One Useful Thing
Setting time on fire and the temptation of The Button
We used to consider writing an indication of time and effort spent on a task. That isn't true...
3 days ago
We used to consider writing an indication of time and effort spent on a task. That isn't true anymore.
Rozado’s Visual...
Pessimism in News Media Headlines
In previous work, I documented the growing emotional negativity (anger, fear, sadness, etc) of...
5 days 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
Is Avoiding Extinction from AI Really an Urgent Priority?
The history of technology suggests that the greatest risks come not from the tech, but from the...
6 days ago
The history of technology suggests that the greatest risks come not from the tech, but from the people who control it
One Useful Thing
What happens when AI reads a book 🤖📖
And some prompts that might be useful when it does.
a week ago
And some prompts that might be useful when it does.
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 week 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...
The Berkeley...
GPT-4 + Stable-Diffusion = ?: Enhancing Prompt Understanding of Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with...
TL;DR: Text Prompt -> LLM -> Intermediate Representation (such as an image layout) -> Stable...
2 weeks ago
TL;DR: Text Prompt -> LLM -> Intermediate Representation (such as an image layout) -> Stable Diffusion -> Image.
Recent advancements in text-to-image generation with diffusion models have yielded remarkable results synthesizing highly realistic and diverse images. However,...
One Useful Thing
On-boarding your AI Intern
There's a somewhat weird alien who wants to work for free for you. You should probably get started.
2 weeks ago
There's a somewhat weird alien who wants to work for free for you. You should probably get started.
One Useful Thing
Catastrophe / Eucatastrophe
We have more agency over the future of AI than we think.
3 weeks ago
We have more agency over the future of AI than we think.
One Useful Thing
AI is not good software. It is pretty good people.
A pragmatic approach to thinking about AI
4 weeks ago
A pragmatic approach to thinking about AI
One Useful Thing
It is starting to get strange.
Let's talk about ChatGPT with Code Interpreter & Microsoft Copilot
a month ago
Let's talk about ChatGPT with Code Interpreter & Microsoft Copilot
AI Snake Oil
Quantifying ChatGPT’s gender bias
Benchmarks allow us to dig deeper into what causes biases and what can be done about it
a month ago
Benchmarks allow us to dig deeper into what causes biases and what can be done about it
One Useful Thing
A guide to prompting AI (for what it is worth)
A little bit of magic, but mostly just practice
a month ago
A little bit of magic, but mostly just practice
One Useful Thing
Democratizing the future of education
We are all EdTech designers, now
a month ago
We are all EdTech designers, now
One Useful Thing
One sentence.
Prompting for maximum impact (and why that is a bad idea)
a month ago
Prompting for maximum impact (and why that is a bad idea)
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 month 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...
AI Snake Oil
I set up a ChatGPT voice interface for my 3-year old. Here’s how it went.
Chatbots are likely to revive familiar debates about kids and apps
a month ago
Chatbots are likely to revive familiar debates about kids and apps
Matt Mazur
Full Time Indie Hacking: First 3 Months in Review
At the end of 2022 I stopped contracting at Help Scout to focus full time on Preceden, a SaaS...
a month ago
At the end of 2022 I stopped contracting at Help Scout to focus full time on Preceden, a SaaS timeline maker tool that I had been running mostly as a side project since 2010. It’s April now so I figured I’d share an update on how things are going. My periodic Friday updates cover...
One Useful Thing
The future of education in a world of AI
A positive vision for the transformation to come
a month ago
A positive vision for the transformation to come
The Berkeley...
Interactive Fleet Learning
Figure 1: “Interactive Fleet Learning” (IFL) refers to robot fleets in industry and academia that...
2 months 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...
Rozado’s Visual...
The Great Awokening as a Global Phenomenon
The striking synchronicity with which Great Awokening terminology increased in news media worldwide
2 months ago
The striking synchronicity with which Great Awokening terminology increased in news media worldwide
One Useful Thing
Thinking companion, companion for thinking
Some simple ways to use AI to break you out of biases
2 months ago
Some simple ways to use AI to break you out of biases
One Useful Thing
Thinking companion, companion for thinking
Some simple ways to use AI to break you out of biases
2 months ago
Some simple ways to use AI to break you out of biases
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...
2 months 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...
AI Snake Oil
A misleading open letter about sci-fi AI dangers ignores the real risks
Misinformation, labor impact, and safety are all risks. But not in the way the letter implies.
2 months ago
Misinformation, labor impact, and safety are all risks. But not in the way the letter implies.
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.
2 months ago
People often ask me how to use AI. Here's an overview with lots of links.
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.
2 months ago
People often ask me how to use AI. Here's an overview with lots of links.
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...
2 months ago
It is probably only a matter of time until a nation state purposely builds a biased AI system designed to advance government interests
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...
2 months 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...
One Useful Thing
Superhuman: What can AI do in 30 minutes?
AI multiplies your efforts. I found out by how much...
2 months ago
AI multiplies your efforts. I found out by how much...
One Useful Thing
Superhuman: What can AI do in 30 minutes?
AI multiplies your efforts. I found out by how much...
2 months ago
AI multiplies your efforts. I found out by how much...
Rozado’s Visual...
Define Wokeness! Or how you shall know a word by the company it keeps
Visualizing what words often appear in the vicinity of woke/wokeness in news media content...
2 months ago
Visualizing what words often appear in the vicinity of woke/wokeness in news media content illustrates why communication is almost impossible between red and blue America
One Useful Thing
Acceleration.
7 days of new AI technologies shows us that everything is happening very fast.
2 months ago
7 days of new AI technologies shows us that everything is happening very fast.
One Useful Thing
Acceleration.
7 days of new AI technologies shows us that everything is happening very fast.
2 months ago
7 days of new AI technologies shows us that everything is happening very fast.
AI Snake Oil
OpenAI’s policies hinder reproducible research on language models
LLMs have become privately-controlled research infrastructure
2 months ago
LLMs have become privately-controlled research infrastructure
AI Snake Oil
GPT-4 and professional benchmarks: the wrong answer to the wrong question
OpenAI may have tested on the training data. Besides, human benchmarks are meaningless for bots.
2 months ago
OpenAI may have tested on the training data. Besides, human benchmarks are meaningless for bots.
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
2 months ago
Here are five strategies and prompts that work for GPT-3.5 & GPT-4
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
2 months ago
Here are five strategies and prompts that work for GPT-3.5 & GPT-4
AI Snake Oil
What is algorithmic amplification and why should we care?
A symposium and a primer on social media recommendation algorithms
2 months ago
A symposium and a primer on social media recommendation algorithms
Rozado’s Visual...
The Political Biases of GPT-4
Things are not always what they seem
2 months ago
Things are not always what they seem
One Useful Thing
How to... use AI to unstick yourself
We often lose momentum because of something small. AI can help.
2 months ago
We often lose momentum because of something small. AI can help.
One Useful Thing
How to... use AI to unstick yourself
We often lose momentum because of something small. AI can help.
2 months ago
We often lose momentum because of something small. AI can help.
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...
2 months 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...
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.
2 months ago
Opting out is the latest example of generative AI developers externalizing costs.
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.
3 months ago
The future is already here, we just need to figure out a few details.
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.
3 months ago
The future is already here, we just need to figure out a few details.
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...
3 months 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
AI Snake Oil
The LLaMA is out of the bag. Should we expect a tidal wave of disinformation?
The bottleneck isn't the cost of producing disinfo, which is already very low.
3 months ago
The bottleneck isn't the cost of producing disinfo, which is already very low.
One Useful Thing
Feats to astonish and amaze
A compendium of things I didn't think AI should be able to do
3 months ago
A compendium of things I didn't think AI should be able to do
One Useful Thing
Feats to astonish and amaze
A compendium of things I didn't think AI should be able to do
3 months ago
A compendium of things I didn't think AI should be able to do
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
3 months ago
Bing AI is a huge leap over ChatGPT, but you have to learn its quirks
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
3 months ago
Bing AI is a huge leap over ChatGPT, but you have to learn its quirks
Rozado’s Visual...
Is climate change 100 times more threatening than gain-of-function research?
Mentions of climate change in news media vastly outnumber other existential threats
3 months ago
Mentions of climate change in news media vastly outnumber other existential threats
AI Snake Oil
AI cannot predict the future. But companies keep trying (and failing).
A new paper on how AI companies make false promises and how we can challenge them
3 months ago
A new paper on how AI companies make false promises and how we can challenge them
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.
3 months ago
I keep getting fooled by AI, and it seems like others are, too.
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.
3 months ago
I keep getting fooled by AI, and it seems like others are, too.
Rozado’s Visual...
Is the Great Awokening Really Winding Down? Part I: Some Multifaceted Evidence from Twitter Content
There has been some discussion lately by Eric Kaufmann, Tyler Cowen, Balaji Srinivasan, Paul Graham...
3 months ago
There has been some discussion lately by Eric Kaufmann, Tyler Cowen, Balaji Srinivasan, Paul Graham and Musa Al Gharbi as to whether The Great Awokening is winding down. I’m going to write a series of blog entries about this topic to contribute to the discussion. In order to do...
One Useful Thing
Blinded by Analogies
What is this AI thing? The wrong model can lead us astray
3 months ago
What is this AI thing? The wrong model can lead us astray
One Useful Thing
Blinded by Analogies
What is this AI thing? The wrong model can lead us astray
3 months ago
What is this AI thing? The wrong model can lead us astray
AI Snake Oil
People keep anthropomorphizing AI. Here’s why
Companies and journalists both contribute to the confusion
3 months ago
Companies and journalists both contribute to the confusion
Rozado’s Visual...
New York Times Word Usage Frequency Chart – An Update
A timely update of an informative chart
3 months ago
A timely update of an informative chart
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
3 months ago
We had a brief glimpse of two different types of AI. Both are significant
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
3 months ago
We had a brief glimpse of two different types of AI. Both are significant
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)
3 months ago
(Spoiler alert: it has been very successful, but there are some lessons to be learned)
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)
3 months ago
(Spoiler alert: it has been very successful, but there are some lessons to be learned)
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
3 months ago
The Dangers of Politically Aligned AIs and their Negative Effects on Societal Polarization
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...
3 months ago
I just got access to the new Bing AI. My initial thoughts are that our assumptions about the limits of AI were wrong.
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...
3 months ago
I just got access to the new Bing AI. My initial thoughts are that our assumptions about the limits of AI were wrong.
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...
3 months 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...
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...
3 months 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...
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...
3 months 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...
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.
3 months ago
It took me a few minutes to create a fake me giving a fake lecture.
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.
3 months ago
It took me a few minutes to create a fake me giving a fake lecture.
One Useful Thing
Magic for English Majors
Programming in prose in an AI-haunted world
3 months ago
Programming in prose in an AI-haunted world
One Useful Thing
Magic for English Majors
Programming in prose in an AI-haunted world
3 months ago
Programming in prose in an AI-haunted world
Daniel Miessler
NO. 368 | ChinaBalloons, CustomGPT, 90s++…
✅ Please add this address to your "safe senders" or equivalent within your mail client. It'll...
3 months 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
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...
4 months 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
"Do not fear AI, puny humans... that is not meant as a threat."
What we can learn from a completely AI written & illustrated lecture
4 months ago
What we can learn from a completely AI written & illustrated lecture
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
4 months ago
What we can learn from a completely AI written & illustrated lecture
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...
4 months 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 […]
Rozado’s Visual...
The unequal treatment of demographic groups by ChatGPT/OpenAI content moderation system
Should AI systems treat different demographic groups unequally?
4 months ago
Should AI systems treat different demographic groups unequally?
One Useful Thing
The Machines of Mastery
"Anyone can learn anything they want..." and how technology can help
4 months ago
"Anyone can learn anything they want..." and how technology can help
One Useful Thing
The Machines of Mastery
"Anyone can learn anything they want..." and how technology can help
4 months ago
"Anyone can learn anything they want..." and how technology can help
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...
4 months 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...
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...
4 months 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...
Daniel Miessler
Summary: Andrej Kaparthy on Lex Fridman’s Podcast (Late 2022)
9/10 This is a summary of Andrej Kaparthy’s appearance on Lex Fridman’s podcast in late 2022. My...
4 months ago
9/10 This is a summary of Andrej Kaparthy’s appearance on Lex Fridman’s podcast in late 2022. My One-Sentence Summary/Highlight The future of programming is not humans writing code, but neural nets creating weights. Capture Neural networks are mathematical expressions with many...
Daniel Miessler
Summary: Andrej Karpathy on Lex Fridman’s Podcast (Late 2022)
This is member content. Thank you for being a subscriber. This is UL Member Content Subscribe...
4 months ago
This is member content. Thank you for being a subscriber. This is UL Member Content Subscribe Already a member? Login
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.
4 months ago
AI can already beat humans in many measures of creativity. Let's use that to our advantage.
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.
4 months ago
AI can already beat humans in many measures of creativity. Let's use that to our advantage.
Matt Mazur
Friday Updates: Prepping TimelineGPT for Launch, Viva la EmergentMind
Preceden This week consisted of Milan (Preceden’s designer) and I getting TimelineGPT (the AI...
4 months ago
Preceden This week consisted of Milan (Preceden’s designer) and I getting TimelineGPT (the AI content generator we’re working on) from 80% ready to ship to 98%. Lots of small, boring tasks like: Hopefully can launch the v1 early next week, rolling it out to 25% of users and then...
Matt Mazur
LearnGPT is now EmergentMind
Naming things is hard. Shortly after ChatGPT launched at the end of November, I decided to build a...
4 months ago
Naming things is hard. Shortly after ChatGPT launched at the end of November, I decided to build a site to share ChatGPT examples and eventually be the home to educational content to help people learn more about GPT. To my surprise, there were a lot of relevant available .com...
One Useful Thing
The practical guide to using AI to do stuff
A resource for students in my classes (and other interested people).
4 months ago
A resource for students in my classes (and other interested people).
One Useful Thing
The practical guide to using AI to do stuff
A resource for students in my classes (and other interested people).
4 months ago
A resource for students in my classes (and other interested people).
Daniel Miessler
NO. 366 | T-Breach, Siri++, Conception Ages…
🎙️If you're not subscribed to the podcast version of the newsletter, please add it using with your...
4 months ago
🎙️If you're not subscribed to the podcast version of the newsletter, please add it using with your favorite client! APPLE | SPOTIFY | OTHER SECURITY NEWS Another T-Mobile Breach T-Mobile has had another security breach, this one affecting at least 37 million accounts. They...
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...
4 months 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
Your Experience is Your Creativity
Creativity is usually described as an external force that graces you with inspiration. Something...
4 months 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...
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. >...
4 months 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...
One Useful Thing
Becoming strange in the Long Singularity
A sudden increase in AI capability suggests a weirder world in our near future
4 months ago
A sudden increase in AI capability suggests a weirder world in our near future
Matt Mazur
Indie Hacking Week 2 Recap – TimelineGPT Progress, LearnGPT Decision Time
For Martin Luther King weekend my family and I headed to Boone, North Carolina and stayed in a cabin...
4 months ago
For Martin Luther King weekend my family and I headed to Boone, North Carolina and stayed in a cabin for a few days. We went snow tubing at Beech Mountain while we were there, one of the many ski resorts in the area. As is common on vacations, I spent way too much time thinking...
The Berkeley...
Fully Autonomous Real-World Reinforcement Learning with Applications to Mobile Manipulation
Reinforcement learning provides a conceptual framework for autonomous agents to learn from...
4 months 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...
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...
4 months 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...
Rozado’s Visual...
El sesgo político de ChatGPT
A la izquierda del centro político
4 months ago
A la izquierda del centro político
One Useful Thing
All my classes suddenly became AI classes
We can't beat AI, but it doesn't need to beat us (or our students)
4 months ago
We can't beat AI, but it doesn't need to beat us (or our students)
Matt Mazur
LearnGPT is for sale. Contact me if you’re interested.
On Friday I announced that I intended to shut down LearnGPT to focus on Preceden, my main business....
4 months ago
On Friday I announced that I intended to shut down LearnGPT to focus on Preceden, my main business. I didn’t plan to sell LearnGPT because I didn’t think a month-old, pre-revenue project like this would be able to sell for enough to warrant going through a sale. It’s been three...
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...
4 months 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...
Matt Mazur
Indie Hacking Week 1 Recap: Starting TimelineGPT, Ending LearnGPT
Today marks the end of my first week of full-time indie hacking. I feel like I’m getting in a good...
4 months ago
Today marks the end of my first week of full-time indie hacking. I feel like I’m getting in a good groove as far as my daily routine, but I don’t think it’s quite sunk in yet how much flexibility I have in terms of my daily schedule. For example, I’m still waking up early to […]
One Useful Thing
How to... use ChatGPT to boost your writing
The key to using generative AI successfully is prompt-crafting
4 months ago
The key to using generative AI successfully is prompt-crafting
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...
4 months 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...
Daniel Miessler
AI Art Hack: Combining Abstract Designs with Objects
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4 months ago
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One Useful Thing
And the great gears begin to turn again...
Progress in two vital areas had slowed, AI could change that
5 months ago
Progress in two vital areas had slowed, AI could change that
Matt Mazur
Going Full Time on My SaaS After 13 Years
In January 2010 I soft-launched launched Preceden, a web-based timeline maker tool, followed a few...
5 months ago
In January 2010 I soft-launched launched Preceden, a web-based timeline maker tool, followed a few weeks later by a larger launch on HackerNews: Today – almost 13 years to the day since the initial launch – I’m going full time on it and I couldn’t be more excited. A brief history...
Daniel Miessler
Frontview Mirror: 2023 Edition
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5 months ago
This is member content. Thank you for being a subscriber. This is UL Member Content Subscribe Already a member? Login
One Useful Thing
You can't brute force the unsolvable
But a little finesse can help
5 months ago
But a little finesse can help
Daniel Miessler
NO. 363 | FrontView Mirror: 2023 Edition
New Content 💡FRONTVIEW MIRROR: 2023 EDITION 💡MY PHILOSOPHY AND RECOMMENDATIONS ON THE LASTPASS...
5 months 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...
Daniel Miessler
My Answer to the “ChatGPT Isn’t Really Creative” Argument
There’s a river of argument about ChatGPT that goes something like this: I know GPT can do some cool...
5 months ago
There’s a river of argument about ChatGPT that goes something like this: I know GPT can do some cool stuff, but it’s really just a next-word-completion trick. It’s not doing real creativity like humans do. I get that argument, and it’s attractive to me as well, but I think it’s...
AI Snake Oil
Four more things we worked on in 2022
We had a busy 2022. Here are a few things we worked on but didn’t cover here.
5 months ago
We had a busy 2022. Here are a few things we worked on but didn’t cover here.
Daniel Miessler
My Philosophy and Recommendations Around the LastPass Breaches
If you follow Information Security at all you are surely aware of the LastPass breach situation. It...
5 months ago
If you follow Information Security at all you are surely aware of the LastPass breach situation. It started back in August of 2022 as a fairly common breach notification on a blog, but it, unfortunately, turned into more of a blog series. The initial blog was on August 25th,...
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...
5 months 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...
One Useful Thing
Who believes more myths about humans: AI or educated humans?
ChatGPT should do badly where human information is most wrong. But is that true?
5 months ago
ChatGPT should do badly where human information is most wrong. But is that true?
One Useful Thing
The street finds its own uses for things, AI Edition
Breakthrough innovations often come from people who use technology, not create it. So, how are...
5 months ago
Breakthrough innovations often come from people who use technology, not create it. So, how are students using AI?
Daniel Miessler
NO. 362 | Dependency Scanner, Citrix Attacks, AI Analysis…
SECURITY NEWS Google released an open-source scanner for vulnerabilities in project dependencies....
5 months 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...
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...
5 months 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...
One Useful Thing
ChatGPT is my co-founder
Common barriers hold entrepreneurs back, AI can help founders cross them
5 months ago
Common barriers hold entrepreneurs back, AI can help founders cross them
One Useful Thing
How to... use AI to teach some of the hardest skills
When errors, inaccuracies, and inconsistencies are actually very useful
5 months ago
When errors, inaccuracies, and inconsistencies are actually very useful
Daniel Miessler
NO. 361 | GPT++, Apple Security, CISA Cuba…
SECURITY NEWS South Korean authorities are warning that North Koreans are disguising themselves and...
5 months 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...
Daniel Miessler
GPT and Search
There’s a lot of talk about how GPT is going to take over search. Meaning, compete with or take down...
5 months ago
There’s a lot of talk about how GPT is going to take over search. Meaning, compete with or take down Google. I get the excitement there, but there are some pretty serious barriers to having this happen immediately. First, GPT is non-deterministic, meaning you can ask it the same...
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....
5 months 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
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...
6 months ago
The philosopher Harry Frankfurt defined bullshit as speech that is intended to persuade without regard for the truth. By this measure, OpenAI’s new chatbot ChatGPT is the greatest bullshitter ever. Large Language Models (LLMs) are trained to produce
Rozado’s Visual...
What is the IQ of ChatGPT?
Making an AI model take an IQ test
6 months ago
Making an AI model take an IQ test
Daniel Miessler
NO. 360 | NEWS, ANALYSIS & DISCOVERY SERIES
SECURITY NEWS Security researchers found that Chinese electronics company Eufy (part of Anker) has...
6 months 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...
Rozado’s Visual...
The political orientation of the ChatGPT AI system
Applying the Pew Research Political Typology Quiz to a state-of-the-art AI Language model
6 months ago
Applying the Pew Research Political Typology Quiz to a state-of-the-art AI Language model
Daniel Miessler
The UL Boost Protocol
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6 months ago
This is a member-only post. Thank you for being part of this. This is UL Member Content Subscribe Already a member? Login
Daniel Miessler
Napkin Ideas Around What Changes to Expect Post-ChatGPT
Work Replacement Talent Magnification Solopreneuers AI Specialists Idea Dominance Use Cases Random...
6 months 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...
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...
6 months 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
Companies as Alaskan Fishing Boats
What if companies are supposed to be like Alaskan fishing boats? You know, the kind on The Deadliest...
6 months ago
What if companies are supposed to be like Alaskan fishing boats? You know, the kind on The Deadliest Catch. So you have this tiny crew of total badasses. Everyone is a superhero at their particular role because the crew needs to stay extremely small to protect profits. The...
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...
6 months 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...
Daniel Miessler
Sponsored Interview: Erkang Zheng of JupiterOne
In this standalone episode we’re doing a sponsored interview with Erkang Zheng of JupiterOne. So...
6 months 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...
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...
6 months ago
Please be mindful of potential confounds: population density, population behavior, virus virulence drift, herd immunity, etc.
Daniel Miessler
NO. 358 | NEWS, ANALYSIS & DISCOVERY
🦃 We're doing our second-ever discount on UL Membership starting the day after Thanksgiving. But...
6 months ago
🦃 We're doing our second-ever discount on UL Membership starting the day after Thanksgiving. But that's a Friday, so I'm going to enable the discount link earlier. How early, and how much of a discount? You'll have to find out. If the link works before the date, then it's...
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....
6 months 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?...
