May 2024 News
May 2024 Gwern.net newsletter with links on TODO
May 2024’s Gwern.net newsletter is now out; previous, April 2024 (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
Links
AI
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“ChatGPT can talk, but OpenAI employees sure can’t”; “Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees”
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“Afterword to Vernor Vinge’s novel, True Names”, Minsky 198440ya (challenges to preference learning & safe agents)
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“Machine Learning as a Tool for Hypothesis Generation”, 2024
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“The carbon emissions of writing and illustrating are lower for AI than for humans”, et al 2024
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“The Longest Training Run: Training runs of large machine learning systems are likely to last less than 14-15 months. This is because longer runs will be outcompeted by runs that start later” (wait equation)
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“TinyStories: How Small Can Language Models Be & Still Speak Coherent English?”, 2023 (<0.01b-parameter models can learn & write fluent stories by GPT-4 knowledge-distillation)
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Marvin Minsky, 1970, on why race to AGI: “…the Russians are only about 3 years behind us in AI work. With our system switched off, they would have us at their mercy.”
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“The Saga of 1961’s Data”, Hardt & Recht (fulltext; early NN pioneers: radically inadequate data & compute for digit recognition, but powerful methods that scaled as predicted)
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“MLPs Learn In-Context”, 2024 (good MLP scaling for meta-learning vs Transformers)
Genetics
Everything Is Heritable:
Recent Evolution:
Engineering:
Statistics/Meta-Science
Politics/Religion
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“How 3M Discovered, Then Concealed, the Dangers of Forever Chemicals” (and how 3M insiders worked the system of a pathological corporation to eventually expose PFOS)
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The 2013 Chinese rare-earth embargo (users of embargos should always keep in mind that embargos tend to be self-defeating in free markets: short-run elasticities are less than long-run elasticities. Embargos can be a useful weapon in the short run, but in the long-run, “use it & lose it”.)
Psychology/Biology
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“Islands of Genius: Artistic brilliance and a dazzling memory can sometimes accompany autism and other developmental disorders”, Treffert & Wallace 200222ya; “Inside the Mind of a Savant”, Treffert & Christensen 200618ya (on Kim Peek)
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“The Mystery of S., the Man with an Impossible Memory” (Luria’s mnemonist)
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“Crows ‘count’ the number of self-generated vocalizations”, et al 2024 (birds can count out loud)
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“Effects of Semaglutide on Chronic Kidney Disease in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes”, et al 2024
GIP/GLP-1 weight-loss drugs are still on track (even excluding the addiction stuff) to be some of the best things to happen to humanity in my lifetime. You should probably read more about them. (The addiction stuff remains one of the most interesting open questions for psychology & psychiatry right now.)
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“General knowledge norms: Updated and expanded from the Nelson & Narens 198044ya norms”, et al 2013
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Paris syndrome (ouiaboos)
Technology
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SpaceX can cancel vested equity of ex-employees (and also ban them from ever selling any vested equity)
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“‘You Are My Friend’: Early Androids and Artificial Speech”, Jessica 2024
Economics
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“How ECMO Is Redefining Death: A medical technology can keep people alive when they otherwise would have died. Where will it lead?” (heart-lung machines can now keep some alive for months or years—even ambulatory… at staggering costs like $30k/day)
Philosophy
Fiction
Miscellaneous
Books
Nonfiction:
Fiction:
Film/TV
Live-action:
Animated:
Music
MLP:
Doujin:
Misc: