The Gradient
Salmon in the Loop
On fish counting – a complex sociotechnical problem in a field that is going through the process of...
a year ago
On fish counting – a complex sociotechnical problem in a field that is going through the process of digital transformation.
Society's Backend
Welcome to 2024: The Year Where AI is No Longer an Option
Why everyone should learn about machine learning
11 months ago
Why everyone should learn about machine learning
Society's Backend
How to Know if Your Data is Being Used Maliciously
The information you should know about a company before gifting them your data
a year ago
The information you should know about a company before gifting them your data
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...
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...
Artificial Ignorance
OpenAI's o1 is a misunderstood model
Are the latest "reasoning" breakthroughs all they're hyped up to be?
3 months ago
Are the latest "reasoning" breakthroughs all they're hyped up to be?
Society's Backend
Artificial Intelligence: A New Paradigm Emerges
A realistic perspective of the advantages and pitfalls of artificial intelligence
a year ago
A realistic perspective of the advantages and pitfalls of artificial intelligence
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
Artificial Ignorance
The Industrial Content Revolution
A fundamental change in the structure the internet.
a year ago
A fundamental change in the structure the internet.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 091: Search wars
November 1, 2024.
a month ago
One Useful Thing
An Opinionated Guide to Which AI to Use: ChatGPT Anniversary Edition
A simple answer, and then a less simple one.
a year ago
A simple answer, and then a less simple one.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 058: Devin and SIMA
March 15, 2023.
9 months ago
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
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 069: Project Greymatter
May 31, 2024.
6 months ago
AI Snake Oil
Generative AI companies must publish transparency reports
The debate about the harms of AI is happening in a data vacuum
a year ago
The debate about the harms of AI is happening in a data vacuum
Daniel Miessler
NO. 366 | T-Breach, Siri++, Conception Ages…
🎙️If you're not subscribed to the podcast version of the newsletter, please add it using with your...
a year ago
🎙️If you're not subscribed to the podcast version of the newsletter, please add it using with your favorite client! APPLE | SPOTIFY | OTHER SECURITY NEWS Another T-Mobile Breach T-Mobile has had another security breach, this one affecting at least 37 million accounts. They...
Rozado’s Visual...
An Analysis of AI Political Preferences from a European Perspective
Introduction
a month ago
Matt Mazur
Redesigning Preceden’s Pricing Page
Milan (Preceden’s designer) and I recently wrapped up a project to redesign Preceden’s pricing page....
a year ago
Milan (Preceden’s designer) and I recently wrapped up a project to redesign Preceden’s pricing page. Here’s the previous above-the-fold content: And here’s how the new design turned out: Few things to highlight: Very happy with how it turned out. Kudus to Milan for suggesting we...
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...
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.
PromptArmor Blog
Data Exfiltration from Slack AI via indirect prompt injection
Authors: PromptArmor
4 months ago
Society's Backend
Weekly Backend #6: 59 Resources and Updates, AI is Taking Off in Medicine
Google DeepMind releases AlphaFold 3, KANs, LLM Benchmarks are being looked at more critically,...
7 months ago
Google DeepMind releases AlphaFold 3, KANs, LLM Benchmarks are being looked at more critically, Apple is bringing their AI chips to data centers, StackOverflow partners with OpenAI, and more
Artificial Ignorance
States are racing ahead of Congress to regulate deepfakes
Several states just banned deepfakes in political ads and porn.
9 months ago
Several states just banned deepfakes in political ads and porn.
One Useful Thing
Secret Cyborgs: The Present Disruption in Three Papers
The future is already here, we just need to figure out a few details.
a year ago
The future is already here, we just need to figure out a few details.
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...
AI Snake Oil
Artists can now opt out of generative AI. It’s not enough.
Opting out is the latest example of generative AI developers externalizing costs.
a year ago
Opting out is the latest example of generative AI developers externalizing costs.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 070: AI whistleblowers
June 7, 2024.
6 months ago
IEEE Spectrum
Remote Sub Sustains Science Kilometers Underwater
The water column is hazy as an unusual remotely operated vehicle glides over the seafloor in search...
2 months ago
The water column is hazy as an unusual remotely operated vehicle glides over the seafloor in search of a delicate tilt meter deployed three years ago off the west side of Vancouver Island. The sensor measures shaking and shifting in continental plates that will eventually unleash...
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,...
The Berkeley...
Reverse engineering the NTK: towards first-principles architecture design
Deep neural networks have enabled technological wonders ranging from voice recognition to machine...
over a year ago
Deep neural networks have enabled technological wonders ranging from voice recognition to machine transition to protein engineering, but their design and application is nonetheless notoriously unprincipled.
The development of tools and methods to guide this process is one of the...
Artificial Ignorance
Stop begging for JSON
How OpenAI's Structured Outputs makes building with AI much more reliable.
a week ago
How OpenAI's Structured Outputs makes building with AI much more reliable.
Stories by Andrej...
ICLR 2017 vs arxiv-sanity
over a year ago
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...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 041: Lyria
November 17, 2023.
a year ago
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...
8 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...
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
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
Sam Altman
Researchers and Founders
I spent many years working with founders and now I work with researchers.
Although there are always...
over a year ago
I spent many years working with founders and now I work with researchers.
Although there are always individual exceptions, on average it’s surprising to me how different the best people in these groups are (including in some qualities that I had assumed were present in great...
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....
23 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.
Matt Mazur
Exploring ChatGPT’s Knowledge Cutoff
A recurring topic of discussion on the OpenAI forums, on Reddit, and on Twitter is about what...
a year ago
A recurring topic of discussion on the OpenAI forums, on Reddit, and on Twitter is about what ChatGPT’s knowledge cutoff date actually is. It seems like it should be straightforward enough to figure out (just ask it), but it can be confusing due to ChatGPT’s inconsistent answers...
Society's Backend
If You Understand Bananas, You Can Understand Machine Learning
A simplified high-level overview of primary machine learning algorithms for anyone to understand
11 months ago
A simplified high-level overview of primary machine learning algorithms for anyone to understand
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 026: AudioCraft
August 4, 2023
a year ago
AI Snake Oil
How Transparent Are Foundation Model Developers?
Introducing the Foundation Model Transparency Index
a year ago
Introducing the Foundation Model Transparency Index
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...
Daniel Miessler
NO. 367 | Hive Ransom, Anti-Google, Software 2.0…
🎙️If you’re not subscribed to the podcast version of the newsletter, please add it using with your...
a year ago
🎙️If you’re not subscribed to the podcast version of the newsletter, please add it using with your favorite client! APPLE | SPOTIFY | OTHER SECURITY NEWS The FBI infiltrated the HIVE ransomware group, stopping over $130 million in ransomware attacks. HIVE is known for going...
Weighty Thoughts
The Mystical Q
OpenAI Q*, Primer on Reinforcement Learning, and Implications
a year ago
OpenAI Q*, Primer on Reinforcement Learning, and Implications
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...
Society's Backend
Stop Obsessing Over the Product and Start Thinking About the Bigger Picture
The actual takeaways from the iPhone 15 event
a year ago
The actual takeaways from the iPhone 15 event
Artificial Ignorance
The State of AI Engineering
Notes from the first AI Engineer Summit.
a year ago
Notes from the first AI Engineer Summit.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 067: GPT-4o and Google I/O
May 17, 2024.
7 months ago
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 045: Google's just getting started
December 15, 2023.
a year ago
One Useful Thing
Captain's log: the irreducible weirdness of prompting AIs
Also, we have a prompt library!
9 months ago
Also, we have a prompt library!
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 095: QwQ
November 29, 2024.
3 weeks ago
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 040: GPTs
November 10, 2023.
a year ago
The Gradient
Interpretability Creationism
On “interpretability creationism” – interpretability methods that only look at the final state of...
a year ago
On “interpretability creationism” – interpretability methods that only look at the final state of the model and ignore its evolution over the course of training
One Useful Thing
What OpenAI did
A new model opens up new possibilities
7 months ago
A new model opens up new possibilities
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
Andrej Karpathy blog
What a Deep Neural Network thinks about your #selfie
Convolutional Neural Networks are great: they recognize things, places and people in your personal...
over a year ago
Convolutional Neural Networks are great: they recognize things, places and people in your personal photos, signs, people and lights in self-driving cars, crops, forests and traffic in aerial imagery, various anomalies in medical images and all kinds of other useful things. But...
Marcus on AI
Casey (Newton) Strikes Out
His continued skepticism of AI skepticism continues to miss the mark
a week ago
His continued skepticism of AI skepticism continues to miss the mark
Society's Backend
Meta's New Segmentation Model, A New Open-Source Image Generation Model, Apple Intelligence Model...
Machine learning resources and updates 8/5/2024
4 months ago
Machine learning resources and updates 8/5/2024
Weighty Thoughts
Startup Valuation Made Simple(r) - Working Backwards
Counterintuitively, start from how much money you need
over a year ago
Counterintuitively, start from how much money you need
Artificial Ignorance
Groq, Gemini, and 10x improvements
As a programmer and CTO, I've developed a rough rule of thumb when it comes to scaling systems. When...
10 months ago
As a programmer and CTO, I've developed a rough rule of thumb when it comes to scaling systems. When you scale your inputs (users, page views, messages, etc) by 10x, something breaks. Usually, it's something pretty fundamental. And the end result is that you need to replace a...
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 build an AI agent (Part 2)
Part 2: Giving our agent internet access.
a year ago
Part 2: Giving our agent internet access.
Rozado’s Visual...
El desproporcionado número de referencias al machismo en los medios de comunicación españoles
Los medios de comunicación españoles constituyen una anomalía en comparación con sus homólogos...
a year ago
Los medios de comunicación españoles constituyen una anomalía en comparación con sus homólogos internacionales por su alto número de referencias al machismo que triplican a las de cualquier otro país
Society's Backend
LLM Research Recap of 2024, Fine-tuning LLM Judges, Amazon's Nova Models, Google's Genie 2, and More
Society's Backend Reading List 12-10-2024
a week ago
Society's Backend Reading List 12-10-2024
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...
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
Artificial Ignorance
Small newsletters, big ideas
A subscriber showcase full of hidden gems on Substack.
6 days ago
A subscriber showcase full of hidden gems on Substack.
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
4 months ago
Machine learning resources and updates 8/19/2024
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?
Weighty Thoughts
Commentary on Technology, Startups, and Investing
Welcome to Weighty Thoughts by me, James Wang. General Partner at Creative Ventures. Ex-Bridgewater...
over a year ago
Welcome to Weighty Thoughts by me, James Wang. General Partner at Creative Ventures. Ex-Bridgewater and Google X. Co-Founder Lioness. Sign up now so you don’t miss the first issue. In the meantime, tell your friends!
Artificial Ignorance
Distributing the future
A reminder that things take time.
6 months ago
A reminder that things take time.
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...
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Mobile Robot Upgrades
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.
ROSCon 2024: 21–23 October 2024,...
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...
Frank’s Ramblings
My Experience Living and Working in China, Part I
In this four-part article, I’ll go over some of the lessons I learned living and doing business in...
over a year ago
In this four-part article, I’ll go over some of the lessons I learned living and doing business in China’s tech industry. During my time in China, I’ve led a team of 10+ engineers to develop a location-based IoT and sensing platform, co-founded an open-source project called...
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...
One Useful Thing
Getting started with AI: Good enough prompting
Don't make this hard
4 weeks ago
Strange Loop Canon
Predicting AI
I revisit past predictions
3 months ago
I revisit past predictions
Strange Loop Canon
No, LLMs are not "scheming"
3 days ago
Marcus on AI
Sora still appears to have trouble with physics
Exactly as I warned in February
a week ago
Exactly as I warned in February
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
Strange Loop Canon
When we become cogs
on motivation and technology
a month ago
on motivation and technology
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 074: Amazon's Adept acquisition
July 5, 2024.
5 months ago
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
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Robot Dog Handstand
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
AI Roundup 043: Happy birthday, ChatGPT
December 1, 2023.
a year ago
Artificial Ignorance
10 of the most impactful AI stories of 2023
A quick look back on a very busy year in AI.
a year ago
A quick look back on a very busy year in AI.
The Berkeley...
GPT-4 + Stable-Diffusion = ?: Enhancing Prompt Understanding of Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with...
TL;DR: Text Prompt -> LLM -> Intermediate Representation (such as an image layout) -> Stable...
a year ago
TL;DR: Text Prompt -> LLM -> Intermediate Representation (such as an image layout) -> Stable Diffusion -> Image.
Recent advancements in text-to-image generation with diffusion models have yielded remarkable results synthesizing highly realistic and diverse images. However,...
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...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 033: DALL·E 3
September 22, 2023.
a year ago
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?...
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
9 months ago
An argument for legal and technical safe harbors for AI safety and trustworthiness research
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
Weighty Thoughts
Today’s AI critics don’t understand the history of technology
But is AI different than other technologies?
9 months ago
But is AI different than other technologies?
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
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
Daniel Miessler
News & Analysis | NO. 349
over a year ago
Society's Backend
OpenAI’s Blunder is a Loss for the ML Community
The timeline and why OpenAI’s actions are a big deal
7 months ago
The timeline and why OpenAI’s actions are a big deal
Rozado’s Visual...
Frecuencia de términos en el periódico generalista más leído de España
Frecuencia de términos en el periódico generalista más leído de España: El País Twitter post...
over a year ago
Frecuencia de términos en el periódico generalista más leído de España: El País Twitter post Verification of integrity of frequency counts: https://zenodo.org/record/5674590
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...
Marcus on AI
Generative AI’s Continuing Copyright Problems, an Essay in Memory of Suchir Balaji, 1998 - 2024
In early November, I had a stimulating Zoom call with a former OpenAI employee and Berkeley graduate...
a week ago
In early November, I had a stimulating Zoom call with a former OpenAI employee and Berkeley graduate named Suchir Balaji, who had just left OpenAI.
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...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 079: Don't call it an acquisition
August 9, 2024.
