Sarah

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on the atlas · 167

highlights · 50

Imagine a generative model trained on paintings up until just before the time of the cubists; might it be that by exploring that model it would be possible to discover cubism?
Using Artificial Intelligence to Augment Human Intelligence
a means to discover new aesthetics and new representations of reality
The artist and the machine – Michael Nielsen
It observes, almost certainly correctly, that imagination and ambition themselves play a large role
We Need a New Science of Progress - The Atlantic
shouldering some of the metacognition
Why books don't work
Will readers notice if they solved a problem but missed the insights it was supposed to reveal?
Why books don't work
Readers must decide which exercises to do and when. Readers must run their own feedback loops: did they clearly understand the ideas involved in the exercise? If not, what should they do next? What should students do if they’re completely stuck?
Why books don't work
Readers must run their own feedback loops.
Why books don't work
What questions should I be asking? How should I summarize what I’m reading?”
Why books don't work
Technologies emerge almost spontaneously when the necessary conditions are in place
Import AI 431: Technological Optimism and Appropriate Fear
one question that intrigues me is whether compression is actually fundamental to intelligence.Is it possible that forcing information into a smaller state forces a model to learn more useful patterns and abstractions?
On the Tradeoffs of SSMs and Transformers | Goomba Lab
marginal distortion occurs with perfect linear perspective
Perspective Distortions: Why Normal Cameras Make Faces Look Weird | Aaron Hertzmann’s blog
natural thermodynamic perspective on deep learning
DSLT 0. Distilling Singular Learning Theory — LessWrong
overindex and overimitate
Language models are weird for the same reason human cultures are weird
no prior knowledge of the concept
Bridging the human–AI knowledge gap through concept discovery and transfer in AlphaZero | PNAS
analyzing the rank of the span of the internal representations of AZ’s and the human’s games.
Bridging the human–AI knowledge gap through concept discovery and transfer in AlphaZero | PNAS
However, this approach still analyzes through the lens of , a bias that limits what we can discover from .
Bridging the human–AI knowledge gap through concept discovery and transfer in AlphaZero | PNAS
teachability (whether the concept is transferable to another AI agent) and novelty (whether the concept contains information not present in human chess games)
Bridging the human–AI knowledge gap through concept discovery and transfer in AlphaZero | PNAS
excavates vectors that represent concepts from AlphaZero’s internal representations using convex optimization
Bridging the human–AI knowledge gap through concept discovery and transfer in AlphaZero | PNAS
Ignorance is bliss. Enjoy the permanent underclass, it’s fun down here.
The trillion-dollar perception gap between Silicon Valley and normal people.
lets us steer model training
Intentionally Designing the Future of AI
So we train a second copy of Claude to work backwards
Natural Language Autoencoders \ Anthropic
we gain sample efficiency by embedding physics structure into a neural state-space model (NSSM)
Learning plasma dynamics and robust rampdown trajectories with predict-first experiments at TCV | Nature Communications
neural state-space model (NSSM)
Learning plasma dynamics and robust rampdown trajectories with predict-first experiments at TCV | Nature Communications
There remains the important issue of longer-term degradation of the REBCO
Will neutrons compromise the operation of superconducting magnets in a fusion plant? | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology
we were way too isolated and insulated in fact, from the energy development world.
The race to fusion with Dennis Whyte | MIT Energy Initiative
oh, this is all going to be slow. You can’t go fast.
The race to fusion with Dennis Whyte | MIT Energy Initiative
So the engineered thing that we make is heat.
The race to fusion with Dennis Whyte | MIT Energy Initiative
Well, cause it can’t go anywhere because it’s contained, it’s confined by the gravity of the sun itself.
The race to fusion with Dennis Whyte | MIT Energy Initiative
That evolution was the biggest single change in my professional career.
The race to fusion with Dennis Whyte | MIT Energy Initiative
And then what was dropped into our lap was really an opportunity to translate our science expertise into the idea of actually making an energy source.
