December 2023 News
December 2023 Gwern.net newsletter with links on TODO
December 2023’s Gwern.net newsletter is now out; previous, November 2023 (archives). This is a collation of links and summary of major changes, overlapping with my Changelog; brought to you by my donors on Patreon.
Writings
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N/A
Links
AI
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“Deep Differentiable Logic Gate Networks”, et al 2022
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“Looped Transformers as Programmable Computers”, et al 2023
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“Language Modeling Is Compression”, et al 2023
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“Sequential Modeling Enables Scalable Learning for Large Vision Models”, et al 2023 (everything is sequence prediction)
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“How Jensen Huang’s Nvidia Is Powering the A.I. Revolution” (a history of Nvidia & its pivot to DL, and its executives’ views on why AI risk does not exist)
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“Autonomous chemical research with large language models”, et al 2023 (“…driven by GPT-4 that autonomously designs, plans and performs complex experiments by incorporating large language models empowered by tools such as internet and documentation search, code execution and experimental automation.”); “Evaluating Language-Model Agents on Realistic Autonomous Tasks”, et al 2023
Genetics
Everything Is Heritable:
Recent Evolution:
Engineering:
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FDA Approves First Gene Therapy for Treatment of Certain Patients with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy
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“Polygenic Embryo Screening: High Approval Despite Substantial Concerns from the U.S. Public”, et al 2023
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“Complete human day 14 post-implantation embryo models from naive ES cells”, et al 2023
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“Game of clones: Science is immortalizing Argentina’s top polo horses”
Statistics/Meta-Science
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“A National Evil”: how iodization was discovered & goiter defeated in Switzerland
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“Stern and Gerlach: How a Bad Cigar Helped Reorient Atomic Physics”, Friedrich & Herschbach 200321ya (media; how a double accident helped prove early quantum mechanics)
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“The survival time of chocolates in hospital wards: covert observational study”, et al 2013
Politics/Religion
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“Aum Shinrikyo: Insights Into How Terrorists Develop Biological and Chemical Weapons”, et al 2023 ( tacit knowledge & Aum’s highly successful chemical warfare vs failed biowarfare programmes)
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“States are trashing troves of masks and pandemic gear as huge, costly stockpiles linger and expire” (why no one wants to invest in PPE manufacturing capability, and there will be shortages in the next pandemic)
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“Math Team: and other horrible things you do to get into Stanford”, Benedict Hsieh
Psychology/Biology
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“Taurine deficiency as a driver of aging”, et al 2023
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“Cat owners are resorting to China’s underground marketplace to buy antivirals for a feline coronavirus” (on GS-441524 for curing FIP)
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“Self-Experimentation: A Call for Change”, Neuringer 198143ya; Andrew Gelman revisits Seth Roberts’s life, Quantified Self, & the Shangri-La Diet
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“Diminished State Space Theory of Human Aging”, et al 2023 (what sort of bad decisions do old people make, and why?)
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“Feline faces: Unraveling the social function of domestic cat facial signals”, 2023
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“Intentional Fire-Spreading by “Firehawk” Raptors in Northern Australia”, et al 2017
Technology
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“Why Google Stores Billions of Lines of Code in a Single Repository”, 2016; “Software Engineering at Google”, 2017; “Big Ball Of Mud”
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“A Matter of Millimeters: The story of Qantas flight 32”, Admiral Cloudberg
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“Counting YouTube videos via random prefix sampling”, Zhou et al 201113ya; “How big is YouTube?” (~13.4b videos, ~4b in 2023, doubling every 2-3 years)
Economics
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“Are CEOs born leaders? Lessons from traits of a million individuals”, et al 2018; “Founder personality and entrepreneurial outcomes: A large-scale field study of technology startups”, 2023 (using tweets to predict startup success)
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“Generate” the Future of Work through AI: Empirical Evidence from Online Labor Markets, et al 2023; “AI and Jobs: Has the Inflection Point Arrived? Evidence from an Online Labor Platform”, et al 2023
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“Gibbon was right: The decline and fall of the Roman economy”, 2007
Philosophy
Fiction
Miscellaneous
Books
Nonfiction:
Fiction:
Film/TV
Live-action:
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Demolition Man
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Elf 2003
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A Christmas Carol 1984
Animated:
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Fantastic Mr. Fox, Wes Anderson (200915ya)
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The Boy and the Heron, Hayao Miyazaki
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Promare, Imaishi (2019)
Music
MLP:
Doujin:
Misc: