Daniel Miessler
News & Analysis | NO. 351
over a year ago
AI Snake Oil
Is AI-generated disinformation a threat to democracy?
An essay on the future of generative AI on social media
a year ago
An essay on the future of generative AI on social media
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 069: Project Greymatter
May 31, 2024.
7 months ago
Sam Altman
Project Covalence
Almost every company and non-profit working on COVID-19 that I offered to help asked for support...
over a year ago
Almost every company and non-profit working on COVID-19 that I offered to help asked for support with clinical trials—for companies focusing on developing novel drugs, vaccines, and diagnostics, rapidly spinning up trials is one of their biggest bottlenecks.
Science remains the...
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...
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...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 028: Sunak's Safety Summit
August 18, 2023
a year ago
Sam Altman
GPT-4o
There are two things from our announcement today I wanted to highlight.
First, a key part of our...
7 months ago
There are two things from our announcement today I wanted to highlight.
First, a key part of our mission is to put very capable AI tools in the hands of people for free (or at a great price). I am very proud that we’ve made the best model in the world available for free in...
Strange Loop Canon
Power, money and human nature
Thoughts on OpenAI, a tragedy
a year ago
Thoughts on OpenAI, a tragedy
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.
AI Snake Oil
Is Avoiding Extinction from AI Really an Urgent Priority?
The history of technology suggests that the greatest risks come not from the tech, but from the...
a year ago
The history of technology suggests that the greatest risks come not from the tech, but from the people who control it
One Useful Thing
Thinking Like an AI
A little intuition can help
2 months ago
A little intuition can help
Stories by Andrej...
Virtual Reality: still not quite there, again.
over a year ago
Society's Backend
Chinese AI is Less Expensive, What it's Like to Work in AI, an Evaluation Framework for Voice...
Society's Backend Reading List 11-18-2024
a month ago
Society's Backend Reading List 11-18-2024
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 084: Strawberry / o1
September 13, 2024.
3 months 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...
Matt Mazur
Going Full Time on My SaaS After 13 Years
In January 2010 I soft-launched launched Preceden, a web-based timeline maker tool, followed a few...
a year ago
In January 2010 I soft-launched launched Preceden, a web-based timeline maker tool, followed a few weeks later by a larger launch on HackerNews: Today – almost 13 years to the day since the initial launch – I’m going full time on it and I couldn’t be more excited. A brief history...
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...
One Useful Thing
On the necessity of a sin
Why treating AI like a person is the future
9 months ago
Why treating AI like a person is the future
Society's Backend
Should You Get a PhD?
The one good reason to do a PhD and two others that fall flat
3 months ago
The one good reason to do a PhD and two others that fall flat
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 090: Computer Use
October 25, 2024.
2 months ago
One Useful Thing
What happens when AI reads a book 🤖📖
And some prompts that might be useful when it does.
a year ago
And some prompts that might be useful when it does.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 030: OpenAI's $1B revenue
September 1, 2023
a year ago
AI Snake Oil
AI leaderboards are no longer useful. It's time to switch to Pareto curves.
What spending $2,000 can tell us about evaluating AI agents
8 months ago
What spending $2,000 can tell us about evaluating AI agents
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.
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
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...
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
Weighty Thoughts
News Roundup: May 27, 2014 🧴
Why does Google suck so much, Microsoft Co-Pilot Everywhere, and Sam Altman
7 months ago
Why does Google suck so much, Microsoft Co-Pilot Everywhere, and Sam Altman
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
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.
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?
Made by Ollin
Priors for Autonomous Vehicle Development
over a year ago
Artificial Ignorance
How to talk to your family about AI this Thanksgiving
A handy guide for your uncle's burning questions.
a year ago
A handy guide for your uncle's burning questions.
One Useful Thing
Change blindness
21 months later
4 months ago
The Berkeley...
Keeping Learning-Based Control Safe by Regulating Distributional Shift
To regulate the distribution shift experience by learning-based controllers, we seek a mechanism for...
over a year ago
To regulate the distribution shift experience by learning-based controllers, we seek a mechanism for constraining the agent to regions of high data density throughout its trajectory (left). Here, we present an approach which achieves this goal by combining features of density...
AI Snake Oil
The bait and switch behind AI risk prediction tools
Toronto recently used an AI tool to predict when a public beach will be safe. It went horribly awry....
over a year ago
Toronto recently used an AI tool to predict when a public beach will be safe. It went horribly awry. The developer claimed the tool achieved over 90% accuracy in predicting when beaches would be safe to swim in. But the tool did much worse: on a majority of the days when the...
Rozado’s Visual...
An Analysis of AI Political Preferences from a European Perspective
Introduction
2 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...
Artificial Ignorance
What President Biden's AI executive order actually means
I read all 111 pages so you don't have to.
a year ago
I read all 111 pages so you don't have to.
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 Fundamental Overview of Machine Learning Experimentation [Part 1]
And how it differs from the software development you're familiar with
4 weeks ago
And how it differs from the software development you're familiar with
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.
Society's Backend
Would You Build the Manhattan Project in the UAE?
Thoughts on AI national security threats
6 months ago
Thoughts on AI national security threats
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.
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...
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.
Made by Ollin
Maple Diffusion
I ported Stable Diffusion to my phone
over a year ago
I ported Stable Diffusion to my phone
One Useful Thing
How to Get an AI to Lie to You in Three Simple Steps
I keep getting fooled by AI, and it seems like others are, too.
a year ago
I keep getting fooled by AI, and it seems like others are, too.
Marcus on AI
25 AI Predictions for 2025, from Marcus on AI
With a review of last year’s predictions
2 days ago
With a review of last year’s predictions
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...
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
Rozado’s Visual...
What is the IQ of ChatGPT?
Making an AI model take an IQ test
over a year ago
Making an AI model take an IQ test
AI Snake Oil
Tech policy is only frustrating 90% of the time
That’s what makes it worthwhile
9 months ago
That’s what makes it worthwhile
Marcus on AI
Two visions of AI’s future
It’s not looking good
4 weeks ago
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...
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...
Is climate change 100 times more threatening than gain-of-function research?
Mentions of climate change in news media vastly outnumber other existential threats
a year ago
Mentions of climate change in news media vastly outnumber other existential threats
Society's Backend
The State of AI in China
Is China winning the race to AGI?
5 months ago
Is China winning the race to AGI?
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 036: The money pit
October 13, 2023.
a year ago
One Useful Thing
Reshaping the tree: rebuilding organizations for AI
Technological change brings organizational change.
a year ago
Technological change brings organizational change.
Society's Backend
Always Be Networking
The things you should know about effective networking
a year ago
The things you should know about effective networking
Society's Backend
MatMul-free Machine Learning Can Improve Efficiency, Excellent Foundational Learning Resources, SSMs...
The top 10 most important updates of last week: 7/8/24
5 months ago
The top 10 most important updates of last week: 7/8/24
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 035: Me or your lying eyes
October 6, 2023.
a year ago
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
The Gradient
Shape, Symmetries, and Structure: The Changing Role of Mathematics in Machine Learning Research
What is the Role of Mathematics in Modern Machine Learning?
The past decade has witnessed a shift in...
a month ago
What is the Role of Mathematics in Modern Machine Learning?
The past decade has witnessed a shift in how progress is made in machine learning. Research involving carefully designed and mathematically principled architectures result in only marginal improvements while...
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...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 054: Ten million tokens
February 16, 2024.
10 months ago
The Berkeley...
Why do Policy Gradient Methods work so well in Cooperative MARL? Evidence from Policy Representation
In cooperative multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL), due to its on-policy nature, policy...
over a year ago
In cooperative multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL), due to its on-policy nature, policy gradient (PG) methods are typically believed to be less sample efficient than value decomposition (VD) methods, which are off-policy. However, some recent empirical studies demonstrate...
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Happy Holidays!
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE...
a week ago
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.
ICRA 2025: 19–23 May 2025, ATLANTA,...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 062: Data is the new oil
April 12, 2024.
8 months ago
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 041: Lyria
November 17, 2023.
a year ago
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 096: Happy Shipmas
December 6, 2024.
3 weeks ago
Made by Ollin
NVIDIA Internship (2017)
Notes on my internship at NVIDIA Redmond.
over a year ago
Notes on my internship at NVIDIA Redmond.
Rozado’s Visual...
Mentions of Prejudice in Academic Papers: A Declining Trend Amidst Ongoing DEI Growth?
Prejudice-denoting terms in academic research have recently decreased while some DEI-related terms...
3 months ago
Prejudice-denoting terms in academic research have recently decreased while some DEI-related terms continue to rise—what does this shift reveal?
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.
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...
Daniel Miessler
UL NO. 354 | THE NEWS & ANALYSIS SERIES
SECURITY NEWS The US has implemented a number of aggressive export controls to stop China from...
over a year ago
SECURITY NEWS The US has implemented a number of aggressive export controls to stop China from attaining advanced semiconductors. And now it looks like the bans will be expanded to quantum computing and AI as well. NYTIMES | MY ANALYSIS BELOW It appears Bytedance had a plan to...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 064: Big Tech's small models
April 26, 2024.
8 months ago
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
Resources to Get a Job in ML, Post-Transformer Architectures, What's in Store for 2025, and More
Society's Backend Reading List 12-30-2024
4 days ago
Society's Backend Reading List 12-30-2024
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 079: Don't call it an acquisition
August 9, 2024.
4 months ago
Weighty Thoughts
What is Defensibility?
Back to basics for AI startups and others
9 months ago
Back to basics for AI startups and others
One Useful Thing
Centaurs and Cyborgs on the Jagged Frontier
I think we have an answer on whether AIs will reshape work....
a year ago
I think we have an answer on whether AIs will reshape work....
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
The Gradient
Mamba Explained
Is Attention all you need? Mamba, a novel AI model based on State Space Models (SSMs), emerges as a...
9 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.
Strange Loop Canon
Evaluations are all we need
On analysing talent in LLMs
11 months ago
On analysing talent in LLMs
Andrej Karpathy blog
Short Story on AI: A Cognitive Discontinuity.
p {
text-align: justify;
}
The idea of writing a collection of short stories has been on my mind...
over a year ago
p {
text-align: justify;
}
The idea of writing a collection of short stories has been on my mind for a while. This post is my first ever half-serious attempt at a story, and what better way to kick things off than with a story on AI and what that might look like if you...
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
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 097: Model Mayhem
December 13, 2024.
2 weeks ago
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...
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.
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
Daniel Miessler
Reverse Transcription
There are dozens of reasons to be bullish on AI right now, especially in the GPT space where we have...
over a year ago
There are dozens of reasons to be bullish on AI right now, especially in the GPT space where we have AIs producing so much extraordinary art. But I’m excited about something else that we’re naturally evolving GPT into, which I’m calling Reverse Transcription. A bit of background...
Rozado’s Visual...
Which is the Wokest AI?
A Wokeness Ranking of LLMs
10 months ago
A Wokeness Ranking of LLMs
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Swiss-Mile Robot vs. Humans
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE...
2 months ago
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.
Humanoids 2024: 22–24 November...
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.
Daniel Miessler
My Prediction For Twitter
I’m a bit Elon and Twittered out, but I want to capture a basic prediction about all the...
over a year ago
I’m a bit Elon and Twittered out, but I want to capture a basic prediction about all the shenanigans. As for my take on things, I will just say that Elon miscalculated a number of things in his handling of the transition. I think he thought his actions would be better received....
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...
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
One Useful Thing
It is starting to get strange.
Let's talk about ChatGPT with Code Interpreter & Microsoft Copilot
a year ago
Let's talk about ChatGPT with Code Interpreter & Microsoft Copilot
Matt Mazur
Indie Hacking Week 2 Recap – TimelineGPT Progress, LearnGPT Decision Time
For Martin Luther King weekend my family and I headed to Boone, North Carolina and stayed in a cabin...
a year ago
For Martin Luther King weekend my family and I headed to Boone, North Carolina and stayed in a cabin for a few days. We went snow tubing at Beech Mountain while we were there, one of the many ski resorts in the area. As is common on vacations, I spent way too much time thinking...
The Berkeley...
Modeling Extremely Large Images with $x$T
As computer vision researchers, we believe that every pixel can tell a story. However, there seems...
9 months ago
As computer vision researchers, we believe that every pixel can tell a story. However, there seems to be a writer’s block settling into the field when it comes to dealing with large images. Large images are no longer rare—the cameras we carry in our pockets and those orbiting our...
Society's Backend
Devin Has Exposed a Major Issue with Software Engineering
And isn't that we're all going to lose our jobs
9 months ago
And isn't that we're all going to lose our jobs
The Berkeley...
Asymmetric Certified Robustness via Feature-Convex Neural Networks
Asymmetric Certified Robustness via Feature-Convex Neural Networks
TLDR: We propose the asymmetric...
a year ago
Asymmetric Certified Robustness via Feature-Convex Neural Networks
TLDR: We propose the asymmetric certified robustness problem, which requires certified robustness for only one class and reflects real-world adversarial scenarios. This focused setting allows us to introduce...
One Useful Thing
The Best Available Human Standard
What are the imperatives of the upside?
a year ago
What are the imperatives of the upside?
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 073: Music make you lose control
June 28, 2024.
6 months ago
Daniel Miessler
News & Analysis | NO. 353
over a year ago
Daniel Miessler
Humiliation is Deadly
I’ve been thinking for a few years about the danger presented by humiliated people and groups. That...
over a year ago
I’ve been thinking for a few years about the danger presented by humiliated people and groups. That is, people who not only feel like they have no respect and no options to gain any respect, but who also feel that: They deserve those things, and… That someone else is the cause of...
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...
Strange Loop Canon
Predicting AI
I revisit past predictions
4 months ago
I revisit past predictions
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...
a year 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...
AI Snake Oil
Is AI progress slowing down?
Making sense of recent technology trends and claims
2 weeks ago
Making sense of recent technology trends and claims
Artificial Ignorance
Funding a new generation of AI companies
Listen now | A conversation with Evan Stites-Clayton, partner at HF0 and CTO of Teespring.
11 months ago
Listen now | A conversation with Evan Stites-Clayton, partner at HF0 and CTO of Teespring.
Marcus on AI
Satya Nadella and the three stages of scientific truth
A textbook case in how good ideas are often initially throttled
a month ago
A textbook case in how good ideas are often initially throttled
Daniel Miessler
OpenAI’s Purpose is to Build AGI, and What That Means
Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, has said multiple times that, He says it in this video as well. >...
a year ago
Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, has said multiple times that, He says it in this video as well. > We’re very much here to build AGI. Sam Altman I am not sure how many people realize this about the company. They’re not like playing with other AI-related tech and AGI might come out...
Strange Loop Canon
Mind the Gap
from empire to umpire
a year ago
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 […]
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.
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
The Method Google Used to Reduce LLM Size by 66%
A brief overview of knowledge distillation and its capabilities
6 months ago
A brief overview of knowledge distillation and its capabilities
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 —
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...
Sam Altman
The United Slate
I would like to find and support a slate of candidates for the 2018 California elections, and also...
over a year ago
I would like to find and support a slate of candidates for the 2018 California elections, and also to find someone to run a ballot initiative focused on affordable housing in the state. A team of aligned people has a chance to make a real change.
I believe in creating prosperity...
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
One Useful Thing
The future of education in a world of AI
A positive vision for the transformation to come
a year ago
A positive vision for the transformation to come
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,...
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...
IEEE Spectrum
Boston Dynamics and Toyota Research Team Up on Robots
Today, Boston Dynamics and the Toyota Research Institute (TRI) announced a new partnership “to...
2 months ago
Today, Boston Dynamics and the Toyota Research Institute (TRI) announced a new partnership “to accelerate the development of general-purpose humanoid robots utilizing TRI’s Large Behavior Models and Boston Dynamics’ Atlas robot.” Committing to working towards a general purpose...
Daniel Miessler
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...
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
Daniel Miessler
Generate AI Art Using Your Own Writing
One of the most challenging parts of finishing a post is coming up with a good image. The AI art...
over a year ago
One of the most challenging parts of finishing a post is coming up with a good image. The AI art tools like DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion are cool, but a lot of the magic comes down to prompt engineering, which is non-trivial. Prompt Engineering is almost equal parts...
Marcus on AI
Don’t Ride This Bike! Generative AI’s persistent trouble with compositionality and parts
When the text-to-image AI generation system DALL-E2 was released in April 2022, the two of us,...
3 weeks ago
When the text-to-image AI generation system DALL-E2 was released in April 2022, the two of us, together with Scott Aaronson, ran some informal experiments to probe its abilities.
AI Snake Oil
Does ChatGPT have a liberal bias?
A new paper making this claim has many flaws. But the question merits research
a year ago
A new paper making this claim has many flaws. But the question merits research
Society's Backend
AI Reading List 1: Understand Transformers, Reflection-70B Update, and LLMs Still Cannot Reason
Society's Backend Reading List 10-07-2024
2 months ago
Society's Backend Reading List 10-07-2024
Rozado’s Visual...
The Academic Literature and its Increasing Emphasis on Prejudice and Social Justice
Published article Twitter thread In previous scholarly work (here and here), I documented a marked...
over a year ago
Published article Twitter thread In previous scholarly work (here and here), I documented a marked increase of references to prejudice in US, UK and Spanish news media content. The work summarized here investigates the prevalence dynamics of prejudice-denoting terms in 175...
Society's Backend
Why Gemini's Struggles Aren't Straightforward
And an overview of LLM security issues
9 months ago
And an overview of LLM security issues
Strange Loop Canon
What can LLMs never do?
On goal drift and lower reliability. Or, why can't LLMs play Conway's Game Of Life?
8 months ago
On goal drift and lower reliability. Or, why can't LLMs play Conway's Game Of Life?
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.
Artificial Ignorance
What are logprobs?
Something to do with logs and probabilities.
11 months ago
Something to do with logs and probabilities.
Andrej Karpathy blog
Self-driving as a case study for AGI
Sparked by progress in Large Language Models (LLMs), there’s a lot of chatter recently about AGI,...
11 months ago
Sparked by progress in Large Language Models (LLMs), there’s a lot of chatter recently about AGI, its timelines, and what it might look like. Some of it is hopeful and optimistic, but a lot of it is fearful and doomy, to put it mildly. Unfortunately, a lot of it is also very...
Weighty Thoughts
Deep Tech Startups Are Not Software Startups
Or why AI and “Software/SaaS” are apples and oranges
10 months ago
Or why AI and “Software/SaaS” are apples and oranges
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 040: GPTs
November 10, 2023.
a year ago
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Mars Chopper
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.
ICRA 2025: 19–23 May 2025, ATLANTA,...
IEEE Spectrum
Drones with Legs Can Walk, Hop, and Jump into the Air
“Whenever I encountered crows on the EPFL campus, I would observe how they walked, hopped over or...
