The Gradient
Neural algorithmic reasoning
In this article, we will talk about classical computation: the kind of computation typically found...
a year ago
In this article, we will talk about classical computation: the kind of computation typically found in an undergraduate Computer Science course on Algorithms and Data Structures [1]. Think shortest path-finding, sorting, clever ways to break problems down into simpler problems,...
Matt Mazur
Sharing small, incremental updates with users
I use a service called Headway to keep Preceden users informed about updates to the product. Headway...
a year ago
I use a service called Headway to keep Preceden users informed about updates to the product. Headway provides a widget I have installed on Preceden to let users know when there have been updates. Users will see a bell with a count of unread items (which Headway keeps track of in...
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
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
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...
fast.ai
A New Chapter for fast.ai: How To Solve It With Code
fast.ai is joining Answer.AI, and we’re announcing a new kind of educational experience, ‘How To...
a month ago
fast.ai is joining Answer.AI, and we’re announcing a new kind of educational experience, ‘How To Solve It With Code’
Artificial Ignorance
The SearchGPT Paradigm
What people (still) fundamentally misunderstand about AI search.
4 months ago
What people (still) fundamentally misunderstand about AI search.
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
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
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...
Rozado’s Visual...
The Increasing Negativity and Emotionality of News Media Headlines
Published article Introduction I have recently published a paper where we describe a chronological...
over a year ago
Published article Introduction I have recently published a paper where we describe a chronological (2000–2019) analysis of sentiment and emotion in 23 million headlines from 47 news media outlets popular in the United States. We used Transformer language models fine-tuned for...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 036: The money pit
October 13, 2023.
a year ago
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 093: Diminishing returns
November 15, 2024.
a month 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
IEEE Spectrum
It's Surprisingly Easy to Jailbreak LLM-Driven Robots
large language models (LLMs) have exploded in popularity, leading a number of companies to explore...
a month ago
large language models (LLMs) have exploded in popularity, leading a number of companies to explore LLM-driven robots. However, a new study now reveals an automated way to hack into such machines with 100 percent success. By circumventing safety guardrails, researchers could...
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...
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.
Strange Loop Canon
Evaluations are all we need
On analysing talent in LLMs
11 months ago
On analysing talent in LLMs
Sam Altman
Greg
A lot of people ask me what the ideal cofounder looks
like. I now have an answer: Greg...
over a year ago
A lot of people ask me what the ideal cofounder looks
like. I now have an answer: Greg Brockman.
Every successful startup I know has at least one person who
provides the force of will to make the startup happen. I’d thought a lot
about this in the abstract while advising YC...
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...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 044: Google Gemini
December 8, 2023.
a year ago
Society's Backend
Alignment: Understanding the Multi-Billion Dollar Opportunity within Machine Learning
A glimpse into the biggest challenge in the world of AI, why it matters to you, and why it's worth...
10 months ago
A glimpse into the biggest challenge in the world of AI, why it matters to you, and why it's worth so much
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 096: Happy Shipmas
December 6, 2024.
2 weeks ago
Society's Backend
All Machine Learning Resources and Updates 06/14/2024
Below are all machine learning resources and updates from the past week you don't want to miss. I’ve...
6 months ago
Below are all machine learning resources and updates from the past week you don't want to miss. I’ve decided to try out separating paid/free updates. I’m constantly trying new ways to make information consumption easier for you while working within the confines of the platforms...
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
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
One Useful Thing
Magic for English Majors
Programming in prose in an AI-haunted world
a year ago
Programming in prose in an AI-haunted world
Artificial Ignorance
How to leverage long form content with AI
Specific tools and tactics for authors, podcasters, and videographers.
6 months ago
Specific tools and tactics for authors, podcasters, and videographers.
Artificial Ignorance
YC is now 80% AI startups (S24)
Analyzing the latest companies out of "AI Combinator"
2 months ago
Analyzing the latest companies out of "AI Combinator"
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
Sam Altman
Keep the Internet Open
The FCC has announced plans to roll back policies on net neutrality, and its new head has indicated...
over a year ago
The FCC has announced plans to roll back policies on net neutrality, and its new head has indicated he has no plan to stop soon.
The internet is a public good, and I believe access should be a basic right. We've seen such great innovation in software because the internet has...
Strange Loop Canon
Google had a very bad week
Gemini's paradox
9 months ago
Daniel Miessler
AI Art Hack: Combining Abstract Designs with Objects
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
AI Snake Oil
Is GPT-4 getting worse over time?
A new paper going viral has been widely misinterpreted
a year ago
A new paper going viral has been widely misinterpreted
The Berkeley...
Why do Policy Gradient Methods work so well in Cooperative MARL? Evidence from Policy Representation
In cooperative multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL), due to its on-policy nature, policy...
over a year ago
In cooperative multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL), due to its on-policy nature, policy gradient (PG) methods are typically believed to be less sample efficient than value decomposition (VD) methods, which are off-policy. However, some recent empirical studies demonstrate...
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.
Strange Loop Canon
The age of access
the great polarisation theory, and the death of professions
a year ago
the great polarisation theory, and the death of professions
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.
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...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 062: Data is the new oil
April 12, 2024.
8 months ago
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.
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....
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...
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...
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
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).
Society's Backend
Meet Devansh: Lessons Learned While Building a Community of 193,000 Subscribers
Content creation and networking lessons from a wildly successful freelance tech writer
a year ago
Content creation and networking lessons from a wildly successful freelance tech writer
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.
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.
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...
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.
Artificial Ignorance
Looking a gift llama in the mouth
How Llama 3.1 uniquely leverages Meta's business model (and why we should be a little bit cynical...
5 months ago
How Llama 3.1 uniquely leverages Meta's business model (and why we should be a little bit cynical about it)
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 032: The Insight Forum
September 15, 2023.
a year ago
Weighty Thoughts
The Fall of Data Moats
AI actually makes most data moats weaker
a year ago
AI actually makes most data moats weaker
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...
Andrej Karpathy blog
A Survival Guide to a PhD
This guide is patterned after my “Doing well in your courses”, a post I wrote a long time ago on...
over a year ago
This guide is patterned after my “Doing well in your courses”, a post I wrote a long time ago on some of the tips/tricks I’ve developed during my undergrad. I’ve received nice comments about that guide, so in the same spirit, now that my PhD has come to an end I wanted to compile...
Rozado’s Visual...
Northern Awokening: Social-justice and prejudice-signifying language in Canadian news media
I have recently published a report with Aaron Wudrick from the Macdonald-Laurier Institute about...
a year ago
I have recently published a report with Aaron Wudrick from the Macdonald-Laurier Institute about changes in the language that the news media in Canada use. I have documented previously how in American news media mentions of terms that signify distinct forms of prejudice have...
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.
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
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.
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.
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
Society's Backend
Discussions around OpenAI's o1, Superhuman AI, When AI Should Be An App, and More
Discussions from the past week: 09/16/2024
3 months ago
Discussions from the past week: 09/16/2024
Rozado’s Visual...
The political preferences of Grok
Elon Musk's response to ChatGPT
a year ago
Elon Musk's response to ChatGPT
One Useful Thing
Working with AI: Two paths to prompting
Don't overcomplicate things
a year ago
Don't overcomplicate things
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...
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
Society's Backend
Digitizing Smell, Automatic Prompt Optimization, Targeted AI Regulation, an Intro to AI Agents, and...
Society's Backend Reading List 11-04-2024
a month ago
Society's Backend Reading List 11-04-2024
One Useful Thing
What OpenAI did
A new model opens up new possibilities
7 months ago
A new model opens up new possibilities
Matt Mazur
Looking to sell Emergent Mind
I currently have two products: Preceden, a SaaS timeline maker, and Emergent Mind, an AI news site...
a year ago
I currently have two products: Preceden, a SaaS timeline maker, and Emergent Mind, an AI news site and newsletter. Emergent Mind began last December as LearnGPT, a ChatGPT examples site, and I later renamed it to Emergent Mind and transitioned it the news site that it is today:...
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...
IEEE Spectrum
Forums, Competitions, Challenges: Inspiring Creativity in Robotics
This is a sponsored article brought to you by Khalifa University of Science and Technology.
A total...
2 months ago
This is a sponsored article brought to you by Khalifa University of Science and Technology.
A total of eight intense competitions to inspire creativity and innovation along with 13 forums dedicated to diverse segments of robotics and artificial intelligence will be part of the...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 037: The AI IPCC
October 20, 2023.
a year ago
Weighty Thoughts
When the AI Bubble Bursts
It’s when, not if, for these kinds of new technologies
5 months ago
It’s when, not if, for these kinds of new technologies
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
AI Roundup 083: Bioacoustics
September 6, 2024.
3 months ago
Strange Loop Canon
When we become cogs
on motivation and technology
a month ago
on motivation and technology
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...
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...
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');
.md h2 {
font-size: 20px;
}
.vimeo-player {
position: relative;
width: 444px;
height: 444px;
...
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...
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
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.
Weighty Thoughts
Software Engineering is Doomed
Or is it?
5 months ago
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
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...
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.
Society's Backend
A Privacy Review: Google
I read Google's privacy policy for you
a year ago
I read Google's privacy policy for you
The Berkeley...
Training Diffusion Models with <br> Reinforcement Learning
function reveal() {
const replay = document.querySelector('.ddpo-replay');
...
a year ago
function reveal() {
const replay = document.querySelector('.ddpo-replay');
replay.style.display = 'flex';
}
window.onload = () => {
const replay = document.querySelector('.ddpo-replay');
replay.addEventListener('click', () => {
...
Made by Ollin
Maple Diffusion
I ported Stable Diffusion to my phone
over a year ago
I ported Stable Diffusion to my phone
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 […]
Marcus on AI
AI influencer hype gone wild
Reality is quite the opposite
a month ago
Reality is quite the opposite
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
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...
The Gradient
Car-GPT: Could LLMs finally make self-driving cars happen?
Exploring the utility of large language models in autonomous driving: Can they be trusted for...
9 months ago
Exploring the utility of large language models in autonomous driving: Can they be trusted for self-driving cars, and what are the key challenges?
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
Society's Backend
Google AI Essentials, A New LLM Benchmark, Washington's AI Task Force, and More [Top 10 ML Resource...
Top 10 Machine Learning Resources and Updates Below are the top 10 machine learning resources and...
5 months ago
Top 10 Machine Learning Resources and Updates Below are the top 10 machine learning resources and updates from the past week you don't want to miss. I share more frequent ML updates on X so don’t forget to follow me there. Support Society's Backend for just $1/mo
One Useful Thing
AI in organizations: Some tactics
Meet the Lab and the Crowd
2 months ago
Meet the Lab and the Crowd
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...
New York Times Word Usage Frequency Chart – An Update
A timely update of an informative chart
a year ago
A timely update of an informative chart
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.
fast.ai
The Jupyter+git problem is now solved
Previously, using git with Jupyter could create conflicts and break notebooks. With nbdev2, the...
over a year ago
Previously, using git with Jupyter could create conflicts and break notebooks. With nbdev2, the problem has been totally solved.
Matt Mazur
My Indie SaaS Revenue has Grown 37% per Year for 13 Years
Unlike many indie founders, I’ve never shared revenue numbers for Preceden, my SaaS timeline maker...
11 months ago
Unlike many indie founders, I’ve never shared revenue numbers for Preceden, my SaaS timeline maker tool. Even if they were remarkable – which they are not really – I just don’t think there are many good reasons to publicly share revenue numbers, and there are lots of downsides....
The Gradient
Why Doesn’t My Model Work?
Have you ever trained a model you thought was good, but then it failed miserably when applied to...
10 months ago
Have you ever trained a model you thought was good, but then it failed miserably when applied to real world data? If so, you’re in good company.
Artificial Ignorance
What are logprobs?
Something to do with logs and probabilities.
11 months ago
Something to do with logs and probabilities.
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...
Made by Ollin
Emojin
An infinite kaomoji generator
over a year ago
An infinite kaomoji generator
Society's Backend
Stop Obsessing Over the Product and Start Thinking About the Bigger Picture
The actual takeaways from the iPhone 15 event
a year ago
The actual takeaways from the iPhone 15 event
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Reachy 2
IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few...
2 months ago
IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.
IROS 2024: 14–18 October 2024, ABU DHABI, UAE
ICSR 2024: 23–26 October 2024, ODENSE, DENMARK
Cybathlon 2024: 25–27 October 2024,...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 059: In̶f̶l̶e̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ Microsoft AI
March 22, 2023.
9 months ago
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.
Sam Altman
Hard Startups
The most counterintuitive secret about startups is that it’s often easier to succeed with a hard...
over a year ago
The most counterintuitive secret about startups is that it’s often easier to succeed with a hard startup than an easy one. A hard startup requires a lot more money, time, coordination, or technological development than most startups. A good hard startup is one that will be...
One Useful Thing
Acceleration.
7 days of new AI technologies shows us that everything is happening very fast.
a year ago
7 days of new AI technologies shows us that everything is happening very fast.
One Useful Thing
On the necessity of a sin
Why treating AI like a person is the future
8 months ago
Why treating AI like a person is the future
PromptArmor Blog
Coming soon
This is PromptArmor Blog.
a year ago
This is PromptArmor Blog.
Matt Mazur
Updates: Preceden Trends, Training Help Scout’s New Analytics Engineer, Don’t Look Up, and Ray...
Preceden Recurring Revenue: In January 2021 I introduced automatically recurring annual plans to...
over a year ago
Preceden Recurring Revenue: In January 2021 I introduced automatically recurring annual plans to Preceden. Prior to that the annual plans did not renew automatically which was an intentional (but bad) choice I had made because most users did not user Preceden for more than a...
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
The Gradient
The Artificiality of Alignment
This essay first appeared in Reboot.
Credulous, breathless coverage of “AI existential risk”...
a year ago
This essay first appeared in Reboot.
Credulous, breathless coverage of “AI existential risk” (abbreviated “x-risk”) has reached the mainstream. Who could have foreseen that the smallcaps onomatopoeia “ꜰᴏᴏᴍ” — both evocative of and directly derived from children’s cartoons —
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
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:
One Useful Thing
Automating creativity
There is now strong evidence that AI can help make us more innovative.
a year ago
There is now strong evidence that AI can help make us more innovative.
IEEE Spectrum
Zen and the Art of Aibo Engineering
Sony’s team made that happen. And since Aibo’s debut, the company has sold
more than 170,000 of...
a week ago
Sony’s team made that happen. And since Aibo’s debut, the company has sold
more than 170,000 of the cute little quadrupeds—a huge number considering their price of several thousand dollars each. From the start, Aibo could express a range of simulated emotions and learn through...
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
Backend Biweekly #1: Important AI Developments and ML Learning Resources
Updates on Apple, Mistral, and Microsoft and resources to build the GPT tokenizer, use MLX to train...
9 months ago
Updates on Apple, Mistral, and Microsoft and resources to build the GPT tokenizer, use MLX to train models, and benchmark LLMs
Daniel Miessler
Would You Put AI Art In Your House?
I’ve been thinking for a couple of weeks about making and hanging some AI art in my house. But I...
over a year ago
I’ve been thinking for a couple of weeks about making and hanging some AI art in my house. But I immediately faced some internal resistance. Like, I wasn’t (and still am not) sure whether this is the right way to “do” art. And that got me thinking what that really means. What...
fast.ai
Masks for COVID: Updating the evidence
Notes taken whilst preparing a paper on mask efficacy from Nov to Jan 2022. My previous paper on...
over a year ago
Notes taken whilst preparing a paper on mask efficacy from Nov to Jan 2022. My previous paper on this was written in April 2020 and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science
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.
Artificial Ignorance
Jevons Paradox and the future of programming
Supply and demand in the Age of AI.
8 months ago
Supply and demand in the Age of AI.
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 033: DALL·E 3
September 22, 2023.
a year ago
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 068: The ScarJo thing
May 24, 2024.
7 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...
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...
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
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
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
AI Roundup 040: GPTs
November 10, 2023.
a year ago
Matt Mazur
Screw it, I’m Keeping Emergent Mind
A few months ago I announced I was going to try to sell Emergent Mind, my AI news aggregator, so I...
a year ago
A few months ago I announced I was going to try to sell Emergent Mind, my AI news aggregator, so I could focus on Preceden, my SaaS timeline maker. I wound up having a lot of discussions with potential buyers, but in the end the offers I received were either too low to be worth...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 028: Sunak's Safety Summit
August 18, 2023
a year ago
Matt Mazur
Running Mistral 8x7Bs Mixture of Experts on a Macbook
Below are the steps I used to get Mistral 8x7Bs Mixture of Experts (MOE) model running locally on my...
a year ago
Below are the steps I used to get Mistral 8x7Bs Mixture of Experts (MOE) model running locally on my Macbook (with its Apple M2 chip and 24 GB of memory). Here’s a great overview of the model for anyone interested in learning more. Short version: The Mistral “Mixtral” 8x7B 32k...
One Useful Thing
What Apple's AI Tells Us: Experimental Models⁴
Siri versus the machine god?
6 months ago
Siri versus the machine god?
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...
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...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 097: Model Mayhem
December 13, 2024.
a week ago
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
Catastrophe / Eucatastrophe
We have more agency over the future of AI than we think.
a year ago
We have more agency over the future of AI than we think.
Marcus on AI
ChatGPT, at Age Two
The bullshit just keeps on coming.
3 weeks ago
The bullshit just keeps on coming.
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
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.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 060: Another CEO gone
March 29, 2024.
8 months ago
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 074: Amazon's Adept acquisition
July 5, 2024.
5 months ago
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
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 031: Think of the children
September 8, 2023
a year ago
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.
Rozado’s Visual...
Prevalence in News Media of Two Competing Hypotheses about COVID-19 Origins
Published article Quick Twitter summary Introduction As of August 2021, the origins of the...
over a year ago
Published article Quick Twitter summary Introduction As of August 2021, the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic remain a mystery. This essay summarizes a recent article I published about the prevalence in news media articles of two popular hypotheses...
Rozado’s Visual...
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
Stories by Andrej...
ICLR 2017 vs arxiv-sanity
over a year 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."
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
Rozado’s Visual...
Sentiment Associations of Politically Loaded Terms in News Media
Summary of manuscript “Using Word Embeddings to Probe Sentiment Associations of Politically Loaded...
over a year ago
Summary of manuscript “Using Word Embeddings to Probe Sentiment Associations of Politically Loaded Terms in News and Opinion Articles from News Media Outlets”
Matt Mazur
Full Time Indie Hacking: Month 5 Update
At the beginning of the year I quit consulting to focus full time on Preceden, my SaaS timeline...
a year ago
At the beginning of the year I quit consulting to focus full time on Preceden, my SaaS timeline maker tool. I also started working on a new side project, Emergent Mind, an AI-powered AI news site. My last update on how things were going was after 3 months which provides more...
Society's Backend
Why everyone loves Spider-Man
Lessons anyone can learn from our friendly neighborhood web-crawler
a year ago
Lessons anyone can learn from our friendly neighborhood web-crawler
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 030: OpenAI's $1B revenue
September 1, 2023
a year ago
Matt Mazur
Nick Kolenda Reviews Preceden
Nick Kolenda is an author, teacher, and consultant who specializes in the psychology of marketing...
over a year ago
Nick Kolenda is an author, teacher, and consultant who specializes in the psychology of marketing and related topics like pricing optimization, sales psychology, and website behavior. He’s also happens to be a regular in a poker game I host each week. A few months back he...
One Useful Thing
Thinking Like an AI
A little intuition can help
2 months ago
A little intuition can help
Sam Altman
Helion
I’m delighted to be investing more in Helion. Helion is by far the most promising approach to fusion...
over a year ago
I’m delighted to be investing more in Helion. Helion is by far the most promising approach to fusion I’ve seen.
David and Chris are two of the most impressive founders and builders (in the sense of building fusion machines, in addition to building companies!) I have ever met,...
Strange Loop Canon
Discovery is the original sin of the modern age
technology, living post scarcity, and how to find what you want
a year ago
technology, living post scarcity, and how to find what you want
Andrej Karpathy blog
A Recipe for Training Neural Networks
Some few weeks ago I posted a tweet on “the most common neural net mistakes”, listing a few common...
over a year ago
Some few weeks ago I posted a tweet on “the most common neural net mistakes”, listing a few common gotchas related to training neural nets. The tweet got quite a bit more engagement than I anticipated (including a webinar :)). Clearly, a lot of people have personally encountered...
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.
AI Snake Oil
FAQ about the book and our writing process
What's in the book and how we wrote it
2 months ago
What's in the book and how we wrote it
The Berkeley...
How to Evaluate Jailbreak Methods: A Case Study with the StrongREJECT Benchmark
When we began studying jailbreak evaluations, we found a fascinating paper claiming that you could...
3 months ago
When we began studying jailbreak evaluations, we found a fascinating paper claiming that you could jailbreak frontier LLMs simply by translating forbidden prompts into obscure languages. Excited by this result, we attempted to reproduce it and found something unexpected.
The...
Marcus on AI
Which CEO will be the last to see it?
What kept me going during the dark years of 2022 and 2023 when Generative AI was wildly overhyped...
2 weeks ago
What kept me going during the dark years of 2022 and 2023 when Generative AI was wildly overhyped and I was constantly ridiculed was the secure knowledge that the truth would eventually come out.
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?
One Useful Thing
Signs and Portents
Some hints about what the next year of AI looks like
11 months ago
Some hints about what the next year of AI looks like
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
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
The AI email startup that's taking on Gmail
A conversation with Andrew Lee, CEO of Shortwave and cofounder of Firebase.
a year ago
A conversation with Andrew Lee, CEO of Shortwave and cofounder of Firebase.
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
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
One Useful Thing
"Do not fear AI, puny humans... that is not meant as a threat."
What we can learn from a completely AI written & illustrated lecture
a year ago
What we can learn from a completely AI written & illustrated lecture
The Gradient
Do text embeddings perfectly encode text?
'Vec2text' can serve as a solution for accurately reverting embeddings back into text, thus...
9 months ago
'Vec2text' can serve as a solution for accurately reverting embeddings back into text, thus highlighting the urgent need for revisiting security protocols around embedded data.
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
Society's Backend
An Overview of Text Summarization Methods from Simple to Complex
We went through a bit of a rebrand. Let me know what you think about Society’s Backend’s new color...
a year ago
We went through a bit of a rebrand. Let me know what you think about Society’s Backend’s new color scheme and logo! :) - Logan I've been researching text summarization methods for a project I'm working on. Since the advent of Large Language Models (LLMs), LLMs have become a go-to...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 079: Don't call it an acquisition
August 9, 2024.
4 months ago
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
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...
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Multiple MagicBots
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE...
2 weeks ago
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.
Humanoids Summit: 11–12 December...
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
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 061: The AI innovator's dilemma
April 5, 2024.
8 months ago
Strange Loop Canon
Mind the Gap
from empire to umpire
a year ago
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 026: AudioCraft
August 4, 2023
a year ago
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
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 088: Movie magic
October 11, 2024.
2 months ago
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.
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...
Matt Mazur
Experimenting with GPT-4 Turbo’s JSON mode
One of the many new features announced at yesterday’s OpenAI dev day is better support for...
a year ago
One of the many new features announced at yesterday’s OpenAI dev day is better support for generating valid JSON output. From the JSON mode docs: A common way to use Chat Completions is to instruct the model to always return JSON in some format that makes sense for your use case,...
Rozado’s Visual...
Artificial Intelligence and Portraits of 17th Century Physicists
The case for customizable AI systems as an alternative to one-size-fits-all AI systems
10 months ago
The case for customizable AI systems as an alternative to one-size-fits-all AI systems
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
One Useful Thing
The Lazy Tyranny of the Wait Calculation
Taking AI timelines seriously
11 months ago
Taking AI timelines seriously
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...
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.
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...
Andrej Karpathy blog
Biohacking Lite
Throughout my life I never paid too much attention to health, exercise, diet or nutrition. I knew...
over a year ago
Throughout my life I never paid too much attention to health, exercise, diet or nutrition. I knew that you’re supposed to get some exercise and eat vegetables or something, but it stopped at that (“mom said”-) level of abstraction. I also knew that I can probably get away with...
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
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
AI Snake Oil
Evaluating LLMs is a minefield
Annotated slides from a recent talk
a year ago
Annotated slides from a recent talk
fast.ai
AI and Power: The Ethical Challenges of Automation, Centralization, and Scale
Moving AI ethics beyond explainability and fairness to empowerment and justice
a year ago
Moving AI ethics beyond explainability and fairness to empowerment and justice
Daniel Miessler
NO. 359 | WhatsLeak, CCTV Ban, Meta Threats
SECURITY NEWS There appears to be a WhatsApp data leak of over 500 million users' data in 84...
over a year ago
SECURITY NEWS There appears to be a WhatsApp data leak of over 500 million users' data in 84 countries. They're supposedly selling the data for $7K in the UK, and around $2K in the US and Germany. MORE The FCC has banned Chinese CCTV cameras on sensitive government sites and...
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
The Berkeley...
Rethinking Human-in-the-Loop for Artificial Augmented Intelligence
How do we build and evaluate an AI system for real-world applications? In most AI research, the...
over a year ago
How do we build and evaluate an AI system for real-world applications? In most AI research, the evaluation of AI methods involves a training-validation-testing process. The experiments usually stop when the models have good testing performance on the reported datasets because...
