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”, 1984 (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 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, but in the long-run, use it and 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”, 2002; “Inside the Mind of a Savant”, 2006 (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
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“General knowledge norms: Updated and expanded from the 1980 norms”, et al 2013
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Paris syndrome (ouiaboo)
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
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“Prof. Dr. Style: Top 10 Web Design Styles of 1993 (Vernacular Web #3)”
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 keep some alive near-indefinitely… at staggering costs like $30k/day)
Philosophy
Fiction
Miscellaneous
Books
Nonfiction:
Fiction:
Film/TV
Live-action:
Animated:
Music
MLP:
Doujin:
Misc: