Weighty Thoughts
Writing, Originality, and Why Does Anyone Care What I Write About?
Musings, Insecurities, and Thoughts on Writing a Book (or Substack)
4 weeks ago
Musings, Insecurities, and Thoughts on Writing a Book (or Substack)
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
The fable of Reflection 70B
From groundbreaking to grifting.
4 months ago
From groundbreaking to grifting.
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
YCombinator's AI boom is still going strong (W24)
Combing through all 158 YC AI startups (65% of the batch).
9 months ago
Combing through all 158 YC AI startups (65% of the batch).
Society's Backend
Know Your Benchmarks
How the Chatbot Arena leaderboard for LLMs works and why it’s important to understand
9 months ago
How the Chatbot Arena leaderboard for LLMs works and why it’s important to understand
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
Frank’s Ramblings
a16z Blogs Are Just Glorified Marketing
… glorified marketing for portfolio companies, that is
I came across one of a16z’s blog posts on...
a year ago
… glorified marketing for portfolio companies, that is
I came across one of a16z’s blog posts on Hacker News today, titled Emerging Architectures for LLM Applications. For folks who didn’t catch it, here’s the tl;dr:
The emerging LLM stack is composed of several elements centered...
Matt Mazur
Nick Kolenda Reviews Preceden
Nick Kolenda is an author, teacher, and consultant who specializes in the psychology of marketing...
over a year ago
Nick Kolenda is an author, teacher, and consultant who specializes in the psychology of marketing and related topics like pricing optimization, sales psychology, and website behavior. He’s also happens to be a regular in a poker game I host each week. A few months back he...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 101: Strange bedfellows
January 17, 2025.
5 days ago
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
Society's Backend
The Step-by-Step Guide to Becoming a Machine Learning Engineer
And other practical guides to understand machine learning
12 months ago
And other practical guides to understand machine learning
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 034: Meta Connect
September 29, 2023
a year ago
Sam Altman
Greg
A lot of people ask me what the ideal cofounder looks
like. I now have an answer: Greg...
over a year ago
A lot of people ask me what the ideal cofounder looks
like. I now have an answer: Greg Brockman.
Every successful startup I know has at least one person who
provides the force of will to make the startup happen. I’d thought a lot
about this in the abstract while advising YC...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 088: Movie magic
October 11, 2024.
3 months ago
One Useful Thing
An AI Haunted World
Intelligence, everywhere.
a year ago
Intelligence, everywhere.
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?
Matt Mazur
It’s Time to Build
It’s been a few months so I wanted to say hey to the 7 of you who follow this blog and share a few...
9 months ago
It’s been a few months so I wanted to say hey to the 7 of you who follow this blog and share a few updates about what I’ve been up to. Quick recap At the start of 2023 I quit consulting to go full time on Preceden, my SaaS timeline maker, after growing it on … Continue reading...
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.
Society's Backend
The Fastest Way to Get Up to Speed on Machine Learning Fundamentals for Free
Announcing the ML Road Map-Turbo
7 months ago
Announcing the ML Road Map-Turbo
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.
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
Introducing the REFORMS checklist for ML-based science
ML-based science is in trouble. Clear reporting standards for researchers could help.
a year ago
ML-based science is in trouble. Clear reporting standards for researchers could help.
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
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...
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
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 067: GPT-4o and Google I/O
May 17, 2024.
8 months ago
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
Stadia is Google’s Product Strategy
Few things in tech were more predictable than Stadia shutting down. Here’s what I wrote the week it...
over a year ago
Few things in tech were more predictable than Stadia shutting down. Here’s what I wrote the week it came out: Here’s what I said about it in 2021. And here’s my analysis of why this keeps happening: How I Knew Stadia Would Fail The overall reason for this is UI/UX in my opinion,...
Rozado’s Visual...
El sesgo político de ChatGPT
A la izquierda del centro político
over a year ago
A la izquierda del centro político
Matt Mazur
Progress on TimelineGPT, Emergent Mind missteps, finding balance
Hey all 👋! It’s been a minute since my last post (for reasons I’ll get into below) so here’s...
a year ago
Hey all 👋! It’s been a minute since my last post (for reasons I’ll get into below) so here’s periodic update on what I’ve been up to: TimelineGPT About two months ago I launched an in-app tool for Preceden that provides GPT-powered event suggestions to users to help them build...
Matt Mazur
Looking to sell Emergent Mind
I currently have two products: Preceden, a SaaS timeline maker, and Emergent Mind, an AI news site...
a year ago
I currently have two products: Preceden, a SaaS timeline maker, and Emergent Mind, an AI news site and newsletter. Emergent Mind began last December as LearnGPT, a ChatGPT examples site, and I later renamed it to Emergent Mind and transitioned it the news site that it is today:...
Society's Backend
Scaling Laws for LLMs, the Actual Cost of Frontier Models, 3 Key Principles for AI at Scale, and...
Society's Backend Reading List 01-10-2025
a week ago
Society's Backend Reading List 01-10-2025
Daniel Miessler
UL NO. 354 | THE NEWS & ANALYSIS SERIES
SECURITY NEWS The US has implemented a number of aggressive export controls to stop China from...
over a year ago
SECURITY NEWS The US has implemented a number of aggressive export controls to stop China from attaining advanced semiconductors. And now it looks like the bans will be expanded to quantum computing and AI as well. NYTIMES | MY ANALYSIS BELOW It appears Bytedance had a plan to...
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
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Robot Dog Handstand
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...
Society's Backend
AI Reading List 3: Meta's Self-Taught Evaluator, AI for Cancer Diagnosis, and a Technical...
Society's Backend Reading List 10-21-2024
3 months ago
Society's Backend Reading List 10-21-2024
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...
Marcus on AI
Breaking news: AGI is not imminent!
Influencers have gone wild lately claiming that AGI is imminent.
2 days ago
Influencers have gone wild lately claiming that AGI is imminent.
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...
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...
Society's Backend
An AI Revolution Isn't Coming - We're Already In It
A small showcase of companies using AI in ways that will change your life
a year ago
A small showcase of companies using AI in ways that will change your life
Made by Ollin
Singing Style Transfer
Initial Experiments
over a year ago
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.
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,...
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 |...
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
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
Daniel Miessler
My Answer to the “ChatGPT Isn’t Really Creative” Argument
There’s a river of argument about ChatGPT that goes something like this: I know GPT can do some cool...
over a year ago
There’s a river of argument about ChatGPT that goes something like this: I know GPT can do some cool stuff, but it’s really just a next-word-completion trick. It’s not doing real creativity like humans do. I get that argument, and it’s attractive to me as well, but I think it’s...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 038: Preparedness
October 27, 2023.
a year ago
Andrej Karpathy blog
A from-scratch tour of Bitcoin in Python
.wrap {
max-width: 900px;
}
p {
font-family: sans-serif;
font-size: 15px;
...
over a year ago
.wrap {
max-width: 900px;
}
p {
font-family: sans-serif;
font-size: 15px;
font-weight: 300;
overflow-wrap: break-word; /* allow wrapping of very very long strings, like txids */
}
.post pre,
.post code {
background-color: #fafafa;
font-size: 13px; /*...
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?
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
Daniel Miessler
News & Analysis | NO. 353
over a year ago
Artificial Ignorance
Why Claude 3 is a big upgrade
On Monday, Anthropic released Claude 3, a family of models that hit new highs on various benchmarks,...
10 months ago
On Monday, Anthropic released Claude 3, a family of models that hit new highs on various benchmarks, add multi-modal capabilities, and are a real competitor to GPT-4.
One Useful Thing
"Do not fear AI, puny humans... that is not meant as a threat."
What we can learn from a completely AI written & illustrated lecture
a year ago
What we can learn from a completely AI written & illustrated lecture
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...
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
AI Snake Oil
ChatGPT is a bullshit generator. But it can still be amazingly useful
The philosopher Harry Frankfurt defined bullshit as speech that is intended to persuade without...
over a year ago
The philosopher Harry Frankfurt defined bullshit as speech that is intended to persuade without regard for the truth. By this measure, OpenAI’s new chatbot ChatGPT is the greatest bullshitter ever. Large Language Models (LLMs) are trained to produce
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 030: OpenAI's $1B revenue
September 1, 2023
a year ago
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...
Artificial Ignorance
10 AI stories that shaped 2024
Agents, deepfakes, Strawberries, and more.
3 weeks ago
Agents, deepfakes, Strawberries, and more.
Daniel Miessler
Summary: Andrej Kaparthy on Lex Fridman’s Podcast (Late 2022)
9/10 This is a summary of Andrej Kaparthy’s appearance on Lex Fridman’s podcast in late 2022. My...
a year ago
9/10 This is a summary of Andrej Kaparthy’s appearance on Lex Fridman’s podcast in late 2022. My One-Sentence Summary/Highlight The future of programming is not humans writing code, but neural nets creating weights. Capture Neural networks are mathematical expressions with many...
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...
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...
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...
Strange Loop Canon
What can LLMs never do?
On goal drift and lower reliability. Or, why can't LLMs play Conway's Game Of Life?
9 months ago
On goal drift and lower reliability. Or, why can't LLMs play Conway's Game Of Life?
Marcus on AI
Cognitive scientist Gary Marcus says AI must be regulated. He has a plan.
Fantastic writeup of my views today at The Wall Street Journal:
a month ago
Fantastic writeup of my views today at The Wall Street Journal:
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
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
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...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 033: DALL·E 3
September 22, 2023.
a year ago
Strange Loop Canon
When we become cogs
on motivation and technology
2 months ago
on motivation and technology
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
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....
fast.ai
Mojo may be the biggest programming language advance in decades
Mojo is a new programming language, based on Python, which fixes Python’s performance and deployment...
a year ago
Mojo is a new programming language, based on Python, which fixes Python’s performance and deployment problems.
One Useful Thing
My class required AI. Here's what I've learned so far.
(Spoiler alert: it has been very successful, but there are some lessons to be learned)
a year ago
(Spoiler alert: it has been very successful, but there are some lessons to be learned)
PromptArmor Blog
Data exfiltration from Writer.com with indirect prompt injection
Authors: PromptArmor and Kai Greshake
a year ago
Authors: PromptArmor and Kai Greshake
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
Sam Altman
2017 YC Annual Letter
Dear YC Community:
In response to a comment on Hacker News, I’m going to try writing an annual...
over a year ago
Dear YC Community:
In response to a comment on Hacker News, I’m going to try writing an annual letter to the YC community with an update on our progress.
Our mission is to enable the most innovation of any company in the world in order to make the future great for everyone. We...
Strange Loop Canon
Strange Loop Canon Commencement Address
6 months ago
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
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
Made by Ollin
Maple Diffusion
I ported Stable Diffusion to my phone
over a year ago
I ported Stable Diffusion to my phone
Marcus on AI
Sam Altman thinks that AGI is basically a solved problem. I don’t. Here’s why.
Yesterday Sam Altman claimed in a new blog post that “We are now confident we how to build AGI as we...
2 weeks ago
Yesterday Sam Altman claimed in a new blog post that “We are now confident we how to build AGI as we have traditionally understood it”, alleging that OpenAI (which has not demonstrated AGI) was now on to new and better things.
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...
IEEE Spectrum
Boston Dynamics’ Latest Vids Show Atlas Going Hands On
Boston Dynamics is the master of dropping amazing robot videos with no warning, and last week, we...
2 months ago
Boston Dynamics is the master of dropping amazing robot videos with no warning, and last week, we got a surprise look at the new electric Atlas going “hands on” with a practical factory task.
This video is notable because it’s the first real look we’ve had at the new Atlas doing...
Daniel Miessler
What Made the 90’s So Awesome?
I just read a brilliant essay about the 90’s by Freddie de Boer, and it got me thinking. What made...
a year ago
I just read a brilliant essay about the 90’s by Freddie de Boer, and it got me thinking. What made the 90’s so great? Here’s GPT’s answer: Give a 90’s lover’s view of what made the 90’s awesome. Include everything from parenting, art, entertainment, games, childhood, movies, TV,...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 027: Challenge accepted
August 11, 2023
a year ago
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
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
Society's Backend
You Are What You Eat: Digital Edition
Why who you follow is more important than who follows you
a year ago
Why who you follow is more important than who follows you
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
Rozado’s Visual...
The political orientation of the ChatGPT AI system
Applying the Pew Research Political Typology Quiz to a state-of-the-art AI Language model
over a year ago
Applying the Pew Research Political Typology Quiz to a state-of-the-art AI Language model
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...
Rozado’s Visual...
RightWingGPT – An AI Manifesting the Opposite Political Biases of ChatGPT
The Dangers of Politically Aligned AIs and their Negative Effects on Societal Polarization
a year ago
The Dangers of Politically Aligned AIs and their Negative Effects on Societal Polarization
Artificial Ignorance
The State of AI Engineering (2024)
Notes from the AI Engineer World's Fair.
6 months ago
Notes from the AI Engineer World's Fair.
Daniel Miessler
Sponsored Interview: Erkang Zheng of JupiterOne
In this standalone episode we’re doing a sponsored interview with Erkang Zheng of JupiterOne. So...
over a year ago
In this standalone episode we’re doing a sponsored interview with Erkang Zheng of JupiterOne. So Jupiter One is a special company to me. I just built a vuln management program at Robinhood based around them, and I believe so much in their vision that I’m looking to actually...
One Useful Thing
Getting started with AI: Good enough prompting
Don't make this hard
a month ago
Daniel Miessler
How to Survive and Thrive in a World Where AI Can Do Almost Everything
Click for printable size. Here’s a quick list of things we can do to get ready for AI’s ascendance....
over a year ago
Click for printable size. Here’s a quick list of things we can do to get ready for AI’s ascendance. You can click it to get the full size to print out. This is UL Member Content Subscribe Already a member? Login
AI Snake Oil
Evaluating LLMs is a minefield
Annotated slides from a recent talk
a year ago
Annotated slides from a recent talk
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
IEEE Spectrum
Where’s My Robot?
See the interactive version of this story on our site →
2 months ago
See the interactive version of this story on our site →
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
Matt Mazur
Introducing Preceden’s new AI-Powered Timeline Generator
For the past few months I’ve been heads down building an AI-powered timeline generator tool for...
a year ago
For the past few months I’ve been heads down building an AI-powered timeline generator tool for Preceden, my SaaS timeline maker software: The tool – which is free to use and available on Preceden’s homepage – lets you type in a topic or detailed description of a timeline and it...
Rozado’s Visual...
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...
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
IEEE Spectrum
It's Surprisingly Easy to Jailbreak LLM-Driven Robots
large language models (LLMs) have exploded in popularity, leading a number of companies to explore...
2 months ago
large language models (LLMs) have exploded in popularity, leading a number of companies to explore LLM-driven robots. However, a new study now reveals an automated way to hack into such machines with 100 percent success. By circumventing safety guardrails, researchers could...
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?
Daniel Miessler
News & Analysis | NO. 349
over a year ago
Marcus on AI
ChatGPT, at Age Two
The bullshit just keeps on coming.
a month ago
The bullshit just keeps on coming.
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...
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
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 098: Flash Thinking
December 20, 2024.
a month ago
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...
Strange Loop Canon
The agent principal problem
"Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome."
a year ago
"Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome."
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...
Weighty Thoughts
News Roundup: May 15, 2024
Open AI announcements, DeepSeek-v2, and TSMC Arizona
8 months ago
Open AI announcements, DeepSeek-v2, and TSMC Arizona
Daniel Miessler
Something is Up With Meritocracy
I’ve been thinking a lot about meritocracy lately, and I’ve come to believe that opportunity...
over a year ago
I’ve been thinking a lot about meritocracy lately, and I’ve come to believe that opportunity magnifies inequality. Here’s one way I’ve seen it explained: If there are two main reasons for outcome differences: innate talent and environment, and if you equalize environment you will...
Andrej Karpathy blog
Deep Neural Nets: 33 years ago and 33 years from now
.post-header h1 {
font-size: 35px;
}
.post pre,
.post code {
background-color: #fcfcfc;
...
over a year ago
.post-header h1 {
font-size: 35px;
}
.post pre,
.post code {
background-color: #fcfcfc;
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
Distributing the future
A reminder that things take time.
7 months ago
A reminder that things take time.
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?...
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
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?
Weighty Thoughts
I'm writing a book!
Why I've been gone over a month, and how you can help
a month ago
Why I've been gone over a month, and how you can help
Marcus on AI
Two visions of AI’s future
It’s not looking good
a month ago
Rozado’s Visual...
The Political Biases of GPT-4
Things are not always what they seem
a year ago
Things are not always what they seem
AI Snake Oil
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
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.
Andrej Karpathy blog
Short Story on AI: Forward Pass
p {
text-align: justify;
}
.post pre, .post code {
border: none;
background-color:...
over a year ago
p {
text-align: justify;
}
.post pre, .post code {
border: none;
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...
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
Weighty Thoughts
AI's Future in Lung Disease and Medicine
A conversation with two radiologists—who are also experts in AI—about how AI can shape clinical...
a month ago
A conversation with two radiologists—who are also experts in AI—about how AI can shape clinical practice and patient experiences
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.