4 weeks ago
“Whenever I encountered crows on the EPFL campus, I would observe how they walked, hopped over or jumped on obstacles, and jumped for take-offs,” says Won Dong Shin, a doctoral student at EPFL’s Laboratory of Intelligent Systems. “What I consistently observed was that they always...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 092: Watermarking the AI wave
November 8, 2024.
a month ago
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
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 047: NYT v. OpenAI
Friday, December 29.
a year ago
Made by Ollin
Emojin
An infinite kaomoji generator
over a year ago
An infinite kaomoji generator
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...
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?
AI Snake Oil
A misleading open letter about sci-fi AI dangers ignores the real risks
Misinformation, labor impact, and safety are all risks. But not in the way the letter implies.
a year ago
Misinformation, labor impact, and safety are all risks. But not in the way the letter implies.
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
Society's Backend
5 Highlights From Society's Backend in 2024
The top 5 articles and resources
2 days ago
The top 5 articles and resources
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.
AI Snake Oil
Three Ideas for Regulating Generative AI
Policy input to the federal government from a Stanford-Princeton team
a year ago
Policy input to the federal government from a Stanford-Princeton team
Marcus on AI
Update re: Microsoft and training data
Relevant to the post I sent earlier today,...
a month ago
Relevant to the post I sent earlier today, https://www.howtogeek.com/is-microsoft-using-your-word-documents-to-train-ai/says that an unnamed spokesperson at Microsoft claims that “Microsoft does not use customer data from Microsoft 365 consumer and commercial applications to...
Frank’s Ramblings
Vision Transformers are Overrated
Vision transformers (ViTs) have seen an incredible rise in the past four years. They have an obvious...
a year ago
Vision transformers (ViTs) have seen an incredible rise in the past four years. They have an obvious upside: in a visual recognition setting, the receptive field of a pure ViT is effectively the entire image 1. In particular, vanilla ViTs maintain the quadratic time complexity...
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.
Society's Backend
The Problem with American Emergency Alerts
In a world of self-driving cars and human-like chatbots, shouldn't the best technologies would be...
a year ago
In a world of self-driving cars and human-like chatbots, shouldn't the best technologies would be used for life-saving applications?
Strange Loop Canon
The mystery of the garage
10 months ago
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...
3 weeks ago
A conversation with two radiologists—who are also experts in AI—about how AI can shape clinical practice and patient experiences
IEEE Spectrum
Detachable Robotic Hand Crawls Around on Finger-Legs
When we think of grasping robots, we think of manipulators of some sort on the ends of arms of some...
3 months ago
When we think of grasping robots, we think of manipulators of some sort on the ends of arms of some sort. Because of course we do—that’s how (most of us) are built, and that’s the mindset with which we have consequently optimized the world around us. But one of the great things...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 076: Grand theft audio
July 19, 2024.
5 months ago
Society's Backend
Google AI Essentials, A New LLM Benchmark, Washington's AI Task Force, and More [Top 10 ML Resource...
Top 10 Machine Learning Resources and Updates Below are the top 10 machine learning resources and...
6 months ago
Top 10 Machine Learning Resources and Updates Below are the top 10 machine learning resources and updates from the past week you don't want to miss. I share more frequent ML updates on X so don’t forget to follow me there. Support Society's Backend for just $1/mo
Strange Loop Canon
AI embraces its product arc
fuzzy processors are entering mass production
7 months ago
fuzzy processors are entering mass production
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
AI Snake Oil
How Transparent Are Foundation Model Developers?
Introducing the Foundation Model Transparency Index
a year ago
Introducing the Foundation Model Transparency Index
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', () => {
...
Daniel Miessler
News & Analysis | NO. 352
over a year ago
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...
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Extreme Off-Road
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE...
a month ago
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.
Humanoids 2024: 22–24 November...
Marcus on AI
Sora still appears to have trouble with physics
Exactly as I warned in February
3 weeks ago
Exactly as I warned in February
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 Roundup 066: AlphaFold 3
May 10, 2024.
7 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...
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.
Matt Mazur
Friday Updates: Prepping TimelineGPT for Launch, Viva la EmergentMind
Preceden This week consisted of Milan (Preceden’s designer) and I getting TimelineGPT (the AI...
a year ago
Preceden This week consisted of Milan (Preceden’s designer) and I getting TimelineGPT (the AI content generator we’re working on) from 80% ready to ship to 98%. Lots of small, boring tasks like: Hopefully can launch the v1 early next week, rolling it out to 25% of users and then...
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...
Society's Backend
AI Reading List 3: Meta's Self-Taught Evaluator, AI for Cancer Diagnosis, and a Technical...
Society's Backend Reading List 10-21-2024
2 months ago
Society's Backend Reading List 10-21-2024
Artificial Ignorance
Jevons Paradox and the future of programming
Supply and demand in the Age of AI.
9 months ago
Supply and demand in the Age of AI.
Andrej Karpathy blog
Deep Reinforcement Learning: Pong from Pixels
-->
This is a long overdue blog post on Reinforcement Learning (RL). RL is hot! You may have...
over a year ago
-->
This is a long overdue blog post on Reinforcement Learning (RL). RL is hot! You may have noticed that computers can now automatically learn to play ATARI games (from raw game pixels!), they are beating world champions at Go, simulated quadrupeds are learning to run and leap,...
