Matt Mazur
LearnGPT is for sale. Contact me if you’re interested.
On Friday I announced that I intended to shut down LearnGPT to focus on Preceden, my main business....
a year ago
On Friday I announced that I intended to shut down LearnGPT to focus on Preceden, my main business. I didn’t plan to sell LearnGPT because I didn’t think a month-old, pre-revenue project like this would be able to sell for enough to warrant going through a sale. It’s been three...
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...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 053: Bye bye Bard
February 9, 2024.
10 months ago
Sam Altman
Quora
I'm a strong believer in the importance of the internet in helping people to share knowledge and...
over a year ago
I'm a strong believer in the importance of the internet in helping people to share knowledge and learn from each other. So I’m delighted to share, on behalf of YC Continuity, that we’re investing alongside Collaborative Fund in Quora.
Quora is doing extremely well. They now...
Society's Backend
Run Your Own Race
What Bluey can teach us about machine learning
8 months ago
What Bluey can teach us about machine learning
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
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...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 036: The money pit
October 13, 2023.
a year ago
Rozado’s Visual...
The political preferences of Grok
Elon Musk's response to ChatGPT
a year ago
Elon Musk's response to ChatGPT
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...
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...
Strange Loop Canon
Slouching Towards Utopia
by Brad DeLong
a year ago
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 061: The AI innovator's dilemma
April 5, 2024.
8 months ago
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 056: Data deals
March 1, 2024.
9 months ago
Artificial Ignorance
The fable of Reflection 70B
From groundbreaking to grifting.
3 months ago
From groundbreaking to grifting.
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...
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
Artificial Ignorance
YCombinator's AI boom is still going strong (W24)
Combing through all 158 YC AI startups (65% of the batch).
8 months ago
Combing through all 158 YC AI startups (65% of the batch).
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 074: Amazon's Adept acquisition
July 5, 2024.
5 months ago
AI Snake Oil
Is the future of AI open or closed? Watch today’s Princeton-Stanford workshop
By Sayash Kapoor, Rishi Bommasani, Percy Liang, Arvind Narayanan Perhaps the biggest tech policy...
a year ago
By Sayash Kapoor, Rishi Bommasani, Percy Liang, Arvind Narayanan Perhaps the biggest tech policy debate today is about the future of AI, especially foundation models and generative AI. Will AI be open or closed? Will we be able to download and modify these models, or will a few...
One Useful Thing
Getting started with AI: Good enough prompting
Don't make this hard
3 weeks ago
Society's Backend
Taking the AI to Consumers
The Google Pixel 8 Pro is a much bigger deal than you think
a year ago
The Google Pixel 8 Pro is a much bigger deal than you think
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?
One Useful Thing
On-boarding your AI Intern
There's a somewhat weird alien who wants to work for free for you. You should probably get started.
a year ago
There's a somewhat weird alien who wants to work for free for you. You should probably get started.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 086: Llama 3.2
September 27, 2024.
2 months ago
Sam Altman
US Digital Currency
I am pretty sure cryptocurrency is here to stay in some form (at least as a store of value, which is...
over a year ago
I am pretty sure cryptocurrency is here to stay in some form (at least as a store of value, which is the only use case we have seen work at scale so far). There was possibly a time when governments could have totally stopped it, but it feels like that’s in the rearview mirror.
...
Society's Backend
Anti-Social Media
How our technology habituates the paradoxical relationship between social media and social isolation
a year ago
How our technology habituates the paradoxical relationship between social media and social isolation
The Berkeley...
Generating 3D Molecular Conformers via Equivariant Coarse-Graining and Aggregated Attention
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Figure 1: CoarsenConf architecture.
(I) The encoder $q_\phi(z| X, \mathcal{R})$ takes the...
a year ago
-->
Figure 1: CoarsenConf architecture.
(I) The encoder $q_\phi(z| X, \mathcal{R})$ takes the fine-grained (FG) ground truth conformer $X$, RDKit approximate conformer $\mathcal{R}$ , and coarse-grained (CG) conformer $\mathcal{C}$ as inputs (derived from $X$ and a predefined...
Marcus on AI
An AI rumor you won’t want to miss
Converging evidence that the core hypothesis driving generative AI may be wrong
a month ago
Converging evidence that the core hypothesis driving generative AI may be wrong
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...
5 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?
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
AI Snake Oil
Scientists should use AI as a tool, not an oracle
How AI hype leads to flawed research that fuels more hype
6 months ago
How AI hype leads to flawed research that fuels more hype
Daniel Miessler
My Philosophy and Recommendations Around the LastPass Breaches
If you follow Information Security at all you are surely aware of the LastPass breach situation. It...
a year ago
If you follow Information Security at all you are surely aware of the LastPass breach situation. It started back in August of 2022 as a fairly common breach notification on a blog, but it, unfortunately, turned into more of a blog series. The initial blog was on August 25th,...
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 week 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
Update re: Microsoft and training data
Relevant to the post I sent earlier today,...
3 weeks 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...
One Useful Thing
On speaking to AI
Voice changes a lot of things
4 months ago
Voice changes a lot of things
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
2 weeks ago
What Casey Newton’s new essay skewering AI skepticism does—and does not—get right
One Useful Thing
The Lazy Tyranny of the Wait Calculation
Taking AI timelines seriously
11 months ago
Taking AI timelines seriously
Sam Altman
Please Fund More Science
Experts on the COVID-19 pandemic seem to think there are three ways out—that is, for life, health,...
over a year ago
Experts on the COVID-19 pandemic seem to think there are three ways out—that is, for life, health, and the economy to return roughly to normal.
Either we get a vaccine good enough that R0 for the world goes below 1, a good enough treatment that people no longer need to be...
One Useful Thing
What Apple's AI Tells Us: Experimental Models⁴
Siri versus the machine god?
6 months ago
Siri versus the machine god?
Artificial Ignorance
The subscriptionization of AI
Navigating the paid AI landscape.
9 months ago
Navigating the paid AI landscape.
Society's Backend
Weekly Backend #4: 62 Total Resources
Apple’s LLM OpenELM, GPT-4-Turbo, Phi-3, Grok-1.5 Vision, and more
7 months ago
Apple’s LLM OpenELM, GPT-4-Turbo, Phi-3, Grok-1.5 Vision, and more
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...
Matt Mazur
LearnGPT is now EmergentMind
Naming things is hard. Shortly after ChatGPT launched at the end of November, I decided to build a...
a year ago
Naming things is hard. Shortly after ChatGPT launched at the end of November, I decided to build a site to share ChatGPT examples and eventually be the home to educational content to help people learn more about GPT. To my surprise, there were a lot of relevant available .com...
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...
Sam Altman
The Strength of Being Misunderstood
A founder recently asked me how to stop caring what other people think. I didn’t have an answer, and...
over a year ago
A founder recently asked me how to stop caring what other people think. I didn’t have an answer, and after reflecting on it more, I think it's the wrong question.
Almost everyone cares what someone thinks (though caring what everyone thinks is definitely a mistake), and it's...
Made by Ollin
Priors for Autonomous Vehicle Development
over a year ago
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 065: The gpt2-chatbot mystery
May 3, 2024.
7 months 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.
Strange Loop Canon
LLMs have special intelligence, not general, and that's plenty.
“Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.”
9 months ago
“Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.”
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 066: AlphaFold 3
May 10, 2024.
7 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
6 days ago
Society's Backend Reading List 12-16-2024
Strange Loop Canon
AI embraces its product arc
fuzzy processors are entering mass production
7 months ago
fuzzy processors are entering mass production
AI Snake Oil
AI safety is not a model property
Trying to make an AI model that can’t be misused is like trying to make a computer that can’t be...
9 months ago
Trying to make an AI model that can’t be misused is like trying to make a computer that can’t be used for bad things
Artificial Ignorance
Has YC hit peak AI? (F24)
The latest batch is up to 86% AI startups.
2 weeks ago
The latest batch is up to 86% AI startups.
Sam Altman
A Clarification
I made a point in this post inelegantly in a way that was
easy to misunderstand, so I’d like to...
over a year ago
I made a point in this post inelegantly in a way that was
easy to misunderstand, so I’d like to clarify it.
I didn’t mean that we need to tolerate brilliant homophobic
jerks in the lab so that we can have scientific progress.
Although there are famous...
AI Snake Oil
Quantifying ChatGPT’s gender bias
Benchmarks allow us to dig deeper into what causes biases and what can be done about it
a year ago
Benchmarks allow us to dig deeper into what causes biases and what can be done about it
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.
Sam Altman
What I Wish Someone Had Told Me
Optimism, obsession, self-belief, raw horsepower and personal connections are how things get...
a year ago
Optimism, obsession, self-belief, raw horsepower and personal connections are how things get started.
Cohesive teams, the right combination of calmness and urgency, and unreasonable commitment are how things get finished. Long-term orientation is in short supply; try not to worry...
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...
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Mars Chopper
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.
ICRA 2025: 19–23 May 2025, ATLANTA,...
Strange Loop Canon
We all live on a knife's edge, and it's fine
Or: How we weaponised serendipity
8 months ago
Or: How we weaponised serendipity
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?
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
5 months ago
Weekly updates and resources 7/22/24
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 080: Grok 2
August 16, 2024.
4 months ago
Society's Backend
The Fastest Way to Get Up to Speed on Machine Learning Fundamentals for Free
Announcing the ML Road Map-Turbo
6 months ago
Announcing the ML Road Map-Turbo
fast.ai
Practical Deep Learning for Coders 2022
A complete from-scratch rewrite of fast.ai’s most popular course, that’s been 2 years in the making.
over a year ago
A complete from-scratch rewrite of fast.ai’s most popular course, that’s been 2 years in the making.
Artificial Ignorance
The SearchGPT Paradigm
What people (still) fundamentally misunderstand about AI search.
4 months ago
What people (still) fundamentally misunderstand about AI search.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 045: Google's just getting started
December 15, 2023.
a year ago
Artificial Ignorance
What are logprobs?
Something to do with logs and probabilities.
11 months ago
Something to do with logs and probabilities.
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
The AI Executive Order
AKA: “We’ll do something about it later”
a year ago
AKA: “We’ll do something about it later”
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
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.
Society's Backend
What it's Like to Work in AI and Advice from 10 AI Professionals
I asked 10 AI professionals 4 questions about their work in AI and the qualifications required for...
a month ago
I asked 10 AI professionals 4 questions about their work in AI and the qualifications required for their job
Society's Backend
AI and Software Reading List 4: State of the Job Market, Apple's Private Cloud Compute Released for...
Society's Backend Reading List 10-28-2024
a month ago
Society's Backend Reading List 10-28-2024
One Useful Thing
Strategies for an Accelerating Future
Four questions to ask your organization.
10 months ago
Four questions to ask your organization.
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.
4 months ago
AI is meant to bring us closer to utopia, according to its builders.
fast.ai
Is Avoiding Extinction from AI Really an Urgent Priority?
The history of technology suggests that the greatest risks come not from the tech, but from the...
a year ago
The history of technology suggests that the greatest risks come not from the tech, but from the people who control it
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...
11 months ago
On the the pivotal role that Deep Learning has played as a key enabler for advancing single-cell sequencing technologies.
IEEE Spectrum
This Inventor Is Molding Tomorrow’s Inventors
This article is part of our special report, “Reinventing Invention: Stories from Innovation’s...
a month ago
This article is part of our special report, “Reinventing Invention: Stories from Innovation’s Edge.”
Marina Umaschi Bers has long been at the forefront of technological innovation for kids. In the 2010s, while teaching at Tufts University, in Massachusetts, she codeveloped the...
One Useful Thing
15 Times to use AI, and 5 Not to
Notes on the Practical Wisdom of AI Use
a week ago
Notes on the Practical Wisdom of AI Use
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...
AI Snake Oil
Are open foundation models actually more risky than closed ones?
A policy brief on open foundation models
a year ago
A policy brief on open foundation models
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
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...
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...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 079: Don't call it an acquisition
August 9, 2024.
4 months ago
Weighty Thoughts
What I got Right or Wrong in 2020
Reflecting on the Past Year
over a year ago
Reflecting on the Past Year
Marcus on AI
A new AI scaling law shell game?
Scaling laws were supposed to be, well, laws.
3 weeks ago
Scaling laws were supposed to be, well, laws.
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...
Matt Mazur
Preceden’s Spam Problem
Around a year ago, I started noticing some spammy timelines being created on Preceden, my SaaS...
a year ago
Around a year ago, I started noticing some spammy timelines being created on Preceden, my SaaS timeline maker tool. I’m honestly surprised it took spammers so long: Preceden is a freemium product (meaning people can sign up and try it for free), the product makes it very easy to...
Artificial Ignorance
Tutorial: How to make and share custom GPTs
They're not going to disrupt everything (yet), but they're a ton of fun.
a year ago
They're not going to disrupt everything (yet), but they're a ton of fun.
PromptArmor Blog
Slack AI data exfiltration from private channels via indirect prompt injection
Authors: PromptArmor
4 months ago
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Trick or Treat, Atlas
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE...
a month ago
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.
Humanoids 2024: 22–24 November...
Artificial Ignorance
The State of AI Engineering (2024)
Notes from the AI Engineer World's Fair.
5 months ago
Notes from the AI Engineer World's Fair.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 049: Down the Rabbit hole
January 12, 2023.
11 months ago
Society's Backend
The FTC Cracks Down on Fake AI-Generated Reviews, Midjourney Available on the Web, AI Used to Farm...
Machine learning resources and updates 8/26/2024
3 months ago
Machine learning resources and updates 8/26/2024
Sam Altman
GPT-4o
There are two things from our announcement today I wanted to highlight.
First, a key part of our...
7 months ago
There are two things from our announcement today I wanted to highlight.
First, a key part of our mission is to put very capable AI tools in the hands of people for free (or at a great price). I am very proud that we’ve made the best model in the world available for free in...
Matt Mazur
The Kenya Quick Answer Goes Viral, Again
On Thursday evening Chris Ingraham, a journalist with 100k followers on Twitter, shared a screenshot...
a year ago
On Thursday evening Chris Ingraham, a journalist with 100k followers on Twitter, shared a screenshot of the now-famous “african country that starts with k” Google Quick Answer, which quickly went viral, garnering over 82k likes and 3 million views as of the time of this writing...
One Useful Thing
What just happened, what is happening next
The tasks AI can do well are expanding rapidly
8 months ago
The tasks AI can do well are expanding rapidly
Andrej Karpathy blog
Short Story on AI: A Cognitive Discontinuity.
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text-align: justify;
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The idea of writing a collection of short stories has been on my mind...
over a year ago
p {
text-align: justify;
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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...
Strange Loop Canon
OpenAI's Strawberry models can reason like an expert
When models can think
3 months ago
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."
Stories by Andrej...
A Peek at Trends in Machine Learning
over a year ago
IEEE Spectrum
Robot Photographer Takes the Perfect Picture
Finding it hard to get the perfect angle for your shot? PhotoBot can take the picture for you. Tell...
4 weeks ago
Finding it hard to get the perfect angle for your shot? PhotoBot can take the picture for you. Tell it what you want the photo to look like, and your robot photographer will present you with references to mimic. Pick your favorite, and PhotoBot—a robot arm with a camera—will...
Matt Mazur
When LTD Purchasers Meet an Inactive User Policy
Last year I participated in a Lifetime Deal (LTD) promotion to offer Preceden to the AppSumo...
a year ago
Last year I participated in a Lifetime Deal (LTD) promotion to offer Preceden to the AppSumo community. Maybe I’ll dive into my experience there in another post, but I wanted to share an interesting thing that’s happening now, a year after the deal ended. AppSumo has a policy...
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
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
Daniel Miessler
NO. 357 | NEWS, ANALYSIS, & DISCOVERY SERIES
SECURITY NEWS Attackers have dumped nearly 8 million Australian health records on the dark web after...
over a year ago
SECURITY NEWS Attackers have dumped nearly 8 million Australian health records on the dark web after breaching a health insurance company with almost 10 million customers. MORE NSA has released guidance asking companies to switch to memory-safe languages like Rust, C#, Go, and...
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.
Weighty Thoughts
The EU is making itself an economic backwater
Regulation is not a real export
5 months ago
Regulation is not a real export
Society's Backend
Devin Has Exposed a Major Issue with Software Engineering
And isn't that we're all going to lose our jobs
9 months ago
And isn't that we're all going to lose our jobs
IEEE Spectrum
Why Simone Giertz, the Queen of Useless Robots, Got Serious
On YouTube she demonstrated a hilarious series of self-built mechanized devices that worked...
2 months ago
On YouTube she demonstrated a hilarious series of self-built mechanized devices that worked perfectly for ridiculous applications, such as a headboard-mounted alarm clock with a rubber hand to slap the user awake.
This article is part of our special report, “Reinventing...
Artificial Ignorance
How Shopify is making AI Magic
A case study on turning competitive advantages into useful AI.
a year ago
A case study on turning competitive advantages into useful AI.
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
Artificial Ignorance
The ideologies fighting for the soul (and future) of AI
EAs, e/accs, decels, and doomers.
a year ago
EAs, e/accs, decels, and doomers.
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...
One Useful Thing
What Can be Done in 59 Seconds: An Opportunity (and a Crisis)
Five analytical tasks in under a minute
10 months ago
Five analytical tasks in under a minute
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: ICRA Turns 40
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.
IROS 2024: 14–18 October 2024, ABU...
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.
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...
3 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...
One Useful Thing
Democratizing the future of education
We are all EdTech designers, now
a year ago
We are all EdTech designers, now
Rozado’s Visual...
The Increasing Prominence of Prejudice and Social Justice Rhetoric in UK News Media
I have recently published a report with Matthew Goodwin about the increasing prominence of prejudice...
over a year ago
I have recently published a report with Matthew Goodwin about the increasing prominence of prejudice and social justice rhetoric in UK news media. Recent years have seen considerable debate about the rise of political polarization in British society. Specifically, over the last...
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...
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...
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 Software Engineers Need to Understand Machine Learning
And how ML helps software engineers in their daily work
6 months ago
And how ML helps software engineers in their daily work
Society's Backend
The Problem with American Emergency Alerts
In a world of self-driving cars and human-like chatbots, shouldn't the best technologies would be...
a year ago
In a world of self-driving cars and human-like chatbots, shouldn't the best technologies would be used for life-saving applications?
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...
IEEE Spectrum
5 Questions for Robotics Legend Ruzena Bajcsy
Ruzena Bajcsy is one of the founders of the modern field of robotics. With an education in...
3 weeks ago
Ruzena Bajcsy is one of the founders of the modern field of robotics. With an education in electrical engineering in Slovakia, followed by a Ph.D. at Stanford, Bajcsy was the first woman to join the engineering faculty at the University of Pennsylvania. She was the first, she...
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....
Society's Backend
Open Models Catching Up, SearchGPT Release, Deepfake Victims Protected by Regulation, and More
Weekly updates and resources 7/29/24
4 months ago
Weekly updates and resources 7/29/24
Weighty Thoughts
China's AI Journey
Talking to Jordan Schneider from ChinaTalk about China's technological ascent
6 months ago
Talking to Jordan Schneider from ChinaTalk about China's technological ascent
fast.ai
A new old kind of R&D lab
Answer.AI is a new kind of AI R&D lab which creates practical end-user products based on...
a year ago
Answer.AI is a new kind of AI R&D lab which creates practical end-user products based on foundational research breakthroughs.
AI Snake Oil
Does ChatGPT have a liberal bias?
A new paper making this claim has many flaws. But the question merits research
a year ago
A new paper making this claim has many flaws. But the question merits research
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 |...
AI Snake Oil
Is AI progress slowing down?
Making sense of recent technology trends and claims
4 days ago
Making sense of recent technology trends and claims
Made by Ollin
Game Emulation via Neural Network
over a year ago
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Quadruped Ladder Climbing
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.
IROS 2024: 14–18 October 2024, ABU...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 078: Voice mode
August 2, 2024.
4 months ago
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.
fast.ai
From Deep Learning Foundations to Stable Diffusion
We’ve released our new course with over 30 hours of video content.
a year ago
We’ve released our new course with over 30 hours of video content.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 084: Strawberry / o1
September 13, 2024.
3 months ago
Artificial Ignorance
Case Study: Scaling customer intelligence
Analyzing 10,000 sales calls with Claude
3 weeks ago
Analyzing 10,000 sales calls with Claude
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
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
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 082: System prompts
August 30, 2024.
3 months ago
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...
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...
Strange Loop Canon
Strange Loop Canon Commencement Address
5 months ago
IEEE Spectrum
Unlock the Power of Agile for Hardware Teams
The Modified Agile for Hardware Development (MAHD) Framework is the ultimate solution for hardware...
6 days ago
The Modified Agile for Hardware Development (MAHD) Framework is the ultimate solution for hardware teams seeking the benefits of Agile without the pitfalls of applying software-centric methods. Traditional development approaches, like waterfall, often result in delayed timelines,...
Society's Backend
Would You Build the Manhattan Project in the UAE?
Thoughts on AI national security threats
6 months ago
Thoughts on AI national security threats
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...
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 Machine Learning Technical Debt is Especially Bad
And effective ways to mitigate it
9 months ago
And effective ways to mitigate it
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 052: AI, EO, DPA
February 2, 2024.
10 months ago
One Useful Thing
Detecting the Secret Cyborgs
The AI Trap for Organizations
a year ago
The AI Trap for Organizations
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 […]
Society's Backend
The Metrics Machine Learning Engineers Care About That Modelers Don't
And a brief overview of TPUs in Google data centers
9 months ago
And a brief overview of TPUs in Google data centers
The Gradient
Financial Market Applications of LLMs
The AI revolution drove frenzied investment in both private and public companies and captured the...
8 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...
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.
Artificial Ignorance
From Stable Diffusion to Stable Everything
Inside Stability AI's roster of AI models.
7 months ago
Inside Stability AI's roster of AI models.
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
Marcus on AI
CONFIRMED: LLMs have indeed reached a point of diminishing returns
Science, sociology, and the likely financial collapse of the Generative AI bubble
a month ago
Science, sociology, and the likely financial collapse of the Generative AI bubble
Marcus on AI
8 signs that Donald Trump has a progressive form of dementia
And how our media is failing, wildly, in one of the most important stories in US history
a month ago
And how our media is failing, wildly, in one of the most important stories in US history
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 and the workplace
How employees and CEOs alike can plan for the future.
7 months ago
How employees and CEOs alike can plan for the future.
Weighty Thoughts
CUDA is Still a Giant Moat for NVIDIA
Despite everyone’s focus on hardware, the software of AI is what protects NVIDIA
9 months ago
Despite everyone’s focus on hardware, the software of AI is what protects NVIDIA
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...
Daniel Miessler
AI Art Will Push the Top 1% to Human Artists
One effect I think we’ll see from all this AI-generated art is magnified status for those who insist...
over a year ago
One effect I think we’ll see from all this AI-generated art is magnified status for those who insist on the opposite, i.e., manual, human art. The more manual the better. The more human the better. Ideally there’d only be one of whatever you have, and it’d only be yours. Why is...
AI Snake Oil
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.
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...
Society's Backend
Backend Biweekly #3: 97 Updates and Resources
Huge Nvidia Updates, Gemini Hackathon for Money, and more
8 months ago
Huge Nvidia Updates, Gemini Hackathon for Money, and more
Artificial Ignorance
Workshop: Prompt Engineering for Claude
Watch now | If you’ve ever wanted to level up your AI prompting skills, this is the workshop for...
2 months ago
Watch now | If you’ve ever wanted to level up your AI prompting skills, this is the workshop for you.
fast.ai
Deep Learning Foundations Signup, Open Source Scholarships, & More
Signups are now open for Practical Deep Learning for Coders Part 2, 2022. Scholarships are available...
over a year ago
Signups are now open for Practical Deep Learning for Coders Part 2, 2022. Scholarships are available for fast.ai community contributors, open source developers, and diversity scholars.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 031: Think of the children
September 8, 2023
a year ago
AI Snake Oil
Can AI automate computational reproducibility?
A new benchmark to measure the impact of AI on improving science
3 months ago
A new benchmark to measure the impact of AI on improving science
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
Eighteen pitfalls to beware of in AI journalism
A checklist for avoiding hype
over a year ago
A checklist for avoiding hype
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 064: Big Tech's small models
April 26, 2024.
7 months 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...
2 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...
Strange Loop Canon
LLMs breach a threshold
Open Source models get more powerful, and an AI system scores silver in Maths Olympiad
4 months ago
Open Source models get more powerful, and an AI system scores silver in Maths Olympiad
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 033: DALL·E 3
September 22, 2023.
a year ago
AI Snake Oil
On the Societal Impact of Open Foundation Models
Adding precision to the debate on openness in AI
9 months ago
Adding precision to the debate on openness in AI
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
One Useful Thing
Almost an Agent: What GPTs can do
Also, my book has a cover (also I have a book coming out)
a year ago
Also, my book has a cover (also I have a book coming out)
fast.ai
In defense of screen time
Pundits say my husband and I are parenting wrong.
a month ago
Pundits say my husband and I are parenting wrong.
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...
Marcus on AI
o3, AGI, the art of the demo, and what you can expect in 2025
OpenAI’s new model was revealed yesterday; its most fervent believers think AGI has already arrived....
19 hours ago
OpenAI’s new model was revealed yesterday; its most fervent believers think AGI has already arrived. Here’s what you should pay attention to in the coming year.
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.