Artificial Ignorance
The AI research tool that saves me hours every week
And why it might revolutionize the search industry.
a year ago
And why it might revolutionize the search industry.
AI Snake Oil
Starting reading the AI Snake Oil book online today
The book will be published on September 24
4 months ago
The book will be published on September 24
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
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...
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
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...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 046: AI has a CSAM problem
December 22, 2023.
a year ago
Daniel Miessler
Generate AI Art Using Your Own Writing
One of the most challenging parts of finishing a post is coming up with a good image. The AI art...
over a year ago
One of the most challenging parts of finishing a post is coming up with a good image. The AI art tools like DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion are cool, but a lot of the magic comes down to prompt engineering, which is non-trivial. Prompt Engineering is almost equal parts...
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”.
Strange Loop Canon
No, LLMs are not "scheming"
a month ago
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 035: Me or your lying eyes
October 6, 2023.
a year ago
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
AI Snake Oil
Licensing is neither feasible nor effective for addressing AI risks
Non-proliferation only benefits incumbents
a year ago
Non-proliferation only benefits incumbents
fast.ai
AI and Power: The Ethical Challenges of Automation, Centralization, and Scale
Moving AI ethics beyond explainability and fairness to empowerment and justice
a year ago
Moving AI ethics beyond explainability and fairness to empowerment and justice
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
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 041: Lyria
November 17, 2023.
a year ago
Made by Ollin
A Video History of Self-Driving Cars
over a year ago
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?
Marcus on AI
Satya Nadella and the three stages of scientific truth
A textbook case in how good ideas are often initially throttled
a month ago
A textbook case in how good ideas are often initially throttled
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 099: Apocalypse Not
January 3, 2025.
2 weeks ago
Marcus on AI
Don’t Ride This Bike! Generative AI’s persistent trouble with compositionality and parts
When the text-to-image AI generation system DALL-E2 was released in April 2022, the two of us,...
a month ago
When the text-to-image AI generation system DALL-E2 was released in April 2022, the two of us, together with Scott Aaronson, ran some informal experiments to probe its abilities.
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);}
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...
Daniel Miessler
News & Analysis | NO. 352
over a year ago
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 056: Data deals
March 1, 2024.
10 months ago
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
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...
Rozado’s Visual...
The unequal treatment of demographic groups by ChatGPT/OpenAI content moderation system
Should AI systems treat different demographic groups unequally?
a year ago
Should AI systems treat different demographic groups unequally?
Strange Loop Canon
Power, money and human nature
Thoughts on OpenAI, a tragedy
a year ago
Thoughts on OpenAI, a tragedy
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
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.
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
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 052: AI, EO, DPA
February 2, 2024.
11 months ago
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 037: The AI IPCC
October 20, 2023.
a year ago
Rozado’s Visual...
Pessimism in News Media Headlines
In previous work, I documented the growing emotional negativity (anger, fear, sadness, etc) of...
a year ago
In previous work, I documented the growing emotional negativity (anger, fear, sadness, etc) of American news media headlines between the years 2000 and 2019. Here, I extend that work by examining the attitudinal tone (pessimism, optimism or neutrality
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
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...
One Useful Thing
The future, soon: what I learned from Bing's AI
We had a brief glimpse of two different types of AI. Both are significant
a year ago
We had a brief glimpse of two different types of AI. Both are significant
Andrej Karpathy blog
(started posting on Medium instead)
The current state of this blog (with the last post 2 years ago) makes it look like I’ve disappeared....
over a year ago
The current state of this blog (with the last post 2 years ago) makes it look like I’ve disappeared. I’ve certainly become less active on blogs since I’ve joined Tesla, but
whenever I do get a chance to post something I have recently been defaulting
to doing it on Medium because...
AI Snake Oil
Students are acing their homework by turning in machine-generated essays. Good.
Teachers adapted to the calculator. They can certainly adapt to language models.
over a year ago
Teachers adapted to the calculator. They can certainly adapt to language models.
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
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
Rozado’s Visual...
What is the IQ of ChatGPT?
Making an AI model take an IQ test
over a year ago
Making an AI model take an IQ test
Society's Backend
Things Everyone Should Understand About the Stanford AI Index Report
And my notes on why they’re important
9 months ago
And my notes on why they’re important
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 079: Don't call it an acquisition
August 9, 2024.
5 months ago
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
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.
Weighty Thoughts
Is AI a Winner-Take-All Market?
A critical question for investors in AI
5 months ago
A critical question for investors in AI
Stories by Andrej...
ICML accepted papers institution stats
over a year 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
Rozado’s Visual...
DepolarizingGPT
A Political Chatbot that Gives 3 Politically Diverse Answers to Every Prompt
a year ago
A Political Chatbot that Gives 3 Politically Diverse Answers to Every Prompt
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.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 080: Grok 2
August 16, 2024.
5 months ago
One Useful Thing
On giving AI eyes and ears
AI can listen and see, with bigger implications than we might realize.
a year ago
AI can listen and see, with bigger implications than we might realize.
The Berkeley...
Ghostbuster: Detecting Text Ghostwritten by Large Language Models
The structure of Ghostbuster, our new state-of-the-art method for detecting AI-generated...
a year ago
The structure of Ghostbuster, our new state-of-the-art method for detecting AI-generated text.
Large language models like ChatGPT write impressively well—so well, in fact, that they’ve become a problem. Students have begun using these models to ghostwrite assignments, leading...
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
One Useful Thing
Change blindness
21 months later
5 months ago
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...
Marcus on AI
The 2023 White House Executive Order on AI has Been Rescinded
See here.
23 hours ago
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
Sam Altman
Join the YC Software Team
If you want to get funded by YC as a founder in the future, but you don't have a startup that's...
over a year ago
If you want to get funded by YC as a founder in the future, but you don't have a startup that's ready for that yet, joining the YC software team is a great hack to get there.
The YC software team is a small group of hackers in SF that write the software that makes all the parts...
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...
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
Marcus on AI
Humanity’s “Oh shit!” AI moment?
Not yet, but it could come sooner than you think. Not because we are close to AGI, but because we...
a month ago
Not yet, but it could come sooner than you think. Not because we are close to AGI, but because we already have machines that can say one thing and do something else altogether.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 100: CES
January 10, 2025.
a week ago
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.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 091: Search wars
November 1, 2024.
2 months ago
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
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 039: The governance issue
November 3, 2023.
a year ago
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...
One Useful Thing
It is starting to get strange.
Let's talk about ChatGPT with Code Interpreter & Microsoft Copilot
a year ago
Let's talk about ChatGPT with Code Interpreter & Microsoft Copilot
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?
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
Artificial Ignorance
The intern and the coach
A recent post from Wharton professor Ethan Mollick shared an impressive new study. In a nutshell, it...
a year ago
A recent post from Wharton professor Ethan Mollick shared an impressive new study. In a nutshell, it found that BCG consultants who used GPT-4 were up to 43% more effective at tasks vs. employees who didn’t.
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?
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
When you give a Claude a mouse
Some quick impressions of an actual agent
3 months ago
Some quick impressions of an actual agent
AI Snake Oil
AI existential risk probabilities are too unreliable to inform policy
How speculation gets laundered through pseudo-quantification
5 months ago
How speculation gets laundered through pseudo-quantification
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
New Evals for Better Models, AI Research Papers Made Easier to Understand, Train Your Own Flux LoRA,...
Machine learning highlights and resources 9-23-24
4 months ago
Machine learning highlights and resources 9-23-24
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
Going Full Time on My SaaS After 13 Years
In January 2010 I soft-launched launched Preceden, a web-based timeline maker tool, followed a few...
over a year ago
In January 2010 I soft-launched launched Preceden, a web-based timeline maker tool, followed a few weeks later by a larger launch on HackerNews: Today – almost 13 years to the day since the initial launch – I’m going full time on it and I couldn’t be more excited. A brief history...
Made by Ollin
HintBot
Hinting icons automatically with a neural network
over a year ago
Hinting icons automatically with a neural network
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
AI Roundup 054: Ten million tokens
February 16, 2024.
11 months ago
Sam Altman
How To Be Successful
I’ve observed thousands of founders and thought a lot about what it takes to make a huge amount of...
over a year ago
I’ve observed thousands of founders and thought a lot about what it takes to make a huge amount of money or to create something important. Usually, people start off wanting the former and end up wanting the latter.
Here are 13 thoughts about how to achieve such outlier...
