Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 089: Adobe MAX
October 18, 2024.
2 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!
AI Snake Oil
Is Avoiding Extinction from AI Really an Urgent Priority?
The history of technology suggests that the greatest risks come not from the tech, but from the...
a year ago
The history of technology suggests that the greatest risks come not from the tech, but from the people who control it
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 069: Project Greymatter
May 31, 2024.
6 months ago
One Useful Thing
On holding back the strange AI tide
There is no way to stop the disruption. We need to channel it instead
a year ago
There is no way to stop the disruption. We need to channel it instead
One Useful Thing
An AI Haunted World
Intelligence, everywhere.
a year ago
Intelligence, everywhere.
Matt Mazur
Reflecting on My First Year as a Full Time Indie Founder
At the beginning of 2023 I went full time on Preceden, my SaaS timeline maker business, after 13...
11 months ago
At the beginning of 2023 I went full time on Preceden, my SaaS timeline maker business, after 13 years of working on it on the side. A year has passed, so I wanted to share an update on how things are going and some lessons learned. Preceden My main focus in 2023 was building AI...
Made by Ollin
NVIDIA Internship (2017)
Notes on my internship at NVIDIA Redmond.
over a year ago
Notes on my internship at NVIDIA Redmond.
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...
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?
Society's Backend
One Year of Society's Backend
The lessons I've learned along the way
4 months ago
The lessons I've learned along the way
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 058: Devin and SIMA
March 15, 2023.
9 months ago
AI Snake Oil
Is AI progress slowing down?
Making sense of recent technology trends and claims
4 days ago
Making sense of recent technology trends and claims
Strange Loop Canon
Mind the Gap
from empire to umpire
a year ago
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.
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?
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...
Artificial Ignorance
Distributing the future
A reminder that things take time.
6 months ago
A reminder that things take time.
Society's Backend
The FTC Cracks Down on Fake AI-Generated Reviews, Midjourney Available on the Web, AI Used to Farm...
Machine learning resources and updates 8/26/2024
3 months ago
Machine learning resources and updates 8/26/2024
Sam Altman
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...
Made by Ollin
Acapella Extraction with ConvNets
A working prototype
over a year ago
AI Snake Oil
Artists can now opt out of generative AI. It’s not enough.
Opting out is the latest example of generative AI developers externalizing costs.
a year ago
Opting out is the latest example of generative AI developers externalizing costs.
Artificial Ignorance
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 038: Preparedness
October 27, 2023.
a year ago
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.
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...
Frank’s Ramblings
My Experience Living and Working in China, Part II: COVID Stories
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...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 037: The AI IPCC
October 20, 2023.
a year ago
Society's Backend
Why Machine Learning Terminology is So Confusing
And definitions for the most important terms you should know
10 months ago
And definitions for the most important terms you should know
The Gradient
Text-to-CAD: Risks and Opportunities
In the realm of AI-powered text-to-CAD, there's promise, but also a surge in subpar designs. Can we...
a year ago
In the realm of AI-powered text-to-CAD, there's promise, but also a surge in subpar designs. Can we steer this technology towards better outcomes?
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 028: Sunak's Safety Summit
August 18, 2023
a year ago
Weighty Thoughts
Who’s Winning the AI War?
All of us, except the AI startups and VCs—unless a real war breaks out
11 months ago
All of us, except the AI startups and VCs—unless a real war breaks out
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.
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,...
Marcus on AI
8 signs that Donald Trump has a progressive form of dementia
And how our media is failing, wildly, in one of the most important stories in US history
a month ago
And how our media is failing, wildly, in one of the most important stories in US history
Weighty Thoughts
Fear and Loathing in 7nm
How much does Huawei and SMIC's new chip matter? And what should the US do?
a year ago
How much does Huawei and SMIC's new chip matter? And what should the US do?
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....
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 045: Google's just getting started
December 15, 2023.
a year ago
One Useful Thing
What people ask me most. Also, some answers.
A FAQ of sorts
a year ago
Society's Backend
Backend Biweekly #3: 97 Updates and Resources
Huge Nvidia Updates, Gemini Hackathon for Money, and more
8 months ago
Huge Nvidia Updates, Gemini Hackathon for Money, and more
One Useful Thing
The Present Future: AI's Impact Long Before Superintelligence
You can start to see the outlines of an AI future, for better and worse
a month ago
You can start to see the outlines of an AI future, for better and worse
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 095: QwQ
November 29, 2024.