4 months ago
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.
a year ago
We had a busy 2022. Here are a few things we worked on but didn’t cover here.
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.
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,...
Made by Ollin
Game Emulation via Neural Network
over a year ago
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.
Society's Backend
Why MLX is Important for the ML Community
And a step-by-step guide to train a machine learning model on your Mac
7 months ago
And a step-by-step guide to train a machine learning model on your Mac
Rozado’s Visual...
Excess mortality during COVID pandemic, % of population vaccinated and Stringency Index of...
Please be mindful of potential confounds: population density, population behavior, virus virulence...
over a year ago
Please be mindful of potential confounds: population density, population behavior, virus virulence drift, herd immunity, etc.
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...
a month ago
A new AI study is making the rounds, claiming that ChatGPT can write poetry that is “indistinguishable” from William Shakespeare.
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...
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
Artificial Ignorance
OpenAI’s DevDay: The biggest announcements
New models, new products, and new pricing.
a year ago
New models, new products, and new pricing.
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...
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
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
One Useful Thing
I hope you weren't getting too comfortable.
I just got access to the new Bing AI. My initial thoughts are that our assumptions about the limits...
a year ago
I just got access to the new Bing AI. My initial thoughts are that our assumptions about the limits of AI were wrong.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 053: Bye bye Bard
February 9, 2024.
10 months ago
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...
Daniel Miessler
News & Analysis | NO. 353
over a year ago
AI Snake Oil
Evaluating LLMs is a minefield
Annotated slides from a recent talk
a year ago
Annotated slides from a recent talk
Marcus on AI
Satya Nadella and the three stages of scientific truth
A textbook case in how good ideas are often initially throttled
4 weeks ago
A textbook case in how good ideas are often initially throttled
Artificial Ignorance
Lies, damned lies, and benchmarks
While benchmarks (and leaderboards) are useful tools, they are but a small facet when it comes to...
10 months ago
While benchmarks (and leaderboards) are useful tools, they are but a small facet when it comes to evaluating large language models. Often, they're not the best indicators of real-world utility - and I want to dig into why (and what other approaches exist).
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
Made by Ollin
NVIDIA Internship (2017)
Notes on my internship at NVIDIA Redmond.
over a year ago
Notes on my internship at NVIDIA Redmond.
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 week 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.
Sam Altman
Productivity
I think I am
at least somewhat more productive than average, and people sometimes ask me...
over a year ago
I think I am
at least somewhat more productive than average, and people sometimes ask me for
productivity tips. So I decided to just write them all down in one place.
Compound
growth gets discussed as a financial concept, but it works in careers as well,
and it is magic. A...
AI Snake Oil
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
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
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...
Society's Backend
Mastering the Art of Documentation
Documentation is really just glorified dog sitting
a year ago
Documentation is really just glorified dog sitting
Sam Altman
The Virus
Although I still hope things will go differently, the experts I’ve spoken to think we are likely to...
over a year ago
Although I still hope things will go differently, the experts I’ve spoken to think we are likely to face a global tragedy—hundreds of thousands of deaths from Covid-19.
I hope that society views this as a warning for the future. Covid-19 is bad, but only a warm-up. I think it’s...
Artificial Ignorance
The subscriptionization of AI
Navigating the paid AI landscape.
9 months ago
Navigating the paid AI landscape.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 088: Movie magic
October 11, 2024.
2 months ago
Daniel Miessler
Custom Models Are AI’s Killer App
The killer app for AI right now is the universal “custom AI model”. Consume your whole business. Or...
a year ago
The killer app for AI right now is the universal “custom AI model”. Consume your whole business. Or your whole life experience. Every text. Every Slack. Every journal entry. Every blog post. Everything you’ve said or written publicly. All your logs. All your documentation. Turn...
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.
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...
Matt Mazur
“Monthly Billed Annually” is Cursed Copy
There was a great discussion on Twitter recently that began with Daniel Vassallo calling out a SaaS...
a year ago
There was a great discussion on Twitter recently that began with Daniel Vassallo calling out a SaaS for not refunding an accidental annual payment he made on their service. He intended to purchase the monthly plan, but due to an unclear UI and poor copy, he unintentionally...
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....
Artificial Ignorance
The hidden side of Apple Intelligence
More than just another keynote recap.
6 months ago
More than just another keynote recap.
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?
One Useful Thing
Reshaping the tree: rebuilding organizations for AI
Technological change brings organizational change.
a year ago
Technological change brings organizational change.
One Useful Thing
Thinking companion, companion for thinking
Some simple ways to use AI to break you out of biases
a year ago
Some simple ways to use AI to break you out of biases
Artificial Ignorance
AI Zoology: Why are there so many animal models?
Inside the emerging model menagerie.
a year ago
Inside the emerging model menagerie.
Society's Backend
What Apple Intelligence Means for You
"We think you're gonna LOVE it"
6 months ago
"We think you're gonna LOVE it"
Society's Backend
No One Should Be GPU Poor
For everyone to have access to AGI, everyone must also have access to the compute to use it
7 months ago
For everyone to have access to AGI, everyone must also have access to the compute to use it
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 042: sama drama
November 24, 2023.
a year ago
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 083: Bioacoustics
September 6, 2024.
3 months ago
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 065: The gpt2-chatbot mystery
May 3, 2024.
7 months ago
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
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...
Society's Backend
Top 10 Machine Learning Resources and Updates 06/21/2024
The fastest way to get up to speed on ML fundamentals, Meta releases new models, NVIDIA releases...
6 months ago
The fastest way to get up to speed on ML fundamentals, Meta releases new models, NVIDIA releases open models, Google generates audio for video, and more
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.
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:
3 weeks ago
Fantastic writeup of my views today at The Wall Street Journal:
Artificial Ignorance
Blade Runner 2024
Reddit's AI Hunters and the quest for authentic digital experiences.
3 months ago
Reddit's AI Hunters and the quest for authentic digital experiences.
Society's Backend
Founder Mode, How AI Impacts Education, Diffusion Models As Real-Time Game Engines, and More
Machine learning resources and updates 2024-09-03
3 months ago
Machine learning resources and updates 2024-09-03
The Berkeley...
Interactive Fleet Learning
Figure 1: “Interactive Fleet Learning” (IFL) refers to robot fleets in industry and academia that...
a year ago
Figure 1: “Interactive Fleet Learning” (IFL) refers to robot fleets in industry and academia that fall back on human teleoperators when necessary and continually learn from them over time.
In the last few years we have seen an exciting development in robotics and artificial...
Stories by Andrej...
Virtual Reality: still not quite there, again.
over a year ago
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
Artificial Ignorance
Who in their right mind would do an AI hardware startup
From megaFLOPS to mega flops.
8 months ago
From megaFLOPS to mega flops.
Artificial Ignorance
AI's invisible instructions
What meme prompts can teach us about better interface design.
2 months ago
What meme prompts can teach us about better interface design.
Made by Ollin
Priors for Autonomous Vehicle Development
over 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 week 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...
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?
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
Strange Loop Canon
Mind the Gap
from empire to umpire
a year ago
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...
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
6 months ago
A new AI employee, a four hour video on recreating GPT-2, meritocracy at Scale, and more
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 week ago
A data-driven exploration uncovers disparities. Are they shaped by editorial choices or broader societal/historical dynamics?
Daniel Miessler
News & Analysis | NO. 352
over a year ago
Society's Backend
A Privacy Review: TikTok
You should stick to Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts
a year ago
You should stick to Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts
One Useful Thing
How to... use AI to unstick yourself
We often lose momentum because of something small. AI can help.
a year ago
We often lose momentum because of something small. AI can help.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 057: Claude 3
March 8, 2024.
9 months ago
One Useful Thing
Working with AI: Two paths to prompting
Don't overcomplicate things
a year ago
Don't overcomplicate things
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
Rozado’s Visual...
The political preferences of Grok
Elon Musk's response to ChatGPT
a year ago
Elon Musk's response to ChatGPT
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
Rozado’s Visual...
Is The Great Awokening Really Winding Down? Part II: Evidence from News Media
Others (here, here and here) have argued previously that The Great Awokening might be winding down....
a year ago
Others (here, here and here) have argued previously that The Great Awokening might be winding down. I have shown before some preliminary evidence from Twitter content about how Great Awokening terminology with negative connotations are indeed down but those with positive...
Jascha’s blog
Neural network training makes beautiful fractals
window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [];
function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);}
...
10 months ago
window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [];
function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);}
gtag('js', new Date());
gtag('config', 'G-1XJMTJ5KCK');
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...
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...
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
Society's Backend
The Unfortunate Truth Regarding AI Regulation
And the impact it'll have for decades to come
6 months ago
And the impact it'll have for decades to come
One Useful Thing
The shape of the shadow of The Thing
We can start to see, dimly, what the near future of AI looks like.
a year ago
We can start to see, dimly, what the near future of AI looks like.
Society's Backend
Weekly Backend #7: 39 Resources and Updates
GPT-4o, Google I/O, Fugaku LLM, Prep for Machine Learning Interviews, and more
7 months ago
GPT-4o, Google I/O, Fugaku LLM, Prep for Machine Learning Interviews, and more
Frank’s Ramblings
Vision Transformers are Overrated
Vision transformers (ViTs) have seen an incredible rise in the past four years. They have an obvious...
11 months 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...
fast.ai
1st Two Lessons of From Deep Learning Foundations to Stable Diffusion
4 videos from Practical Deep Learning for Coders Part 2, 2022 have been released as a special early...
over a year ago
4 videos from Practical Deep Learning for Coders Part 2, 2022 have been released as a special early preview of the new course.
Daniel Miessler
The UL Boost Protocol
This is a member-only post. Thank you for being part of this. This is UL Member Content Subscribe...
over a year ago
This is a member-only post. Thank you for being part of this. This is UL Member Content Subscribe Already a member? Login
One Useful Thing
Now is the time for grimoires
It isn't data that will unlock AI, it is human expertise
a year ago
It isn't data that will unlock AI, it is human expertise
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
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...
The Berkeley...
Generating 3D Molecular Conformers via Equivariant Coarse-Graining and Aggregated Attention
-->
Figure 1: CoarsenConf architecture.
(I) The encoder $q_\phi(z| X, \mathcal{R})$ takes the...
a year ago
-->
Figure 1: CoarsenConf architecture.
(I) The encoder $q_\phi(z| X, \mathcal{R})$ takes the fine-grained (FG) ground truth conformer $X$, RDKit approximate conformer $\mathcal{R}$ , and coarse-grained (CG) conformer $\mathcal{C}$ as inputs (derived from $X$ and a predefined...
Matt Mazur
Reflecting on My First Year as a Full Time Indie Founder
At the beginning of 2023 I went full time on Preceden, my SaaS timeline maker business, after 13...
11 months ago
At the beginning of 2023 I went full time on Preceden, my SaaS timeline maker business, after 13 years of working on it on the side. A year has passed, so I wanted to share an update on how things are going and some lessons learned. Preceden My main focus in 2023 was building AI...
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
PromptArmor Blog
Slack AI data exfiltration from private channels via indirect prompt injection
Authors: PromptArmor
4 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
Artificial Ignorance
How to build an AI search engine (Part 1)
Working with Claude, Brave, and streaming responses.
2 months ago
Working with Claude, Brave, and streaming responses.
One Useful Thing
In Praise of Boring AI
Automation has always been about killing tedious work. AI can do the same.
a year ago
Automation has always been about killing tedious work. AI can do the same.
Made by Ollin
HintBot
Hinting icons automatically with a neural network
over a year ago
Hinting icons automatically with a neural network
Society's Backend
OpenAI's o1, Model Merging, California Approves AI Regulation, and More
Machine learning resources and updates 2024-09-17
3 months ago
Machine learning resources and updates 2024-09-17
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...
4 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...
Matt Mazur
Turning Down $7k for a Side Project I Announced Two Weeks Ago I was Shutting Down
About two weeks ago I announced I was shutting down LearnGPT. After the announcement, I received a...
a year ago
About two weeks ago I announced I was shutting down LearnGPT. After the announcement, I received a lot of interest from people interested in taking it over, so I decided to try to sell it instead of shutting it down. I wound up receiving two offers, one for $6.5k and one for $7k,...
The Gradient
Mamba Explained
Is Attention all you need? Mamba, a novel AI model based on State Space Models (SSMs), emerges as a...
8 months ago
Is Attention all you need? Mamba, a novel AI model based on State Space Models (SSMs), emerges as a formidable alternative to the widely used Transformer models, addressing their inefficiency in processing long sequences.
fast.ai
AI Safety and the Age of Dislightenment
Model licensing & surveillance will likely be counterproductive by concentrating power in...
a year ago
Model licensing & surveillance will likely be counterproductive by concentrating power in unsustainable ways
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
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 037: The AI IPCC
October 20, 2023.
a year ago
Society's Backend
I Enjoy Technical Interviews and You Can Too
A simple change in mindset that completely changed the way I interview
a year ago
A simple change in mindset that completely changed the way I interview
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 073: Music make you lose control
June 28, 2024.
5 months ago
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...
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...
Weighty Thoughts
Scaling is a Choice
Progress in tech is rarely “inevitable.” Looking at semiconductors and AI.
3 days ago
Progress in tech is rarely “inevitable.” Looking at semiconductors and AI.
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...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 051: The Taylor Swift thing
January 26, 2024.
11 months ago
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 059: In̶f̶l̶e̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ Microsoft AI
March 22, 2023.
9 months ago
Daniel Miessler
My Mom Died on Saturday
My mom died on Saturday. My biological mother became unable to function when I was around five due...
over a year ago
My mom died on Saturday. My biological mother became unable to function when I was around five due to mental illness, which left my dad and me on our own. Sometime after we were blessed with a strong, beautiful soul named Rhonda. My dad and I were like rescue dogs, and she saved...
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
One Useful Thing
Scaling: The State of Play in AI
A brief intergenerational pause...
3 months ago
A brief intergenerational pause...
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...
10 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,...