Society's Backend
AI Reading List 1: Understand Transformers, Reflection-70B Update, and LLMs Still Cannot Reason
Society's Backend Reading List 10-07-2024
2 months ago
Society's Backend Reading List 10-07-2024
Artificial Ignorance
10 AI predictions for 2024
Hey Siri, set a reminder for 365 days.
12 months ago
Hey Siri, set a reminder for 365 days.
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
a month ago
You can start to see the outlines of an AI future, for better and worse
Rozado’s Visual...
A brief response to a reader regarding prejudice denoting terms in Swedish media
Regarding when Swedish media started to increase mentions of prejudice denoting terminology and a...
a week ago
Regarding when Swedish media started to increase mentions of prejudice denoting terminology and a reader comments about it, several things to note:
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...
Stories by Andrej...
Virtual Reality: still not quite there, again.
over a year ago
Daniel Miessler
Unsupervised Learning NO. 364 | Reality Headset, BingPT, AI+Cyber
If you're not subscribed to the podcast version of the newsletter, please add it with your favorite...
a year ago
If you're not subscribed to the podcast version of the newsletter, please add it with your favorite client. APPLE | SPOTIFY | OTHER SECURITY NEWS The FBI is warning people to block online ads due to imposters poisoning search results. They advise users to 1) check ad URLs, 2) go...
Strange Loop Canon
Evaluations are all we need
On analysing talent in LLMs
11 months ago
On analysing talent in LLMs
Rozado’s Visual...
The Political Preferences of LLMs
Substantial political homogeneity in Large Language Models (LLMs) responses to questions with...
10 months ago
Substantial political homogeneity in Large Language Models (LLMs) responses to questions with political connotations
Weighty Thoughts
Open AI's Valuation and a Favor to Ask
A guest post and an in-person panel
4 months ago
A guest post and an in-person panel
Weighty Thoughts
What’s coming next for AI in 2024
A long overdue VC apocalypse and the birth of the first real AI companies
11 months ago
A long overdue VC apocalypse and the birth of the first real AI companies
Society's Backend
I Beat Newsletter Fatigue With AI
And why direct forms of communication will always be super valuable
10 months ago
And why direct forms of communication will always be super valuable
The Berkeley...
Modeling Extremely Large Images with $x$T
As computer vision researchers, we believe that every pixel can tell a story. However, there seems...
9 months ago
As computer vision researchers, we believe that every pixel can tell a story. However, there seems to be a writer’s block settling into the field when it comes to dealing with large images. Large images are no longer rare—the cameras we carry in our pockets and those orbiting our...
Society's Backend
Weekly Backend #5: 55 Resources
The inner workings of transformers, Machine Learning Q and AI, machine learning classifies harmful...
7 months ago
The inner workings of transformers, Machine Learning Q and AI, machine learning classifies harmful viruses, and more
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).
Weighty Thoughts
News Roundup: May 15, 2024
Open AI announcements, DeepSeek-v2, and TSMC Arizona
7 months ago
Open AI announcements, DeepSeek-v2, and TSMC Arizona
Artificial Ignorance
LLMs are getting dumber and we have no idea why
Five theories that could explain how chatbots are getting worse.
3 months ago
Five theories that could explain how chatbots are getting worse.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 030: OpenAI's $1B revenue
September 1, 2023
a year ago
Weighty Thoughts
What is Defensibility?
Back to basics for AI startups and others
8 months ago
Back to basics for AI startups and others
The Gradient
A Brief Overview of Gender Bias in AI
A brief overview and discussion on gender bias in AI
8 months ago
A brief overview and discussion on gender bias in AI
Society's Backend
Should You Get a PhD?
The one good reason to do a PhD and two others that fall flat
2 months ago
The one good reason to do a PhD and two others that fall flat
Sam Altman
Time to Take a Stand
It is time for tech companies to start speaking up about
some of the actions taken by President...
over a year ago
It is time for tech companies to start speaking up about
some of the actions taken by President Trump’s administration.
There are many actions from his first week that are
objectionable. In repeatedly
invoking unsubstantiated conspiracy theories (like the 3 million...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 048: The Robot Constitution
January 5, 2024.
11 months ago
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...
One Useful Thing
Centaurs and Cyborgs on the Jagged Frontier
I think we have an answer on whether AIs will reshape work....
a year ago
I think we have an answer on whether AIs will reshape work....
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...
Rozado’s Visual...
The Prevalence of Prejudice-Denoting Terms in Spanish Newspapers
Published paper Twitter summary Introduction Previous scholarly literature here and here has...
over a year ago
Published paper Twitter summary Introduction Previous scholarly literature here and here has documented a pronounced increase in the prevalence of prejudice-denoting terms in American news media content. Some have referred to this shift in journalistic discourse and related...
Artificial Ignorance
Bridging AI and human creativity
A conversation with Harrison Telyan, co-founder of NUMI.
9 months ago
A conversation with Harrison Telyan, co-founder of NUMI.
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...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 026: AudioCraft
August 4, 2023
a year ago
Society's Backend
Allen AI and DeepSeek are Taking Off, Professional Advice for Working in AI, Agentic Web Design, and...
Society's Backend Reading List 12-2-2024
2 weeks ago
Society's Backend Reading List 12-2-2024
Rozado’s Visual...
