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.
Marcus on AI
Cognitive scientist Gary Marcus says AI must be regulated. He has a plan.
Fantastic writeup of my views today at The Wall Street Journal:
3 weeks ago
Fantastic writeup of my views today at The Wall Street Journal:
Strange Loop Canon
Whither Utopia?
The mystery of why we don't dream of building perfect societies anymore
6 months ago
The mystery of why we don't dream of building perfect societies anymore
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,...
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
Matt Mazur
Reflecting on My First Year as a Full Time Indie Founder
At the beginning of 2023 I went full time on Preceden, my SaaS timeline maker business, after 13...
11 months ago
At the beginning of 2023 I went full time on Preceden, my SaaS timeline maker business, after 13 years of working on it on the side. A year has passed, so I wanted to share an update on how things are going and some lessons learned. Preceden My main focus in 2023 was building AI...
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...
Weighty Thoughts
Why ChatGPT Strawberry o1 (and other LLMs) will Never be Good at Diagnosis
“Connectionist” vs. Knowledge-Based AI
2 months ago
“Connectionist” vs. Knowledge-Based AI
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...
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's invisible instructions
What meme prompts can teach us about better interface design.
a month ago
What meme prompts can teach us about better interface design.
Rozado’s Visual...
The Political Bias of ChatGPT – Extended Analysis
On December 6th I published a preliminary analysis showing a left-leaning political bias embedded in...
a year ago
On December 6th I published a preliminary analysis showing a left-leaning political bias embedded in the first release of ChatGPT from November 30. After the December 15th update of ChatGPT, I replicated my analysis and it appeared as if the political bias had been partially...
Society's Backend
The FTC Cracks Down on Fake AI-Generated Reviews, Midjourney Available on the Web, AI Used to Farm...
Machine learning resources and updates 8/26/2024
3 months ago
Machine learning resources and updates 8/26/2024
One Useful Thing
Post-apocalyptic education
What comes after the Homework Apocalypse
3 months ago
What comes after the Homework Apocalypse
One Useful Thing
The Present Future: AI's Impact Long Before Superintelligence
You can start to see the outlines of an AI future, for better and worse
a month ago
You can start to see the outlines of an AI future, for better and worse
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
a month ago
Society's Backend Reading List 10-28-2024
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 050: Synthetic Geometry
January 19, 2024.
11 months ago
The Gradient
Text-to-CAD: Risks and Opportunities
In the realm of AI-powered text-to-CAD, there's promise, but also a surge in subpar designs. Can we...
a year ago
In the realm of AI-powered text-to-CAD, there's promise, but also a surge in subpar designs. Can we steer this technology towards better outcomes?
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 073: Music make you lose control
June 28, 2024.
5 months ago
AI Snake Oil
AI scaling myths
Scaling will run out. The question is when.
5 months ago
Scaling will run out. The question is when.
Rozado’s Visual...
Is The Great Awokening Really Winding Down? Part II: Evidence from News Media
Others (here, here and here) have argued previously that The Great Awokening might be winding down....
a year ago
Others (here, here and here) have argued previously that The Great Awokening might be winding down. I have shown before some preliminary evidence from Twitter content about how Great Awokening terminology with negative connotations are indeed down but those with positive...
One Useful Thing
Using AI to make teaching easier & more impactful
Here are five strategies and prompts that work for GPT-3.5 & GPT-4
a year ago
Here are five strategies and prompts that work for GPT-3.5 & GPT-4
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 068: The ScarJo thing
May 24, 2024.
7 months ago
Society's Backend
Would You Build the Manhattan Project in the UAE?
Thoughts on AI national security threats
6 months ago
Thoughts on AI national security threats
Society's Backend
MASSIVE New Model Releases from Google, OpenAI, and Meta Change the AI Landscape
Society's Backend Reading List 12-16-2024
6 days ago
Society's Backend Reading List 12-16-2024
One Useful Thing
What happens when AI reads a book 🤖📖
And some prompts that might be useful when it does.
a year ago
And some prompts that might be useful when it does.
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
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 067: GPT-4o and Google I/O
May 17, 2024.
7 months ago
Society's Backend
OpenAI’s Blunder is a Loss for the ML Community
The timeline and why OpenAI’s actions are a big deal
7 months ago
The timeline and why OpenAI’s actions are a big deal
One Useful Thing
Now is the time for grimoires
It isn't data that will unlock AI, it is human expertise
a year ago
It isn't data that will unlock AI, it is human expertise
One Useful Thing
Something New: On OpenAI's "Strawberry" and Reasoning
Solving hard problems in new ways
3 months ago
Solving hard problems in new ways
Jascha’s blog
Too much efficiency makes everything worse: overfitting and the strong version of Goodhart’s law
window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [];
function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);}
...
over a year ago
window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [];
function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);}
gtag('js', new Date());
gtag('config', 'G-1XJMTJ5KCK');
Increased efficiency can sometimes, counterintuitively, lead to worse outcomes.
This is true almost everywhere.
We will name...
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
Gradually, then Suddenly: Upon the Threshold
Small improvements can lead to big changes
5 months ago
Small improvements can lead to big changes
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...
Daniel Miessler
Generate AI Art Using Your Own Writing
One of the most challenging parts of finishing a post is coming up with a good image. The AI art...
over a year ago
One of the most challenging parts of finishing a post is coming up with a good image. The AI art tools like DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion are cool, but a lot of the magic comes down to prompt engineering, which is non-trivial. Prompt Engineering is almost equal parts...
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
Society's Backend
The Unfortunate Truth Regarding AI Regulation
And the impact it'll have for decades to come
6 months ago
And the impact it'll have for decades to come
One Useful Thing
Superhuman: What can AI do in 30 minutes?
AI multiplies your efforts. I found out by how much...
a year ago
AI multiplies your efforts. I found out by how much...
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
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
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 042: sama drama
November 24, 2023.
a year ago
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
Society's Backend
The Metrics Machine Learning Engineers Care About That Modelers Don't
And a brief overview of TPUs in Google data centers
9 months ago
And a brief overview of TPUs in Google data centers
Strange Loop Canon
When we become cogs
on motivation and technology
a month ago
on motivation and technology
Artificial Ignorance
Groq, Gemini, and 10x improvements
As a programmer and CTO, I've developed a rough rule of thumb when it comes to scaling systems. When...
10 months ago
As a programmer and CTO, I've developed a rough rule of thumb when it comes to scaling systems. When you scale your inputs (users, page views, messages, etc) by 10x, something breaks. Usually, it's something pretty fundamental. And the end result is that you need to replace a...
Society's Backend
Devin Has Exposed a Major Issue with Software Engineering
And isn't that we're all going to lose our jobs
9 months ago
And isn't that we're all going to lose our jobs
Artificial Ignorance
What AI models really think about politics
Exploring the political biases of ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Grok.
a month ago
Exploring the political biases of ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Grok.
Frank’s Ramblings
Hierarchical Navigable Small Worlds (HNSW)
(Note: A version of this post has been cross-published to the Zilliz blog)
In a previous blog, we...
a year ago
(Note: A version of this post has been cross-published to the Zilliz blog)
In a previous blog, we took a look at scalar quantization and product quantization - two indexing strategies which are used to reduce the overall size of the database without reducing the scope of a...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 076: Grand theft audio
July 19, 2024.
5 months ago
One Useful Thing
Doing Stuff with AI: Opinionated Midyear Edition
AI systems have gotten more capable and easier to use
6 months ago
AI systems have gotten more capable and easier to use
Society's Backend
Side Projects to Get a Job in ML, a Survey of Small Language Models, How to Build ML Pipelines, and...
Society's Backend Reading List 11-11-2024
a month ago
Society's Backend Reading List 11-11-2024
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 AI email startup that's taking on Gmail
A conversation with Andrew Lee, CEO of Shortwave and cofounder of Firebase.
a year ago
A conversation with Andrew Lee, CEO of Shortwave and cofounder of Firebase.
Society's Backend
Why Rust Isn't Killing C++
And a consideration for choosing a language
8 months ago
And a consideration for choosing a language
Rozado’s Visual...
The Political Biases of GPT-4
Things are not always what they seem
a year ago
Things are not always what they seem
Artificial Ignorance
Tutorial: How to streamline your writing process with Whisper and GPT-4
These Python scripts help me write 3x faster and go from loose ideas to first draft in minutes.
7 months ago
These Python scripts help me write 3x faster and go from loose ideas to first draft in minutes.
Artificial Ignorance
Blade Runner 2024
Reddit's AI Hunters and the quest for authentic digital experiences.
3 months ago
Reddit's AI Hunters and the quest for authentic digital experiences.
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...
Frank’s Ramblings
My Experience Living and Working in China, Part II: COVID Stories
In this four-part article, I’ll go over some of the lessons I learned living and doing business in...
over a year ago
In this four-part article, I’ll go over some of the lessons I learned living and doing business in China’s tech industry. During my time in China, I’ve led a team of 10+ engineers to develop a location-based IoT and sensing platform, co-founded an open-source project called...
Weighty Thoughts
Apple Wins
Apple Intelligence and aggregation puts Apple in a dominant AI position
6 months ago
Apple Intelligence and aggregation puts Apple in a dominant AI position
Society's Backend
The State of AI in China
Is China winning the race to AGI?
5 months ago
Is China winning the race to AGI?
Society's Backend
Alignment: Understanding the Multi-Billion Dollar Opportunity within Machine Learning
A glimpse into the biggest challenge in the world of AI, why it matters to you, and why it's worth...
10 months ago
A glimpse into the biggest challenge in the world of AI, why it matters to you, and why it's worth so much
Artificial Ignorance
Why Claude 3 is a big upgrade
On Monday, Anthropic released Claude 3, a family of models that hit new highs on various benchmarks,...
9 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
AI Roundup 027: Challenge accepted
August 11, 2023
a year ago
Weighty Thoughts
What’s coming next for AI in 2024
A long overdue VC apocalypse and the birth of the first real AI companies
11 months ago
A long overdue VC apocalypse and the birth of the first real AI companies
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 072: The new new Claude
June 21, 2024.
6 months ago
Matt Mazur
Running Mistral 7B Instruct on a Macbook
Similar to yesterday’s post on running Mistral 8x7Bs Mixture of Experts (MOE) model, I wanted to...
a year ago
Similar to yesterday’s post on running Mistral 8x7Bs Mixture of Experts (MOE) model, I wanted to document the steps I took to run Mistral’s 7B-Instruct-v0.2 model on a Mac for anyone else interested in playing around with it. Unlike yesterday’s post though, this 7B Instruct...
One Useful Thing
Reshaping the tree: rebuilding organizations for AI
Technological change brings organizational change.
a year ago
Technological change brings organizational change.
AI Snake Oil
Generative AI companies must publish transparency reports
The debate about the harms of AI is happening in a data vacuum
a year ago
The debate about the harms of AI is happening in a data vacuum
One Useful Thing
One sentence.
Prompting for maximum impact (and why that is a bad idea)
a year ago
Prompting for maximum impact (and why that is a bad idea)
Artificial Ignorance
Workshop: Midjourney Masterclass with Daniel Nest
“This is one of the only webinars where I've actually been glued to my screen for the entire time,...
3 months ago
“This is one of the only webinars where I've actually been glued to my screen for the entire time, not distracted by passing whimsies...
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
One Useful Thing
Innovation through prompting
Democratizing educational technology... and more
8 months ago
Democratizing educational technology... and more
Strange Loop Canon
AI embraces its product arc
fuzzy processors are entering mass production
7 months ago
fuzzy processors are entering mass production
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 085: You win some, you Newsom
September 20, 2024.
3 months ago
Artificial Ignorance
Tutorial: How to build an AI agent (Part 2)
Part 2: Giving our agent internet access.
a year ago
Part 2: Giving our agent internet access.
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.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 077: A good week for open-source
July 26, 2024.
4 months ago
Daniel Miessler
NO. 363 | FrontView Mirror: 2023 Edition
New Content 💡FRONTVIEW MIRROR: 2023 EDITION 💡MY PHILOSOPHY AND RECOMMENDATIONS ON THE LASTPASS...
a year ago
New Content 💡FRONTVIEW MIRROR: 2023 EDITION 💡MY PHILOSOPHY AND RECOMMENDATIONS ON THE LASTPASS BREACHES SECURITY NEWS In a bit of Deja Vu from LastPass, Okta has now revealed that attackers have stolen source code from its GitHub repositories. This comes after it was hit by...
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
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.
Andrej Karpathy blog
What a Deep Neural Network thinks about your #selfie
Convolutional Neural Networks are great: they recognize things, places and people in your personal...
over a year ago
Convolutional Neural Networks are great: they recognize things, places and people in your personal photos, signs, people and lights in self-driving cars, crops, forests and traffic in aerial imagery, various anomalies in medical images and all kinds of other useful things. But...
fast.ai
AI and Power: The Ethical Challenges of Automation, Centralization, and Scale
Moving AI ethics beyond explainability and fairness to empowerment and justice
a year ago
Moving AI ethics beyond explainability and fairness to empowerment and justice
fast.ai
Masks for COVID: Updating the evidence
Notes taken whilst preparing a paper on mask efficacy from Nov to Jan 2022. My previous paper on...
over a year ago
Notes taken whilst preparing a paper on mask efficacy from Nov to Jan 2022. My previous paper on this was written in April 2020 and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science
Artificial Ignorance
How to fine-tune ChatGPT
No GPU cluster required.
a year ago
The Berkeley...
Koala: A Dialogue Model for Academic Research
In this post, we introduce Koala, a chatbot trained by fine-tuning Meta’s LLaMA on dialogue data...
a year ago
In this post, we introduce Koala, a chatbot trained by fine-tuning Meta’s LLaMA on dialogue data gathered from the web. We describe the dataset curation and training process of our model, and also present the results of a user study that compares our model to ChatGPT and...
One Useful Thing
Thinking Like an AI
A little intuition can help
2 months ago
A little intuition can help
Matt Mazur
Updates: Preceden Trends, Training Help Scout’s New Analytics Engineer, Don’t Look Up, and Ray...
Preceden Recurring Revenue: In January 2021 I introduced automatically recurring annual plans to...
over a year ago
Preceden Recurring Revenue: In January 2021 I introduced automatically recurring annual plans to Preceden. Prior to that the annual plans did not renew automatically which was an intentional (but bad) choice I had made because most users did not user Preceden for more than a...
IEEE Spectrum
Forums, Competitions, Challenges: Inspiring Creativity in Robotics
This is a sponsored article brought to you by Khalifa University of Science and Technology.
A total...
2 months ago
This is a sponsored article brought to you by Khalifa University of Science and Technology.
A total of eight intense competitions to inspire creativity and innovation along with 13 forums dedicated to diverse segments of robotics and artificial intelligence will be part of the...
Andrej Karpathy blog
Self-driving as a case study for AGI
Sparked by progress in Large Language Models (LLMs), there’s a lot of chatter recently about AGI,...
11 months ago
Sparked by progress in Large Language Models (LLMs), there’s a lot of chatter recently about AGI, its timelines, and what it might look like. Some of it is hopeful and optimistic, but a lot of it is fearful and doomy, to put it mildly. Unfortunately, a lot of it is also very...
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
One Useful Thing
My class required AI. Here's what I've learned so far.
(Spoiler alert: it has been very successful, but there are some lessons to be learned)
a year ago
(Spoiler alert: it has been very successful, but there are some lessons to be learned)
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
Saving the world with AI and government grants
Listen now | A conversation with Helena Merk, founder and CEO of Streamline Climate.
5 months ago
Listen now | A conversation with Helena Merk, founder and CEO of Streamline Climate.
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...
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
IEEE Spectrum
How Amazon Is Changing the Future of Robotics and Logistics
This is a sponsored article brought to you by Amazon.
“Innovation doesn’t just happen because you...
6 days ago
This is a sponsored article brought to you by Amazon.