PromptArmor Blog
Coming soon
This is PromptArmor Blog.
a year ago
This is PromptArmor Blog.
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”
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.
Rozado’s Visual...
The Political Biases of GPT-4
Things are not always what they seem
a year ago
Things are not always what they seem
Andrej Karpathy blog
Deep Neural Nets: 33 years ago and 33 years from now
.post-header h1 {
font-size: 35px;
}
.post pre,
.post code {
background-color: #fcfcfc;
...
over a year ago
.post-header h1 {
font-size: 35px;
}
.post pre,
.post code {
background-color: #fcfcfc;
font-size: 13px; /* make code smaller for this post... */
}
The Yann LeCun et al. (1989) paper Backpropagation Applied to Handwritten Zip Code Recognition is I believe of some...
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...
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...
Society's Backend
Bridging the Gap from Simple Algebra to Machine Learning
You probably know more about machine learning math than you think
11 months ago
You probably know more about machine learning math than you think
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...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 077: A good week for open-source
July 26, 2024.
5 months ago
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!
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...
One Useful Thing
Confronting Impossible Futures
We shouldn't be certain about what is next, but we should plan for it
5 months ago
We shouldn't be certain about what is next, but we should plan for it
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 027: Challenge accepted
August 11, 2023
a year ago
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...
Rozado’s Visual...
The Political Preferences of LLMs
Substantial political homogeneity in Large Language Models (LLMs) responses to questions with...
11 months ago
Substantial political homogeneity in Large Language Models (LLMs) responses to questions with political connotations
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
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
Society's Backend
The Step-by-Step Guide to Becoming a Machine Learning Engineer
And other practical guides to understand machine learning
11 months ago
And other practical guides to understand machine learning
Artificial Ignorance
Who's winning the AI arms race?
It depends whether AI is a "disruptive" or "sustaining" technology.
a year ago
It depends whether AI is a "disruptive" or "sustaining" technology.
Artificial Ignorance
Lies, damned lies, and benchmarks
While benchmarks (and leaderboards) are useful tools, they are but a small facet when it comes to...
11 months ago
While benchmarks (and leaderboards) are useful tools, they are but a small facet when it comes to evaluating large language models. Often, they're not the best indicators of real-world utility - and I want to dig into why (and what other approaches exist).
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
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 051: The Taylor Swift thing
January 26, 2024.
11 months ago
Artificial Ignorance
Blade Runner 2024
Reddit's AI Hunters and the quest for authentic digital experiences.
4 months ago
Reddit's AI Hunters and the quest for authentic digital experiences.
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.
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...
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...
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.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 050: Synthetic Geometry
January 19, 2024.
11 months ago
Matt Mazur
Running Mistral 7B Instruct on a Macbook
Similar to yesterday’s post on running Mistral 8x7Bs Mixture of Experts (MOE) model, I wanted to...
a year ago
Similar to yesterday’s post on running Mistral 8x7Bs Mixture of Experts (MOE) model, I wanted to document the steps I took to run Mistral’s 7B-Instruct-v0.2 model on a Mac for anyone else interested in playing around with it. Unlike yesterday’s post though, this 7B Instruct...
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,...
Sam Altman
Hard Startups
The most counterintuitive secret about startups is that it’s often easier to succeed with a hard...
over a year ago
The most counterintuitive secret about startups is that it’s often easier to succeed with a hard startup than an easy one. A hard startup requires a lot more money, time, coordination, or technological development than most startups. A good hard startup is one that will be...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 093: Diminishing returns
November 15, 2024.
a month ago
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,...
Society's Backend
Why Software Engineers Need to Understand Machine Learning
And how ML helps software engineers in their daily work
7 months ago
And how ML helps software engineers in their daily work
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
The Berkeley...
Are We Ready for Multi-Image Reasoning? Launching VHs: The Visual Haystacks Benchmark!
Humans excel at processing vast arrays of visual information, a skill that is crucial for achieving...
5 months ago
Humans excel at processing vast arrays of visual information, a skill that is crucial for achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI). Over the decades, AI researchers have developed Visual Question Answering (VQA) systems to interpret scenes within single images and answer...
Society's Backend
Why Rust Isn't Killing C++
And a consideration for choosing a language
8 months ago
And a consideration for choosing a language
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...
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...
Society's Backend
1000+ AI Agents Make a Civilization, xAI Creates the Largest Supercomputer in 4 Months, Possible AI...
Machine learning resources and updates 2024-09-09
3 months ago
Machine learning resources and updates 2024-09-09
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...
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...
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
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 055: Race conditions
February 23, 2023.
10 months ago
Society's Backend
I Beat Newsletter Fatigue With AI
And why direct forms of communication will always be super valuable
11 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
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,...
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...
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
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.
Sam Altman
Join the YC Software Team
If you want to get funded by YC as a founder in the future, but you don't have a startup that's...
over a year ago
If you want to get funded by YC as a founder in the future, but you don't have a startup that's ready for that yet, joining the YC software team is a great hack to get there.
The YC software team is a small group of hackers in SF that write the software that makes all the parts...
One Useful Thing
The Lazy Tyranny of the Wait Calculation
Taking AI timelines seriously
11 months ago
Taking AI timelines seriously
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....
a week 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.
IEEE Spectrum
SwitchBot S10 Review: “This Is the Future of Home Robots”
I’ve been reviewing robot vacuums for more than a decade, and robot mops for just as long. It’s been...
2 months ago
I’ve been reviewing robot vacuums for more than a decade, and robot mops for just as long. It’s been astonishing how the technology has evolved, from the original iRobot Roomba bouncing off of walls and furniture to robots that use lidar and vision to map your entire house and...
Weighty Thoughts
When the AI Bubble Bursts
It’s when, not if, for these kinds of new technologies
6 months ago
It’s when, not if, for these kinds of new technologies
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
Matt Mazur
Full Time Indie Hacking: Month 5 Update
At the beginning of the year I quit consulting to focus full time on Preceden, my SaaS timeline...
a year ago
At the beginning of the year I quit consulting to focus full time on Preceden, my SaaS timeline maker tool. I also started working on a new side project, Emergent Mind, an AI-powered AI news site. My last update on how things were going was after 3 months which provides more...
One Useful Thing
What AI can do with a toolbox... Getting started with Code Interpreter
Democratizing data analysis with AI
a year ago
Democratizing data analysis with AI
PromptArmor Blog
Slack AI data exfiltration from private channels via indirect prompt injection
Authors: PromptArmor
4 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.
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
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
PromptArmor Blog
Announcing LASEC: LLM Application Security Executive Certification
Including a never before seen exploit from PromptArmor's cutting edge threat intelligence team.
9 months ago
Including a never before seen exploit from PromptArmor's cutting edge threat intelligence team.
Weighty Thoughts
From 6 Weeks to 600 Seconds (or Less)
The revolutionary potential of utilizing AI for electronic hardware design
4 days ago
The revolutionary potential of utilizing AI for electronic hardware design
AI Snake Oil
What the executive order means for openness in AI
Good news on paper, but the devil is in the details
a year ago
Good news on paper, but the devil is in the details
Rozado’s Visual...
The political preferences of Grok
Elon Musk's response to ChatGPT
a year ago
Elon Musk's response to ChatGPT
Strange Loop Canon
Symposium: On Building God
a year ago
Artificial Ignorance
Tutorial: How to narrate video with Sora, GPT-Vision, and ElevenLabs
The future of entertainment is going to be a wild ride.
10 months ago
The future of entertainment is going to be a wild ride.
Weighty Thoughts
News Roundup: May 15, 2024
Open AI announcements, DeepSeek-v2, and TSMC Arizona
7 months ago
Open AI announcements, DeepSeek-v2, and TSMC Arizona
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
Weighty Thoughts
The AI Executive Order
AKA: “We’ll do something about it later”
a year ago
AKA: “We’ll do something about it later”
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...
Daniel Miessler
News & Analysis | NO. 350
over a year ago
Strange Loop Canon
Google had a very bad week
Gemini's paradox
10 months ago
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
Daniel Miessler
News, Analysis, and Discovery | NO. 356
SECURITY NEWS TikTok has now admitted, after denying last week, that Chinese staff can in fact read...
over a year ago
SECURITY NEWS TikTok has now admitted, after denying last week, that Chinese staff can in fact read European TikTok data. Pressure is increasing across the US government to outright ban the app, but it's quickly becoming national infrastructure so many young people. MORE |...
IEEE Spectrum
How a Robot Is Grabbing Fuel From a Fukushima Reactor
Thirteen years since a massive earthquake and tsunami struck the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power...
2 months ago
Thirteen years since a massive earthquake and tsunami struck the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in northern Japan, causing a loss of power, meltdowns and a major release of radioactive material, operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) finally seems to be close to...
Strange Loop Canon
Seeing Like A Network
Dark Forests, Dense Networks
6 months ago
Dark Forests, Dense Networks
Andrej Karpathy blog
A from-scratch tour of Bitcoin in Python
.wrap {
max-width: 900px;
}
p {
font-family: sans-serif;
font-size: 15px;
...
over a year ago
.wrap {
max-width: 900px;
}
p {
font-family: sans-serif;
font-size: 15px;
font-weight: 300;
overflow-wrap: break-word; /* allow wrapping of very very long strings, like txids */
}
.post pre,
.post code {
background-color: #fafafa;
font-size: 13px; /*...
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...
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...
Sam Altman
What I Heard From Trump Supporters
After the election, I decided to talk to 100 Trump voters from around
the country. I went to the...
over a year ago
After the election, I decided to talk to 100 Trump voters from around
the country. I went to the middle of the
country, the middle of the state, and talked to many online.
This was a surprisingly interesting and helpful experience—I highly
recommend it. With three exceptions,...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 034: Meta Connect
September 29, 2023
a year ago
AI Snake Oil
Can AI automate computational reproducibility?
A new benchmark to measure the impact of AI on improving science
3 months ago
A new benchmark to measure the impact of AI on improving science
Matt Mazur
When you ship a major bug before signing off for the day
For better or worse, I still handle all of Preceden’s support requests. At one I did have help...
a year ago
For better or worse, I still handle all of Preceden’s support requests. At one I did have help (thanks Liesl!), but these days support takes at most an hour per week, and all requests fall into two buckets: As a result, there hasn’t been a pressing need to outsource support. But...
Society's Backend
Weekly Backend #4: 62 Total Resources
Apple’s LLM OpenELM, GPT-4-Turbo, Phi-3, Grok-1.5 Vision, and more
8 months ago
Apple’s LLM OpenELM, GPT-4-Turbo, Phi-3, Grok-1.5 Vision, and more
Artificial Ignorance
The SearchGPT Paradigm
What people (still) fundamentally misunderstand about AI search.
5 months ago
What people (still) fundamentally misunderstand about AI search.
fast.ai
Is Avoiding Extinction from AI Really an Urgent Priority?
The history of technology suggests that the greatest risks come not from the tech, but from the...
a year ago
The history of technology suggests that the greatest risks come not from the tech, but from the people who control it
One Useful Thing
Democratizing the future of education
We are all EdTech designers, now
a year ago
We are all EdTech designers, now
One Useful Thing
Not much is changing, a lot is changing
OpenAI, Microsoft, and the OpenOffspring
a year ago
OpenAI, Microsoft, and the OpenOffspring
Sam Altman
Tech Workers' Values
For good and bad, technology has become a central force in all
our lives.
As members of the...
over a year ago
For good and bad, technology has become a central force in all
our lives.
As members of the community, we're interested in ways in which
tech companies can use their collective power to protect privacy, rule of law,
freedom of expression, and other fundamental American rights....
Society's Backend
Founder Mode, How AI Impacts Education, Diffusion Models As Real-Time Game Engines, and More
Machine learning resources and updates 2024-09-03
4 months ago
Machine learning resources and updates 2024-09-03
Society's Backend
Taking the AI to Consumers
The Google Pixel 8 Pro is a much bigger deal than you think
a year ago
The Google Pixel 8 Pro is a much bigger deal than you think
Artificial Ignorance
The fable of Reflection 70B
From groundbreaking to grifting.
3 months ago
From groundbreaking to grifting.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 049: Down the Rabbit hole
January 12, 2023.
11 months ago
Weighty Thoughts
VC Office Hours
Talk to James Wang, author of Weighty Thoughts and General Partner of Creative Ventures
11 months ago
Talk to James Wang, author of Weighty Thoughts and General Partner of Creative Ventures
Society's Backend
Why MLX is Important for the ML Community
And a step-by-step guide to train a machine learning model on your Mac
8 months ago
And a step-by-step guide to train a machine learning model on your Mac
One Useful Thing
Detecting the Secret Cyborgs
The AI Trap for Organizations
a year ago
The AI Trap for Organizations
AI Snake Oil
We Looked at 78 Election Deepfakes. Political Misinformation is not an AI Problem.
Technology Isn’t the Problem—or the Solution.
2 weeks ago
Technology Isn’t the Problem—or the Solution.
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...
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
PromptArmor Blog
Data Exfiltration from Slack AI via indirect prompt injection
Authors: PromptArmor
4 months ago
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
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...
4 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...
IEEE Spectrum
How Amazon Is Changing the Future of Robotics and Logistics
This is a sponsored article brought to you by Amazon.
“Innovation doesn’t just happen because you...
2 weeks ago
This is a sponsored article brought to you by Amazon.
“Innovation doesn’t just happen because you have a good idea,” said Valerie Samzun, a leader in Amazon’s Fulfillment Technologies and Robotics (FTR) division. “It happens because you have the right team, the right...
AI Snake Oil
Scientists should use AI as a tool, not an oracle
How AI hype leads to flawed research that fuels more hype
7 months ago
How AI hype leads to flawed research that fuels more hype
AI Snake Oil
Students are acing their homework by turning in machine-generated essays. Good.
Teachers adapted to the calculator. They can certainly adapt to language models.
over a year ago
Teachers adapted to the calculator. They can certainly adapt to language models.
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
Software Engineering is Doomed
Or is it?
6 months ago
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
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
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
Strange Loop Canon
OpenAI's Strawberry models can reason like an expert
When models can think
3 months ago
Full Width 
Shortcuts 
Sign Up 
Log In 
Articles 
Reading List 