Artificial Ignorance
What AI models really think about politics
Exploring the political biases of ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Grok.
a month ago
Exploring the political biases of ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Grok.
The Berkeley...
2024 BAIR Graduate Directory
Every year, the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research (BAIR) Lab graduates some of the most...
9 months ago
Every year, the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research (BAIR) Lab graduates some of the most talented and innovative minds in artificial intelligence and machine learning. Our Ph.D. graduates have each expanded the frontiers of AI research and are now ready to embark on new...
One Useful Thing
Something New: On OpenAI's "Strawberry" and Reasoning
Solving hard problems in new ways
3 months ago
Solving hard problems in new ways
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...
Andrej Karpathy blog
Short Story on AI: Forward Pass
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over a year ago
p {
text-align: justify;
}
.post pre, .post code {
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background-color: #eee;
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The inspiration for this short story came to me while reading Kevin Lacker’s Giving GPT-3 a Turing Test. It is probably worth it (though not required) to skim this post to get...
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...
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
fast.ai
Can LLMs learn from a single example?
We’ve noticed an unusual training pattern in fine-tuning LLMs. At first we thought it’s a bug, but...
a year ago
We’ve noticed an unusual training pattern in fine-tuning LLMs. At first we thought it’s a bug, but now we think it shows LLMs can learn effectively from a single example.
One Useful Thing
Four Singularities for Research
The rise of AI is creating both crisis and opportunity
7 months ago
The rise of AI is creating both crisis and opportunity
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...
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...
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.
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
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Cobot Proxie
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE...
4 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.
Humanoids Summit: 11–12 December...
Artificial Ignorance
How a $2000/hour escort uses AI to automate sex work
Listen now | A conversation with Adelyn Moore, an independent escort and adult content creator.
4 months ago
Listen now | A conversation with Adelyn Moore, an independent escort and adult content creator.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 064: Big Tech's small models
April 26, 2024.
8 months ago
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.
Society's Backend
The Method Google Used to Reduce LLM Size by 66%
A brief overview of knowledge distillation and its capabilities
5 months ago
A brief overview of knowledge distillation and its capabilities
Sam Altman
E Pur Si Muove
Earlier
this year, I noticed something in China that really surprised me. I
realized I felt more...
over a year ago
Earlier
this year, I noticed something in China that really surprised me. I
realized I felt more comfortable discussing controversial ideas in Beijing than
in San Francisco. I didn’t feel completely comfortable—this was China,
after all—just more comfortable than at home.
That...
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
Daniel Miessler
5 Things I’m Still Waiting for With the iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods
I just camped for the new lineup of Apple products, as I have every year since 2007, and I am pretty...
over a year ago
I just camped for the new lineup of Apple products, as I have every year since 2007, and I am pretty impressed. As many have said, this year was an incremental update. The iPhones look nearly identical. And so do the AirPods Pro 2. The exception was the Apple Watch Ultra, which...
Sam Altman
How To Invest In Startups
There is a lot of advice about how to be a good startup founder. But there isn’t very much about...
over a year ago
There is a lot of advice about how to be a good startup founder. But there isn’t very much about how to be a good startup investor.
Before going any further, I should point out that this is a particularly hard time to invest in startups—it’s easier right now to be a...
Artificial Ignorance
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...
10 months ago
Over the past year, AI startups have raised some impressive amounts of money. OpenAI raised $10 billion, Anthropic did $6 billion, Inflection AI raised $1.3 billion, and dozens of companies closed rounds in the hundreds of millions.
Artificial Ignorance
Honey, I joined a cabal
Or: Mainstream media still isn't great at covering tech and AI ideologies
6 months ago
Or: Mainstream media still isn't great at covering tech and AI ideologies
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,...
Artificial Ignorance
How to reverse engineer the Substack (or any!) web API
Building an unauthorized Substack client with Claude.
4 months ago
Building an unauthorized Substack client with Claude.
fast.ai
AI Harms are Societal, Not Just Individual
In the west, our ideas of harm are largely anchored to an individual being harmed by a particular...
over a year ago
In the west, our ideas of harm are largely anchored to an individual being harmed by a particular action at a discrete moment in time. Yet the harms caused by algorithmic systems are often collective and communal.
Strange Loop Canon
Symposium: On Building God
a year ago
One Useful Thing
Not much is changing, a lot is changing
OpenAI, Microsoft, and the OpenOffspring
a year ago
OpenAI, Microsoft, and the OpenOffspring
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.
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...
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
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...
Society's Backend
One Year of Society's Backend
The lessons I've learned along the way
4 months ago
The lessons I've learned along the way
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 097: Model Mayhem
December 13, 2024.
a week ago
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...
Society's Backend
What you need to understand about LLM creativity
An simple overview of temperature and its effect on LLM output
7 months ago
An simple overview of temperature and its effect on LLM output
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...
