Strange Loop Canon
Symposium: On Building God
a year ago
Sam Altman
Reinforcement Learning Progress
Today, OpenAI released a new result. We used PPO (Proximal Policy Optimization), a general...
over a year ago
Today, OpenAI released a new result. We used PPO (Proximal Policy Optimization), a general reinforcement learning algorithm invented by OpenAI, to train a team of 5 agents to play Dota and beat semi-pros.
This is the game that to me feels closest to the real world and complex...
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
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
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
Marcus on AI
Could 2025 see the largest cyberattack in history?
In a just-published series of very brief essays called “The Incredible, World-Altering ‘Black Swan’...
2 weeks ago
In a just-published series of very brief essays called “The Incredible, World-Altering ‘Black Swan’ Events That Could Upend Life in 2025”, Politico asked “15 futurists, foreign policy analysts and other prognosticators”, including me, “to provide some explosive potential...
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
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
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
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 Gradient
Why Doesn’t My Model Work?
Have you ever trained a model you thought was good, but then it failed miserably when applied to...
11 months ago
Have you ever trained a model you thought was good, but then it failed miserably when applied to real world data? If so, you’re in good company.
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.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 040: GPTs
November 10, 2023.
a year ago
Artificial Ignorance
How to fine-tune ChatGPT
No GPU cluster required.
a year ago
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 041: Lyria
November 17, 2023.
a year ago
IEEE Spectrum
How Amazon Is Changing the Future of Robotics and Logistics
This is a sponsored article brought to you by Amazon.
“Innovation doesn’t just happen because you...
a month ago
This is a sponsored article brought to you by Amazon.
“Innovation doesn’t just happen because you have a good idea,” said Valerie Samzun, a leader in Amazon’s Fulfillment Technologies and Robotics (FTR) division. “It happens because you have the right team, the right...
Sam Altman
How To Invest In Startups
There is a lot of advice about how to be a good startup founder. But there isn’t very much about...
over a year ago
There is a lot of advice about how to be a good startup founder. But there isn’t very much about how to be a good startup investor.
Before going any further, I should point out that this is a particularly hard time to invest in startups—it’s easier right now to be a...
Artificial Ignorance
Lessons from 139 YC AI startups (S23)
The evolution of the AI landscape, and YC's Copilot era.
a year ago
The evolution of the AI landscape, and YC's Copilot era.
One Useful Thing
Post-apocalyptic education
What comes after the Homework Apocalypse
4 months ago
What comes after the Homework Apocalypse
One Useful Thing
What just happened
A transformative month rewrites the capabilities of AI
a month ago
A transformative month rewrites the capabilities of AI
Society's Backend
OpenAI's o1, Model Merging, California Approves AI Regulation, and More
Machine learning resources and updates 2024-09-17
4 months ago
Machine learning resources and updates 2024-09-17
Society's Backend
All Machine Learning Resources and Updates 7/8/24
Everything I've been reading
6 months ago
Everything I've been reading
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,...
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Mars Chopper
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,...
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
Society's Backend
Always Be Networking
The things you should know about effective networking
a year ago
The things you should know about effective networking
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...
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
Society's Backend
Coming soon!
Weekly publications to teach you about the technology that governs our society and how it impacts...
a year ago
Weekly publications to teach you about the technology that governs our society and how it impacts you. Coming in August!
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 098: Flash Thinking
December 20, 2024.
a month ago
Artificial Ignorance
Lies, damned lies, and benchmarks
While benchmarks (and leaderboards) are useful tools, they are but a small facet when it comes to...
11 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
I gave ChatGPT access to my Gmail
I'm sure this will end well.
a year ago
I'm sure this will end well.
Society's Backend
1000+ AI Agents Make a Civilization, xAI Creates the Largest Supercomputer in 4 Months, Possible AI...
Machine learning resources and updates 2024-09-09
4 months ago
Machine learning resources and updates 2024-09-09
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Sleepy Robot Baby
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE...
2 weeks 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...
PromptArmor Blog
Data exfiltration from Writer.com with indirect prompt injection
Authors: PromptArmor and Kai Greshake
a year ago
Authors: PromptArmor and Kai Greshake
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
Artificial Ignorance
AI and the workplace
How employees and CEOs alike can plan for the future.
8 months ago
How employees and CEOs alike can plan for the future.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 031: Think of the children
September 8, 2023
a year ago
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 053: Bye bye Bard
February 9, 2024.
11 months ago
Artificial Ignorance
o3 is important, but not because of benchmarks
OpenAI's new model offers a peek at the future of AI investment.
4 weeks ago
OpenAI's new model offers a peek at the future of AI investment.
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...
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
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
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?
Marcus on AI
ChatGPT, at Age Two
The bullshit just keeps on coming.
a month ago
The bullshit just keeps on coming.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 050: Synthetic Geometry
January 19, 2024.
a year ago
Andrej Karpathy blog
Biohacking Lite
Throughout my life I never paid too much attention to health, exercise, diet or nutrition. I knew...
over a year ago
Throughout my life I never paid too much attention to health, exercise, diet or nutrition. I knew that you’re supposed to get some exercise and eat vegetables or something, but it stopped at that (“mom said”-) level of abstraction. I also knew that I can probably get away with...
fast.ai
AI Harms are Societal, Not Just Individual
In the west, our ideas of harm are largely anchored to an individual being harmed by a particular...
over a year ago
In the west, our ideas of harm are largely anchored to an individual being harmed by a particular action at a discrete moment in time. Yet the harms caused by algorithmic systems are often collective and communal.
Andrej Karpathy blog
A Recipe for Training Neural Networks
Some few weeks ago I posted a tweet on “the most common neural net mistakes”, listing a few common...
over a year ago
Some few weeks ago I posted a tweet on “the most common neural net mistakes”, listing a few common gotchas related to training neural nets. The tweet got quite a bit more engagement than I anticipated (including a webinar :)). Clearly, a lot of people have personally encountered...
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...
Strange Loop Canon
Progress
when benefits are worth tallying the human cost of technological leaps
a year ago
when benefits are worth tallying the human cost of technological leaps
PromptArmor Blog
Coming soon
This is PromptArmor Blog.
a year ago
This is PromptArmor Blog.
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
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
Marcus on AI
Where will AI be at the end of 2027? A bet
We, Gary Marcus, author, scientist, and noted AI skeptic, and Miles Brundage, an independent AI...
3 weeks ago
We, Gary Marcus, author, scientist, and noted AI skeptic, and Miles Brundage, an independent AI policy researcher who recently left OpenAI and is bullish on AI progress, have agreed to the following bet, at 10:1 odds, with criteria drawn from two earlier Substack essays by Gary...
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).
Matt Mazur
AOL Underground Podcast Interview about AOL-Files.com
Back in 1998 when I was 13 years old I got heavily involved in the AOL hacking scene, originally...
over a year ago
Back in 1998 when I was 13 years old I got heavily involved in the AOL hacking scene, originally building add-on software called progs (Revolution, Meridian), publishing code libraries called bas files (Alpha32), and later co-founding AOL-Files.com (where I went by the hacker...
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...
Marcus on AI
Sora still appears to have trouble with physics
Exactly as I warned in February
a month ago
Exactly as I warned in February
Society's Backend
Clarifying DEI
What makes DEI important and where it fails
a year ago
What makes DEI important and where it fails
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Unitree Talent Awakening
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE...
3 weeks 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,...
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...
Daniel Miessler
NO. 360 | NEWS, ANALYSIS & DISCOVERY SERIES
SECURITY NEWS Security researchers found that Chinese electronics company Eufy (part of Anker) has...
over 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...
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...
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.
Artificial Ignorance
The hidden side of Apple Intelligence
More than just another keynote recap.
7 months ago
More than just another keynote recap.
Sam Altman
The Merge
A popular topic in Silicon Valley is talking about what year humans and machines will merge (or, if...
over a year ago
A popular topic in Silicon Valley is talking about what year humans and machines will merge (or, if not, what year humans will get surpassed by rapidly improving AI or a genetically enhanced species). Most guesses seem to be between 2025 and 2075.
People used to call this the...
Artificial Ignorance
OpenAI's o1 is a misunderstood model
Are the latest "reasoning" breakthroughs all they're hyped up to be?
4 months ago
Are the latest "reasoning" breakthroughs all they're hyped up to be?
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
Small newsletters, big ideas
A subscriber showcase full of hidden gems on Substack.
a month ago
A subscriber showcase full of hidden gems on Substack.
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
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 060: Another CEO gone
March 29, 2024.
9 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
AI Snake Oil
People keep anthropomorphizing AI. Here’s why
Companies and journalists both contribute to the confusion
a year ago
Companies and journalists both contribute to the confusion
fast.ai
I was an AI researcher. Now, I am an immunology student.
Last year, I became captivated by a new topic in a way that I hadn’t felt since I first discovered...
a year ago
Last year, I became captivated by a new topic in a way that I hadn’t felt since I first discovered machine learning
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,...
a year 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...
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...
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...
One Useful Thing
Not much is changing, a lot is changing
OpenAI, Microsoft, and the OpenOffspring
a year ago
OpenAI, Microsoft, and the OpenOffspring
Marcus on AI
𝗼𝟯 “𝗔𝗥𝗖 𝗔𝗚𝗜” 𝗽𝗼𝘀𝘁𝗺𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗲𝗺 𝗺𝗲𝗴𝗮𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱: 𝘄𝗵𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 𝗴𝗼𝘁...
Kevin Roose, of Hard Fork and NYT, was so impressed with OpenAI’s rollout that he joked “of course...
a month ago
Kevin Roose, of Hard Fork and NYT, was so impressed with OpenAI’s rollout that he joked “of course they have to announce AGI the day my vacation starts”.
The Gradient
Text-to-CAD: Risks and Opportunities
In the realm of AI-powered text-to-CAD, there's promise, but also a surge in subpar designs. Can we...
a year ago
In the realm of AI-powered text-to-CAD, there's promise, but also a surge in subpar designs. Can we steer this technology towards better outcomes?
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...
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...
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
Why Rust Isn't Killing C++
And a consideration for choosing a language
9 months ago
And a consideration for choosing a language
Sam Altman
Researchers and Founders
I spent many years working with founders and now I work with researchers.
Although there are always...
over a year ago
I spent many years working with founders and now I work with researchers.
Although there are always individual exceptions, on average it’s surprising to me how different the best people in these groups are (including in some qualities that I had assumed were present in great...
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.
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...
over 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...
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
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
Weighty Thoughts
VC Office Hours
Talk to James Wang, author of Weighty Thoughts and General Partner of Creative Ventures
11 months ago
Talk to James Wang, author of Weighty Thoughts and General Partner of Creative Ventures
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.
Rozado’s Visual...
Which is the Wokest AI?
A Wokeness Ranking of LLMs
11 months ago
A Wokeness Ranking of LLMs
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.
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...
Strange Loop Canon
The mystery of the garage
11 months ago
Stories by Andrej...
ICLR 2017 vs arxiv-sanity
over a year ago
Daniel Miessler
Podcast Audio Quality: AI-based Post-processing vs. Hardware
I’ve been podcasting since 2015 and got really into audio when the plague started. Like…too much....
over a year ago
I’ve been podcasting since 2015 and got really into audio when the plague started. Like…too much. Anyway. I’ve been obsessed with podcast audio quality for years, and have been through so…many…iterations of my setup. I started with a Yeti (still a great mic). Did the...
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...
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
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...
Society's Backend
How to Know if Your Data is Being Used Maliciously
The information you should know about a company before gifting them your data
a year ago
The information you should know about a company before gifting them your data
One Useful Thing
Google's Gemini Advanced: Tasting Notes and Implications
And then there were two.
11 months ago
Society's Backend
I Enjoy Technical Interviews and You Can Too
A simple change in mindset that completely changed the way I interview
a year ago
A simple change in mindset that completely changed the way I interview
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...
Artificial Ignorance
The greatest movies never made
A look into the world of AI-generated movie trailer slop.
a week ago
A look into the world of AI-generated movie trailer slop.
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...
fast.ai
A New Chapter for fast.ai: How To Solve It With Code
fast.ai is joining Answer.AI, and we’re announcing a new kind of educational experience, ‘How To...
2 months ago
fast.ai is joining Answer.AI, and we’re announcing a new kind of educational experience, ‘How To Solve It With Code’
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
8 months ago
What spending $2,000 can tell us about evaluating AI agents
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...
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...
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...
AI Snake Oil
Generative AI’s end-run around copyright won’t be resolved by the courts
Output similarity is a distraction
a year ago
Output similarity is a distraction
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 093: Diminishing returns
November 15, 2024.
2 months ago
Made by Ollin
Maple Diffusion
I ported Stable Diffusion to my phone
over a year ago
I ported Stable Diffusion to my phone
Sam Altman
Keep the Internet Open
The FCC has announced plans to roll back policies on net neutrality, and its new head has indicated...
over a year ago
The FCC has announced plans to roll back policies on net neutrality, and its new head has indicated he has no plan to stop soon.
The internet is a public good, and I believe access should be a basic right. We've seen such great innovation in software because the internet has...
Sam Altman
Funding for COVID-19 Projects
I’m trying to fund startups/projects helping with COVID-19, because it’s basically the one thing I...
over a year ago
I’m trying to fund startups/projects helping with COVID-19, because it’s basically the one thing I know how to do that can help. I think we will soon have enough testing capacity, so now I’d like to start funding more startups working on:
Producing a lot of ventilators or...
Artificial Ignorance
AI predictions for 2025
And a review of last year's predictions.
2 weeks ago
And a review of last year's predictions.
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...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 055: Race conditions
February 23, 2023.
11 months ago
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...
3 months ago
Providing a technical perspective for a more educated assessment of a complaint I hear quite frequently
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...
Weighty Thoughts
What’s coming next for AI in 2024
A long overdue VC apocalypse and the birth of the first real AI companies
a year ago
A long overdue VC apocalypse and the birth of the first real AI companies
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 […]
Matt Mazur
Indie Hacking Week 2 Recap – TimelineGPT Progress, LearnGPT Decision Time
For Martin Luther King weekend my family and I headed to Boone, North Carolina and stayed in a cabin...
over a year ago
For Martin Luther King weekend my family and I headed to Boone, North Carolina and stayed in a cabin for a few days. We went snow tubing at Beech Mountain while we were there, one of the many ski resorts in the area. As is common on vacations, I spent way too much time thinking...
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
Strange Loop Canon
Discovery is the original sin of the modern age
technology, living post scarcity, and how to find what you want
a year ago
technology, living post scarcity, and how to find what you want
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
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.
8 months ago
These Python scripts help me write 3x faster and go from loose ideas to first draft in minutes.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 074: Amazon's Adept acquisition
July 5, 2024.
6 months ago
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...
The Gradient
Shape, Symmetries, and Structure: The Changing Role of Mathematics in Machine Learning Research
What is the Role of Mathematics in Modern Machine Learning?
The past decade has witnessed a shift in...
2 months ago
What is the Role of Mathematics in Modern Machine Learning?
The past decade has witnessed a shift in how progress is made in machine learning. Research involving carefully designed and mathematically principled architectures result in only marginal improvements while...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 070: AI whistleblowers
June 7, 2024.
7 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...
over 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,...
Made by Ollin
NVIDIA Internship (2017)
Notes on my internship at NVIDIA Redmond.
over a year ago
Notes on my internship at NVIDIA Redmond.
AI Snake Oil
AI existential risk probabilities are too unreliable to inform policy
How speculation gets laundered through pseudo-quantification
6 months ago
How speculation gets laundered through pseudo-quantification
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.
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...
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...
One Useful Thing
Detecting the Secret Cyborgs
The AI Trap for Organizations
a year ago
The AI Trap for Organizations
Marcus on AI
The impeccable logic of Sam Altman
From a Bloomberg interview, spotted and summarized by Harlan Stewart, presented without further...
a week ago
From a Bloomberg interview, spotted and summarized by Harlan Stewart, presented without further comment:
One Useful Thing
I, Cyborg: Using Co-Intelligence
How I used AI in my book about AI
10 months ago
How I used AI in my book about AI
Society's Backend
Why Machine Learning Terminology is So Confusing
And definitions for the most important terms you should know
11 months ago
And definitions for the most important terms you should know
Rozado’s Visual...
An Analysis of AI Political Preferences from a European Perspective
Introduction
2 months ago
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...
Is climate change 100 times more threatening than gain-of-function research?
