Sam Altman
Researchers and Founders
I spent many years working with founders and now I work with researchers.
Although there are always...
over a year ago
I spent many years working with founders and now I work with researchers.
Although there are always individual exceptions, on average it’s surprising to me how different the best people in these groups are (including in some qualities that I had assumed were present in great...
Daniel Miessler
Scott Kuffer of Nucleus Security | SPONSORED INTERVIEW SERIES
In this standalone episode we’re doing a sponsored interview with Scott Kuffer, co-founder and COO...
over a year ago
In this standalone episode we’re doing a sponsored interview with Scott Kuffer, co-founder and COO of Nucleus Security. I was already excited by this vendor just based on the research I did to allow them to be a sponsor, but the conversation with them really made me think they’re...
Strange Loop Canon
Symposium: On Building God
a year ago
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 085: You win some, you Newsom
September 20, 2024.
3 months ago
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
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.
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
AI Snake Oil
Eighteen pitfalls to beware of in AI journalism
A checklist for avoiding hype
over a year ago
A checklist for avoiding hype
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...
Artificial Ignorance
Dealing with AI fatigue
Notes for myself, and maybe you too.
10 months ago
Notes for myself, and maybe you too.
Matt Mazur
Is the ChatGPT API Refusing to Summarize Academic Papers? Not so fast.
Yesterday on X, I shared a post about some responses I was getting from the ChatGPT 3.5 API...
a year ago
Yesterday on X, I shared a post about some responses I was getting from the ChatGPT 3.5 API indicating that it was refusing to summarize arXiv papers: There has been a lot of discussion recently about the perceived decrease in the quality of ChatGPT’s responses and seeing...
The Berkeley...
Virtual Personas for Language Models via an Anthology of Backstories
Anthology, a method for conditioning LLMs to representative, consistent, and diverse virtual...
a month ago
Anthology, a method for conditioning LLMs to representative, consistent, and diverse virtual personas by generating and utilizing naturalistic backstories with rich details of individual values and experience.
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We introduce Anthology, a method for conditioning LLMs to...
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
Workshop: Prompt Engineering for Claude
Watch now | If you’ve ever wanted to level up your AI prompting skills, this is the workshop for...
3 months ago
Watch now | If you’ve ever wanted to level up your AI prompting skills, this is the workshop for you.
IEEE Spectrum
Unlock the Power of Agile for Hardware Teams
The Modified Agile for Hardware Development (MAHD) Framework is the ultimate solution for hardware...
2 weeks ago
The Modified Agile for Hardware Development (MAHD) Framework is the ultimate solution for hardware teams seeking the benefits of Agile without the pitfalls of applying software-centric methods. Traditional development approaches, like waterfall, often result in delayed timelines,...
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...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 038: Preparedness
October 27, 2023.
a year 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.
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
A Privacy Review: Google
I read Google's privacy policy for you
a year ago
I read Google's privacy policy for you
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
One Useful Thing
"Do not fear AI, puny humans... that is not meant as a threat."
What we can learn from a completely AI written & illustrated lecture
a year ago
What we can learn from a completely AI written & illustrated lecture
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 043: Happy birthday, ChatGPT
December 1, 2023.
a year ago
Marcus on AI
25 AI Predictions for 2025, from Marcus on AI
With a review of last year’s predictions
2 days ago
With a review of last year’s predictions
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.
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
Gradually, then Suddenly: Upon the Threshold
Small improvements can lead to big changes
6 months ago
Small improvements can lead to big changes
Society's Backend
The Metrics Machine Learning Engineers Care About That Modelers Don't
And a brief overview of TPUs in Google data centers
10 months ago
And a brief overview of TPUs in Google data centers
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
Rozado’s Visual...
Out-of-office Donald Trump still more prominent in news media content than the current U.S....
In 2019, I helped my colleague Musa al-Gharbi document the extraordinary prominence of Donald Trump...
a year ago
In 2019, I helped my colleague Musa al-Gharbi document the extraordinary prominence of Donald Trump in news media content (see here). I have recently updated that previous analysis. Briefly stated, no U.S. president in recent history has received a similar amount of media...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 094: Pixtral et Le Chat
November 22, 2024.
a month ago
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 084: Strawberry / o1
September 13, 2024.
3 months ago
Strange Loop Canon
Predicting AI
I revisit past predictions
4 months ago
I revisit past predictions
Society's Backend
The Fastest Way to Get Up to Speed on Machine Learning Fundamentals for Free
Announcing the ML Road Map-Turbo
6 months ago
Announcing the ML Road Map-Turbo
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 035: Me or your lying eyes
October 6, 2023.
a year ago
Society's Backend
Bridging the Gap from Simple Algebra to Machine Learning
You probably know more about machine learning math than you think
11 months ago
You probably know more about machine learning math than you think
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 051: The Taylor Swift thing
January 26, 2024.
11 months 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,...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 048: The Robot Constitution
January 5, 2024.
12 months ago
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
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
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
Artificial Ignorance
How to talk to your family about AI this Thanksgiving
A handy guide for your uncle's burning questions.
a year ago
A handy guide for your uncle's burning questions.
Artificial Ignorance
10 AI stories that shaped 2024
Agents, deepfakes, Strawberries, and more.
a week ago
Agents, deepfakes, Strawberries, and more.
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...
Rozado’s Visual...
RightWingGPT – An AI Manifesting the Opposite Political Biases of ChatGPT
The Dangers of Politically Aligned AIs and their Negative Effects on Societal Polarization
a year ago
The Dangers of Politically Aligned AIs and their Negative Effects on Societal Polarization
Sam Altman
The United Slate
I would like to find and support a slate of candidates for the 2018 California elections, and also...
over a year ago
I would like to find and support a slate of candidates for the 2018 California elections, and also to find someone to run a ballot initiative focused on affordable housing in the state. A team of aligned people has a chance to make a real change.
I believe in creating prosperity...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 061: The AI innovator's dilemma
April 5, 2024.
9 months ago
Artificial Ignorance
10 of the most impactful AI stories of 2023
A quick look back on a very busy year in AI.
a year ago
A quick look back on a very busy year in AI.
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.
PromptArmor Blog
Data Exfiltration from Slack AI via indirect prompt injection
Authors: PromptArmor
4 months ago
Strange Loop Canon
State of the Canon
Onwards
a year ago
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 083: Bioacoustics
September 6, 2024.
3 months ago
The Berkeley...
Training Diffusion Models with <br> Reinforcement Learning
function reveal() {
const replay = document.querySelector('.ddpo-replay');
...
a year ago
function reveal() {
const replay = document.querySelector('.ddpo-replay');
replay.style.display = 'flex';
}
window.onload = () => {
const replay = document.querySelector('.ddpo-replay');
replay.addEventListener('click', () => {
...
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...
Made by Ollin
Singing Style Transfer
Initial Experiments
over a year ago
One Useful Thing
Detecting the Secret Cyborgs
The AI Trap for Organizations
a year ago
The AI Trap for Organizations
PromptArmor Blog
Data exfiltration from Writer.com with indirect prompt injection
Authors: PromptArmor and Kai Greshake
a year ago
Authors: PromptArmor and Kai Greshake
Daniel Miessler
NO. 361 | GPT++, Apple Security, CISA Cuba…
SECURITY NEWS South Korean authorities are warning that North Koreans are disguising themselves and...
over a year ago
SECURITY NEWS South Korean authorities are warning that North Koreans are disguising themselves and getting jobs in South Korea. The saddest part is that it appears to be just another income generation scheme, meaning they use the salaries to fund the North Korean nuclear...
Marcus on AI
Sora still appears to have trouble with physics
Exactly as I warned in February
3 weeks ago
Exactly as I warned in February
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
Stop begging for JSON
How OpenAI's Structured Outputs makes building with AI much more reliable.
3 weeks ago
How OpenAI's Structured Outputs makes building with AI much more reliable.
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.
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
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...
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...
Daniel Miessler
News & Analysis | NO. 349
over a year ago
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
Jascha’s blog
The hot mess theory of AI misalignment: More intelligent agents behave less coherently
window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [];
function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);}
...
a year ago
window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [];
function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);}
gtag('js', new Date());
gtag('config', 'G-1XJMTJ5KCK');
.md h2 {
font-size: 20px;
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Many machine learning researchers worry about risks from building artificial intelligence...
IEEE Spectrum
It's Surprisingly Easy to Jailbreak LLM-Driven Robots
large language models (LLMs) have exploded in popularity, leading a number of companies to explore...
a month ago
large language models (LLMs) have exploded in popularity, leading a number of companies to explore LLM-driven robots. However, a new study now reveals an automated way to hack into such machines with 100 percent success. By circumventing safety guardrails, researchers could...
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
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...
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...
Strange Loop Canon
AI embraces its product arc
fuzzy processors are entering mass production
7 months ago
fuzzy processors are entering mass production
AI Snake Oil
Is AI progress slowing down?
Making sense of recent technology trends and claims
2 weeks ago
Making sense of recent technology trends and claims
Society's Backend
Why MLX is Important for the ML Community
And a step-by-step guide to train a machine learning model on your Mac
8 months ago
And a step-by-step guide to train a machine learning model on your Mac
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 069: Project Greymatter
May 31, 2024.
7 months ago
Society's Backend
You Are What You Eat: Digital Edition
Why who you follow is more important than who follows you
a year ago
Why who you follow is more important than who follows you
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).
Daniel Miessler
Napkin Ideas Around What Changes to Expect Post-ChatGPT
Work Replacement Talent Magnification Solopreneuers AI Specialists Idea Dominance Use Cases Random...
over a year ago
Work Replacement Talent Magnification Solopreneuers AI Specialists Idea Dominance Use Cases Random Thoughts If you’re reading this you already know the internet is on fire over the new GPTChatBot from OpenAI. There are people using it to create full virtual machines, to be their...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 045: Google's just getting started
December 15, 2023.
a year ago
The Berkeley...
Modeling Extremely Large Images with $x$T
As computer vision researchers, we believe that every pixel can tell a story. However, there seems...
9 months ago
As computer vision researchers, we believe that every pixel can tell a story. However, there seems to be a writer’s block settling into the field when it comes to dealing with large images. Large images are no longer rare—the cameras we carry in our pockets and those orbiting our...
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
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...
One Useful Thing
What AI can do with a toolbox... Getting started with Code Interpreter
Democratizing data analysis with AI
a year ago
Democratizing data analysis with AI
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.
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...
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...
The Gradient
Financial Market Applications of LLMs
The AI revolution drove frenzied investment in both private and public companies and captured the...
8 months ago
The AI revolution drove frenzied investment in both private and public companies and captured the public’s imagination in 2023. Transformational consumer products like ChatGPT are powered by Large Language Models (LLMs) that excel at modeling sequences of tokens that represent...
The Berkeley...
Linguistic Bias in ChatGPT: Language Models Reinforce Dialect Discrimination
Sample language model responses to different varieties of English and native speaker...
3 months ago
Sample language model responses to different varieties of English and native speaker reactions.
ChatGPT does amazingly well at communicating with people in English. But whose English?
Only 15% of ChatGPT users are from the US, where Standard American English is the default. 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
AI Roundup 042: sama drama
November 24, 2023.
a year ago
Society's Backend
5 Highlights From Society's Backend in 2024
The top 5 articles and resources
2 days ago
The top 5 articles and resources
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.
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
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 039: The governance issue
November 3, 2023.
a year ago
Matt Mazur
Full Time Indie Hacking: Month 5 Update
At the beginning of the year I quit consulting to focus full time on Preceden, my SaaS timeline...
a year ago
At the beginning of the year I quit consulting to focus full time on Preceden, my SaaS timeline maker tool. I also started working on a new side project, Emergent Mind, an AI-powered AI news site. My last update on how things were going was after 3 months which provides more...
Strange Loop Canon
Seeing Like A Network
Dark Forests, Dense Networks
6 months ago
Dark Forests, Dense Networks
Artificial Ignorance
How a $2000/hour escort uses AI to automate sex work
Listen now | A conversation with Adelyn Moore, an independent escort and adult content creator.
4 months ago
Listen now | A conversation with Adelyn Moore, an independent escort and adult content creator.
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...
a month 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...
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
Sam Altman
GPT-4o
There are two things from our announcement today I wanted to highlight.
First, a key part of our...
7 months ago
There are two things from our announcement today I wanted to highlight.
First, a key part of our mission is to put very capable AI tools in the hands of people for free (or at a great price). I am very proud that we’ve made the best model in the world available for free in...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 071: How do you like them AIs
June 14, 2024.
6 months 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...
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
Bridging AI and human creativity
A conversation with Harrison Telyan, co-founder of NUMI.
10 months ago
A conversation with Harrison Telyan, co-founder of NUMI.
Society's Backend
Digitizing Smell, Automatic Prompt Optimization, Targeted AI Regulation, an Intro to AI Agents, and...
Society's Backend Reading List 11-04-2024
a month ago
Society's Backend Reading List 11-04-2024
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
Artificial Ignorance
The fable of Reflection 70B
From groundbreaking to grifting.
3 months ago
From groundbreaking to grifting.
Strange Loop Canon
Whither Utopia?
The mystery of why we don't dream of building perfect societies anymore
7 months ago
The mystery of why we don't dream of building perfect societies anymore
One Useful Thing
Blinded by Analogies
What is this AI thing? The wrong model can lead us astray
a year ago
What is this AI thing? The wrong model can lead us astray
Strange Loop Canon
Evaluations are all we need
On analysing talent in LLMs
11 months ago
On analysing talent in LLMs
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...
Sam Altman
Join the YC Software Team
If you want to get funded by YC as a founder in the future, but you don't have a startup that's...
over a year ago
If you want to get funded by YC as a founder in the future, but you don't have a startup that's ready for that yet, joining the YC software team is a great hack to get there.
The YC software team is a small group of hackers in SF that write the software that makes all the parts...
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...
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...
The Berkeley...
Ghostbuster: Detecting Text Ghostwritten by Large Language Models
The structure of Ghostbuster, our new state-of-the-art method for detecting AI-generated...
a year ago
The structure of Ghostbuster, our new state-of-the-art method for detecting AI-generated text.