Strange Loop Canon
Progress
when benefits are worth tallying the human cost of technological leaps
a year ago
when benefits are worth tallying the human cost of technological leaps
Made by Ollin
Singing Style Transfer
Initial Experiments
over a year ago
Artificial Ignorance
Tutorial: How to chat with your documents
A step-by-step guide to doing Q&A with your data, using LlamaIndex and OpenAI.
a year ago
A step-by-step guide to doing Q&A with your data, using LlamaIndex and OpenAI.
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
IEEE Spectrum
Where’s My Robot?
See the interactive version of this story on our site →
a month ago
See the interactive version of this story on our site →
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
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...
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.
One Useful Thing
The Machines of Mastery
"Anyone can learn anything they want..." and how technology can help
a year ago
"Anyone can learn anything they want..." and how technology can help
Daniel Miessler
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...
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Happy Holidays!
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE...
2 days ago
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.
ICRA 2025: 19–23 May 2025, ATLANTA,...
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...
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,...
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...
Society's Backend
Coming soon!
Weekly publications to teach you about the technology that governs our society and how it impacts...
a year ago
Weekly publications to teach you about the technology that governs our society and how it impacts you. Coming in August!
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.
Jascha’s blog
Brain dump on the diversity of AI risk
window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [];
function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);}
...
a year ago
window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [];
function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);}
gtag('js', new Date());
gtag('config', 'G-1XJMTJ5KCK');
.md h2 {
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AI has the power to change the world in both wonderful and terrible ways. We should try to...
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
AI Snake Oil
The LLaMA is out of the bag. Should we expect a tidal wave of disinformation?
The bottleneck isn't the cost of producing disinfo, which is already very low.
a year ago
The bottleneck isn't the cost of producing disinfo, which is already very low.
AI Snake Oil
New paper: AI agents that matter
Rethinking AI agent benchmarking and evaluation
5 months ago
Rethinking AI agent benchmarking and evaluation
The Berkeley...
Designing Societally Beneficial Reinforcement Learning Systems
Deep reinforcement learning (DRL) is transitioning from a research field focused on game playing to...
over a year ago
Deep reinforcement learning (DRL) is transitioning from a research field focused on game playing to a technology with real-world applications. Notable examples include DeepMind’s work on controlling a nuclear reactor or on improving Youtube video compression, or Tesla attempting...
One Useful Thing
How to use AI to do practical stuff: A new guide
People often ask me how to use AI. Here's an overview with lots of links.
a year ago
People often ask me how to use AI. Here's an overview with lots of links.
Marcus on AI
ChatGPT, at Age Two
The bullshit just keeps on coming.
3 weeks ago
The bullshit just keeps on coming.
Rozado’s Visual...
Prevalence in News Media of Two Competing Hypotheses about COVID-19 Origins
Published article Quick Twitter summary Introduction As of August 2021, the origins of the...
over a year ago
Published article Quick Twitter summary Introduction As of August 2021, the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic remain a mystery. This essay summarizes a recent article I published about the prevalence in news media articles of two popular hypotheses...
The Gradient
What Do LLMs Know About Linguistics? It Depends on How You Ask
On the phenomenon of LLM sensitivity to prompting choices through two core linguistic tasks and...
a year ago
On the phenomenon of LLM sensitivity to prompting choices through two core linguistic tasks and categorize how specific prompting choices can affect the model's behavior.
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
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
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.
8 months ago
Listen now | A conversation with Christian Salem, founder and CPO of Consensus.
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
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...
fast.ai
Qualitative humanities research is crucial to AI
Following the thread of any seemingly quantitative issue in AI ethics (such as determining if...
over a year ago
Following the thread of any seemingly quantitative issue in AI ethics (such as determining if software to rate loan applicants is racially biased or evaluating YouTube’s recommendation system) quickly leads to a host of qualitative questions. Unfortunately, there is often a large...
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
Matt Mazur
Emergent Mind in The Atlantic
One of the many people who saw the incorrect Google Quick Answer about Kenya was an editor at The...
a year ago
One of the many people who saw the incorrect Google Quick Answer about Kenya was an editor at The Atlantic who asked Caroline Mimbs Nyce, one of their reporters, to look into it. Caroline interviewed me for the article they just published which focused on the challenges Google is...
One Useful Thing
Freeing the chatbot
Intelligence, of a sort, is going to be all around us
7 months ago
Intelligence, of a sort, is going to be all around us
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
Bridging AI and human creativity
A conversation with Harrison Telyan, co-founder of NUMI.
10 months ago
A conversation with Harrison Telyan, co-founder of NUMI.
Society's Backend
Things Everyone Should Understand About the Stanford AI Index Report
And my notes on why they’re important
8 months ago
And my notes on why they’re important