Mentions of climate change in news media vastly outnumber other existential threats
a year ago
Mentions of climate change in news media vastly outnumber other existential threats
Weighty Thoughts
Commentary on Technology, Startups, and Investing
Welcome to Weighty Thoughts by me, James Wang. General Partner at Creative Ventures. Ex-Bridgewater...
over a year ago
Welcome to Weighty Thoughts by me, James Wang. General Partner at Creative Ventures. Ex-Bridgewater and Google X. Co-Founder Lioness. Sign up now so you don’t miss the first issue. In the meantime, tell your friends!
Made by Ollin
Game Emulation via Neural Network
over a year ago
One Useful Thing
Thinking Like an AI
A little intuition can help
3 months ago
A little intuition can help
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
Strange Loop Canon
What would a world with AGI look like?
16 hours ago
Artificial Ignorance
The subscriptionization of AI
Navigating the paid AI landscape.
10 months ago
Navigating the paid AI landscape.
The Berkeley...
Asymmetric Certified Robustness via Feature-Convex Neural Networks
Asymmetric Certified Robustness via Feature-Convex Neural Networks
TLDR: We propose the asymmetric...
a year 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...
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.
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
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 038: Preparedness
October 27, 2023.
a year ago
Marcus on AI
25 AI Predictions for 2025, from Marcus on AI
With a review of last year’s predictions
2 weeks ago
With a review of last year’s predictions
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...
Made by Ollin
Acapella Extraction with ConvNets
A working prototype
over a year ago
AI Snake Oil
What is algorithmic amplification and why should we care?
A symposium and a primer on social media recommendation algorithms
a year ago
A symposium and a primer on social media recommendation algorithms
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Arms on Vacuums
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE...
a week 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...
One Useful Thing
AI in organizations: Some tactics
Meet the Lab and the Crowd
3 months ago
Meet the Lab and the Crowd
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
Is GPT-4 getting worse over time?
A new paper going viral has been widely misinterpreted
a year ago
A new paper going viral has been widely misinterpreted
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
Weighty Thoughts
Let’s Talk About AI Compute
What really matters and why AI computing is exactly the same as all other large-scale computing
a year ago
What really matters and why AI computing is exactly the same as all other large-scale computing
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...
Society's Backend
Why everyone loves Spider-Man
Lessons anyone can learn from our friendly neighborhood web-crawler
a year ago
Lessons anyone can learn from our friendly neighborhood web-crawler
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 037: The AI IPCC
October 20, 2023.
a year ago
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...
Made by Ollin
Priors for Autonomous Vehicle Development
over a year ago
One Useful Thing
Signs and Portents
Some hints about what the next year of AI looks like
a year ago
Some hints about what the next year of AI looks like
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
Weighty Thoughts
Why ChatGPT Strawberry o1 (and other LLMs) will Never be Good at Diagnosis
“Connectionist” vs. Knowledge-Based AI
3 months ago
“Connectionist” vs. Knowledge-Based AI
One Useful Thing
An Opinionated Guide to Which AI to Use: ChatGPT Anniversary Edition
A simple answer, and then a less simple one.
a year ago
A simple answer, and then a less simple one.
One Useful Thing
The Present Future: AI's Impact Long Before Superintelligence
You can start to see the outlines of an AI future, for better and worse
2 months ago
You can start to see the outlines of an AI future, for better and worse
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...
over 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
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,...
Artificial Ignorance
How to reverse engineer the Substack (or any!) web API
Building an unauthorized Substack client with Claude.
5 months ago
Building an unauthorized Substack client with Claude.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 073: Music make you lose control
June 28, 2024.
6 months ago
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
Society's Backend
JAX is for More Than Just Machine Learning
What JAX is and its potential applications
7 months ago
What JAX is and its potential applications
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...
Artificial Ignorance
Who in their right mind would do an AI hardware startup
From megaFLOPS to mega flops.
9 months ago
From megaFLOPS to mega flops.
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
AI Roundup 026: AudioCraft
August 4, 2023
a year ago
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
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...
Artificial Ignorance
Saving the world with AI and government grants
Listen now | A conversation with Helena Merk, founder and CEO of Streamline Climate.