“Innovation doesn’t just happen because you have a good idea,” said Valerie Samzun, a leader in Amazon’s Fulfillment Technologies and Robotics (FTR) division. “It happens because you have the right team, the right...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 094: Pixtral et Le Chat
November 22, 2024.
4 weeks 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...
fast.ai
Deep Learning Foundations Signup, Open Source Scholarships, & More
Signups are now open for Practical Deep Learning for Coders Part 2, 2022. Scholarships are available...
over a year ago
Signups are now open for Practical Deep Learning for Coders Part 2, 2022. Scholarships are available for fast.ai community contributors, open source developers, and diversity scholars.
Artificial Ignorance
Distributing the future
A reminder that things take time.
6 months ago
A reminder that things take time.
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Quadruped Ladder Climbing
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE...
2 months ago
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.
IROS 2024: 14–18 October 2024, ABU...
Strange Loop Canon
Google had a very bad week
Gemini's paradox
9 months ago
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
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.
The Berkeley...
Goal Representations for Instruction Following
Goal Representations for Instruction Following
Figure title. Figure caption. This image is...
a year ago
Goal Representations for Instruction Following
Figure title. Figure caption. This image is centered and set to 50%
page width. -->
A longstanding goal of the field of robot learning has been to create generalist agents that can perform tasks for humans. Natural language has...
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
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 082: System prompts
August 30, 2024.
3 months ago
Stories by Andrej...
Virtual Reality: still not quite there, again.
over a year ago
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
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
AI Roundup 035: Me or your lying eyes
October 6, 2023.
a year ago
Rozado’s Visual...
Northern Awokening: Social-justice and prejudice-signifying language in Canadian news media
I have recently published a report with Aaron Wudrick from the Macdonald-Laurier Institute about...
a year ago
I have recently published a report with Aaron Wudrick from the Macdonald-Laurier Institute about changes in the language that the news media in Canada use. I have documented previously how in American news media mentions of terms that signify distinct forms of prejudice have...
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
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 052: AI, EO, DPA
February 2, 2024.
10 months ago
Rozado’s Visual...
Mentions of Prejudice in Academic Papers: A Declining Trend Amidst Ongoing DEI Growth?
Prejudice-denoting terms in academic research have recently decreased while some DEI-related terms...
3 months ago
Prejudice-denoting terms in academic research have recently decreased while some DEI-related terms continue to rise—what does this shift reveal?
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 060: Another CEO gone
March 29, 2024.
8 months ago
Society's Backend
All Machine Learning Resources and Updates 06/21/2024
Below are the machine learning resources and updates from the past few days you don't want to miss....
6 months ago
Below are the machine learning resources and updates from the past few days you don't want to miss. If you want all the ML updates from X, follow me there. Mamba + Sliding Window Attention = SAMBA with Efficient Unlimited... China runs to be one of top global players in AI model...
The Berkeley...
Fully Autonomous Real-World Reinforcement Learning with Applications to Mobile Manipulation
Reinforcement learning provides a conceptual framework for autonomous agents to learn from...
a year ago
Reinforcement learning provides a conceptual framework for autonomous agents to learn from experience, analogously to how one might train a pet with treats. But practical applications of reinforcement learning are often far from natural: instead of using RL to learn through trial...
Daniel Miessler
Your Experience is Your Creativity
Creativity is usually described as an external force that graces you with inspiration. Something...
a year ago
Creativity is usually described as an external force that graces you with inspiration. Something that you have to open yourself to—that you have to allow in. But creativity is more like an inner forge of your past, perspectives, and passions. It’s not something you let in; it’s...
Society's Backend
A Technical Perspective: Has Google Search Gotten Worse?
Providing a technical perspective for a more educated assessment of a complaint I hear quite...
2 months ago
Providing a technical perspective for a more educated assessment of a complaint I hear quite frequently
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', () => {
...
Society's Backend
Allen AI and DeepSeek are Taking Off, Professional Advice for Working in AI, Agentic Web Design, and...
Society's Backend Reading List 12-2-2024
2 weeks ago
Society's Backend Reading List 12-2-2024
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 →
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 064: Big Tech's small models
April 26, 2024.
7 months ago
Society's Backend
OpenAI's Strawberry May Enhance AI Reasoning, Optimization of Vision Language Models, Info on...
Weekly updates and resources 7/15/24
5 months ago
Weekly updates and resources 7/15/24
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...
One Useful Thing
15 Times to use AI, and 5 Not to
Notes on the Practical Wisdom of AI Use
a week ago
Notes on the Practical Wisdom of AI Use
Rozado’s Visual...
The Political Preferences of LLMs
Substantial political homogeneity in Large Language Models (LLMs) responses to questions with...
10 months ago
Substantial political homogeneity in Large Language Models (LLMs) responses to questions with political connotations
Daniel Miessler
How to Survive and Thrive in a World Where AI Can Do Almost Everything
Click for printable size. Here’s a quick list of things we can do to get ready for AI’s ascendance....
over a year ago
Click for printable size. Here’s a quick list of things we can do to get ready for AI’s ascendance. You can click it to get the full size to print out. This is UL Member Content Subscribe Already a member? Login
Artificial Ignorance
How to reverse engineer the Substack (or any!) web API
Building an unauthorized Substack client with Claude.
4 months ago
Building an unauthorized Substack client with Claude.
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...
Society's Backend
The Step-by-Step Guide to Becoming a Machine Learning Engineer
And other practical guides to understand machine learning
11 months ago
And other practical guides to understand machine learning
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...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 075: Levels of AGI
July 12, 2024.