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
The Gradient
Deep learning for single-cell sequencing: a microscope to see the diversity of cells
On the the pivotal role that Deep Learning has played as a key enabler for advancing single-cell...
a year ago
On the the pivotal role that Deep Learning has played as a key enabler for advancing single-cell sequencing technologies.
The Gradient
Car-GPT: Could LLMs finally make self-driving cars happen?
Exploring the utility of large language models in autonomous driving: Can they be trusted for...
10 months ago
Exploring the utility of large language models in autonomous driving: Can they be trusted for self-driving cars, and what are the key challenges?
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 047: NYT v. OpenAI
Friday, December 29.
a year ago
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
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,...
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...
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 096: Happy Shipmas
December 6, 2024.
a month ago
Artificial Ignorance
Pitfalls of building with large language models
Dealing with more than just hallucinations.
a year ago
Dealing with more than just hallucinations.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 070: AI whistleblowers
June 7, 2024.
7 months ago
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,...
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...
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...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 068: The ScarJo thing
May 24, 2024.
8 months ago
Sam Altman
Helion Needs You
Helion has been progressing even faster than I expected and is on pace in 2024 to 1) demonstrate Q >...
over a year ago
Helion has been progressing even faster than I expected and is on pace in 2024 to 1) demonstrate Q > 1 fusion and 2) resolve all questions needed to design a mass-producible fusion generator.
The goals of the company are quite ambitious—clean, continuous energy for 1...
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...
Strange Loop Canon
OpenAI's Strawberry models can reason like an expert
When models can think
4 months ago
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...
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:
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 055: Race conditions
February 23, 2023.
11 months ago
The Berkeley...
Why do Policy Gradient Methods work so well in Cooperative MARL? Evidence from Policy Representation
In cooperative multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL), due to its on-policy nature, policy...
over a year ago
In cooperative multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL), due to its on-policy nature, policy gradient (PG) methods are typically believed to be less sample efficient than value decomposition (VD) methods, which are off-policy. However, some recent empirical studies demonstrate...
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.
One Useful Thing
Superhuman: What can AI do in 30 minutes?
AI multiplies your efforts. I found out by how much...
a year ago
AI multiplies your efforts. I found out by how much...
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
The Mystical Q
OpenAI Q*, Primer on Reinforcement Learning, and Implications
a year ago
OpenAI Q*, Primer on Reinforcement Learning, and Implications
One Useful Thing
Latent Expertise: Everyone is in R&D
Ideas come from the edges, not the center
7 months ago
Ideas come from the edges, not the center
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...
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
IEEE Spectrum
This Pool Robot Is the First With Ultrasonic Mapping
Back in the day, the defining characteristic of home-cleaning robots was that they’d randomly bounce...
a week ago
Back in the day, the defining characteristic of home-cleaning robots was that they’d randomly bounce around your floor as part of their cleaning process, because the technology required to localize and map an area hadn’t yet trickled down into the consumer space. That all changed...
Marcus on AI
PSA: Microsoft may be training on your private data without your knowledge
The Great Data Heist continues.
a month ago
The Great Data Heist continues.
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).
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.
AI Snake Oil
Is AI progress slowing down?
Making sense of recent technology trends and claims
a month ago
Making sense of recent technology trends and claims
Daniel Miessler
Summary: Andrej Karpathy on Lex Fridman’s Podcast (Late 2022)
This is member content. Thank you for being a subscriber. This is UL Member Content Subscribe...
a year ago
This is member content. Thank you for being a subscriber. This is UL Member Content Subscribe Already a member? Login
Society's Backend
Backend Biweekly #2: 112 Total Updates and Resources
Details on Metas training clusters, analysis of ML competitions in 2023, AI's impact on water...
10 months ago
Details on Metas training clusters, analysis of ML competitions in 2023, AI's impact on water resources, and more
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
Rozado’s Visual...
Which is the Wokest AI?
A Wokeness Ranking of LLMs
11 months ago
A Wokeness Ranking of LLMs
Daniel Miessler
Humiliation is Deadly
I’ve been thinking for a few years about the danger presented by humiliated people and groups. That...
over a year ago
I’ve been thinking for a few years about the danger presented by humiliated people and groups. That is, people who not only feel like they have no respect and no options to gain any respect, but who also feel that: They deserve those things, and… That someone else is the cause of...
Strange Loop Canon
Seeing Like A Network
Dark Forests, Dense Networks
7 months ago
Dark Forests, Dense Networks
AI Snake Oil
We Looked at 78 Election Deepfakes. Political Misinformation is not an AI Problem.
Technology Isn’t the Problem—or the Solution.
a month ago
Technology Isn’t the Problem—or the Solution.
Made by Ollin
Emojin
An infinite kaomoji generator
over a year ago
An infinite kaomoji generator
Weighty Thoughts
Consider the Llama
Are closed source AI models doomed?
6 months ago
Are closed source AI models doomed?
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.
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
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...
One Useful Thing
A prosthesis for imagination: Using AI to boost your creativity
AI can already beat humans in many measures of creativity. Let's use that to our advantage.
a year ago
AI can already beat humans in many measures of creativity. Let's use that to our advantage.
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
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 049: Down the Rabbit hole
January 12, 2023.
a year ago
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,...
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?
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 026: AudioCraft
August 4, 2023
a year ago
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...
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...
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.
AI Snake Oil
GPT-4 and professional benchmarks: the wrong answer to the wrong question
OpenAI may have tested on the training data. Besides, human benchmarks are meaningless for bots.
a year ago
OpenAI may have tested on the training data. Besides, human benchmarks are meaningless for bots.
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...
AI Snake Oil
A safe harbor for AI evaluation and red teaming
An argument for legal and technical safe harbors for AI safety and trustworthiness research
10 months ago
An argument for legal and technical safe harbors for AI safety and trustworthiness research
The Berkeley...
Rethinking Human-in-the-Loop for Artificial Augmented Intelligence
How do we build and evaluate an AI system for real-world applications? In most AI research, the...
over a year ago
How do we build and evaluate an AI system for real-world applications? In most AI research, the evaluation of AI methods involves a training-validation-testing process. The experiments usually stop when the models have good testing performance on the reported datasets because...
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?
fast.ai
My family’s unlikely homeschooling journey
Prior to 2020, we never expected to homeschool, and now we have committed to it long-term.
over a year ago
Prior to 2020, we never expected to homeschool, and now we have committed to it long-term.
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...
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...
Daniel Miessler
NO. 355 | NEWS & ANALYSIS SERIES
SECURITY NEWS ⛔️ There is likely to be a critical TLS vulnerability released this week. Consider...
over a year ago
SECURITY NEWS ⛔️ There is likely to be a critical TLS vulnerability released this week. Consider getting your teams ready by looking for your instances before it drops. ZDNET | GLOBALSIGN | REDDIT DISCUSSION The US accused 13 Chinese nationals of committing espionage-related...
Sam Altman
What I Heard From Trump Supporters
After the election, I decided to talk to 100 Trump voters from around
the country. I went to the...
over a year ago
After the election, I decided to talk to 100 Trump voters from around
the country. I went to the middle of the
country, the middle of the state, and talked to many online.
This was a surprisingly interesting and helpful experience—I highly
recommend it. With three exceptions,...
Artificial Ignorance
What AI models really think about politics
Exploring the political biases of ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Grok.
2 months ago
Exploring the political biases of ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Grok.
The Gradient
What's Missing From LLM Chatbots: A Sense of Purpose
LLM-based chatbots’ capabilities have been advancing every month. These improvements are mostly...
4 months ago
LLM-based chatbots’ capabilities have been advancing every month. These improvements are mostly measured by benchmarks like MMLU, HumanEval, and MATH (e.g. sonnet 3.5, gpt-4o). However, as these measures get more and more saturated, is user experience increasing in proportion to...
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
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
Strange Loop Canon
The mystery of the garage
11 months ago
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
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?
Rozado’s Visual...
The decreasing/increasing prevalence of the terms "global warming" and "climate change" in news...
I will drop this here as a simple curiosity without much further comment: The decreasing/increasing...
over a year ago
I will drop this here as a simple curiosity without much further comment: The decreasing/increasing prevalence of the terms global warming and climate change in news media discourse. For some reason, peak usage of the term global warming happened in 2007 and it has been dropping...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 078: Voice mode
August 2, 2024.
5 months ago
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...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 045: Google's just getting started
December 15, 2023.
a year ago
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...
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...
Society's Backend
Positioning Myself: The Greatest Piece of Career Advice I've Ever Received
And how it changed my personal life too
a year ago
And how it changed my personal life too
Full Width 
Shortcuts 
Sign Up 
Log In 
Articles 
Reading List 