6 months ago
Listen now | A conversation with Helena Merk, founder and CEO of Streamline Climate.
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...
Artificial Ignorance
How a $2000/hour escort uses AI to automate sex work
Listen now | A conversation with Adelyn Moore, an independent escort and adult content creator.
5 months ago
Listen now | A conversation with Adelyn Moore, an independent escort and adult content creator.
Strange Loop Canon
Seeing Like A Network
Dark Forests, Dense Networks
7 months ago
Dark Forests, Dense Networks
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.
Artificial Ignorance
The Industrial Content Revolution
A fundamental change in the structure the internet.
a year ago
A fundamental change in the structure the internet.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 075: Levels of AGI
July 12, 2024.
6 months ago
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...
Stories by Andrej...
A Peek at Trends in Machine Learning
over a year ago
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
Weighty Thoughts
Apple Wins
Apple Intelligence and aggregation puts Apple in a dominant AI position
7 months ago
Apple Intelligence and aggregation puts Apple in a dominant AI position
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...
11 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.
Society's Backend
MatMul-free Machine Learning Can Improve Efficiency, Excellent Foundational Learning Resources, SSMs...
The top 10 most important updates of last week: 7/8/24
6 months ago
The top 10 most important updates of last week: 7/8/24
Jascha’s blog
Too much efficiency makes everything worse: overfitting and the strong version of Goodhart’s law
window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [];
function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);}
...
over a year ago
window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [];
function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);}
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gtag('config', 'G-1XJMTJ5KCK');
Increased efficiency can sometimes, counterintuitively, lead to worse outcomes.
This is true almost everywhere.
We will name...
Daniel Miessler
News & Analysis | NO. 349
over a year ago
One Useful Thing
What OpenAI did
A new model opens up new possibilities
8 months ago
A new model opens up new possibilities
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.
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...
Rozado’s Visual...
The ‘Great Awokening' Preceded Trump. It May Continue Beyond Him
Newsweek opinion piece Follow-up: Prevalence of Prejudice-Denoting Words in News Media Discourse...
over a year ago
Newsweek opinion piece Follow-up: Prevalence of Prejudice-Denoting Words in News Media Discourse Over the last five years, poll after poll has found that the GOP base has grown warmer towards Blacks, Hispanics, immigrants and Muslims. They’ve simultaneously become
The Gradient
Financial Market Applications of LLMs
The AI revolution drove frenzied investment in both private and public companies and captured the...
9 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...
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.
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...
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?...
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.
Strange Loop Canon
We all live on a knife's edge, and it's fine
Or: How we weaponised serendipity
9 months ago
Or: How we weaponised serendipity
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...
11 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,...
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...
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: ICRA Turns 40
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE...
3 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.
IROS 2024: 14–18 October 2024, ABU...
Sam Altman
Helion
I’m delighted to be investing more in Helion. Helion is by far the most promising approach to fusion...
over a year ago
I’m delighted to be investing more in Helion. Helion is by far the most promising approach to fusion I’ve seen.
David and Chris are two of the most impressive founders and builders (in the sense of building fusion machines, in addition to building companies!) I have ever met,...
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
Marcus on AI
Two visions of AI’s future
It’s not looking good
a month ago
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...
a year 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....
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.
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...
Rozado’s Visual...
ChatGPT no longer displays a clear left-leaning political bias
Update (20/01/2023): Results of administering 15 political orientation tests to ChatGPT Twitter...
over a year ago
Update (20/01/2023): Results of administering 15 political orientation tests to ChatGPT Twitter Thread Summary Between December 5-6, I applied 4 political orientation tests to ChatGPT. Results were consistent across the tests. All 4 tests diagnosed ChatGPT answers to their...
One Useful Thing
Power and Weirdness: How to Use Bing AI
Bing AI is a huge leap over ChatGPT, but you have to learn its quirks
a year ago
Bing AI is a huge leap over ChatGPT, but you have to learn its quirks
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 077: A good week for open-source
July 26, 2024.
6 months ago
Weighty Thoughts
What is Defensibility?
Back to basics for AI startups and others
9 months ago
Back to basics for AI startups and others
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 079: Don't call it an acquisition
August 9, 2024.
5 months ago
Strange Loop Canon
Google had a very bad week
Gemini's paradox
10 months ago
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?