5 months ago
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.
Strange Loop Canon
What can LLMs never do?
On goal drift and lower reliability. Or, why can't LLMs play Conway's Game Of Life?
8 months ago
On goal drift and lower reliability. Or, why can't LLMs play Conway's Game Of Life?
One Useful Thing
Captain's log: the irreducible weirdness of prompting AIs
Also, we have a prompt library!
9 months ago
Also, we have a prompt library!
Andrej Karpathy blog
A from-scratch tour of Bitcoin in Python
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...
over a year ago
.wrap {
max-width: 900px;
}
p {
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font-size: 15px;
font-weight: 300;
overflow-wrap: break-word; /* allow wrapping of very very long strings, like txids */
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background-color: #fafafa;
font-size: 13px; /*...
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
One Useful Thing
Getting started with AI: Good enough prompting
Don't make this hard
3 weeks ago
AI Snake Oil
Artists can now opt out of generative AI. It’s not enough.
Opting out is the latest example of generative AI developers externalizing costs.
a year ago
Opting out is the latest example of generative AI developers externalizing costs.
Society's Backend
What you need to understand about LLM creativity
An simple overview of temperature and its effect on LLM output
7 months ago
An simple overview of temperature and its effect on LLM output
fast.ai
AI Safety and the Age of Dislightenment
Model licensing & surveillance will likely be counterproductive by concentrating power in...
a year ago
Model licensing & surveillance will likely be counterproductive by concentrating power in unsustainable ways
One Useful Thing
Change blindness
21 months later
4 months ago
Matt Mazur
Screw it, I’m Keeping Emergent Mind
A few months ago I announced I was going to try to sell Emergent Mind, my AI news aggregator, so I...
a year ago
A few months ago I announced I was going to try to sell Emergent Mind, my AI news aggregator, so I could focus on Preceden, my SaaS timeline maker. I wound up having a lot of discussions with potential buyers, but in the end the offers I received were either too low to be worth...
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...
Matt Mazur
When you ship a major bug before signing off for the day
For better or worse, I still handle all of Preceden’s support requests. At one I did have help...
a year ago
For better or worse, I still handle all of Preceden’s support requests. At one I did have help (thanks Liesl!), but these days support takes at most an hour per week, and all requests fall into two buckets: As a result, there hasn’t been a pressing need to outsource support. But...
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
AI Roundup 034: Meta Connect
September 29, 2023
a year ago
Stories by Andrej...
ICLR 2017 vs arxiv-sanity
over a year ago
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...
Society's Backend
Know Your Benchmarks
How the Chatbot Arena leaderboard for LLMs works and why it’s important to understand
8 months ago
How the Chatbot Arena leaderboard for LLMs works and why it’s important to understand
Weighty Thoughts
Software Engineering is Doomed
Or is it?
5 months ago
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 059: In̶f̶l̶e̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ Microsoft AI
March 22, 2023.
9 months ago
Matt Mazur
Turning Down $7k for a Side Project I Announced Two Weeks Ago I was Shutting Down
About two weeks ago I announced I was shutting down LearnGPT. After the announcement, I received a...
a year ago
About two weeks ago I announced I was shutting down LearnGPT. After the announcement, I received a lot of interest from people interested in taking it over, so I decided to try to sell it instead of shutting it down. I wound up receiving two offers, one for $6.5k and one for $7k,...
Daniel Miessler
News & Analysis | NO. 352
over a year ago
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...
Sam Altman
Time to Take a Stand
It is time for tech companies to start speaking up about
some of the actions taken by President...
over a year ago
It is time for tech companies to start speaking up about
some of the actions taken by President Trump’s administration.
There are many actions from his first week that are
objectionable. In repeatedly
invoking unsubstantiated conspiracy theories (like the 3 million...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 096: Happy Shipmas
December 6, 2024.
2 weeks ago
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
a week ago
Society's Backend Reading List 12-10-2024
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
AI Roundup 063: Llama 3
April 19, 2024.
8 months ago
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 084: Strawberry / o1
September 13, 2024.
3 months ago
Artificial Ignorance
The subscriptionization of AI
Navigating the paid AI landscape.
9 months ago
Navigating the paid AI landscape.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 047: NYT v. OpenAI
Friday, December 29.
11 months ago
Society's Backend
Meta's New Segmentation Model, A New Open-Source Image Generation Model, Apple Intelligence Model...
Machine learning resources and updates 8/5/2024
4 months ago
Machine learning resources and updates 8/5/2024
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.
...
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
Society's Backend
Stop Obsessing Over the Product and Start Thinking About the Bigger Picture
The actual takeaways from the iPhone 15 event
a year ago
The actual takeaways from the iPhone 15 event
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.
Daniel Miessler
My Mom Died on Saturday
My mom died on Saturday. My biological mother became unable to function when I was around five due...
over a year ago
My mom died on Saturday. My biological mother became unable to function when I was around five due to mental illness, which left my dad and me on our own. Sometime after we were blessed with a strong, beautiful soul named Rhonda. My dad and I were like rescue dogs, and she saved...
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
Mac Replacement Icons
A standardized, simplified, and beautiful icon set
over a year ago
A standardized, simplified, and beautiful icon set
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....
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...
Weighty Thoughts
The Fall of Data Moats
AI actually makes most data moats weaker
a year ago
AI actually makes most data moats weaker
Sam Altman
The Strength of Being Misunderstood
A founder recently asked me how to stop caring what other people think. I didn’t have an answer, and...
over a year ago
A founder recently asked me how to stop caring what other people think. I didn’t have an answer, and after reflecting on it more, I think it's the wrong question.
Almost everyone cares what someone thinks (though caring what everyone thinks is definitely a mistake), and it's...
Society's Backend
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
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
Not much is changing, a lot is changing
OpenAI, Microsoft, and the OpenOffspring
a year ago
OpenAI, Microsoft, and the OpenOffspring
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 091: Search wars
November 1, 2024.
a month ago
Rozado’s Visual...
What is the IQ of ChatGPT?
Making an AI model take an IQ test
over a year ago
Making an AI model take an IQ test
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 053: Bye bye Bard
February 9, 2024.
10 months ago
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
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.
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?
Society's Backend
Chinese AI is Less Expensive, What it's Like to Work in AI, an Evaluation Framework for Voice...
Society's Backend Reading List 11-18-2024
a month ago
Society's Backend Reading List 11-18-2024
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 071: How do you like them AIs
June 14, 2024.
6 months ago
The Gradient
Mamba Explained
Is Attention all you need? Mamba, a novel AI model based on State Space Models (SSMs), emerges as a...
8 months ago
Is Attention all you need? Mamba, a novel AI model based on State Space Models (SSMs), emerges as a formidable alternative to the widely used Transformer models, addressing their inefficiency in processing long sequences.
Society's Backend
Backend Biweekly #2: 112 Total Updates and Resources
Details on Metas training clusters, analysis of ML competitions in 2023, AI's impact on water...
9 months ago
Details on Metas training clusters, analysis of ML competitions in 2023, AI's impact on water resources, and more
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 074: Amazon's Adept acquisition
July 5, 2024.
5 months ago
IEEE Spectrum
Why Simone Giertz, the Queen of Useless Robots, Got Serious
On YouTube she demonstrated a hilarious series of self-built mechanized devices that worked...
2 months ago
On YouTube she demonstrated a hilarious series of self-built mechanized devices that worked perfectly for ridiculous applications, such as a headboard-mounted alarm clock with a rubber hand to slap the user awake.
This article is part of our special report, “Reinventing...
Sam Altman
American Equity
I’d like feedback on the following idea.
I think that every adult US citizen should get an annual...
over a year ago
I’d like feedback on the following idea.
I think that every adult US citizen should get an annual share of the US GDP.
I believe that owning something like a share in America would align all of us in making the country as successful as possible—the better the country does, the...
Artificial Ignorance
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.
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
Andrej Karpathy blog
Short Story on AI: A Cognitive Discontinuity.
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The idea of writing a collection of short stories has been on my mind...
over a year ago
p {
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The idea of writing a collection of short stories has been on my mind for a while. This post is my first ever half-serious attempt at a story, and what better way to kick things off than with a story on AI and what that might look like if you...
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
Rozado’s Visual...
Which is the Wokest AI?
A Wokeness Ranking of LLMs
9 months ago
A Wokeness Ranking of LLMs
Made by Ollin
Acapella Extraction with ConvNets
A working prototype
over a year ago
Society's Backend
A Privacy Review: TikTok
You should stick to Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts
a year ago
You should stick to Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts
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
News Roundup: May 27, 2014 🧴
Why does Google suck so much, Microsoft Co-Pilot Everywhere, and Sam Altman
6 months ago
Why does Google suck so much, Microsoft Co-Pilot Everywhere, and Sam Altman
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
fast.ai
The Jupyter+git problem is now solved
Previously, using git with Jupyter could create conflicts and break notebooks. With nbdev2, the...
over a year ago
Previously, using git with Jupyter could create conflicts and break notebooks. With nbdev2, the problem has been totally solved.
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?
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...
Stories by Andrej...
A Peek at Trends in Machine Learning
over a year ago
The Berkeley...
How to Evaluate Jailbreak Methods: A Case Study with the StrongREJECT Benchmark
When we began studying jailbreak evaluations, we found a fascinating paper claiming that you could...
3 months ago
When we began studying jailbreak evaluations, we found a fascinating paper claiming that you could jailbreak frontier LLMs simply by translating forbidden prompts into obscure languages. Excited by this result, we attempted to reproduce it and found something unexpected.
The...
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...
Matt Mazur
Progress on TimelineGPT, Emergent Mind missteps, finding balance
Hey all 👋! It’s been a minute since my last post (for reasons I’ll get into below) so here’s...
a year ago
Hey all 👋! It’s been a minute since my last post (for reasons I’ll get into below) so here’s periodic update on what I’ve been up to: TimelineGPT About two months ago I launched an in-app tool for Preceden that provides GPT-powered event suggestions to users to help them build...
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...
Daniel Miessler
News & Analysis | NO. 350
over a year ago
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 070: AI whistleblowers
June 7, 2024.
6 months ago
Artificial Ignorance
Small newsletters, big ideas
A subscriber showcase full of hidden gems on Substack.
6 days ago
A subscriber showcase full of hidden gems on Substack.
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...
IEEE Spectrum
Fish-Inspired Sensor "Touches" Using Electric Fields
The ability to detect a nearby presence without seeing or touching it may sound fantastical—but it’s...
a week ago
The ability to detect a nearby presence without seeing or touching it may sound fantastical—but it’s a real ability that some creatures have. A family of African fish known as Mormyrids are weakly electric, and have special organs that can locate a nearby prey, whether it’s in...
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
Tutorial: How to narrate video with Sora, GPT-Vision, and ElevenLabs
The future of entertainment is going to be a wild ride.
9 months ago
The future of entertainment is going to be a wild ride.
Weighty Thoughts
Today’s AI critics don’t understand the history of technology
But is AI different than other technologies?
9 months ago
But is AI different than other technologies?
Rozado’s Visual...
ChatGPT no longer displays a clear left-leaning political bias
Update (20/01/2023): Results of administering 15 political orientation tests to ChatGPT Twitter...
a year ago
Update (20/01/2023): Results of administering 15 political orientation tests to ChatGPT Twitter Thread Summary Between December 5-6, I applied 4 political orientation tests to ChatGPT. Results were consistent across the tests. All 4 tests diagnosed ChatGPT answers to their...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 048: The Robot Constitution
January 5, 2024.
11 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
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 040: GPTs
November 10, 2023.
a year ago
Matt Mazur
Experimenting with GPT-4 Turbo’s JSON mode
One of the many new features announced at yesterday’s OpenAI dev day is better support for...
a year ago
One of the many new features announced at yesterday’s OpenAI dev day is better support for generating valid JSON output. From the JSON mode docs: A common way to use Chat Completions is to instruct the model to always return JSON in some format that makes sense for your use case,...
The Gradient
Why transformative artificial intelligence is really, really hard to achieve
A collection of the best technical, social, and economic arguments
Humans have a good track record...
a year ago
A collection of the best technical, social, and economic arguments
Humans have a good track record of innovation. The mechanization of agriculture, steam engines, electricity, modern medicine, computers, and the internet—these technologies radically changed the world. Still, the...
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
Andrej Karpathy blog
Deep Reinforcement Learning: Pong from Pixels
-->
This is a long overdue blog post on Reinforcement Learning (RL). RL is hot! You may have...
over a year ago
-->
This is a long overdue blog post on Reinforcement Learning (RL). RL is hot! You may have noticed that computers can now automatically learn to play ATARI games (from raw game pixels!), they are beating world champions at Go, simulated quadrupeds are learning to run and leap,...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 028: Sunak's Safety Summit
August 18, 2023
a year ago
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 046: AI has a CSAM problem
December 22, 2023.
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
Rozado’s Visual...
Pessimism in News Media Headlines
In previous work, I documented the growing emotional negativity (anger, fear, sadness, etc) of...
a year ago
In previous work, I documented the growing emotional negativity (anger, fear, sadness, etc) of American news media headlines between the years 2000 and 2019. Here, I extend that work by examining the attitudinal tone (pessimism, optimism or neutrality
AI Snake Oil
What is algorithmic amplification and why should we care?
A symposium and a primer on social media recommendation algorithms
a year ago
A symposium and a primer on social media recommendation algorithms
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...
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...
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...
Daniel Miessler
AI is About to Feel Like AGI, and You Need to Get Ready
I just wrote a piece similar to this last week, but this one drives the point home even more....
over a year ago
I just wrote a piece similar to this last week, but this one drives the point home even more. Basically, the current trajectory of AI, with all the art generation, the language models, etc., are about to become a whole lot more instruction and response based. What does that mean?...
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...
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
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...
One Useful Thing
A guide to prompting AI (for what it is worth)
A little bit of magic, but mostly just practice
a year ago
A little bit of magic, but mostly just practice
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...
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
Strange Loop Canon
Power, money and human nature
Thoughts on OpenAI, a tragedy
a year ago
Thoughts on OpenAI, a tragedy
Sam Altman
The Virus
Although I still hope things will go differently, the experts I’ve spoken to think we are likely to...
over a year ago
Although I still hope things will go differently, the experts I’ve spoken to think we are likely to face a global tragedy—hundreds of thousands of deaths from Covid-19.
I hope that society views this as a warning for the future. Covid-19 is bad, but only a warm-up. I think it’s...
IEEE Spectrum
5 Questions for Robotics Legend Ruzena Bajcsy
Ruzena Bajcsy is one of the founders of the modern field of robotics. With an education in...
3 weeks ago
Ruzena Bajcsy is one of the founders of the modern field of robotics. With an education in electrical engineering in Slovakia, followed by a Ph.D. at Stanford, Bajcsy was the first woman to join the engineering faculty at the University of Pennsylvania. She was the first, she...
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...
Stories by Andrej...
ICML accepted papers institution stats
over a year ago
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
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
Strange Loop Canon
State of the Canon
Onwards
11 months ago
Rozado’s Visual...
A brief response to a reader regarding prejudice denoting terms in Swedish media
Regarding when Swedish media started to increase mentions of prejudice denoting terminology and a...
a week ago
Regarding when Swedish media started to increase mentions of prejudice denoting terminology and a reader comments about it, several things to note:
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
AI Art Will Push the Top 1% to Human Artists
One effect I think we’ll see from all this AI-generated art is magnified status for those who insist...
over a year ago
One effect I think we’ll see from all this AI-generated art is magnified status for those who insist on the opposite, i.e., manual, human art. The more manual the better. The more human the better. Ideally there’d only be one of whatever you have, and it’d only be yours. Why is...
Strange Loop Canon
Discovery is the original sin of the modern age
technology, living post scarcity, and how to find what you want
a year ago
technology, living post scarcity, and how to find what you want
Society's Backend
Backend Biweekly #1: Important AI Developments and ML Learning Resources
Updates on Apple, Mistral, and Microsoft and resources to build the GPT tokenizer, use MLX to train...
9 months ago
Updates on Apple, Mistral, and Microsoft and resources to build the GPT tokenizer, use MLX to train models, and benchmark LLMs
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...
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
Daniel Miessler
NO. 360 | NEWS, ANALYSIS & DISCOVERY SERIES
SECURITY NEWS Security researchers found that Chinese electronics company Eufy (part of Anker) has...
over a year ago
SECURITY NEWS Security researchers found that Chinese electronics company Eufy (part of Anker) has major vulnerabilities in its security cameras. The issues include uploading data to the cloud when they said they weren't, and the existence of a URL endpoint that allows an...
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 055: Race conditions
February 23, 2023.
10 months ago
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 088: Movie magic
October 11, 2024.
2 months ago
Matt Mazur
Friday Updates: Shipping AI Suggestions in Preceden, EmergentMind Growth and Brainstorming
Preceden On Tuesday I shipped the v1 of Preceden’s new AI suggestions feature to 10% of new users: I...
a year ago
Preceden On Tuesday I shipped the v1 of Preceden’s new AI suggestions feature to 10% of new users: I had planned on slowly rolling it out to 100% of users over the course of a week or two, but my OpenAI costs were minimal on Tuesday so on Wednesday I said screw it and just […]
One Useful Thing
Secret Cyborgs: The Present Disruption in Three Papers
The future is already here, we just need to figure out a few details.
a year ago
The future is already here, we just need to figure out a few details.
One Useful Thing
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
Rozado’s Visual...
The unequal treatment of demographic groups by ChatGPT/OpenAI content moderation system
Should AI systems treat different demographic groups unequally?
a year ago
Should AI systems treat different demographic groups unequally?
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...
AI Snake Oil
How Transparent Are Foundation Model Developers?
Introducing the Foundation Model Transparency Index
a year ago
Introducing the Foundation Model Transparency Index
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.
Artificial Ignorance
The fable of Reflection 70B
From groundbreaking to grifting.
3 months ago
From groundbreaking to grifting.
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 038: Preparedness
October 27, 2023.
a year ago
Society's Backend
All Machine Learning Resources and Updates 06/14/2024
Below are all machine learning resources and updates from the past week you don't want to miss. I’ve...
6 months ago
Below are all machine learning resources and updates from the past week you don't want to miss. I’ve decided to try out separating paid/free updates. I’m constantly trying new ways to make information consumption easier for you while working within the confines of the platforms...
Society's Backend
If You Understand Bananas, You Can Understand Machine Learning
A simplified high-level overview of primary machine learning algorithms for anyone to understand
11 months ago
A simplified high-level overview of primary machine learning algorithms for anyone to understand
Strange Loop Canon
Why AI hasn’t shown up in the GDP statistics yet
AI is meant to bring us closer to utopia, according to its builders.
4 months ago
AI is meant to bring us closer to utopia, according to its builders.
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.
Society's Backend
AI Video Editing, MLX vs PyTorch, AI in Space, and More [Comprehensive ML Resource List for 6/28/24]
Here is a comprehensive list of all machine learning resources and updates from the past week. Thank...
5 months ago
Here is a comprehensive list of all machine learning resources and updates from the past week. Thank you for supporting Society's Backend! Don't forget to also follow me on X. Claude 3.5 Sonnet Can Long-Context Language Models Subsume Retrieval, RAG, SQL, and More?
Artificial Ignorance
Case Study: Scaling customer intelligence
Analyzing 10,000 sales calls with Claude
3 weeks ago
Analyzing 10,000 sales calls with Claude
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
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 078: Voice mode
August 2, 2024.
4 months ago
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...
Artificial Ignorance
A stroll through Google's Model Garden
What generative AI capabilities does Google offer to developers?
a year ago
What generative AI capabilities does Google offer to developers?
Artificial Ignorance
AI Roundup 033: DALL·E 3
September 22, 2023.
a year ago
Society's Backend
Weekly Backend #4: 62 Total Resources
Apple’s LLM OpenELM, GPT-4-Turbo, Phi-3, Grok-1.5 Vision, and more
7 months ago
Apple’s LLM OpenELM, GPT-4-Turbo, Phi-3, Grok-1.5 Vision, and more
Strange Loop Canon
Mind the Gap
from empire to umpire
a year ago
Frank’s Ramblings
Vision Transformers are Overrated
Vision transformers (ViTs) have seen an incredible rise in the past four years. They have an obvious...
11 months ago
Vision transformers (ViTs) have seen an incredible rise in the past four years. They have an obvious upside: in a visual recognition setting, the receptive field of a pure ViT is effectively the entire image 1. In particular, vanilla ViTs maintain the quadratic time complexity...
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
2 months ago
Machine learning highlights and resources 9-23-24
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
The Merge
A popular topic in Silicon Valley is talking about what year humans and machines will merge (or, if...
over a year ago
A popular topic in Silicon Valley is talking about what year humans and machines will merge (or, if not, what year humans will get surpassed by rapidly improving AI or a genetically enhanced species). Most guesses seem to be between 2025 and 2075.
People used to call this the...
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...
11 months 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...
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...
One Useful Thing
Google's Gemini Advanced: Tasting Notes and Implications
And then there were two.
10 months ago
Stories by Andrej...
Yes you should understand backprop
over a year ago