AI Snake Oil
The bait and switch behind AI risk prediction tools
Toronto recently used an AI tool to predict when a public beach will be safe. It went horribly awry....
6 months ago
Toronto recently used an AI tool to predict when a public beach will be safe. It went horribly awry. The developer claimed the tool achieved over 90% accuracy in predicting when beaches would be safe to swim in. But the tool did much worse: on a majority of the days when the...
Daniel Miessler
NO. 357 | NEWS, ANALYSIS, & DISCOVERY SERIES
SECURITY NEWS Attackers have dumped nearly 8 million Australian health records on the dark web after...
6 months ago
SECURITY NEWS Attackers have dumped nearly 8 million Australian health records on the dark web after breaching a health insurance company with almost 10 million customers. MORE NSA has released guidance asking companies to switch to memory-safe languages like Rust, C#, Go, and...
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...
7 months 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
AI Art Just Opened The Threat to Human Work We Were Expecting from AGI
Let me start with the punchline: Something like 80% of most “knowledge work” is about to get...
7 months ago
Let me start with the punchline: Something like 80% of most “knowledge work” is about to get replaced by artificial intelligence. I’m not professionally educated or trained in AI, but I’ve read probably 30 books and spent thousands of hours thinking about it. I am not talking...
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...
7 months 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....
Daniel Miessler
Twitter’s Blue Checkmark Strategy Reduces Trust in Pursuit of Revenue
When I heard that Twitter was going to open the blue checkmark up to anyone willing to pay $8/month,...
7 months ago
When I heard that Twitter was going to open the blue checkmark up to anyone willing to pay $8/month, I was happy. As a legacy holder of the checkmark there’s a slight band-aid-sting of the check indicating specialness—who doesn’t want to feel special?—but I’d much rather see a...
Daniel Miessler
Reverse Transcription
There are dozens of reasons to be bullish on AI right now, especially in the GPT space where we have...
7 months 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...
Daniel Miessler
NO. 355 | NEWS & ANALYSIS SERIES
SECURITY NEWS ⛔️ There is likely to be a critical TLS vulnerability released this week. Consider...
7 months ago
SECURITY NEWS ⛔️ There is likely to be a critical TLS vulnerability released this week. Consider getting your teams ready by looking for your instances before it drops. ZDNET | GLOBALSIGN | REDDIT DISCUSSION The US accused 13 Chinese nationals of committing espionage-related...
Daniel Miessler
Why Apple Keeps Winning
People are blown away that Apple keeps winning while its competitors are floundering. It’s a simple...
7 months 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...
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....
7 months 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...
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...
7 months 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...
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.
7 months ago
Teachers adapted to the calculator. They can certainly adapt to language models.
Daniel Miessler
Humiliation is Deadly
I’ve been thinking for a few years about the danger presented by humiliated people and groups. That...
7 months ago
I’ve been thinking for a few years about the danger presented by humiliated people and groups. That is, people who not only feel like they have no respect and no options to gain any respect, but who also feel that: They deserve those things, and… That someone else is the cause of...
Daniel Miessler
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...
7 months 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...
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...
7 months 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...
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...
7 months 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...
Daniel Miessler
Something is Up With Meritocracy
I’ve been thinking a lot about meritocracy lately, and I’ve come to believe that opportunity...
8 months ago
I’ve been thinking a lot about meritocracy lately, and I’ve come to believe that opportunity magnifies inequality. Here’s one way I’ve seen it explained: If there are two main reasons for outcome differences: innate talent and environment, and if you equalize environment you will...
Daniel Miessler
Stadia is Google’s Product Strategy
Few things in tech were more predictable than Stadia shutting down. Here’s what I wrote the week it...
8 months ago
Few things in tech were more predictable than Stadia shutting down. Here’s what I wrote the week it came out: Here’s what I said about it in 2021. And here’s my analysis of why this keeps happening: How I Knew Stadia Would Fail The overall reason for this is UI/UX in my opinion,...
AI Snake Oil
Eighteen pitfalls to beware of in AI journalism
A checklist for avoiding hype
8 months ago
A checklist for avoiding hype
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...
8 months 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...
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...
8 months 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...
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...
8 months 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...
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...
8 months 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...
AI Snake Oil
Generative AI models generate AI hype
Over 90% of images of AI produced by a popular image generation tool contain humanoids
9 months ago
Over 90% of images of AI produced by a popular image generation tool contain humanoids
AI Snake Oil
Why are deep learning technologists so overconfident?
Deep learning researchers have proved skeptics wrong before, but the past doesn't predict the...
9 months ago
Deep learning researchers have proved skeptics wrong before, but the past doesn't predict the future.
The Berkeley...
Reverse engineering the NTK: towards first-principles architecture design
Deep neural networks have enabled technological wonders ranging from voice recognition to machine...
9 months 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...
AI Snake Oil
A sneak peek into the book
What makes AI click, what makes it snake oil, and how to tell the difference
9 months ago
What makes AI click, what makes it snake oil, and how to tell the difference
AI Snake Oil
Introducing the AI Snake Oil book project
Something weird happened on November 19, 2019. When a professor shares scholarly slides online, they...
9 months ago
Something weird happened on November 19, 2019. When a professor shares scholarly slides online, they are usually intended for a niche group of peers. You’d be lucky if 20 people looked at them. But that day, the slides Arvind released went viral. They were downloaded tens of...
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...
10 months 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...
Rozado’s Visual...
The Increasing Prominence of Prejudice and Social Justice Rhetoric in UK News Media
I have recently published a report with Matthew Goodwin about the increasing prominence of prejudice...
10 months ago
I have recently published a report with Matthew Goodwin about the increasing prominence of prejudice and social justice rhetoric in UK news media. Recent years have seen considerable debate about the rise of political polarization in British society. Specifically, over the last...
Sam Altman
Helion Needs You
Helion has been progressing even faster than I expected and is on pace in 2024 to 1) demonstrate Q >...
10 months ago
Helion has been progressing even faster than I expected and is on pace in 2024 to 1) demonstrate Q > 1 fusion and 2) resolve all questions needed to design a mass-producible fusion generator.
The goals of the company are quite ambitious—clean, continuous energy for 1...
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...
11 months 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 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...
11 months 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...
The Berkeley...
The Berkeley Crossword Solver
We recently published the Berkeley Crossword Solver (BCS), the current state of the art for solving...
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...
Matt Mazur
AOL Underground Podcast Interview about AOL-Files.com
Back in 1998 when I was 13 years old I got heavily involved in the AOL hacking scene, originally...
a year ago
Back in 1998 when I was 13 years old I got heavily involved in the AOL hacking scene, originally building add-on software called progs (Revolution, Meridian), publishing code libraries called bas files (Alpha32), and later co-founding AOL-Files.com (where I went by the hacker...
The Berkeley...
Rethinking Human-in-the-Loop for Artificial Augmented Intelligence
How do we build and evaluate an AI system for real-world applications? In most AI research, the...
a year ago
How do we build and evaluate an AI system for real-world applications? In most AI research, the evaluation of AI methods involves a training-validation-testing process. The experiments usually stop when the models have good testing performance on the reported datasets because...
The Berkeley...
Designing Societally Beneficial Reinforcement Learning Systems
Deep reinforcement learning (DRL) is transitioning from a research field focused on game playing to...
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...
Rozado’s Visual...
The Increasing Frequency of Terms Denoting Political Extremism in U.S. and U.K. News Media
Published manuscript Twitter Thread Introduction I summarize here a published study co-authored with...
a year ago
Published manuscript Twitter Thread Introduction I summarize here a published study co-authored with Eric Kaufmann where we examine longitudinally the prevalence of terms denoting far-right and far-left political extremism in more than 30 million written news and opinion articles...
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...
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...
Andrej Karpathy blog
Deep Neural Nets: 33 years ago and 33 years from now
.post-header h1 {
font-size: 35px;
}
.post pre,
.post code {
background-color: #fcfcfc;
...
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...
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...
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...
Rozado’s Visual...
The Prevalence of Prejudice-Denoting Terms in Spanish Newspapers
Published paper Twitter summary Introduction Previous scholarly literature here and here has...
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...
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...
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...
Rozado’s Visual...
Frecuencia de términos en el periódico generalista más leído de España
Frecuencia de términos en el periódico generalista más leído de España: El País Twitter post...
a year ago
Frecuencia de términos en el periódico generalista más leído de España: El País Twitter post Verification of integrity of frequency counts: https://zenodo.org/record/5674590
Matt Mazur
Nick Kolenda Reviews Preceden
Nick Kolenda is an author, teacher, and consultant who specializes in the psychology of marketing...
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
Helion
I’m delighted to be investing more in Helion. Helion is by far the most promising approach to fusion...
a year ago
I’m delighted to be investing more in Helion. Helion is by far the most promising approach to fusion I’ve seen.
David and Chris are two of the most impressive founders and builders (in the sense of building fusion machines, in addition to building companies!) I have ever met,...
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...
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
Rozado’s Visual...
Prevalence in News Media of Two Competing Hypotheses about COVID-19 Origins
Published article Quick Twitter summary Introduction As of August 2021, the origins of the...
a year ago
Published article Quick Twitter summary Introduction As of August 2021, the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic remain a mystery. This essay summarizes a recent article I published about the prevalence in news media articles of two popular hypotheses...
Rozado’s Visual...
Prevalence of Prejudice-Denoting Words in News Media Discourse
Summary of manuscript “Prevalence of Prejudice-Denoting Words in News Media Discourse: A...
a year ago
Summary of manuscript “Prevalence of Prejudice-Denoting Words in News Media Discourse: A Chronological Analysis”
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...
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”
Andrej Karpathy blog
A from-scratch tour of Bitcoin in Python
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font-size: 15px;
...
a year ago
.wrap {
max-width: 900px;
}
p {
font-family: sans-serif;
font-size: 15px;
font-weight: 300;
overflow-wrap: break-word; /* allow wrapping of very very long strings, like txids */
}
.post pre,
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background-color: #fafafa;
font-size: 13px; /*...
Andrej Karpathy blog
Short Story on AI: Forward Pass
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border: none;
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over a year ago
p {
text-align: justify;
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border: none;
background-color: #eee;
}
The inspiration for this short story came to me while reading Kevin Lacker’s Giving GPT-3 a Turing Test. It is probably worth it (though not required) to skim this post to get...
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...
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...
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
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...
Andrej Karpathy blog
Biohacking Lite
Throughout my life I never paid too much attention to health, exercise, diet or nutrition. I knew...
over a year ago
Throughout my life I never paid too much attention to health, exercise, diet or nutrition. I knew that you’re supposed to get some exercise and eat vegetables or something, but it stopped at that (“mom said”-) level of abstraction. I also knew that I can probably get away with...
Sam Altman
Idea Generation
The most common question prospective startup founders ask is how to get ideas for startups. The...
over a year ago
The most common question prospective startup founders ask is how to get ideas for startups. The second most common question is if you have any ideas for their startup.
But giving founders an idea almost always doesn’t work. Having ideas is among the most important qualities for...
Sam Altman
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...
Sam Altman
Funding for COVID-19 Projects
I’m trying to fund startups/projects helping with COVID-19, because it’s basically the one thing I...
over a year ago
I’m trying to fund startups/projects helping with COVID-19, because it’s basically the one thing I know how to do that can help. I think we will soon have enough testing capacity, so now I’d like to start funding more startups working on:
Producing a lot of ventilators or...
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...
Sam Altman
Hard Startups
The most counterintuitive secret about startups is that it’s often easier to succeed with a hard...
over a year ago
The most counterintuitive secret about startups is that it’s often easier to succeed with a hard startup than an easy one. A hard startup requires a lot more money, time, coordination, or technological development than most startups. A good hard startup is one that will be...
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...
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...
Sam Altman
How To Be Successful
I’ve observed thousands of founders and thought a lot about what it takes to make a huge amount of...
over a year ago
I’ve observed thousands of founders and thought a lot about what it takes to make a huge amount of money or to create something important. Usually, people start off wanting the former and end up wanting the latter.
Here are 13 thoughts about how to achieve such outlier...
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...
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.
...
Sam Altman
Productivity
I think I am
at least somewhat more productive than average, and people sometimes ask me...
over a year ago
I think I am
at least somewhat more productive than average, and people sometimes ask me for
productivity tips. So I decided to just write them all down in one place.
Compound
growth gets discussed as a financial concept, but it works in careers as well,
and it is magic. A...
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...
Sam Altman
A Clarification
I made a point in this post inelegantly in a way that was
easy to misunderstand, so I’d like to...
over a year ago
I made a point in this post inelegantly in a way that was
easy to misunderstand, so I’d like to clarify it.
I didn’t mean that we need to tolerate brilliant homophobic
jerks in the lab so that we can have scientific progress.
Although there are famous...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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
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...
Sam Altman
Tech Workers' Values
For good and bad, technology has become a central force in all
our lives.
As members of the...
over a year ago
For good and bad, technology has become a central force in all
our lives.
As members of the community, we're interested in ways in which
tech companies can use their collective power to protect privacy, rule of law,
freedom of expression, and other fundamental American rights....
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...
Sam Altman
Greg
A lot of people ask me what the ideal cofounder looks
like. I now have an answer: Greg...
over a year ago
A lot of people ask me what the ideal cofounder looks
like. I now have an answer: Greg Brockman.
Every successful startup I know has at least one person who
provides the force of will to make the startup happen. I’d thought a lot
about this in the abstract while advising YC...
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,...
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...
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...
Stories by Andrej...
Virtual Reality: still not quite there, again.
over a year ago
Andrej Karpathy blog
A Survival Guide to a PhD
This guide is patterned after my “Doing well in your courses”, a post I wrote a long time ago on...
over a year ago
This guide is patterned after my “Doing well in your courses”, a post I wrote a long time ago on some of the tips/tricks I’ve developed during my undergrad. I’ve received nice comments about that guide, so in the same spirit, now that my PhD has come to an end I wanted to compile...
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,...
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
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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...
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...
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