Large language models like ChatGPT write impressively well—so well, in fact, that they’ve become a problem. Students have begun using these models to ghostwrite assignments, leading...
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
Andrej Karpathy blog
A Recipe for Training Neural Networks
Some few weeks ago I posted a tweet on “the most common neural net mistakes”, listing a few common...
over a year ago
Some few weeks ago I posted a tweet on “the most common neural net mistakes”, listing a few common gotchas related to training neural nets. The tweet got quite a bit more engagement than I anticipated (including a webinar :)). Clearly, a lot of people have personally encountered...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 031: Think of the children
September 8, 2023
a year ago
The Gradient
Deep learning for single-cell sequencing: a microscope to see the diversity of cells
On the the pivotal role that Deep Learning has played as a key enabler for advancing single-cell...
11 months ago
On the the pivotal role that Deep Learning has played as a key enabler for advancing single-cell sequencing technologies.
Weighty Thoughts
Today’s AI critics don’t understand the history of technology
But is AI different than other technologies?
10 months ago
But is AI different than other technologies?
Marcus on AI
Casey (Newton) Strikes Out
His continued skepticism of AI skepticism continues to miss the mark
3 weeks ago
His continued skepticism of AI skepticism continues to miss the mark
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...
Daniel Miessler
The 2 Current Major AI Bottlenecks
I’ve been going hardcore on using GPT to create essays, reports, and other kinds of analysis. I’ve...
a year ago
I’ve been going hardcore on using GPT to create essays, reports, and other kinds of analysis. I’ve had tons of success with it, and it’s given me a clear view of current limitations with the current tech. I’m not complaining. This stuff is brand-new. Here are the current...
One Useful Thing
The future, soon: what I learned from Bing's AI
We had a brief glimpse of two different types of AI. Both are significant
a year ago
We had a brief glimpse of two different types of AI. Both are significant
One Useful Thing
Something New: On OpenAI's "Strawberry" and Reasoning
Solving hard problems in new ways
3 months ago
Solving hard problems in new ways
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...
Rozado’s Visual...
Prevalence of Prejudice-Denoting Words in News Media Discourse
Summary of manuscript “Prevalence of Prejudice-Denoting Words in News Media Discourse: A...
over a year ago
Summary of manuscript “Prevalence of Prejudice-Denoting Words in News Media Discourse: A Chronological Analysis”
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 089: Adobe MAX
October 18, 2024.
2 months ago
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 096: Happy Shipmas
December 6, 2024.
3 weeks ago
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 053: Bye bye Bard
February 9, 2024.
10 months ago
AI Snake Oil
Tech policy is only frustrating 90% of the time
That’s what makes it worthwhile
9 months ago
That’s what makes it worthwhile
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.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 056: Data deals
March 1, 2024.
10 months ago
Strange Loop Canon
Strange Loop Canon Commencement Address
5 months ago
Society's Backend
Google AI Essentials, A New LLM Benchmark, Washington's AI Task Force, and More [Top 10 ML Resource...
Top 10 Machine Learning Resources and Updates Below are the top 10 machine learning resources and...
6 months ago
Top 10 Machine Learning Resources and Updates Below are the top 10 machine learning resources and updates from the past week you don't want to miss. I share more frequent ML updates on X so don’t forget to follow me there. Support Society's Backend for just $1/mo
One Useful Thing
Captain's log: the irreducible weirdness of prompting AIs
Also, we have a prompt library!
10 months ago
Also, we have a prompt library!
PromptArmor Blog
Slack AI data exfiltration from private channels via indirect prompt injection
Authors: PromptArmor
4 months ago
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.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 076: Grand theft audio
July 19, 2024.
5 months ago
The Berkeley...
Are We Ready for Multi-Image Reasoning? Launching VHs: The Visual Haystacks Benchmark!
Humans excel at processing vast arrays of visual information, a skill that is crucial for achieving...
5 months ago
Humans excel at processing vast arrays of visual information, a skill that is crucial for achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI). Over the decades, AI researchers have developed Visual Question Answering (VQA) systems to interpret scenes within single images and answer...
Strange Loop Canon
We all live on a knife's edge, and it's fine
Or: How we weaponised serendipity
9 months ago
Or: How we weaponised serendipity
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 029: Hug all the faces
August 25, 2023
a year ago
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 075: Levels of AGI
July 12, 2024.
5 months ago
Society's Backend
Chinese AI is Less Expensive, What it's Like to Work in AI, an Evaluation Framework for Voice...
Society's Backend Reading List 11-18-2024
a month ago
Society's Backend Reading List 11-18-2024
Rozado’s Visual...
Which is the Wokest AI?
A Wokeness Ranking of LLMs
10 months ago
A Wokeness Ranking of LLMs
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
One Useful Thing
When you give a Claude a mouse
Some quick impressions of an actual agent
2 months ago
Some quick impressions of an actual agent
IEEE Spectrum
Forums, Competitions, Challenges: Inspiring Creativity in Robotics
This is a sponsored article brought to you by Khalifa University of Science and Technology.
A total...
3 months ago
This is a sponsored article brought to you by Khalifa University of Science and Technology.
A total of eight intense competitions to inspire creativity and innovation along with 13 forums dedicated to diverse segments of robotics and artificial intelligence will be part of the...
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
One Useful Thing
The Machines of Mastery
"Anyone can learn anything they want..." and how technology can help
a year ago
"Anyone can learn anything they want..." and how technology can help
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
One Useful Thing
On speaking to AI
Voice changes a lot of things
5 months ago
Voice changes a lot of things
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...
Marcus on AI
A new AI scaling law shell game?
Scaling laws were supposed to be, well, laws.
a month ago
Scaling laws were supposed to be, well, laws.
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
One Useful Thing
AI in organizations: Some tactics
Meet the Lab and the Crowd
3 months ago
Meet the Lab and the Crowd
Artificial Ignorance
The Chatbot Trap
Why AI products really need some better UX.
a month ago
Why AI products really need some better UX.
Daniel Miessler
News, Analysis, and Discovery | NO. 356
SECURITY NEWS TikTok has now admitted, after denying last week, that Chinese staff can in fact read...
over a year ago
SECURITY NEWS TikTok has now admitted, after denying last week, that Chinese staff can in fact read European TikTok data. Pressure is increasing across the US government to outright ban the app, but it's quickly becoming national infrastructure so many young people. MORE |...
Daniel Miessler
Sponsored Interview: Erkang Zheng of JupiterOne
In this standalone episode we’re doing a sponsored interview with Erkang Zheng of JupiterOne. So...
over a year ago
In this standalone episode we’re doing a sponsored interview with Erkang Zheng of JupiterOne. So Jupiter One is a special company to me. I just built a vuln management program at Robinhood based around them, and I believe so much in their vision that I’m looking to actually...
Daniel Miessler
AI Art Hack: Combining Abstract Designs with Objects
This is member content. Thank you for being a subscriber. This is UL Member Content Subscribe...
a year ago
This is member content. Thank you for being a subscriber. This is UL Member Content Subscribe Already a member? Login
Artificial Ignorance
The AI email startup that's taking on Gmail
A conversation with Andrew Lee, CEO of Shortwave and cofounder of Firebase.
a year ago
A conversation with Andrew Lee, CEO of Shortwave and cofounder of Firebase.
One Useful Thing
Google's Gemini Advanced: Tasting Notes and Implications
And then there were two.
10 months ago
Rozado’s Visual...
El desproporcionado número de referencias al machismo en los medios de comunicación españoles
Los medios de comunicación españoles constituyen una anomalía en comparación con sus homólogos...
a year ago
Los medios de comunicación españoles constituyen una anomalía en comparación con sus homólogos internacionales por su alto número de referencias al machismo que triplican a las de cualquier otro país
Society's Backend
No One Should Be GPU Poor
For everyone to have access to AGI, everyone must also have access to the compute to use it
7 months ago
For everyone to have access to AGI, everyone must also have access to the compute to use it
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 070: AI whistleblowers
June 7, 2024.
6 months ago
AI Snake Oil
AI scaling myths
Scaling will run out. The question is when.
6 months ago
Scaling will run out. The question is when.
AI Snake Oil
ML is useful for many things, but not for predicting scientific replicability
How the veneer of AI is used to legitimize awful ideas
a year ago
How the veneer of AI is used to legitimize awful ideas
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 095: QwQ
November 29, 2024.
a month ago
Daniel Miessler
Unsupervised Learning NO. 365 | China’s Decline, MicrosoftAI, Creativity Ratio…
🎙️If you're not subscribed to the podcast version of the newsletter, please add it using with your...
a year ago
🎙️If you're not subscribed to the podcast version of the newsletter, please add it using with your favorite client! APPLE | SPOTIFY | OTHER SECURITY NEWS NYC Surveillance Amnesty International has revealed new research showing that the NYPD has over 15,000 cameras that can do...
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
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.
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
Stories by Andrej...
ICML accepted papers institution stats
over a year ago
The Berkeley...
Asymmetric Certified Robustness via Feature-Convex Neural Networks
Asymmetric Certified Robustness via Feature-Convex Neural Networks
TLDR: We propose the asymmetric...
a year ago
Asymmetric Certified Robustness via Feature-Convex Neural Networks
TLDR: We propose the asymmetric certified robustness problem, which requires certified robustness for only one class and reflects real-world adversarial scenarios. This focused setting allows us to introduce...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 030: OpenAI's $1B revenue
September 1, 2023
a year ago
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...
The Berkeley...
Rethinking the Role of PPO in RLHF
Rethinking the Role of PPO in RLHF
TL;DR: In RLHF, there’s tension between the reward learning...
a year ago
Rethinking the Role of PPO in RLHF
TL;DR: In RLHF, there’s tension between the reward learning phase, which uses human preference in the form of comparisons, and the RL fine-tuning phase, which optimizes a single, non-comparative reward. What if we performed RL in a comparative...
Society's Backend
How to Know if Your Data is Being Used Maliciously
The information you should know about a company before gifting them your data
a year ago
The information you should know about a company before gifting them your data
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 098: Flash Thinking
December 20, 2024.
a week ago
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.
Marcus on AI
Satya Nadella and the three stages of scientific truth
A textbook case in how good ideas are often initially throttled
a month ago
A textbook case in how good ideas are often initially throttled
Daniel Miessler
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
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.
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...
Society's Backend
Founder Mode, How AI Impacts Education, Diffusion Models As Real-Time Game Engines, and More
Machine learning resources and updates 2024-09-03
4 months ago
Machine learning resources and updates 2024-09-03
Matt Mazur
My Indie SaaS Revenue has Grown 37% per Year for 13 Years
Unlike many indie founders, I’ve never shared revenue numbers for Preceden, my SaaS timeline maker...
11 months ago
Unlike many indie founders, I’ve never shared revenue numbers for Preceden, my SaaS timeline maker tool. Even if they were remarkable – which they are not really – I just don’t think there are many good reasons to publicly share revenue numbers, and there are lots of downsides....
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.
One Useful Thing
How to Get an AI to Lie to You in Three Simple Steps
I keep getting fooled by AI, and it seems like others are, too.
a year ago
I keep getting fooled by AI, and it seems like others are, too.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 064: Big Tech's small models
April 26, 2024.
8 months ago
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.
...
AI Snake Oil
Does ChatGPT have a liberal bias?
A new paper making this claim has many flaws. But the question merits research
a year ago
A new paper making this claim has many flaws. But the question merits research
Marcus on AI
AI influencer hype gone wild
Reality is quite the opposite
2 months ago
Reality is quite the opposite
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
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 and the workplace
How employees and CEOs alike can plan for the future.
7 months ago
How employees and CEOs alike can plan for the future.
Andrej Karpathy blog
Deep Neural Nets: 33 years ago and 33 years from now
.post-header h1 {
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background-color: #fcfcfc;
...
over a year ago
.post-header h1 {
font-size: 35px;
}
.post pre,
.post code {
background-color: #fcfcfc;
font-size: 13px; /* make code smaller for this post... */
}
The Yann LeCun et al. (1989) paper Backpropagation Applied to Handwritten Zip Code Recognition is I believe of some...
Artificial Ignorance
Small newsletters, big ideas
A subscriber showcase full of hidden gems on Substack.
2 weeks ago
A subscriber showcase full of hidden gems on Substack.
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...
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.
Sam Altman
Keep the Internet Open
The FCC has announced plans to roll back policies on net neutrality, and its new head has indicated...
over a year ago
The FCC has announced plans to roll back policies on net neutrality, and its new head has indicated he has no plan to stop soon.
The internet is a public good, and I believe access should be a basic right. We've seen such great innovation in software because the internet has...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 081: Creative differences
August 23, 2024.
4 months ago
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”
Artificial Ignorance
YCombinator's AI boom is still going strong (W24)
Combing through all 158 YC AI startups (65% of the batch).
9 months ago
Combing through all 158 YC AI startups (65% of the batch).
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...
The decreasing/increasing prevalence of the terms "global warming" and "climate change" in news...
I will drop this here as a simple curiosity without much further comment: The decreasing/increasing...
over a year ago
I will drop this here as a simple curiosity without much further comment: The decreasing/increasing prevalence of the terms global warming and climate change in news media discourse. For some reason, peak usage of the term global warming happened in 2007 and it has been dropping...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 034: Meta Connect
September 29, 2023
a year ago
Marcus on AI
Don’t Ride This Bike! Generative AI’s persistent trouble with compositionality and parts
When the text-to-image AI generation system DALL-E2 was released in April 2022, the two of us,...
3 weeks ago
When the text-to-image AI generation system DALL-E2 was released in April 2022, the two of us, together with Scott Aaronson, ran some informal experiments to probe its abilities.
Artificial Ignorance
Tutorial: How to chat with your documents
A step-by-step guide to doing Q&A with your data, using LlamaIndex and OpenAI.
a year ago
A step-by-step guide to doing Q&A with your data, using LlamaIndex and OpenAI.
The Berkeley...
FIGS: Attaining XGBoost-level performance with the interpretability and speed of CART
FIGS (Fast Interpretable Greedy-tree Sums): A method for building interpretable models by...
over a year ago
FIGS (Fast Interpretable Greedy-tree Sums): A method for building interpretable models by simultaneously growing an ensemble of decision trees in competition with one another.
Recent machine-learning advances have led to increasingly complex predictive models, often at the cost...
Rozado’s Visual...
The Prevalence of Prejudice-Denoting Terms in Spanish Newspapers
Published paper Twitter summary Introduction Previous scholarly literature here and here has...
over a year ago
Published paper Twitter summary Introduction Previous scholarly literature here and here has documented a pronounced increase in the prevalence of prejudice-denoting terms in American news media content. Some have referred to this shift in journalistic discourse and related...
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.
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,...
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.
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
Sam Altman
Please Fund More Science
Experts on the COVID-19 pandemic seem to think there are three ways out—that is, for life, health,...
over a year ago
Experts on the COVID-19 pandemic seem to think there are three ways out—that is, for life, health, and the economy to return roughly to normal.
Either we get a vaccine good enough that R0 for the world goes below 1, a good enough treatment that people no longer need to be...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 037: The AI IPCC
October 20, 2023.
a year ago
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
AI Roundup 059: In̶f̶l̶e̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ Microsoft AI
March 22, 2023.
9 months ago
One Useful Thing
The future of education in a world of AI
A positive vision for the transformation to come
a year ago
A positive vision for the transformation to come
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 090: Computer Use
October 25, 2024.
2 months ago
Society's Backend
Always Be Networking
The things you should know about effective networking
a year ago
The things you should know about effective networking
Marcus on AI
ChatGPT, at Age Two
The bullshit just keeps on coming.
a month ago
The bullshit just keeps on coming.
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
AI Snake Oil
Generative AI’s end-run around copyright won’t be resolved by the courts
Output similarity is a distraction
11 months ago
Output similarity is a distraction
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...
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...
One Useful Thing
Change blindness
21 months later
4 months ago
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
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...
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.
Society's Backend
Should You Get a PhD?
The one good reason to do a PhD and two others that fall flat
3 months ago
The one good reason to do a PhD and two others that fall flat
Artificial Ignorance
Getting to the top of the GPT Store (and building an AI-native search engine, too)
Listen now | A conversation with Christian Salem, founder and CPO of Consensus.
8 months ago
Listen now | A conversation with Christian Salem, founder and CPO of Consensus.
One Useful Thing
An AI Haunted World
Intelligence, everywhere.
a year ago
Intelligence, everywhere.
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
One Useful Thing
On the necessity of a sin
Why treating AI like a person is the future
9 months ago
Why treating AI like a person is the future
Weighty Thoughts
The Mystical Q
OpenAI Q*, Primer on Reinforcement Learning, and Implications
a year ago
OpenAI Q*, Primer on Reinforcement Learning, and Implications
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
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
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
Vision Transformers are Overrated
Vision transformers (ViTs) have seen an incredible rise in the past four years. They have an obvious...
a year ago
Vision transformers (ViTs) have seen an incredible rise in the past four years. They have an obvious upside: in a visual recognition setting, the receptive field of a pure ViT is effectively the entire image 1. In particular, vanilla ViTs maintain the quadratic time complexity...
One Useful Thing
Now is the time for grimoires
It isn't data that will unlock AI, it is human expertise
a year ago
It isn't data that will unlock AI, it is human expertise
Made by Ollin
Mac Replacement Icons
A standardized, simplified, and beautiful icon set
over a year ago
A standardized, simplified, and beautiful icon set
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?
One Useful Thing
Everyone is above average
Is AI a Leveler, King Maker, or Escalator?
a year ago
Is AI a Leveler, King Maker, or Escalator?
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.
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”
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."
Matt Mazur
Sharing small, incremental updates with users
I use a service called Headway to keep Preceden users informed about updates to the product. Headway...
a year ago
I use a service called Headway to keep Preceden users informed about updates to the product. Headway provides a widget I have installed on Preceden to let users know when there have been updates. Users will see a bell with a count of unread items (which Headway keeps track of in...
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...
One Useful Thing
Democratizing the future of education
We are all EdTech designers, now
a year ago
We are all EdTech designers, now
The Gradient
Mamba Explained
Is Attention all you need? Mamba, a novel AI model based on State Space Models (SSMs), emerges as a...
9 months ago
Is Attention all you need? Mamba, a novel AI model based on State Space Models (SSMs), emerges as a formidable alternative to the widely used Transformer models, addressing their inefficiency in processing long sequences.
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Happy Holidays!
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE...
a week ago
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.
ICRA 2025: 19–23 May 2025, ATLANTA,...
Society's Backend
I Enjoy Technical Interviews and You Can Too
A simple change in mindset that completely changed the way I interview
a year ago
A simple change in mindset that completely changed the way I interview
Daniel Miessler
Why Apple Keeps Winning
People are blown away that Apple keeps winning while its competitors are floundering. It’s a simple...
over a year ago
People are blown away that Apple keeps winning while its competitors are floundering. It’s a simple formula. Make consistently super-high-quality products that work together as part of an ecosystem. Google and Microsoft have 20X Apple’s losses in the last year. A staggering $3...
Artificial Ignorance
The hidden side of Apple Intelligence
More than just another keynote recap.
6 months ago
More than just another keynote recap.
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:...
Daniel Miessler
Would You Put AI Art In Your House?
I’ve been thinking for a couple of weeks about making and hanging some AI art in my house. But I...
over a year ago
I’ve been thinking for a couple of weeks about making and hanging some AI art in my house. But I immediately faced some internal resistance. Like, I wasn’t (and still am not) sure whether this is the right way to “do” art. And that got me thinking what that really means. What...
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
OpenAI’s Purpose is to Build AGI, and What That Means
Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, has said multiple times that, He says it in this video as well. >...
a year ago
Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, has said multiple times that, He says it in this video as well. > We’re very much here to build AGI. Sam Altman I am not sure how many people realize this about the company. They’re not like playing with other AI-related tech and AGI might come out...
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
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
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
Daniel Miessler
5 Things I’m Still Waiting for With the iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods
I just camped for the new lineup of Apple products, as I have every year since 2007, and I am pretty...
over a year ago
I just camped for the new lineup of Apple products, as I have every year since 2007, and I am pretty impressed. As many have said, this year was an incremental update. The iPhones look nearly identical. And so do the AirPods Pro 2. The exception was the Apple Watch Ultra, which...
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.
The Berkeley...
The Berkeley Crossword Solver
We recently published the Berkeley Crossword Solver (BCS), the current state of the art for solving...
over a year ago
We recently published the Berkeley Crossword Solver (BCS), the current state of the art for solving American-style crossword puzzles. The BCS combines neural question answering and probabilistic inference to achieve near-perfect performance on most American-style crossword...
Weighty Thoughts
What I got Right or Wrong in 2020
Reflecting on the Past Year
over a year ago
Reflecting on the Past Year
Society's Backend
An Overview of Text Summarization Methods from Simple to Complex
We went through a bit of a rebrand. Let me know what you think about Society’s Backend’s new color...
a year ago
We went through a bit of a rebrand. Let me know what you think about Society’s Backend’s new color scheme and logo! :) - Logan I've been researching text summarization methods for a project I'm working on. Since the advent of Large Language Models (LLMs), LLMs have become a go-to...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 092: Watermarking the AI wave
November 8, 2024.
a month 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
Stories by Andrej...
Virtual Reality: still not quite there, again.
over a year ago
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
IEEE Spectrum
Zen and the Art of Aibo Engineering
Sony’s team made that happen. And since Aibo’s debut, the company has sold
more than 170,000 of...
3 weeks ago
Sony’s team made that happen. And since Aibo’s debut, the company has sold
more than 170,000 of the cute little quadrupeds—a huge number considering their price of several thousand dollars each. From the start, Aibo could express a range of simulated emotions and learn through...
Society's Backend
All Machine Learning Resources and Updates 06/14/2024
Below are all machine learning resources and updates from the past week you don't want to miss. I’ve...
6 months ago
Below are all machine learning resources and updates from the past week you don't want to miss. I’ve decided to try out separating paid/free updates. I’m constantly trying new ways to make information consumption easier for you while working within the confines of the platforms...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 077: A good week for open-source
July 26, 2024.
5 months ago
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
Made by Ollin
Emojin
An infinite kaomoji generator
over a year ago
An infinite kaomoji generator
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...
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...
Society's Backend
What Apple Intelligence Means for You
"We think you're gonna LOVE it"
6 months ago
"We think you're gonna LOVE it"
Strange Loop Canon
Mind the Gap
from empire to umpire
a year ago
AI Snake Oil
Can AI automate computational reproducibility?
A new benchmark to measure the impact of AI on improving science
3 months ago
A new benchmark to measure the impact of AI on improving science
Society's Backend
I Beat Newsletter Fatigue With AI
And why direct forms of communication will always be super valuable
11 months ago
And why direct forms of communication will always be super valuable
Artificial Ignorance
The ideologies fighting for the soul (and future) of AI
EAs, e/accs, decels, and doomers.
a year ago
EAs, e/accs, decels, and doomers.
Strange Loop Canon
Google had a very bad week
Gemini's paradox
10 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
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.
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.
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...
Weighty Thoughts
The Fall of Data Moats
AI actually makes most data moats weaker
a year ago
AI actually makes most data moats weaker
fast.ai
A new old kind of R&D lab
Answer.AI is a new kind of AI R&D lab which creates practical end-user products based on...
a year ago
Answer.AI is a new kind of AI R&D lab which creates practical end-user products based on foundational research breakthroughs.
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...
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...
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
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
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