The race to fusion with Dennis Whyte | MIT Energy Initiative
our system favors like inventiveness and innovation
The race to fusion with Dennis Whyte | MIT Energy Initiative
They’re inherently distributed forms of generation. They’re all over the place. And that necessitates a simultaneous change in the structure of the grid.
The race to fusion with Dennis Whyte | MIT Energy Initiative
The analogy here was inspired by Yejin Choi’s work on commonsense intelligence — do check out her work if you haven’t already! Also, Matt Mason’s research continues to be a constant source of inspiration (see his blog posts on the fascinating nuances of dexterous manipulation e.g. in clutter).
Generalist - The Dark Matter of Robotics: Physical Commonsense
If we could somehow distinguish between ‘stable’ and ‘unstable’ explanations then we would know to what extent to trust their corresponding answer distributions.
Cycles of Thought: Measuring LLM Confidence through Stable Explanations
Likewise, deciding what to say or ask can be viewed through the lens of Bayesian belief updating or information gain, where the goal is to reduce uncertainty about user intent.
Alignment has a Fantasia Problem
Challenge 1. Modeling User Uncertainty
Alignment has a Fantasia Problem
It focused on having a generic, over-confident, pseudo-profound blogger voice despite having 15,000 words of context from my best blogs
If Anyone Bursts It, Effective Altruism Dies
If we learned that a person responded to x with y, what sort of a person would we think they are?
The Persona Selection Model: Why AI Assistants might Behave like Humans
If we met a person who behaved this way, we’d most likely suspect that they had emotions but were hiding them; we might further conclude that the person is inauthentic or dishonest. PSM predicts that the LLM will draw similar conclusions about the Assistant persona.
The Persona Selection Model: Why AI Assistants might Behave like Humans
Then the executives of the companies will face a choice: Abandon the faithful CoT golden era, or fall behind competitors. (Or the secret third option: Coordinate with each other & the government to make sure everyone who matters (all the big players at least) stick to faithful CoT).
The Most Forbidden Technique — LessWrong
This is a coordination problem. And solving it starts with measurement.
How AI Is Learning to Think in Secret
functional emotions: patterns of expression and behavior modeled after humans under the influence of an emotion, which are mediated by underlying abstract representations of emotion concepts.
Emotion Concepts and their Function in a Large Language Model
The value-loading problem was framed as perhaps unsolvable in principle, and every discussion of AI risk proceeded from that assumption.
Alignment Is Proven To Be Solvable - by SE Gyges
It is easier to know that something isn’t right than it is to figure out what to replace it with
Some relationships deepen when you tell the truth and some end
But with groups, there was a whole set of social dynamics that made people turn on whoever challenged the status quo.
Some relationships deepen when you tell the truth and some end
1 Rodriguez’ diary, Rebel Without a Crew, is one example. “The Story of VaccinateCA” is another. I also like “Playing to Win” by Alice Maz. A Guide to the Perplexed with Werner Herzog. Surely, you're joking Mr. Feynman. Robert Caro’s The Years of Lyndon Johnson.
How to walk through walls - by Henrik Karlsson
My boss said that if you are someone who is already creative, and then you become technical, then you are unstoppable.
How to walk through walls - by Henrik Karlsson
The idea is to experience creating your own images and/or stories no matter how crude they are and then manipulating them through editing.
How to walk through walls - by Henrik Karlsson
I generally advise people working on wicked problems to aim for "jogging" rather than "sprinting" - a metaphor I like because it emphasizes that this is fully consistent with trying to finish as fast as possible.
Useful Vices for Wicked Problems
Starting [at a young age] he’s read everything that he could find about business. The subject that interests him, he’s read newspapers, biographies, trade press. He went over to his grandfather who was a grocer and he read the progressive grocer magazine, and he read articles on how to stock a meat department... What he’s really done is he’s created this immense vertical filing cabinet in his brain of layers and layers and layers of files of information that he can draw back on now for more than 70 years worth of data.
Curius / Onboarding