unnamed spokesperson at Microsoft claims that “Microsoft does not use customer data from Microsoft 365 consumer and commercial applications to...
IEEE Spectrum
Boston Dynamics and Toyota Research Team Up on Robots
Today, Boston Dynamics and the Toyota Research Institute (TRI) announced a new partnership “to...
3 months ago
Today, Boston Dynamics and the Toyota Research Institute (TRI) announced a new partnership “to accelerate the development of general-purpose humanoid robots utilizing TRI’s Large Behavior Models and Boston Dynamics’ Atlas robot.” Committing to working towards a general purpose...
Frank’s Ramblings
My Experience Living and Working in China, Part II: COVID Stories
In this four-part article, I’ll go over some of the lessons I learned living and doing business in...
over a year ago
In this four-part article, I’ll go over some of the lessons I learned living and doing business in China’s tech industry. During my time in China, I’ve led a team of 10+ engineers to develop a location-based IoT and sensing platform, co-founded an open-source project called...
Weighty Thoughts
Open AI's Valuation and a Favor to Ask
A guest post and an in-person panel
5 months ago
A guest post and an in-person panel
Artificial Ignorance
Workshop: Midjourney Masterclass with Daniel Nest
“This is one of the only webinars where I've actually been glued to my screen for the entire time,...
4 months ago
“This is one of the only webinars where I've actually been glued to my screen for the entire time, not distracted by passing whimsies...
Artificial Ignorance
AI's invisible instructions
What meme prompts can teach us about better interface design.
3 months ago
What meme prompts can teach us about better interface design.
One Useful Thing
How to... use AI to unstick yourself
We often lose momentum because of something small. AI can help.
a year ago
We often lose momentum because of something small. AI can help.
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...
Daniel Miessler
Frontview Mirror: 2023 Edition
This is member content. Thank you for being a subscriber. This is UL Member Content Subscribe...
over a year ago
This is member content. Thank you for being a subscriber. This is UL Member Content Subscribe Already a member? Login
Society's Backend
Top 10 Machine Learning Resources and Updates 06/14/2024
A new AI employee, a four hour video on recreating GPT-2, meritocracy at Scale, and more
7 months ago
A new AI employee, a four hour video on recreating GPT-2, meritocracy at Scale, and more
Artificial Ignorance
From Stable Diffusion to Stable Everything
Inside Stability AI's roster of AI models.
8 months ago
Inside Stability AI's roster of AI models.
One Useful Thing
Doing Stuff with AI: Opinionated Midyear Edition
AI systems have gotten more capable and easier to use
7 months ago
AI systems have gotten more capable and easier to use
Society's Backend
The Slow, Painful Death of the Free Content Creator
It's happening as you read this
a year ago
It's happening as you read this
One Useful Thing
15 Times to use AI, and 5 Not to
Notes on the Practical Wisdom of AI Use
a month ago
Notes on the Practical Wisdom of AI Use
AI Snake Oil
Will AI transform law?
The hype is not supported by current evidence
12 months ago
The hype is not supported by current evidence
Society's Backend
Taking the AI to Consumers
The Google Pixel 8 Pro is a much bigger deal than you think
a year ago
The Google Pixel 8 Pro is a much bigger deal than you think
Marcus on AI
Which CEO will be the last to see it?
What kept me going during the dark years of 2022 and 2023 when Generative AI was wildly overhyped...
a month ago
What kept me going during the dark years of 2022 and 2023 when Generative AI was wildly overhyped and I was constantly ridiculed was the secure knowledge that the truth would eventually come out.
Sam Altman
Hard Startups
The most counterintuitive secret about startups is that it’s often easier to succeed with a hard...
over a year ago
The most counterintuitive secret about startups is that it’s often easier to succeed with a hard startup than an easy one. A hard startup requires a lot more money, time, coordination, or technological development than most startups. A good hard startup is one that will be...
Artificial Ignorance
Tutorial: How to build an AI agent (Part 1)
Part 1: What is an agent, and how do they work?
a year ago
Part 1: What is an agent, and how do they work?
Rozado’s Visual...
Excess mortality during COVID pandemic, % of population vaccinated and Stringency Index of...
Please be mindful of potential confounds: population density, population behavior, virus virulence...
over a year ago
Please be mindful of potential confounds: population density, population behavior, virus virulence drift, herd immunity, etc.
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...
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Reachy 2
IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few...
3 months ago
IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.
IROS 2024: 14–18 October 2024, ABU DHABI, UAE
ICSR 2024: 23–26 October 2024, ODENSE, DENMARK
Cybathlon 2024: 25–27 October 2024,...
Society's Backend
Weekly Backend #7: 39 Resources and Updates
GPT-4o, Google I/O, Fugaku LLM, Prep for Machine Learning Interviews, and more
8 months ago
GPT-4o, Google I/O, Fugaku LLM, Prep for Machine Learning Interviews, and more
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 035: Me or your lying eyes
October 6, 2023.
a year ago
The Berkeley...
Virtual Personas for Language Models via an Anthology of Backstories
Anthology, a method for conditioning LLMs to representative, consistent, and diverse virtual...
2 months ago
Anthology, a method for conditioning LLMs to representative, consistent, and diverse virtual personas by generating and utilizing naturalistic backstories with rich details of individual values and experience.
-->
We introduce Anthology, a method for conditioning LLMs to...
IEEE Spectrum
Detachable Robotic Hand Crawls Around on Finger-Legs
When we think of grasping robots, we think of manipulators of some sort on the ends of arms of some...
3 months ago
When we think of grasping robots, we think of manipulators of some sort on the ends of arms of some sort. Because of course we do—that’s how (most of us) are built, and that’s the mindset with which we have consequently optimized the world around us. But one of the great things...
IEEE Spectrum
SwitchBot S10 Review: “This Is the Future of Home Robots”
I’ve been reviewing robot vacuums for more than a decade, and robot mops for just as long. It’s been...
3 months ago
I’ve been reviewing robot vacuums for more than a decade, and robot mops for just as long. It’s been astonishing how the technology has evolved, from the original iRobot Roomba bouncing off of walls and furniture to robots that use lidar and vision to map your entire house and...
Weighty Thoughts
Today’s AI critics don’t understand the history of technology
But is AI different than other technologies?
10 months ago
But is AI different than other technologies?
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