An Analysis of AI Political Preferences from a European Perspective
Introduction
a month 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
Society's Backend
The Attention Thief: Machine Learning as a Monetization Weapon
How your greatest asset is silently stolen by technology every day
a year ago
How your greatest asset is silently stolen by technology every day
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
5 months ago
The top 10 most important updates of last week: 7/8/24
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
a month ago
Seemingly minor technical decisions can have life-or-death effects
Weighty Thoughts
Why ChatGPT Strawberry o1 (and other LLMs) will Never be Good at Diagnosis
“Connectionist” vs. Knowledge-Based AI
2 months ago
“Connectionist” vs. Knowledge-Based AI
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...
Rozado’s Visual...
El sesgo político de ChatGPT
A la izquierda del centro político
a year ago
A la izquierda del centro político
Daniel Miessler
Why Apple Keeps Winning
People are blown away that Apple keeps winning while its competitors are floundering. It’s a simple...
over a year ago
People are blown away that Apple keeps winning while its competitors are floundering. It’s a simple formula. Make consistently super-high-quality products that work together as part of an ecosystem. Google and Microsoft have 20X Apple’s losses in the last year. A staggering $3...
Daniel Miessler
NO. 361 | GPT++, Apple Security, CISA Cuba…
SECURITY NEWS South Korean authorities are warning that North Koreans are disguising themselves and...
over a year ago
SECURITY NEWS South Korean authorities are warning that North Koreans are disguising themselves and getting jobs in South Korea. The saddest part is that it appears to be just another income generation scheme, meaning they use the salaries to fund the North Korean nuclear...
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...
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...
Rozado’s Visual...
Out-of-office Donald Trump still more prominent in news media content than the current U.S....
In 2019, I helped my colleague Musa al-Gharbi document the extraordinary prominence of Donald Trump...
a year ago
In 2019, I helped my colleague Musa al-Gharbi document the extraordinary prominence of Donald Trump in news media content (see here). I have recently updated that previous analysis. Briefly stated, no U.S. president in recent history has received a similar amount of media...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 093: Diminishing returns
November 15, 2024.
a month ago
Artificial Ignorance
How to build an AI search engine (Part 2)
VC funding, here we come.
2 months ago
VC funding, here we come.
One Useful Thing
When you give a Claude a mouse
Some quick impressions of an actual agent
2 months ago
Some quick impressions of an actual agent
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...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 039: The governance issue
November 3, 2023.
a year ago
One Useful Thing
Confronting Impossible Futures
We shouldn't be certain about what is next, but we should plan for it
5 months ago
We shouldn't be certain about what is next, but we should plan for it
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');
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...
Daniel Miessler
Reverse Transcription
There are dozens of reasons to be bullish on AI right now, especially in the GPT space where we have...
over a year ago
There are dozens of reasons to be bullish on AI right now, especially in the GPT space where we have AIs producing so much extraordinary art. But I’m excited about something else that we’re naturally evolving GPT into, which I’m calling Reverse Transcription. A bit of background...
IEEE Spectrum
Drones with Legs Can Walk, Hop, and Jump into the Air
“Whenever I encountered crows on the EPFL campus, I would observe how they walked, hopped over or...
2 weeks ago
“Whenever I encountered crows on the EPFL campus, I would observe how they walked, hopped over or jumped on obstacles, and jumped for take-offs,” says Won Dong Shin, a doctoral student at EPFL’s Laboratory of Intelligent Systems. “What I consistently observed was that they always...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 083: Bioacoustics
September 6, 2024.
3 months ago
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 069: Project Greymatter
May 31, 2024.
6 months ago
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?
8 months ago
On goal drift and lower reliability. Or, why can't LLMs play Conway's Game Of Life?
Strange Loop Canon
People want competence, seemingly over everything else
All elections are about state capacity
a month ago
All elections are about state capacity
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 097: Model Mayhem
December 13, 2024.
a week ago
PromptArmor Blog
Coming soon
This is PromptArmor Blog.
a year ago
This is PromptArmor Blog.
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.
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
8 months ago
What artificial intelligence can do, what it can't, and how to tell the difference
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...
Society's Backend
The State of AI in China
Is China winning the race to AGI?
5 months ago
Is China winning the race to AGI?
AI Snake Oil
A misleading open letter about sci-fi AI dangers ignores the real risks
Misinformation, labor impact, and safety are all risks. But not in the way the letter implies.
a year ago
Misinformation, labor impact, and safety are all risks. But not in the way the letter implies.
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
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
Weighty Thoughts
Why we need AI as a society
We’re aging too fast (AKA my entire AI/robotics investment thesis)
7 months ago
We’re aging too fast (AKA my entire AI/robotics investment thesis)
Artificial Ignorance
Why now?
What's behind our current AI boom?
a year ago
What's behind our current AI boom?
AI Snake Oil
AI scaling myths
Scaling will run out. The question is when.
5 months ago
Scaling will run out. The question is when.
Strange Loop Canon
Whither Utopia?
The mystery of why we don't dream of building perfect societies anymore
6 months ago
The mystery of why we don't dream of building perfect societies anymore
Society's Backend
OpenAI's Strawberry May Enhance AI Reasoning, Optimization of Vision Language Models, Info on...
Weekly updates and resources 7/15/24
5 months ago
Weekly updates and resources 7/15/24
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Extreme Off-Road
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE...
a month ago
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.
Humanoids 2024: 22–24 November...
AI Snake Oil
Is AI-generated disinformation a threat to democracy?
An essay on the future of generative AI on social media
a year ago
An essay on the future of generative AI on social media
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...
9 months ago
Details on Metas training clusters, analysis of ML competitions in 2023, AI's impact on water resources, and more
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.
7 months ago
These Python scripts help me write 3x faster and go from loose ideas to first draft in minutes.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 062: Data is the new oil
April 12, 2024.
8 months ago
The Berkeley...
Keeping Learning-Based Control Safe by Regulating Distributional Shift
To regulate the distribution shift experience by learning-based controllers, we seek a mechanism for...
over a year ago
To regulate the distribution shift experience by learning-based controllers, we seek a mechanism for constraining the agent to regions of high data density throughout its trajectory (left). Here, we present an approach which achieves this goal by combining features of density...
Frank’s Ramblings
Hierarchical Navigable Small Worlds (HNSW)
(Note: A version of this post has been cross-published to the Zilliz blog)
In a previous blog, we...
a year ago
(Note: A version of this post has been cross-published to the Zilliz blog)
In a previous blog, we took a look at scalar quantization and product quantization - two indexing strategies which are used to reduce the overall size of the database without reducing the scope of a...
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....
6 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
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?
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 085: You win some, you Newsom
September 20, 2024.
3 months ago
Weighty Thoughts
The Real Risks of AI
Humans are really the ones to be scared of
7 months ago
Humans are really the ones to be scared of
One Useful Thing
Gradually, then Suddenly: Upon the Threshold
Small improvements can lead to big changes
5 months ago
Small improvements can lead to big changes
Weighty Thoughts
Let's talk about AI power costs
It's important, but a lot of recent attention has been concern-trolling
4 months ago
It's important, but a lot of recent attention has been concern-trolling
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.
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...
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...
Artificial Ignorance
The AI research tool that saves me hours every week
And why it might revolutionize the search industry.
11 months ago
And why it might revolutionize the search industry.
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...
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...
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 070: AI whistleblowers
June 7, 2024.
6 months ago
Daniel Miessler
Frontview Mirror: 2023 Edition
This is member content. Thank you for being a subscriber. This is UL Member Content Subscribe...
a year ago
This is member content. Thank you for being a subscriber. This is UL Member Content Subscribe Already a member? Login
One Useful Thing
AI is not good software. It is pretty good people.
A pragmatic approach to thinking about AI
a year ago
A pragmatic approach to thinking about AI
The Berkeley...
Are We Ready for Multi-Image Reasoning? Launching VHs: The Visual Haystacks Benchmark!
Humans excel at processing vast arrays of visual information, a skill that is crucial for achieving...
5 months ago
Humans excel at processing vast arrays of visual information, a skill that is crucial for achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI). Over the decades, AI researchers have developed Visual Question Answering (VQA) systems to interpret scenes within single images and answer...
Sam Altman
American Equity
I’d like feedback on the following idea.
I think that every adult US citizen should get an annual...
over a year ago
I’d like feedback on the following idea.
I think that every adult US citizen should get an annual share of the US GDP.
I believe that owning something like a share in America would align all of us in making the country as successful as possible—the better the country does, the...
Sam Altman
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,...
AI Snake Oil
Tech policy is only frustrating 90% of the time
That’s what makes it worthwhile
8 months ago
That’s what makes it worthwhile
Weighty Thoughts
One Definite Sign of a Bad Startup Idea
If you can’t tell anyone about your startup idea, it's not a good idea
over a year ago
If you can’t tell anyone about your startup idea, it's not a good idea
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...
3 months ago
Prejudice-denoting terms in academic research have recently decreased while some DEI-related terms continue to rise—what does this shift reveal?
AI Snake Oil
Generative AI’s end-run around copyright won’t be resolved by the courts
Output similarity is a distraction
11 months ago
Output similarity is a distraction
Society's Backend
A Fundamental Overview of Machine Learning Experimentation [Part 1]
And how it differs from the software development you're familiar with
2 weeks ago
And how it differs from the software development you're familiar with
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 092: Watermarking the AI wave
November 8, 2024.
a month ago
Strange Loop Canon
Predicting AI
I revisit past predictions
3 months ago
I revisit past predictions
Artificial Ignorance
Tutorial: How to narrate video with Sora, GPT-Vision, and ElevenLabs
The future of entertainment is going to be a wild ride.
9 months ago
The future of entertainment is going to be a wild ride.
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...
11 months ago
Yesterday on X, I shared a post about some responses I was getting from the ChatGPT 3.5 API indicating that it was refusing to summarize arXiv papers: There has been a lot of discussion recently about the perceived decrease in the quality of ChatGPT’s responses and seeing...
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...
2 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...
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
Made by Ollin
HintBot
Hinting icons automatically with a neural network
over a year ago
Hinting icons automatically with a neural network
Artificial Ignorance
How Intercom is transforming customer support with AI
A conversation with Fergal Reid, VP of AI at Intercom.
8 months ago
A conversation with Fergal Reid, VP of AI at Intercom.
One Useful Thing
What just happened
A transformative month rewrites the capabilities of AI
3 days ago
A transformative month rewrites the capabilities of AI
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