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
Artificial Ignorance
What are logprobs?
Something to do with logs and probabilities.
a year ago
Something to do with logs and probabilities.
Artificial Ignorance
I fell for a deepfake Elon Musk’s cryptocurrency scam bait
A lesson in deepfakes, Ponzi schemes, and YouTube algorithm manipulation.
7 months ago
A lesson in deepfakes, Ponzi schemes, and YouTube algorithm manipulation.
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.
IEEE Spectrum
The Top 7 Robotics Stories of 2024
2024 was the best year ever for robotics, which I’m pretty sure is not something that I’ve ever said...
3 weeks ago
2024 was the best year ever for robotics, which I’m pretty sure is not something that I’ve ever said before. But that’s the great thing about robotics—it’s always new, and it’s always exciting. What may be different about this year is the real sense that not only is AI going to...
fast.ai
GPT 4 and the Uncharted Territories of Language
Language is a source of limitation and liberation. GPT 4 pushes this idea to the extreme by giving...
a year ago
Language is a source of limitation and liberation. GPT 4 pushes this idea to the extreme by giving us access to unlimited language.
Artificial Ignorance
Has YC hit peak AI? (F24)
The latest batch is up to 86% AI startups.
a month ago
The latest batch is up to 86% AI startups.
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?
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
Daniel Miessler
GPT and Search
There’s a lot of talk about how GPT is going to take over search. Meaning, compete with or take down...
over a year ago
There’s a lot of talk about how GPT is going to take over search. Meaning, compete with or take down Google. I get the excitement there, but there are some pretty serious barriers to having this happen immediately. First, GPT is non-deterministic, meaning you can ask it the same...
AI Snake Oil
AI cannot predict the future. But companies keep trying (and failing).
A new paper on how AI companies make false promises and how we can challenge them
a year ago
A new paper on how AI companies make false promises and how we can challenge them
Marcus on AI
AGI versus “broad, shallow intelligence”
The BSI we have now, versus the AGI we want
a week ago
The BSI we have now, versus the AGI we want
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 044: Google Gemini
December 8, 2023.
a year ago
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 054: Ten million tokens
February 16, 2024.
11 months ago
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 036: The money pit
October 13, 2023.
a year ago
Society's Backend
Welcome to 2024: The Year Where AI is No Longer an Option
Why everyone should learn about machine learning
a year ago
Why everyone should learn about machine learning
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 043: Happy birthday, ChatGPT
December 1, 2023.
a year ago
The Berkeley...
Training Diffusion Models with <br> Reinforcement Learning
function reveal() {
const replay = document.querySelector('.ddpo-replay');
...
a year ago
function reveal() {
const replay = document.querySelector('.ddpo-replay');
replay.style.display = 'flex';
}
window.onload = () => {
const replay = document.querySelector('.ddpo-replay');
replay.addEventListener('click', () => {
...
One Useful Thing
What Can be Done in 59 Seconds: An Opportunity (and a Crisis)
Five analytical tasks in under a minute
11 months ago
Five analytical tasks in under a minute
Society's Backend
Bridging the Gap from Simple Algebra to Machine Learning
You probably know more about machine learning math than you think
11 months ago
You probably know more about machine learning math than you think
Strange Loop Canon
Predicting AI
I revisit past predictions
4 months ago
I revisit past predictions
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.
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...
Society's Backend
5 Highlights From Society's Backend in 2024
The top 5 articles and resources
3 weeks ago
The top 5 articles and resources
Society's Backend
Open Models Catching Up, SearchGPT Release, Deepfake Victims Protected by Regulation, and More
Weekly updates and resources 7/29/24
5 months ago
Weekly updates and resources 7/29/24
Andrej Karpathy blog
Deep Neural Nets: 33 years ago and 33 years from now
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}
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...
over a year ago
.post-header h1 {
font-size: 35px;
}
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font-size: 13px; /* make code smaller for this post... */
}
The Yann LeCun et al. (1989) paper Backpropagation Applied to Handwritten Zip Code Recognition is I believe of some...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 056: Data deals
March 1, 2024.