3 weeks ago
Society's Backend
OpenAI's Strawberry May Enhance AI Reasoning, Optimization of Vision Language Models, Info on...
Weekly updates and resources 7/15/24
5 months ago
Weekly updates and resources 7/15/24
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
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 084: Strawberry / o1
September 13, 2024.
3 months ago
One Useful Thing
One sentence.
Prompting for maximum impact (and why that is a bad idea)
a year ago
Prompting for maximum impact (and why that is a bad idea)
Society's Backend
Meta's New Segmentation Model, A New Open-Source Image Generation Model, Apple Intelligence Model...
Machine learning resources and updates 8/5/2024
4 months ago
Machine learning resources and updates 8/5/2024
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.
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...
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Quadruped Ladder Climbing
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE...
2 months ago
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.
IROS 2024: 14–18 October 2024, ABU...
Daniel Miessler
My Mom Died on Saturday
My mom died on Saturday. My biological mother became unable to function when I was around five due...
over a year ago
My mom died on Saturday. My biological mother became unable to function when I was around five due to mental illness, which left my dad and me on our own. Sometime after we were blessed with a strong, beautiful soul named Rhonda. My dad and I were like rescue dogs, and she saved...
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
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
Post-apocalyptic education
What comes after the Homework Apocalypse
3 months ago
What comes after the Homework Apocalypse
Artificial Ignorance
Lies, damned lies, and benchmarks
While benchmarks (and leaderboards) are useful tools, they are but a small facet when it comes to...
10 months ago
While benchmarks (and leaderboards) are useful tools, they are but a small facet when it comes to evaluating large language models. Often, they're not the best indicators of real-world utility - and I want to dig into why (and what other approaches exist).
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...
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...
Jascha’s blog
The hot mess theory of AI misalignment: More intelligent agents behave less coherently
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a year ago
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Many machine learning researchers worry about risks from building artificial intelligence...
AI Snake Oil
Licensing is neither feasible nor effective for addressing AI risks
Non-proliferation only benefits incumbents
a year ago
Non-proliferation only benefits incumbents
Society's Backend
OpenAI’s Blunder is a Loss for the ML Community
The timeline and why OpenAI’s actions are a big deal
7 months ago
The timeline and why OpenAI’s actions are a big deal
Artificial Ignorance
Milestones, motivations, and miscellany
Some thoughts on the future of this newsletter.
5 months ago
Some thoughts on the future of this newsletter.
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...
The Berkeley...
The Shift from Models to Compound AI Systems
AI caught everyone’s attention in 2023 with Large Language Models (LLMs) that can be instructed to...
10 months ago
AI caught everyone’s attention in 2023 with Large Language Models (LLMs) that can be instructed to perform general tasks, such as translation or coding, just by prompting. This naturally led to an intense focus on models as the primary ingredient in AI application development,...
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....
The Gradient
We Need Positive Visions for AI Grounded in Wellbeing
Introduction
Imagine yourself a decade ago, jumping directly into the present shock of conversing...
4 months ago
Introduction
Imagine yourself a decade ago, jumping directly into the present shock of conversing naturally with an encyclopedic AI that crafts images, writes code, and debates philosophy. Won’t this technology almost certainly transform society — and hasn’t AI’s impact on us so...
Weighty Thoughts
What is Defensibility?
Back to basics for AI startups and others
8 months ago
Back to basics for AI startups and others
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.
Jascha’s blog
Neural network training makes beautiful fractals
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...
10 months ago
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.vimeo-player {
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Strange Loop Canon
The mystery of the garage
10 months ago
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...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 096: Happy Shipmas
December 6, 2024.
2 weeks ago
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
AI Roundup 072: The new new Claude
June 21, 2024.
6 months ago
One Useful Thing
Four Singularities for Research
The rise of AI is creating both crisis and opportunity
6 months ago
The rise of AI is creating both crisis and opportunity
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...
6 days 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...
The Berkeley...
GPT-4 + Stable-Diffusion = ?: Enhancing Prompt Understanding of Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with...
TL;DR: Text Prompt -> LLM -> Intermediate Representation (such as an image layout) -> Stable...
a year ago
TL;DR: Text Prompt -> LLM -> Intermediate Representation (such as an image layout) -> Stable Diffusion -> Image.
Recent advancements in text-to-image generation with diffusion models have yielded remarkable results synthesizing highly realistic and diverse images. However,...
