Weighty Thoughts
Most AI startups are doomed
Just because it matters doesn’t mean it’s defensible or profitable
a year ago
Just because it matters doesn’t mean it’s defensible or profitable
Rozado’s Visual...
Which is the Wokest AI?
A Wokeness Ranking of LLMs
10 months ago
A Wokeness Ranking of LLMs
Society's Backend
Weekly Backend #5: 55 Resources
The inner workings of transformers, Machine Learning Q and AI, machine learning classifies harmful...
8 months ago
The inner workings of transformers, Machine Learning Q and AI, machine learning classifies harmful viruses, and more
Matt Mazur
Nick Kolenda Reviews Preceden
Nick Kolenda is an author, teacher, and consultant who specializes in the psychology of marketing...
over a year ago
Nick Kolenda is an author, teacher, and consultant who specializes in the psychology of marketing and related topics like pricing optimization, sales psychology, and website behavior. He’s also happens to be a regular in a poker game I host each week. A few months back he...
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...
AI Snake Oil
Four more things we worked on in 2022
We had a busy 2022. Here are a few things we worked on but didn’t cover here.
over a year ago
We had a busy 2022. Here are a few things we worked on but didn’t cover here.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 061: The AI innovator's dilemma
April 5, 2024.
9 months ago
One Useful Thing
How to use AI to do practical stuff: A new guide
People often ask me how to use AI. Here's an overview with lots of links.
a year ago
People often ask me how to use AI. Here's an overview with lots of links.
IEEE Spectrum
Fish-Inspired Sensor "Touches" Using Electric Fields
The ability to detect a nearby presence without seeing or touching it may sound fantastical—but it’s...
3 weeks ago
The ability to detect a nearby presence without seeing or touching it may sound fantastical—but it’s a real ability that some creatures have. A family of African fish known as Mormyrids are weakly electric, and have special organs that can locate a nearby prey, whether it’s in...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 033: DALL·E 3
September 22, 2023.
a year ago
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,...
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
Alignment: Understanding the Multi-Billion Dollar Opportunity within Machine Learning
A glimpse into the biggest challenge in the world of AI, why it matters to you, and why it's worth...
10 months ago
A glimpse into the biggest challenge in the world of AI, why it matters to you, and why it's worth so much
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?
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...
Society's Backend
What you need to understand about LLM creativity
An simple overview of temperature and its effect on LLM output
8 months ago
An simple overview of temperature and its effect on LLM output
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
Daniel Miessler
My Philosophy and Recommendations Around the LastPass Breaches
If you follow Information Security at all you are surely aware of the LastPass breach situation. It...
over a year ago
If you follow Information Security at all you are surely aware of the LastPass breach situation. It started back in August of 2022 as a fairly common breach notification on a blog, but it, unfortunately, turned into more of a blog series. The initial blog was on August 25th,...
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
Rozado’s Visual...
The Political Biases of Google Bard
It is probably only a matter of time until a nation state purposely builds a biased AI system...
a year ago
It is probably only a matter of time until a nation state purposely builds a biased AI system designed to advance government interests
Weighty Thoughts
Is AI a Winner-Take-All Market?
A critical question for investors in AI
4 months ago
A critical question for investors in AI
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.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 065: The gpt2-chatbot mystery
May 3, 2024.
8 months ago
Artificial Ignorance
What are logprobs?
Something to do with logs and probabilities.
11 months ago
Something to do with logs and probabilities.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 078: Voice mode
August 2, 2024.
5 months ago
Matt Mazur
Emergent Mind in The Atlantic
One of the many people who saw the incorrect Google Quick Answer about Kenya was an editor at The...
a year ago
One of the many people who saw the incorrect Google Quick Answer about Kenya was an editor at The Atlantic who asked Caroline Mimbs Nyce, one of their reporters, to look into it. Caroline interviewed me for the article they just published which focused on the challenges Google is...
One Useful Thing
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.
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.
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?
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...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 077: A good week for open-source
July 26, 2024.
5 months ago
Made by Ollin
Emojin
An infinite kaomoji generator
over a year ago
An infinite kaomoji generator
The Berkeley...
Reverse engineering the NTK: towards first-principles architecture design
Deep neural networks have enabled technological wonders ranging from voice recognition to machine...
over a year ago
Deep neural networks have enabled technological wonders ranging from voice recognition to machine transition to protein engineering, but their design and application is nonetheless notoriously unprincipled.
The development of tools and methods to guide this process is one of the...
Artificial Ignorance
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.
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...
Society's Backend
Pelosi opposes SB 1047, New LLM Training Paradigms, Prompt Caching to Save 90% of API Costs, and...
Machine learning resources and updates 8/19/2024
4 months ago
Machine learning resources and updates 8/19/2024
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Robot Dog Handstand
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE...
a month ago
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.
Humanoids 2024: 22–24 November...
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
4 months ago
Machine learning resources and updates 8/26/2024
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
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.
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
Google's Gemini Advanced: Tasting Notes and Implications
And then there were two.
10 months ago
Artificial Ignorance
States are racing ahead of Congress to regulate deepfakes
Several states just banned deepfakes in political ads and porn.
9 months ago
Several states just banned deepfakes in political ads and porn.
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...
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
Matt Mazur
AOL Underground Podcast Interview about AOL-Files.com
Back in 1998 when I was 13 years old I got heavily involved in the AOL hacking scene, originally...
over a year ago
Back in 1998 when I was 13 years old I got heavily involved in the AOL hacking scene, originally building add-on software called progs (Revolution, Meridian), publishing code libraries called bas files (Alpha32), and later co-founding AOL-Files.com (where I went by the hacker...
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”
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.
Sam Altman
Reinforcement Learning Progress
Today, OpenAI released a new result. We used PPO (Proximal Policy Optimization), a general...
over a year ago
Today, OpenAI released a new result. We used PPO (Proximal Policy Optimization), a general reinforcement learning algorithm invented by OpenAI, to train a team of 5 agents to play Dota and beat semi-pros.
This is the game that to me feels closest to the real world and complex...
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
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
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
The Gradient
Do text embeddings perfectly encode text?
'Vec2text' can serve as a solution for accurately reverting embeddings back into text, thus...
10 months ago
'Vec2text' can serve as a solution for accurately reverting embeddings back into text, thus highlighting the urgent need for revisiting security protocols around embedded data.
Marcus on AI
AI influencer hype gone wild
Reality is quite the opposite
2 months ago
Reality is quite the opposite
One Useful Thing
Thinking Like an AI
A little intuition can help
2 months ago
A little intuition can help
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 082: System prompts
August 30, 2024.
4 months ago
Weighty Thoughts
Startup Valuation Made Simple(r) - Working Backwards
Counterintuitively, start from how much money you need
over a year ago
Counterintuitively, start from how much money you need
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.
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
10 of the most impactful AI stories of 2023
A quick look back on a very busy year in AI.
a year ago
A quick look back on a very busy year in AI.
Rozado’s Visual...
Artificial Intelligence and Portraits of 17th Century Physicists
The case for customizable AI systems as an alternative to one-size-fits-all AI systems
10 months ago
The case for customizable AI systems as an alternative to one-size-fits-all AI systems
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...
Society's Backend
Clarifying DEI
What makes DEI important and where it fails
11 months ago
What makes DEI important and where it fails
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 035: Me or your lying eyes
October 6, 2023.
a year ago
Rozado’s Visual...
El sesgo político de ChatGPT
A la izquierda del centro político
a year ago
A la izquierda del centro político
Sam Altman
Helion
I’m delighted to be investing more in Helion. Helion is by far the most promising approach to fusion...
over a year ago
I’m delighted to be investing more in Helion. Helion is by far the most promising approach to fusion I’ve seen.
David and Chris are two of the most impressive founders and builders (in the sense of building fusion machines, in addition to building companies!) I have ever met,...
Matt Mazur
Introducing Preceden’s new AI-Powered Timeline Generator
For the past few months I’ve been heads down building an AI-powered timeline generator tool for...
a year ago
For the past few months I’ve been heads down building an AI-powered timeline generator tool for Preceden, my SaaS timeline maker software: The tool – which is free to use and available on Preceden’s homepage – lets you type in a topic or detailed description of a timeline and it...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 030: OpenAI's $1B revenue
September 1, 2023
a year ago
Society's Backend
Why Machine Learning Systems Misbehave
And what makes them so difficult to work with
5 months ago
And what makes them so difficult to work with
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...
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.
One Useful Thing
An AI Haunted World
Intelligence, everywhere.
a year ago
Intelligence, everywhere.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 066: AlphaFold 3
May 10, 2024.
7 months ago
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 087: DevDay SF
October 4, 2024.
3 months ago
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
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,...
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.
Made by Ollin
Mac Replacement Icons
A standardized, simplified, and beautiful icon set
over a year ago
A standardized, simplified, and beautiful icon set
Artificial Ignorance
OpenAI’s DevDay: The biggest announcements
New models, new products, and new pricing.
a year ago
New models, new products, and new pricing.
Rozado’s Visual...
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
Marcus on AI
Humanity’s “Oh shit!” AI moment?
Not yet, but it could come sooner than you think. Not because we are close to AGI, but because we...
3 weeks ago
Not yet, but it could come sooner than you think. Not because we are close to AGI, but because we already have machines that can say one thing and do something else altogether.
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
I set up a ChatGPT voice interface for my 3-year old. Here’s how it went.
Chatbots are likely to revive familiar debates about kids and apps
a year ago
Chatbots are likely to revive familiar debates about kids and apps
Daniel Miessler
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...
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.
PromptArmor Blog
Data Exfiltration from Slack AI via indirect prompt injection
Authors: PromptArmor
4 months ago
AI Snake Oil
OpenAI’s policies hinder reproducible research on language models
LLMs have become privately-controlled research infrastructure
a year ago
LLMs have become privately-controlled research infrastructure
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.
Weighty Thoughts
Writing, Originality, and Why Does Anyone Care What I Write About?
Musings, Insecurities, and Thoughts on Writing a Book (or Substack)
a week ago
Musings, Insecurities, and Thoughts on Writing a Book (or Substack)
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
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.
AI Snake Oil
FAQ about the book and our writing process
What's in the book and how we wrote it
3 months ago
What's in the book and how we wrote it
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...
Matt Mazur
The Kenya Quick Answer Goes Viral, Again
On Thursday evening Chris Ingraham, a journalist with 100k followers on Twitter, shared a screenshot...
a year ago
On Thursday evening Chris Ingraham, a journalist with 100k followers on Twitter, shared a screenshot of the now-famous “african country that starts with k” Google Quick Answer, which quickly went viral, garnering over 82k likes and 3 million views as of the time of this writing...
Artificial Ignorance
Has YC hit peak AI? (F24)
The latest batch is up to 86% AI startups.
4 weeks ago
The latest batch is up to 86% AI startups.
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.
The Berkeley...
2024 BAIR Graduate Directory
Every year, the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research (BAIR) Lab graduates some of the most...
9 months ago
Every year, the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research (BAIR) Lab graduates some of the most talented and innovative minds in artificial intelligence and machine learning. Our Ph.D. graduates have each expanded the frontiers of AI research and are now ready to embark on new...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 075: Levels of AGI
July 12, 2024.
5 months ago
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....
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 Gradient
An Introduction to the Problems of AI Consciousness
Once considered a forbidden topic in the AI community, discussions around the concept of AI...
a year ago
Once considered a forbidden topic in the AI community, discussions around the concept of AI consciousness are now taking center stage, marking a significant shift since the current AI resurgence began over a decade ago.
Matt Mazur
Exploring ChatGPT’s Knowledge Cutoff
A recurring topic of discussion on the OpenAI forums, on Reddit, and on Twitter is about what...
a year ago
A recurring topic of discussion on the OpenAI forums, on Reddit, and on Twitter is about what ChatGPT’s knowledge cutoff date actually is. It seems like it should be straightforward enough to figure out (just ask it), but it can be confusing due to ChatGPT’s inconsistent answers...
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
How to build an AI search engine (Part 1)
Working with Claude, Brave, and streaming responses.
3 months ago
Working with Claude, Brave, and streaming responses.
fast.ai
nbdev+Quarto: A new secret weapon for productivity
Our favorite tool for software engineering productivity–nbdev, now re-written with Quarto
over a year ago
Our favorite tool for software engineering productivity–nbdev, now re-written with Quarto
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
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
Weighty Thoughts
The EU is making itself an economic backwater
Regulation is not a real export
5 months ago
Regulation is not a real export
One Useful Thing
AI in organizations: Some tactics
Meet the Lab and the Crowd
3 months ago
Meet the Lab and the Crowd
Weighty Thoughts
What’s coming next for AI in 2024
A long overdue VC apocalypse and the birth of the first real AI companies
12 months ago
A long overdue VC apocalypse and the birth of the first real AI companies
Strange Loop Canon
OpenAI's Strawberry models can reason like an expert
When models can think
3 months ago
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 081: Creative differences
August 23, 2024.
4 months ago
Strange Loop Canon
What can LLMs never do?
On goal drift and lower reliability. Or, why can't LLMs play Conway's Game Of Life?
8 months ago
On goal drift and lower reliability. Or, why can't LLMs play Conway's Game Of Life?
Stories by Andrej...
Yes you should understand backprop
over a year ago
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
Why Claude 3 is a big upgrade
On Monday, Anthropic released Claude 3, a family of models that hit new highs on various benchmarks,...
10 months ago
On Monday, Anthropic released Claude 3, a family of models that hit new highs on various benchmarks, add multi-modal capabilities, and are a real competitor to GPT-4.
Artificial Ignorance
Why now?
What's behind our current AI boom?
a year ago
What's behind our current AI boom?
Strange Loop Canon
AI bill vetoed; what's next?
Make AI regulations evidence based
3 months ago
Make AI regulations evidence based
One Useful Thing
Getting started with AI: Good enough prompting
Don't make this hard
a month ago
Matt Mazur
Looking to sell Emergent Mind
I currently have two products: Preceden, a SaaS timeline maker, and Emergent Mind, an AI news site...
a year ago
I currently have two products: Preceden, a SaaS timeline maker, and Emergent Mind, an AI news site and newsletter. Emergent Mind began last December as LearnGPT, a ChatGPT examples site, and I later renamed it to Emergent Mind and transitioned it the news site that it is today:...
fast.ai
In defense of screen time
Pundits say my husband and I are parenting wrong.
2 months ago
Pundits say my husband and I are parenting wrong.
Strange Loop Canon
Life in India is a series of bilateral negotiations
finding the new equilibrium for the next superpower
2 months ago
finding the new equilibrium for the next superpower
One Useful Thing
What people ask me most. Also, some answers.
A FAQ of sorts
a year ago
One Useful Thing
AI is not good software. It is pretty good people.
A pragmatic approach to thinking about AI
a year ago
A pragmatic approach to thinking about AI
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
On the Societal Impact of Open Foundation Models
Adding precision to the debate on openness in AI
10 months ago
Adding precision to the debate on openness in AI
Andrej Karpathy blog
What a Deep Neural Network thinks about your #selfie
Convolutional Neural Networks are great: they recognize things, places and people in your personal...
over a year ago
Convolutional Neural Networks are great: they recognize things, places and people in your personal photos, signs, people and lights in self-driving cars, crops, forests and traffic in aerial imagery, various anomalies in medical images and all kinds of other useful things. But...
Weighty Thoughts
The Fall of Data Moats
AI actually makes most data moats weaker
a year ago
AI actually makes most data moats weaker
One Useful Thing
Superhuman?
What does it mean for AI to be better than a human? And how can we tell?
7 months ago
What does it mean for AI to be better than a human? And how can we tell?
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
Society's Backend
The Unfortunate Truth Regarding AI Regulation
And the impact it'll have for decades to come
7 months ago
And the impact it'll have for decades to come
Society's Backend
What Makes Machine Learning so Hard for Software Engineers
How decades of learning a mindset makes adapting difficult
4 months ago
How decades of learning a mindset makes adapting difficult
Strange Loop Canon
Symposium: On Building God
a year ago
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...
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
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
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
AI existential risk probabilities are too unreliable to inform policy
How speculation gets laundered through pseudo-quantification
5 months ago
How speculation gets laundered through pseudo-quantification
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
Google had a very bad week
Gemini's paradox
10 months ago
AI Snake Oil
People keep anthropomorphizing AI. Here’s why
Companies and journalists both contribute to the confusion
a year ago
Companies and journalists both contribute to the confusion
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
2 months ago
And how our media is failing, wildly, in one of the most important stories in US history
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...
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
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
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...
10 months ago
Updates on Apple, Mistral, and Microsoft and resources to build the GPT tokenizer, use MLX to train models, and benchmark LLMs
Society's Backend
AI and Software Reading List 4: State of the Job Market, Apple's Private Cloud Compute Released for...
Society's Backend Reading List 10-28-2024
2 months ago
Society's Backend Reading List 10-28-2024
One Useful Thing
A quick and sobering guide to cloning yourself
It took me a few minutes to create a fake me giving a fake lecture.
a year ago
It took me a few minutes to create a fake me giving a fake lecture.
Sam Altman
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...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 080: Grok 2
August 16, 2024.
4 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...
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...
Strange Loop Canon
The age of access
the great polarisation theory, and the death of professions
a year ago
the great polarisation theory, and the death of professions
One Useful Thing
What OpenAI did
A new model opens up new possibilities
7 months ago
A new model opens up new possibilities
The Gradient
What's Missing From LLM Chatbots: A Sense of Purpose
LLM-based chatbots’ capabilities have been advancing every month. These improvements are mostly...
3 months ago
LLM-based chatbots’ capabilities have been advancing every month. These improvements are mostly measured by benchmarks like MMLU, HumanEval, and MATH (e.g. sonnet 3.5, gpt-4o). However, as these measures get more and more saturated, is user experience increasing in proportion to...
One Useful Thing
I hope you weren't getting too comfortable.
I just got access to the new Bing AI. My initial thoughts are that our assumptions about the limits...
a year ago
I just got access to the new Bing AI. My initial thoughts are that our assumptions about the limits of AI were wrong.
Rozado’s Visual...
The Increasing Negativity and Emotionality of News Media Headlines
Published article Introduction I have recently published a paper where we describe a chronological...
over a year ago
Published article Introduction I have recently published a paper where we describe a chronological (2000–2019) analysis of sentiment and emotion in 23 million headlines from 47 news media outlets popular in the United States. We used Transformer language models fine-tuned for...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 092: Watermarking the AI wave
November 8, 2024.
a month 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...
Artificial Ignorance
AI's invisible instructions
What meme prompts can teach us about better interface design.
2 months ago
What meme prompts can teach us about better interface design.
One Useful Thing
Freeing the chatbot
Intelligence, of a sort, is going to be all around us
8 months ago
Intelligence, of a sort, is going to be all around us
Marcus on AI
PSA: Microsoft may be training on your private data without your knowledge
The Great Data Heist continues.
a month ago
The Great Data Heist continues.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 058: Devin and SIMA
March 15, 2023.
9 months ago
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...
AI Snake Oil
Introducing the REFORMS checklist for ML-based science
ML-based science is in trouble. Clear reporting standards for researchers could help.
a year ago
ML-based science is in trouble. Clear reporting standards for researchers could help.
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
One Useful Thing
What just happened
A transformative month rewrites the capabilities of AI
2 weeks ago
A transformative month rewrites the capabilities of AI
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Cobot Proxie
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 Summit: 11–12 December...
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...
3 weeks ago
Regarding when Swedish media started to increase mentions of prejudice denoting terminology and a reader comments about it, several things to note:
One Useful Thing
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
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. 366 | T-Breach, Siri++, Conception Ages…
🎙️If you're not subscribed to the podcast version of the newsletter, please add it using with your...
a year ago
🎙️If you're not subscribed to the podcast version of the newsletter, please add it using with your favorite client! APPLE | SPOTIFY | OTHER SECURITY NEWS Another T-Mobile Breach T-Mobile has had another security breach, this one affecting at least 37 million accounts. They...
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...
Society's Backend
An Overview of Text Summarization Methods from Simple to Complex
We went through a bit of a rebrand. Let me know what you think about Society’s Backend’s new color...
a year ago
We went through a bit of a rebrand. Let me know what you think about Society’s Backend’s new color scheme and logo! :) - Logan I've been researching text summarization methods for a project I'm working on. Since the advent of Large Language Models (LLMs), LLMs have become a go-to...
One Useful Thing
Power and Weirdness: How to Use Bing AI
Bing AI is a huge leap over ChatGPT, but you have to learn its quirks
a year ago
Bing AI is a huge leap over ChatGPT, but you have to learn its quirks
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 072: The new new Claude
June 21, 2024.
6 months ago
Weighty Thoughts
What I got Right or Wrong in 2020
Reflecting on the Past Year
over a year ago
Reflecting on the Past Year
Daniel Miessler
Summary: Andrej Kaparthy on Lex Fridman’s Podcast (Late 2022)
9/10 This is a summary of Andrej Kaparthy’s appearance on Lex Fridman’s podcast in late 2022. My...
a year ago
9/10 This is a summary of Andrej Kaparthy’s appearance on Lex Fridman’s podcast in late 2022. My One-Sentence Summary/Highlight The future of programming is not humans writing code, but neural nets creating weights. Capture Neural networks are mathematical expressions with many...
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...
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...
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...
Daniel Miessler
Summary: Andrej Karpathy on Lex Fridman’s Podcast (Late 2022)
This is member content. Thank you for being a subscriber. This is UL Member Content Subscribe...
a year ago
This is member content. Thank you for being a subscriber. This is UL Member Content Subscribe Already a member? Login
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
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...
Stories by Andrej...
Virtual Reality: still not quite there, again.
over a year ago
AI Snake Oil
AI companies are pivoting from creating gods to building products. Good.
Turning models into products runs into five challenges
4 months ago
Turning models into products runs into five challenges
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...
One Useful Thing
Not much is changing, a lot is changing
OpenAI, Microsoft, and the OpenOffspring
a year ago
OpenAI, Microsoft, and the OpenOffspring
Society's Backend
New Evals for Better Models, AI Research Papers Made Easier to Understand, Train Your Own Flux LoRA,...
Machine learning highlights and resources 9-23-24
3 months ago
Machine learning highlights and resources 9-23-24
One Useful Thing
Assigning AI: Seven Ways of Using AI in Class
Also prompts! And things to watch out for!
a year ago
Also prompts! And things to watch out for!
Society's Backend
Meet Devansh: Lessons Learned While Building a Community of 193,000 Subscribers
Content creation and networking lessons from a wildly successful freelance tech writer
a year ago
Content creation and networking lessons from a wildly successful freelance tech writer
Daniel Miessler
News & Analysis | NO. 353
over a year ago
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?
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 subscriptionization of AI
Navigating the paid AI landscape.
9 months ago
Navigating the paid AI landscape.
Artificial Ignorance
What AI models really think about politics
Exploring the political biases of ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Grok.
2 months ago
Exploring the political biases of ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Grok.
The Gradient
A Brief Overview of Gender Bias in AI
A brief overview and discussion on gender bias in AI
8 months ago
A brief overview and discussion on gender bias in AI
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,...
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
Machine Learning Infrastructure: The Bridge Between Software Engineering and AI
What makes machine learning infra so important and why I find it so interesting
a year ago
What makes machine learning infra so important and why I find it so interesting
Artificial Ignorance
Tutorial: How to make and share custom GPTs
They're not going to disrupt everything (yet), but they're a ton of fun.
a year ago
They're not going to disrupt everything (yet), but they're a ton of fun.
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...
Strange Loop Canon
The agent principal problem
"Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome."
a year ago
"Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome."
One Useful Thing
The Homework Apocalypse
Fall is going to be very different this year. Educators need to be ready.
a year ago
Fall is going to be very different this year. Educators need to be ready.
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
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
Frank’s Ramblings
Hierarchical Navigable Small Worlds (HNSW)
(Note: A version of this post has been cross-published to the Zilliz blog)
In a previous blog, we...
a year ago
(Note: A version of this post has been cross-published to the Zilliz blog)
In a previous blog, we took a look at scalar quantization and product quantization - two indexing strategies which are used to reduce the overall size of the database without reducing the scope of a...
Strange Loop Canon
Progress
when benefits are worth tallying the human cost of technological leaps
a year ago
when benefits are worth tallying the human cost of technological leaps
One Useful Thing
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 069: Project Greymatter
May 31, 2024.
7 months ago
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 064: Big Tech's small models
April 26, 2024.
8 months ago
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
AI Roundup 037: The AI IPCC
October 20, 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...
Weighty Thoughts
What is Defensibility?
Back to basics for AI startups and others
9 months ago
Back to basics for AI startups and others
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
How Shopify is making AI Magic
A case study on turning competitive advantages into useful AI.
a year ago
A case study on turning competitive advantages into useful AI.
Strange Loop Canon
Evaluations are all we need
On analysing talent in LLMs
11 months ago
On analysing talent in LLMs
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
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.
8 months ago
These Python scripts help me write 3x faster and go from loose ideas to first draft in minutes.
Sam Altman
Funding for COVID-19 Projects
I’m trying to fund startups/projects helping with COVID-19, because it’s basically the one thing I...
over a year ago
I’m trying to fund startups/projects helping with COVID-19, because it’s basically the one thing I know how to do that can help. I think we will soon have enough testing capacity, so now I’d like to start funding more startups working on:
Producing a lot of ventilators or...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 026: AudioCraft
August 4, 2023
a year ago
Weighty Thoughts
Why we need AI as a society
We’re aging too fast (AKA my entire AI/robotics investment thesis)
7 months ago
We’re aging too fast (AKA my entire AI/robotics investment thesis)
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...
Artificial Ignorance
Workshop: Enough GPT To Be Dangerous with Sairam Sundaresan
Have you ever wondered what’s actually happening inside ChatGPT and Claude, but found “explainers”...
a month ago
Have you ever wondered what’s actually happening inside ChatGPT and Claude, but found “explainers” too complex or technical?
Artificial Ignorance
How to leverage long form content with AI
Specific tools and tactics for authors, podcasters, and videographers.
7 months ago
Specific tools and tactics for authors, podcasters, and videographers.
Daniel Miessler
News & Analysis | NO. 352
over a year ago
One Useful Thing
Setting time on fire and the temptation of The Button
We used to consider writing an indication of time and effort spent on a task. That isn't true...
a year ago
We used to consider writing an indication of time and effort spent on a task. That isn't true anymore.
Artificial Ignorance
How to build an AI search engine (Part 2)
VC funding, here we come.
2 months ago
VC funding, here we come.
Society's Backend
LLM Research Recap of 2024, Fine-tuning LLM Judges, Amazon's Nova Models, Google's Genie 2, and More
Society's Backend Reading List 12-10-2024
3 weeks ago
Society's Backend Reading List 12-10-2024
Matt Mazur
Preceden’s Spam Problem
Around a year ago, I started noticing some spammy timelines being created on Preceden, my SaaS...
a year ago
Around a year ago, I started noticing some spammy timelines being created on Preceden, my SaaS timeline maker tool. I’m honestly surprised it took spammers so long: Preceden is a freemium product (meaning people can sign up and try it for free), the product makes it very easy to...
Andrej Karpathy blog
(started posting on Medium instead)
The current state of this blog (with the last post 2 years ago) makes it look like I’ve disappeared....
over a year ago
The current state of this blog (with the last post 2 years ago) makes it look like I’ve disappeared. I’ve certainly become less active on blogs since I’ve joined Tesla, but
whenever I do get a chance to post something I have recently been defaulting
to doing it on Medium because...
Artificial Ignorance
The intern and the coach
A recent post from Wharton professor Ethan Mollick shared an impressive new study. In a nutshell, it...
a year ago
A recent post from Wharton professor Ethan Mollick shared an impressive new study. In a nutshell, it found that BCG consultants who used GPT-4 were up to 43% more effective at tasks vs. employees who didn’t.
Rozado’s Visual...
Mentions of Political Extremism in English Wikipedia
A data-driven exploration uncovers disparities. Are they shaped by editorial choices or broader...
2 weeks ago
A data-driven exploration uncovers disparities. Are they shaped by editorial choices or broader societal/historical dynamics?
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
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
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
Society's Backend
Positioning Myself: The Greatest Piece of Career Advice I've Ever Received
And how it changed my personal life too
a year ago
And how it changed my personal life too
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 028: Sunak's Safety Summit
August 18, 2023
a year ago
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
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).
IEEE Spectrum
Where’s My Robot?
See the interactive version of this story on our site →
a month ago
See the interactive version of this story on our site →
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...
Artificial Ignorance
10 AI predictions for 2024
Hey Siri, set a reminder for 365 days.
a year ago
Hey Siri, set a reminder for 365 days.
Society's Backend
The Attention Thief: Machine Learning as a Monetization Weapon
How your greatest asset is silently stolen by technology every day
a year ago
How your greatest asset is silently stolen by technology every day
Society's Backend
Ask Stupid Questions
I’m convinced that after having a fourth or fifth child exhaustion kicks in and a person’s long-term...
a year ago
I’m convinced that after having a fourth or fifth child exhaustion kicks in and a person’s long-term memory ceases to function properly. I’ve become victim to this and I’ve started taking very detailed notes during meetings. If my brain won’t store the information, something else...
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...
Weighty Thoughts
Let's talk about AI power costs
It's important, but a lot of recent attention has been concern-trolling
4 months ago
It's important, but a lot of recent attention has been concern-trolling
Artificial Ignorance
The Chatbot Trap
Why AI products really need some better UX.
a month ago
Why AI products really need some better UX.
Weighty Thoughts
The Mystical Q
OpenAI Q*, Primer on Reinforcement Learning, and Implications
a year ago
OpenAI Q*, Primer on Reinforcement Learning, and Implications
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 091: Search wars
November 1, 2024.
2 months ago
Artificial Ignorance
AI Zoology: Why are there so many animal models?
Inside the emerging model menagerie.
a year ago
Inside the emerging model menagerie.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 084: Strawberry / o1
September 13, 2024.
3 months ago
Daniel Miessler
NO. 369 | Reddit Hack, Deepfake Scams, Embracing Change…
✅ Please subscribe to and give a 17-star review to this show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Thank...
a year ago
✅ Please subscribe to and give a 17-star review to this show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Thank you! SECURITY Reddit has confirmed it was hacked, and it’s recommending users add 2FA. The attack started by phishing Reddit employees and stealing credentials and 2FA codes. After...
AI Snake Oil
New paper: AI agents that matter
Rethinking AI agent benchmarking and evaluation
6 months ago
Rethinking AI agent benchmarking and evaluation
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.
Marcus on AI
Two visions of AI’s future
It’s not looking good
4 weeks ago
Society's Backend
JAX is for More Than Just Machine Learning
What JAX is and its potential applications
7 months ago
What JAX is and its potential applications
Society's Backend
Run Your Own Race
What Bluey can teach us about machine learning
9 months ago
What Bluey can teach us about machine learning
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,...
Daniel Miessler
Unsupervised Learning NO. 364 | Reality Headset, BingPT, AI+Cyber
If you're not subscribed to the podcast version of the newsletter, please add it with your favorite...
a year ago
If you're not subscribed to the podcast version of the newsletter, please add it with your favorite client. APPLE | SPOTIFY | OTHER SECURITY NEWS The FBI is warning people to block online ads due to imposters poisoning search results. They advise users to 1) check ad URLs, 2) go...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 052: AI, EO, DPA
February 2, 2024.
11 months ago
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
Society's Backend
Discussions around OpenAI's o1, Superhuman AI, When AI Should Be An App, and More
Discussions from the past week: 09/16/2024
3 months ago
Discussions from the past week: 09/16/2024
AI Snake Oil
ChatGPT is a bullshit generator. But it can still be amazingly useful
The philosopher Harry Frankfurt defined bullshit as speech that is intended to persuade without...
over a year ago
The philosopher Harry Frankfurt defined bullshit as speech that is intended to persuade without regard for the truth. By this measure, OpenAI’s new chatbot ChatGPT is the greatest bullshitter ever. Large Language Models (LLMs) are trained to produce
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
Daniel Miessler
NO. 358 | NEWS, ANALYSIS & DISCOVERY
🦃 We're doing our second-ever discount on UL Membership starting the day after Thanksgiving. But...
over a year ago
🦃 We're doing our second-ever discount on UL Membership starting the day after Thanksgiving. But that's a Friday, so I'm going to enable the discount link earlier. How early, and how much of a discount? You'll have to find out. If the link works before the date, then it's...