AI Snake Oil
I set up a ChatGPT voice interface for my 3-year old. Here’s how it went.
Chatbots are likely to revive familiar debates about kids and apps
a year ago
Chatbots are likely to revive familiar debates about kids and apps
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...
Matt Mazur
Emergent Mind finally went viral
Last week, the Twitter account Everything Out of Context posted a screenshot showing Google’s...
a year ago
Last week, the Twitter account Everything Out of Context posted a screenshot showing Google’s incorrect response to the search query “country in africa that starts with k”: The tweet went viral, garnering over 133k likes, 6k retweets, and 1k replies. Someone eventually tagged me...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 071: How do you like them AIs
June 14, 2024.
6 months ago
Society's Backend
Clarifying DEI
What makes DEI important and where it fails
11 months ago
What makes DEI important and where it fails
Weighty Thoughts
I'm writing a book!
Why I've been gone over a month, and how you can help
3 weeks ago
Why I've been gone over a month, and how you can help
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...
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...
One Useful Thing
Embracing weirdness: What it means to use AI as a (writing) tool
AI is strange. We need to learn to use it.
a year ago
AI is strange. We need to learn to use it.
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...
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...
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...
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?
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
One Useful Thing
Not much is changing, a lot is changing
OpenAI, Microsoft, and the OpenOffspring
a year ago
OpenAI, Microsoft, and the OpenOffspring
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 048: The Robot Constitution
January 5, 2024.
11 months ago
One Useful Thing
The Homework Apocalypse
Fall is going to be very different this year. Educators need to be ready.
a year ago
Fall is going to be very different this year. Educators need to be ready.
Society's Backend
Ask Stupid Questions
I’m convinced that after having a fourth or fifth child exhaustion kicks in and a person’s long-term...
a year ago
I’m convinced that after having a fourth or fifth child exhaustion kicks in and a person’s long-term memory ceases to function properly. I’ve become victim to this and I’ve started taking very detailed notes during meetings. If my brain won’t store the information, something else...
Society's Backend
Why Machine Learning Systems Misbehave
And what makes them so difficult to work with
5 months ago
And what makes them so difficult to work with
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.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 087: DevDay SF
October 4, 2024.
2 months ago
Matt Mazur
AOL Underground Podcast Interview about AOL-Files.com
Back in 1998 when I was 13 years old I got heavily involved in the AOL hacking scene, originally...
over a year ago
Back in 1998 when I was 13 years old I got heavily involved in the AOL hacking scene, originally building add-on software called progs (Revolution, Meridian), publishing code libraries called bas files (Alpha32), and later co-founding AOL-Files.com (where I went by the hacker...
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"
Sam Altman
DALL•E 2
Today we did a research launch of DALL•E 2, a new AI tool that can create and edit images from...
over a year ago
Today we did a research launch of DALL•E 2, a new AI tool that can create and edit images from natural language instructions.
Most importantly, we hope people love the tool and find it useful. For me, it’s the most delightful thing to play with we’ve created so far. I find it to...
IEEE Spectrum
This Mobile 3D Printer Can Print Directly on Your Floor
Waiting for each part of a 3D-printed project to finish, taking it out of the printer, and then...
a month ago
Waiting for each part of a 3D-printed project to finish, taking it out of the printer, and then installing it on location can be tedious for multi-part projects. What if there was a way for your printer to print its creation exactly where you needed it? That’s the promise of...
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
AI Snake Oil
ChatGPT is a bullshit generator. But it can still be amazingly useful
The philosopher Harry Frankfurt defined bullshit as speech that is intended to persuade without...
over a year ago
The philosopher Harry Frankfurt defined bullshit as speech that is intended to persuade without regard for the truth. By this measure, OpenAI’s new chatbot ChatGPT is the greatest bullshitter ever. Large Language Models (LLMs) are trained to produce
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...
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
Made by Ollin
NVIDIA Internship (2017)
Notes on my internship at NVIDIA Redmond.
over a year ago
Notes on my internship at NVIDIA Redmond.
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
The Berkeley...
FIGS: Attaining XGBoost-level performance with the interpretability and speed of CART
FIGS (Fast Interpretable Greedy-tree Sums): A method for building interpretable models by...
over a year ago
FIGS (Fast Interpretable Greedy-tree Sums): A method for building interpretable models by simultaneously growing an ensemble of decision trees in competition with one another.
Recent machine-learning advances have led to increasingly complex predictive models, often at the cost...
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
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 082: System prompts
August 30, 2024.
3 months ago
Daniel Miessler
Sponsored Interview: Erkang Zheng of JupiterOne
In this standalone episode we’re doing a sponsored interview with Erkang Zheng of JupiterOne. So...
over a year ago
In this standalone episode we’re doing a sponsored interview with Erkang Zheng of JupiterOne. So Jupiter One is a special company to me. I just built a vuln management program at Robinhood based around them, and I believe so much in their vision that I’m looking to actually...
Daniel Miessler
News & Analysis | NO. 351
over a year ago
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...
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!
Marcus on AI
An epidemic of weirdly precise AI butt facts
The parade of made-up numbers never stops
a month ago
The parade of made-up numbers never stops
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
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 092: Watermarking the AI wave
November 8, 2024.
a month ago
AI Snake Oil
Starting reading the AI Snake Oil book online today
The book will be published on September 24
3 months ago
The book will be published on September 24
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
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.
Weighty Thoughts
What I got Right or Wrong in 2020
Reflecting on the Past Year
over a year ago
Reflecting on the Past Year
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.
...
Strange Loop Canon
Slouching Towards Utopia
by Brad DeLong
a year ago
Society's Backend
Positioning Myself: The Greatest Piece of Career Advice I've Ever Received
And how it changed my personal life too
12 months ago
And how it changed my personal life too
Artificial Ignorance
The subscriptionization of AI
Navigating the paid AI landscape.
9 months ago
Navigating the paid AI landscape.
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...
AI Snake Oil
New paper: AI agents that matter
Rethinking AI agent benchmarking and evaluation
5 months ago
Rethinking AI agent benchmarking and evaluation
Rozado’s Visual...
The political orientation of the ChatGPT AI system
Applying the Pew Research Political Typology Quiz to a state-of-the-art AI Language model
over a year ago
Applying the Pew Research Political Typology Quiz to a state-of-the-art AI Language model
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,...
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.
One Useful Thing
What people ask me most. Also, some answers.
A FAQ of sorts
a year ago
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
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
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 080: Grok 2
August 16, 2024.
4 months ago
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.
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
Rozado’s Visual...
Prevalence of Prejudice-Denoting Words in News Media Discourse
Summary of manuscript “Prevalence of Prejudice-Denoting Words in News Media Discourse: A...
over a year ago
Summary of manuscript “Prevalence of Prejudice-Denoting Words in News Media Discourse: A Chronological Analysis”
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
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 →
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...
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.
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 Roundup 069: Project Greymatter
May 31, 2024.
6 months ago
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
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...
Society's Backend
Bridging the Gap from Simple Algebra to Machine Learning
You probably know more about machine learning math than you think
10 months ago
You probably know more about machine learning math than you think
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.
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...
AI Snake Oil
We Looked at 78 Election Deepfakes. Political Misinformation is not an AI Problem.
Technology Isn’t the Problem—or the Solution.
a week ago
Technology Isn’t the Problem—or the Solution.
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
One Useful Thing
Blinded by Analogies
What is this AI thing? The wrong model can lead us astray
a year ago
What is this AI thing? The wrong model can lead us astray
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
AI Roundup 070: AI whistleblowers
June 7, 2024.
6 months ago
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
AI Roundup 065: The gpt2-chatbot mystery
May 3, 2024.
7 months ago
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
Rozado’s Visual...
Is the Great Awokening Really Winding Down? Part I: Some Multifaceted Evidence from Twitter Content
There has been some discussion lately by Eric Kaufmann, Tyler Cowen, Balaji Srinivasan, Paul Graham...
a year ago
There has been some discussion lately by Eric Kaufmann, Tyler Cowen, Balaji Srinivasan, Paul Graham and Musa Al Gharbi as to whether The Great Awokening is winding down. I’m going to write a series of blog entries about this topic to contribute to the discussion. In order to do...
Matt Mazur
Friday Updates: Smart Icons, Automatic Suggestions, Dealing with Spammers, Better Icon Colors
Preceden Lots of updates to Preceden this week: Improving the UX for the AI Suggestions When we...
a year ago
Preceden Lots of updates to Preceden this week: Improving the UX for the AI Suggestions When we rolled out the AI Suggestions feature last week, the typical experience for the user would go something like this: Lots of UX issues there though: To remedy this, I updated Preceden to...