Strange Loop Canon
When we become cogs
on motivation and technology
a month ago
on motivation and technology
One Useful Thing
How to... use AI to unstick yourself
We often lose momentum because of something small. AI can help.
a year ago
We often lose momentum because of something small. AI can help.
The Berkeley...
Training Diffusion Models with <br> Reinforcement Learning
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...
a year ago
function reveal() {
const replay = document.querySelector('.ddpo-replay');
replay.style.display = 'flex';
}
window.onload = () => {
const replay = document.querySelector('.ddpo-replay');
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...
Weighty Thoughts
The Mystical Q
OpenAI Q*, Primer on Reinforcement Learning, and Implications
a year ago
OpenAI Q*, Primer on Reinforcement Learning, and Implications
Rozado’s Visual...
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:
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 076: Grand theft audio
July 19, 2024.
5 months ago
One Useful Thing
AI in organizations: Some tactics
Meet the Lab and the Crowd
2 months ago
Meet the Lab and the Crowd
Society's Backend
What it's Like to Work in AI and Advice from 10 AI Professionals
I asked 10 AI professionals 4 questions about their work in AI and the qualifications required for...
a month ago
I asked 10 AI professionals 4 questions about their work in AI and the qualifications required for their job
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.
AI Snake Oil
Scientists should use AI as a tool, not an oracle
How AI hype leads to flawed research that fuels more hype
6 months ago
How AI hype leads to flawed research that fuels more hype
Matt Mazur
Redesigning Preceden’s Pricing Page
Milan (Preceden’s designer) and I recently wrapped up a project to redesign Preceden’s pricing page....
a year ago
Milan (Preceden’s designer) and I recently wrapped up a project to redesign Preceden’s pricing page. Here’s the previous above-the-fold content: And here’s how the new design turned out: Few things to highlight: Very happy with how it turned out. Kudus to Milan for suggesting we...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 052: AI, EO, DPA
February 2, 2024.
10 months ago
Matt Mazur
Progress on TimelineGPT, Emergent Mind missteps, finding balance
Hey all 👋! It’s been a minute since my last post (for reasons I’ll get into below) so here’s...
a year ago
Hey all 👋! It’s been a minute since my last post (for reasons I’ll get into below) so here’s periodic update on what I’ve been up to: TimelineGPT About two months ago I launched an in-app tool for Preceden that provides GPT-powered event suggestions to users to help them build...
Strange Loop Canon
OpenAI's Strawberry models can reason like an expert
When models can think
3 months ago
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...
Society's Backend
A Technical Perspective: Has Google Search Gotten Worse?
Providing a technical perspective for a more educated assessment of a complaint I hear quite...
2 months ago
Providing a technical perspective for a more educated assessment of a complaint I hear quite frequently
Daniel Miessler
News & Analysis | NO. 350
over a year ago
Society's Backend
Taking the AI to Consumers
The Google Pixel 8 Pro is a much bigger deal than you think
a year ago
The Google Pixel 8 Pro is a much bigger deal than you think
Sam Altman
E Pur Si Muove
Earlier
this year, I noticed something in China that really surprised me. I
realized I felt more...
over a year ago
Earlier
this year, I noticed something in China that really surprised me. I
realized I felt more comfortable discussing controversial ideas in Beijing than
in San Francisco. I didn’t feel completely comfortable—this was China,
after all—just more comfortable than at home.
That...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 062: Data is the new oil
April 12, 2024.
8 months ago
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.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 087: DevDay SF
October 4, 2024.
2 months ago
Sam Altman
2017 YC Annual Letter
Dear YC Community:
In response to a comment on Hacker News, I’m going to try writing an annual...
over a year ago
Dear YC Community:
In response to a comment on Hacker News, I’m going to try writing an annual letter to the YC community with an update on our progress.
Our mission is to enable the most innovation of any company in the world in order to make the future great for everyone. We...
Society's Backend
Know Your Benchmarks
How the Chatbot Arena leaderboard for LLMs works and why it’s important to understand
8 months ago
How the Chatbot Arena leaderboard for LLMs works and why it’s important to understand
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.
...
Frank’s Ramblings
Vision Transformers are Overrated
Vision transformers (ViTs) have seen an incredible rise in the past four years. They have an obvious...
11 months ago
Vision transformers (ViTs) have seen an incredible rise in the past four years. They have an obvious upside: in a visual recognition setting, the receptive field of a pure ViT is effectively the entire image 1. In particular, vanilla ViTs maintain the quadratic time complexity...
One Useful Thing
Scaling: The State of Play in AI
A brief intergenerational pause...
3 months ago
A brief intergenerational pause...
Andrej Karpathy blog
Short Story on AI: Forward Pass
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over a year ago
p {
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The inspiration for this short story came to me while reading Kevin Lacker’s Giving GPT-3 a Turing Test. It is probably worth it (though not required) to skim this post to get...
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
Artificial Ignorance
Tutorial: How to build an AI agent (Part 2)
Part 2: Giving our agent internet access.
a year ago
Part 2: Giving our agent internet access.
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.
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...
Sam Altman
How To Invest In Startups
There is a lot of advice about how to be a good startup founder. But there isn’t very much about...
over a year ago
There is a lot of advice about how to be a good startup founder. But there isn’t very much about how to be a good startup investor.
Before going any further, I should point out that this is a particularly hard time to invest in startups—it’s easier right now to be a...
Artificial Ignorance
Case Study: Scaling customer intelligence
Analyzing 10,000 sales calls with Claude
3 weeks ago
Analyzing 10,000 sales calls with Claude
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
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
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”
Daniel Miessler
NO. 362 | Dependency Scanner, Citrix Attacks, AI Analysis…
SECURITY NEWS Google released an open-source scanner for vulnerabilities in project dependencies....
over a year ago
SECURITY NEWS Google released an open-source scanner for vulnerabilities in project dependencies. It's a front-end to the OSV database that links a dependency list to its vulnerabilities. MORE The latest updates for Apple software fixed a new zero-day that could be used to hack...
Stories by Andrej...
ICLR 2017 vs arxiv-sanity
over a year ago
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
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!
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...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 086: Llama 3.2
September 27, 2024.
2 months ago
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
A Fundamental Overview of Machine Learning Experimentation [Part 1]
And how it differs from the software development you're familiar with
2 weeks ago
And how it differs from the software development you're familiar with
IEEE Spectrum
Drones with Legs Can Walk, Hop, and Jump into the Air
“Whenever I encountered crows on the EPFL campus, I would observe how they walked, hopped over or...
2 weeks ago
“Whenever I encountered crows on the EPFL campus, I would observe how they walked, hopped over or jumped on obstacles, and jumped for take-offs,” says Won Dong Shin, a doctoral student at EPFL’s Laboratory of Intelligent Systems. “What I consistently observed was that they always...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 098: Flash Thinking
December 20, 2024.
2 days ago
One Useful Thing
Change blindness
21 months later
4 months ago
Society's Backend
Weekly Backend #5: 55 Resources
The inner workings of transformers, Machine Learning Q and AI, machine learning classifies harmful...
7 months ago
The inner workings of transformers, Machine Learning Q and AI, machine learning classifies harmful viruses, and more
One Useful Thing
Using AI to make teaching easier & more impactful
Here are five strategies and prompts that work for GPT-3.5 & GPT-4
a year ago
Here are five strategies and prompts that work for GPT-3.5 & GPT-4
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
One Useful Thing
Not much is changing, a lot is changing
OpenAI, Microsoft, and the OpenOffspring
a year ago
OpenAI, Microsoft, and the OpenOffspring
One Useful Thing
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
AI Roundup 061: The AI innovator's dilemma
April 5, 2024.
8 months ago
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
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 047: NYT v. OpenAI
Friday, December 29.
11 months ago
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
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...
Artificial Ignorance
YCombinator's AI boom is still going strong (W24)
Combing through all 158 YC AI startups (65% of the batch).
8 months ago
Combing through all 158 YC AI startups (65% of the batch).
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 077: A good week for open-source
July 26, 2024.
4 months ago
Artificial Ignorance
GPTs won't make you rich
But they'll make you more productive.
11 months ago
But they'll make you more productive.
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...
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Mars Chopper
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE...
a week ago
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.
ICRA 2025: 19–23 May 2025, ATLANTA,...
Strange Loop Canon
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
Society's Backend
LLM-as-a-Judge, Instruction Pretraining, Solving Benchmarks Instead of Real-World ML Problems, and...
Weekly updates and resources 7/22/24
5 months ago
Weekly updates and resources 7/22/24
Sam Altman
PG and Jessica
A lot of people want to replicate YC in some other industry or some other place or with some other...
over a year ago
A lot of people want to replicate YC in some other industry or some other place or with some other strategy. In general, people seem to assume that: 1) although there was some degree of mystery or luck about how YC got going, it can’t be that hard, and 2) if you can get it off...
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...
Artificial Ignorance
From Stable Diffusion to Stable Everything
Inside Stability AI's roster of AI models.
7 months ago
Inside Stability AI's roster of AI models.
Rozado’s Visual...
The ‘Great Awokening' Preceded Trump. It May Continue Beyond Him
Newsweek opinion piece Follow-up: Prevalence of Prejudice-Denoting Words in News Media Discourse...
over a year ago
Newsweek opinion piece Follow-up: Prevalence of Prejudice-Denoting Words in News Media Discourse Over the last five years, poll after poll has found that the GOP base has grown warmer towards Blacks, Hispanics, immigrants and Muslims. They’ve simultaneously become
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
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
Strange Loop Canon
Symposium: On Building God
a year ago
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
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
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
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...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 055: Race conditions
February 23, 2023.
10 months ago
Strange Loop Canon
LLMs have special intelligence, not general, and that's plenty.
“Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.”
9 months ago
“Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.”
Artificial Ignorance
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?
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
Updates to Society's Backend
New benefits for paid subscribers, support Society's Backend for just $1/mo, a referral program, and...
9 months ago
New benefits for paid subscribers, support Society's Backend for just $1/mo, a referral program, and more
Artificial Ignorance
LLMs are getting dumber and we have no idea why
Five theories that could explain how chatbots are getting worse.
3 months ago
Five theories that could explain how chatbots are getting worse.
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
7 months ago
What spending $2,000 can tell us about evaluating AI agents
Society's Backend
A Privacy Review: TikTok
You should stick to Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts
a year ago
You should stick to Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts
One Useful Thing
Google's Gemini Advanced: Tasting Notes and Implications
And then there were two.
10 months ago
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”
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 078: Voice mode
August 2, 2024.
4 months ago
Weighty Thoughts
Why did the Prior Generations of AI Fail?
Diving into the History—Which is Kind of a Circle
3 months ago
Diving into the History—Which is Kind of a Circle
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...
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.
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...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 092: Watermarking the AI wave
November 8, 2024.
a month ago
Daniel Miessler
NO. 368 | ChinaBalloons, CustomGPT, 90s++…
✅ Please add this address to your "safe senders" or equivalent within your mail client. It'll...
a year ago
✅ Please add this address to your "safe senders" or equivalent within your mail client. It'll prevent the email from occasionally descending into the void. SECURITY The US shot down a Chinese spy balloon. They gathered the debris from the water it fell into, and it's currently...
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”
One Useful Thing
Strategies for an Accelerating Future
Four questions to ask your organization.
10 months ago
Four questions to ask your organization.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 059: In̶f̶l̶e̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ Microsoft AI
March 22, 2023.
9 months ago
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...
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...
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
Artificial Ignorance
How to build an AI search engine (Part 2)
VC funding, here we come.
2 months ago
VC funding, here we come.
AI Snake Oil
One year update: book submitted; TIME 100; Sep 21 online workshop
It's been an eventful year
a year ago
It's been an eventful year
Frank’s Ramblings
A Gentle Introduction to Vector Databases
Update: An earlier version of this post was cross-published to the Zilliz learning center, Medium,...
over a year ago
Update: An earlier version of this post was cross-published to the Zilliz learning center, Medium, and DZone.
If you have any feedback, feel free to connect with me on Twitter or Linkedin. If you enjoyed this post and want to learn a bit more about vector databases and embeddings...
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
Strange Loop Canon
Evaluations are all we need
On analysing talent in LLMs
11 months ago
On analysing talent in LLMs
Rozado’s Visual...
Define Wokeness! Or how you shall know a word by the company it keeps
Visualizing what words often appear in the vicinity of woke/wokeness in news media content...
a year ago
Visualizing what words often appear in the vicinity of woke/wokeness in news media content illustrates why communication is almost impossible between red and blue America
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?
Daniel Miessler
How to Survive and Thrive in a World Where AI Can Do Almost Everything
Click for printable size. Here’s a quick list of things we can do to get ready for AI’s ascendance....
over a year ago
Click for printable size. Here’s a quick list of things we can do to get ready for AI’s ascendance. You can click it to get the full size to print out. This is UL Member Content Subscribe Already a member? Login
Society's Backend
Godmother of AI Warns Against Regulation, Apple Intelligence System Prompts, Faster and Cheaper AI,...
Machine learning resources and updates 8/12/2024
4 months ago
Machine learning resources and updates 8/12/2024
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.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 090: Computer Use
October 25, 2024.
a month ago
Sam Altman
Idea Generation
The most common question prospective startup founders ask is how to get ideas for startups. The...
over a year ago
The most common question prospective startup founders ask is how to get ideas for startups. The second most common question is if you have any ideas for their startup.
But giving founders an idea almost always doesn’t work. Having ideas is among the most important qualities for...
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...
AI Snake Oil
Can AI automate computational reproducibility?
A new benchmark to measure the impact of AI on improving science
3 months ago
A new benchmark to measure the impact of AI on improving science
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 074: Amazon's Adept acquisition
July 5, 2024.
5 months ago
Rozado’s Visual...
DepolarizingGPT
A Political Chatbot that Gives 3 Politically Diverse Answers to Every Prompt
a year ago
A Political Chatbot that Gives 3 Politically Diverse Answers to Every Prompt
Artificial Ignorance
Tutorial: How to streamline your writing process with Whisper and GPT-4
These Python scripts help me write 3x faster and go from loose ideas to first draft in minutes.
7 months ago
These Python scripts help me write 3x faster and go from loose ideas to first draft in minutes.
Matt Mazur
The Security Questionnaire Dilemma
About once a year I get an email from someone working in a security and compliance department at a...
a year ago
About once a year I get an email from someone working in a security and compliance department at a large organization asking that I fill out a detailed security questionnaire to help them assess the risk of their employees using Preceden. I received one recently from a large,...
One Useful Thing
Detecting the Secret Cyborgs
The AI Trap for Organizations
a year ago
The AI Trap for Organizations
AI Snake Oil
AI existential risk probabilities are too unreliable to inform policy
How speculation gets laundered through pseudo-quantification
4 months ago
How speculation gets laundered through pseudo-quantification
Stories by Andrej...
Virtual Reality: still not quite there, again.
over a year ago
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,...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 075: Levels of AGI
July 12, 2024.
5 months ago
AI Snake Oil
New paper: AI agents that matter
Rethinking AI agent benchmarking and evaluation
5 months ago
Rethinking AI agent benchmarking and evaluation
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)
The Gradient
What's Missing From LLM Chatbots: A Sense of Purpose
LLM-based chatbots’ capabilities have been advancing every month. These improvements are mostly...
3 months ago
LLM-based chatbots’ capabilities have been advancing every month. These improvements are mostly measured by benchmarks like MMLU, HumanEval, and MATH (e.g. sonnet 3.5, gpt-4o). However, as these measures get more and more saturated, is user experience increasing in proportion to...
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
One Useful Thing
Working with AI: Two paths to prompting
Don't overcomplicate things
a year ago
Don't overcomplicate things
PromptArmor Blog
Data exfiltration from Writer.com with indirect prompt injection
Authors: PromptArmor and Kai Greshake
a year ago
Authors: PromptArmor and Kai Greshake
One Useful Thing
The practical guide to using AI to do stuff
A resource for students in my classes (and other interested people).
a year ago
A resource for students in my classes (and other interested people).
Weighty Thoughts
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
Strange Loop Canon
We all live on a knife's edge, and it's fine
Or: How we weaponised serendipity
8 months ago
Or: How we weaponised serendipity
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.
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...
Weighty Thoughts
Let’s Talk About AI Compute
What really matters and why AI computing is exactly the same as all other large-scale computing
a year ago
What really matters and why AI computing is exactly the same as all other large-scale computing
Weighty Thoughts
Compute is Overrated as AI’s Bottleneck
You can’t just blindly extrapolate compute requirements
a year ago
You can’t just blindly extrapolate compute requirements
Daniel Miessler
Using Custom Searches in Safari (in 2022)
I’ve just started using Safari again after being on Chrome for a while, and one of the things I miss...
over a year ago
I’ve just started using Safari again after being on Chrome for a while, and one of the things I miss most from Chrome is custom searches. There you can search Amazon directly from the address bar by doing: You can change the search prompts to be single letters like ‘a’ for...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 073: Music make you lose control
June 28, 2024.
5 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.
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
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
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
Strange Loop Canon
Why AI hasn’t shown up in the GDP statistics yet
AI is meant to bring us closer to utopia, according to its builders.
4 months ago
AI is meant to bring us closer to utopia, according to its builders.
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...
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.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 026: AudioCraft
August 4, 2023
a year ago
Daniel Miessler
Podcast Audio Quality: AI-based Post-processing vs. Hardware
I’ve been podcasting since 2015 and got really into audio when the plague started. Like…too much....
over a year ago
I’ve been podcasting since 2015 and got really into audio when the plague started. Like…too much. Anyway. I’ve been obsessed with podcast audio quality for years, and have been through so…many…iterations of my setup. I started with a Yeti (still a great mic). Did the...
Marcus on AI
Satya Nadella and the three stages of scientific truth
A textbook case in how good ideas are often initially throttled
4 weeks ago
A textbook case in how good ideas are often initially throttled
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
AI Roundup 060: Another CEO gone
March 29, 2024.
8 months ago
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.
Strange Loop Canon
I wrote a book!
AI enables us to, finally, get "soft" APIs
a year ago
AI enables us to, finally, get "soft" APIs
One Useful Thing
On-boarding your AI Intern
There's a somewhat weird alien who wants to work for free for you. You should probably get started.
a year ago
There's a somewhat weird alien who wants to work for free for you. You should probably get started.
Strange Loop Canon
Predicting AI
I revisit past predictions
3 months ago
I revisit past predictions
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...
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...
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
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
AI Snake Oil
How Transparent Are Foundation Model Developers?
Introducing the Foundation Model Transparency Index
a year ago
Introducing the Foundation Model Transparency Index
Strange Loop Canon
Whither Utopia?
The mystery of why we don't dream of building perfect societies anymore
6 months ago
The mystery of why we don't dream of building perfect societies anymore
Artificial Ignorance
GPT-4o and the illusion of AGI
Why speed and multimodality is becoming the name of the game.
7 months ago
Why speed and multimodality is becoming the name of the game.
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.
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Happy Holidays!
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE...
2 days ago
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.
ICRA 2025: 19–23 May 2025, ATLANTA,...
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...
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
Stories by Andrej...
A Peek at Trends in Machine Learning
over a year ago
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 067: GPT-4o and Google I/O
May 17, 2024.
7 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
IEEE Spectrum
This Inventor Is Molding Tomorrow’s Inventors
This article is part of our special report, “Reinventing Invention: Stories from Innovation’s...
a month ago
This article is part of our special report, “Reinventing Invention: Stories from Innovation’s Edge.”
Marina Umaschi Bers has long been at the forefront of technological innovation for kids. In the 2010s, while teaching at Tufts University, in Massachusetts, she codeveloped the...
AI Snake Oil
Does the UK’s liver transplant matching algorithm systematically exclude younger patients?
Seemingly minor technical decisions can have life-or-death effects
a month ago
Seemingly minor technical decisions can have life-or-death effects
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
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.
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...
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
Made by Ollin
Emojin
An infinite kaomoji generator
over a year ago
An infinite kaomoji generator
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 050: Synthetic Geometry
January 19, 2024.
11 months ago
Matt Mazur
It’s Time to Build
It’s been a few months so I wanted to say hey to the 7 of you who follow this blog and share a few...
8 months ago
It’s been a few months so I wanted to say hey to the 7 of you who follow this blog and share a few updates about what I’ve been up to. Quick recap At the start of 2023 I quit consulting to go full time on Preceden, my SaaS timeline maker, after growing it on … Continue reading...
AI Snake Oil
Quantifying ChatGPT’s gender bias
Benchmarks allow us to dig deeper into what causes biases and what can be done about it
a year ago
Benchmarks allow us to dig deeper into what causes biases and what can be done about it
One Useful Thing
What Apple's AI Tells Us: Experimental Models⁴
Siri versus the machine god?
6 months ago
Siri versus the machine god?
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...
AI Snake Oil
Generative AI companies must publish transparency reports
The debate about the harms of AI is happening in a data vacuum
a year ago
The debate about the harms of AI is happening in a data vacuum
Artificial Ignorance
The State of AI Engineering
Notes from the first AI Engineer Summit.
a year ago
Notes from the first AI Engineer Summit.
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
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.
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...
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...
Matt Mazur
LearnGPT is for sale. Contact me if you’re interested.
On Friday I announced that I intended to shut down LearnGPT to focus on Preceden, my main business....
a year ago
On Friday I announced that I intended to shut down LearnGPT to focus on Preceden, my main business. I didn’t plan to sell LearnGPT because I didn’t think a month-old, pre-revenue project like this would be able to sell for enough to warrant going through a sale. It’s been three...
fast.ai
1st Two Lessons of From Deep Learning Foundations to Stable Diffusion
4 videos from Practical Deep Learning for Coders Part 2, 2022 have been released as a special early...
over a year ago
4 videos from Practical Deep Learning for Coders Part 2, 2022 have been released as a special early preview of the new course.
Artificial Ignorance
Pitfalls of building with large language models
Dealing with more than just hallucinations.
a year ago
Dealing with more than just hallucinations.
IEEE Spectrum
Boston Dynamics’ Latest Vids Show Atlas Going Hands On
Boston Dynamics is the master of dropping amazing robot videos with no warning, and last week, we...
a month ago
Boston Dynamics is the master of dropping amazing robot videos with no warning, and last week, we got a surprise look at the new electric Atlas going “hands on” with a practical factory task.
This video is notable because it’s the first real look we’ve had at the new Atlas doing...
Matt Mazur
LearnGPT is now EmergentMind
Naming things is hard. Shortly after ChatGPT launched at the end of November, I decided to build a...
a year ago
Naming things is hard. Shortly after ChatGPT launched at the end of November, I decided to build a site to share ChatGPT examples and eventually be the home to educational content to help people learn more about GPT. To my surprise, there were a lot of relevant available .com...
Weighty Thoughts
VC Office Hours
Talk to James Wang, author of Weighty Thoughts and General Partner of Creative Ventures
10 months ago
Talk to James Wang, author of Weighty Thoughts and General Partner of Creative Ventures
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.
Society's Backend
Run Your Own Race
What Bluey can teach us about machine learning
8 months ago
What Bluey can teach us about machine learning
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
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...
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...
Society's Backend
The Unfortunate Truth Regarding AI Regulation
And the impact it'll have for decades to come
6 months ago
And the impact it'll have for decades to come
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...
AI Snake Oil
AI scaling myths
Scaling will run out. The question is when.
5 months ago
Scaling will run out. The question is when.
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
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 034: Meta Connect
September 29, 2023
a year ago
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...
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.
One Useful Thing
The Lazy Tyranny of the Wait Calculation
Taking AI timelines seriously
11 months ago
Taking AI timelines seriously
Stories by Andrej...
ICML accepted papers institution stats
over a year ago
Strange Loop Canon
People want competence, seemingly over everything else
All elections are about state capacity
a month ago
All elections are about state capacity
Artificial Ignorance
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
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.
Artificial Ignorance
AI's massive cash needs are Big Tech's chance to own the future
Over the past year, AI startups have raised some impressive amounts of money. OpenAI raised $10...
10 months ago
Over the past year, AI startups have raised some impressive amounts of money. OpenAI raised $10 billion, Anthropic did $6 billion, Inflection AI raised $1.3 billion, and dozens of companies closed rounds in the hundreds of millions.
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.
Weighty Thoughts
Scaling is a Choice
Progress in tech is rarely “inevitable.” Looking at semiconductors and AI.
3 days ago
Progress in tech is rarely “inevitable.” Looking at semiconductors and AI.
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...
One Useful Thing
Latent Expertise: Everyone is in R&D
Ideas come from the edges, not the center
6 months ago
Ideas come from the edges, not the center
Weighty Thoughts
CUDA is Still a Giant Moat for NVIDIA
Despite everyone’s focus on hardware, the software of AI is what protects NVIDIA
9 months ago
Despite everyone’s focus on hardware, the software of AI is what protects NVIDIA
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
The Gradient
Why transformative artificial intelligence is really, really hard to achieve
A collection of the best technical, social, and economic arguments
Humans have a good track record...
a year ago
A collection of the best technical, social, and economic arguments
Humans have a good track record of innovation. The mechanization of agriculture, steam engines, electricity, modern medicine, computers, and the internet—these technologies radically changed the world. Still, the...
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
Strange Loop Canon
Google had a very bad week
Gemini's paradox
9 months ago
Society's Backend
Allen AI and DeepSeek are Taking Off, Professional Advice for Working in AI, Agentic Web Design, and...
Society's Backend Reading List 12-2-2024
2 weeks ago
Society's Backend Reading List 12-2-2024
One Useful Thing
Reshaping the tree: rebuilding organizations for AI
Technological change brings organizational change.
a year ago
Technological change brings organizational change.
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...
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