One Useful Thing
The Lazy Tyranny of the Wait Calculation
Taking AI timelines seriously
11 months ago
Taking AI timelines seriously
fast.ai
GPT 4 and the Uncharted Territories of Language
Language is a source of limitation and liberation. GPT 4 pushes this idea to the extreme by giving...
a year ago
Language is a source of limitation and liberation. GPT 4 pushes this idea to the extreme by giving us access to unlimited language.
One Useful Thing
Strategies for an Accelerating Future
Four questions to ask your organization.
10 months ago
Four questions to ask your organization.
AI Snake Oil
A safe harbor for AI evaluation and red teaming
An argument for legal and technical safe harbors for AI safety and trustworthiness research
10 months ago
An argument for legal and technical safe harbors for AI safety and trustworthiness research
Matt Mazur
Running Mistral 8x7Bs Mixture of Experts on a Macbook
Below are the steps I used to get Mistral 8x7Bs Mixture of Experts (MOE) model running locally on my...
a year ago
Below are the steps I used to get Mistral 8x7Bs Mixture of Experts (MOE) model running locally on my Macbook (with its Apple M2 chip and 24 GB of memory). Here’s a great overview of the model for anyone interested in learning more. Short version: The Mistral “Mixtral” 8x7B 32k...
Daniel Miessler
News & Analysis | NO. 350
over a year ago
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
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.
One Useful Thing
Which AI should I use? Superpowers and the State of Play
And then there were three...
9 months ago
And then there were three...
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
Marcus on AI
CONFIRMED: LLMs have indeed reached a point of diminishing returns
Science, sociology, and the likely financial collapse of the Generative AI bubble
a month ago
Science, sociology, and the likely financial collapse of the Generative AI bubble
Artificial Ignorance
Saving the world with AI and government grants
Listen now | A conversation with Helena Merk, founder and CEO of Streamline Climate.
6 months ago
Listen now | A conversation with Helena Merk, founder and CEO of Streamline Climate.
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
Mojo may be the biggest programming language advance in decades
Mojo is a new programming language, based on Python, which fixes Python’s performance and deployment...
a year ago
Mojo is a new programming language, based on Python, which fixes Python’s performance and deployment problems.
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
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.
Sam Altman
Quora
I'm a strong believer in the importance of the internet in helping people to share knowledge and...
over a year ago
I'm a strong believer in the importance of the internet in helping people to share knowledge and learn from each other. So I’m delighted to share, on behalf of YC Continuity, that we’re investing alongside Collaborative Fund in Quora.
Quora is doing extremely well. They now...
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Quadruped Ladder Climbing
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE...
3 months ago
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.
IROS 2024: 14–18 October 2024, ABU...
AI Snake Oil
Model alignment protects against accidental harms, not intentional ones
The hand wringing about failures of model alignment is misguided
a year ago
The hand wringing about failures of model alignment is misguided
Artificial Ignorance
Looking a gift llama in the mouth
How Llama 3.1 uniquely leverages Meta's business model (and why we should be a little bit cynical...
5 months ago
How Llama 3.1 uniquely leverages Meta's business model (and why we should be a little bit cynical about it)
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 042: sama drama
November 24, 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
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.
PromptArmor Blog
Data exfiltration from Writer.com with indirect prompt injection
Authors: PromptArmor and Kai Greshake
a year ago
Authors: PromptArmor and Kai Greshake
IEEE Spectrum
The Top 7 Robotics Stories of 2024
2024 was the best year ever for robotics, which I’m pretty sure is not something that I’ve ever said...
5 days ago
2024 was the best year ever for robotics, which I’m pretty sure is not something that I’ve ever said before. But that’s the great thing about robotics—it’s always new, and it’s always exciting. What may be different about this year is the real sense that not only is AI going to...
Daniel Miessler
GPT and Search
There’s a lot of talk about how GPT is going to take over search. Meaning, compete with or take down...
over a year ago
There’s a lot of talk about how GPT is going to take over search. Meaning, compete with or take down Google. I get the excitement there, but there are some pretty serious barriers to having this happen immediately. First, GPT is non-deterministic, meaning you can ask it the same...
Strange Loop Canon
Power, money and human nature
Thoughts on OpenAI, a tragedy
a year ago
Thoughts on OpenAI, a tragedy
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...
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...
Full Width 
Shortcuts 
Sign Up 
Log In 
Articles 
Reading List 