10 months ago
fast.ai
The Jupyter+git problem is now solved
Previously, using git with Jupyter could create conflicts and break notebooks. With nbdev2, the...
over a year ago
Previously, using git with Jupyter could create conflicts and break notebooks. With nbdev2, the problem has been totally solved.
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
One Useful Thing
On the necessity of a sin
Why treating AI like a person is the future
9 months ago
Why treating AI like a person is the future
The Gradient
We Need Positive Visions for AI Grounded in Wellbeing
Introduction
Imagine yourself a decade ago, jumping directly into the present shock of conversing...
5 months ago
Introduction
Imagine yourself a decade ago, jumping directly into the present shock of conversing naturally with an encyclopedic AI that crafts images, writes code, and debates philosophy. Won’t this technology almost certainly transform society — and hasn’t AI’s impact on us so...
fast.ai
From Deep Learning Foundations to Stable Diffusion
Practical Deep Learning for Coders part 2, 2022
over a year ago
Practical Deep Learning for Coders part 2, 2022
One Useful Thing
An AI Haunted World
Intelligence, everywhere.
a year ago
Intelligence, everywhere.
Marcus on AI
AGI isn’t coming in 2025 — and GPT-5 may well not emerge this year, either.
Much was quietly revealed yesterday
a week ago
Much was quietly revealed yesterday
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.
Andrej Karpathy blog
Short Story on AI: Forward Pass
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over a year ago
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background-color: #eee;
}
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...
Sam Altman
Tech Workers' Values
For good and bad, technology has become a central force in all
our lives.
As members of the...
over a year ago
For good and bad, technology has become a central force in all
our lives.
As members of the community, we're interested in ways in which
tech companies can use their collective power to protect privacy, rule of law,
freedom of expression, and other fundamental American rights....
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.
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...
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
fast.ai
In defense of screen time
Pundits say my husband and I are parenting wrong.
2 months ago
Pundits say my husband and I are parenting wrong.
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...
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
How to talk to your family about AI this Thanksgiving
A handy guide for your uncle's burning questions.
a year ago
A handy guide for your uncle's burning questions.
Strange Loop Canon
Strange Loop Canon Commencement Address
6 months ago
Made by Ollin
HintBot
Hinting icons automatically with a neural network
over a year ago
Hinting icons automatically with a neural network
The Gradient
Why transformative artificial intelligence is really, really hard to achieve
A collection of the best technical, social, and economic arguments
Humans have a good track record...
a year ago
A collection of the best technical, social, and economic arguments
Humans have a good track record of innovation. The mechanization of agriculture, steam engines, electricity, modern medicine, computers, and the internet—these technologies radically changed the world. Still, the...
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...
IEEE Spectrum
SwitchBot Introduces Modular Mobile Home Robot
Earlier this year, we reviewed the SwitchBot S10, a vacuuming and wet mopping robot that uses a...
2 weeks ago
Earlier this year, we reviewed the SwitchBot S10, a vacuuming and wet mopping robot that uses a water-integrated docking system to autonomously manage both clean and dirty water for you. It’s a pretty clever solution, and we appreciated that SwitchBot was willing to try something...
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
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 076: Grand theft audio
July 19, 2024.
6 months ago
Andrej Karpathy blog
A from-scratch tour of Bitcoin in Python
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...
over a year ago
.wrap {
max-width: 900px;
}
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font-family: sans-serif;
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AI Snake Oil
Scientists should use AI as a tool, not an oracle
How AI hype leads to flawed research that fuels more hype
7 months ago
How AI hype leads to flawed research that fuels more hype
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?
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Swiss-Mile Robot vs. Humans
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...
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...
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Trick or Treat, Atlas
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...
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
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 092: Watermarking the AI wave
November 8, 2024.
2 months ago
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 063: Llama 3
April 19, 2024.
9 months ago
Society's Backend
Resources to Get a Job in ML, Post-Transformer Architectures, What's in Store for 2025, and More
Society's Backend Reading List 12-30-2024
3 weeks ago
Society's Backend Reading List 12-30-2024
Weighty Thoughts
Scaling is a Choice
Progress in tech is rarely “inevitable.” Looking at semiconductors and AI.
a month ago
Progress in tech is rarely “inevitable.” Looking at semiconductors and AI.
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,...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 100: CES
January 10, 2025.
a week ago
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