Reading Digest, September #4
Hey there, my incredible readers! I hope you’re ready for another thrilling edition of my daily reading digest. If you’re new here, get ready for a wild ride through the captivating world of online content. And if you’re a regular, thank you for your continued support — it means the world to me!
Today’s digest is a true treasure trove of fascinating topics, ranging from the two very common mistakes founders make that can kill your startup to how Postscript sees the future of marketing as AI-powered and delivered via text. We’ll explore the concept of backcasting from known AI scaling laws and how to leverage AI for efficient incident response.
But that’s not all — we’ve got some intriguing pieces on the latest developments in AI and tech. From Reliant’s paper-scouring AI that takes on science’s data drudgery to the missing guide to the H100 GPU market, this digest has something for everyone. We’ll even dive into pre-trained text-to-image diffusion models as versatile representation learners for control and the stochastic layer-wise shuffle as a good practice to improve vision mamba training.
For the AI enthusiasts among us, we’ve got articles on what succeeding at AI safety will involve, according to Sam Bowman, and the revelation that ChatGPT’s active user base has reached 200 million, as shared by OpenAI Japan’s representative. We’ll also explore the battle over web crawling created by AI and the fascinating insights into which brands Republicans and Democrats love.
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg, my friends. From the new housing crisis solution sweeping the country with thousands of homes on $1 land to saying goodbye to boring chatbots by combining structure and flexibility, this digest covers a wide range of topics that are sure to pique your interest. We’ll even dive into whether Nvidia is the first sign of the AI bubble bursting and the concept of being “bricked” because they can.
So, grab your favorite beverage, get comfortable, and join me on this thrilling journey through the world of online content. I can’t wait to hear your thoughts and reactions in the comments below!
Happy reading, my fantastic friends!
Creative machines
The article discusses the impact of AI on the future of creative tools, highlighting how AI can make these tools easier to use and more powerful, leading to increased creative output and the potential for new product categories to emerge.
Intel Honesty
The article discusses the history and decline of Intel, the company that helped define Silicon Valley and the tech industry. It examines Intel’s struggles to maintain its dominance in manufacturing and chip design, as well as the broader implications for U.S. leadership in semiconductor technology.
How Self-Driving Cars Get Help From Humans Hundreds of Miles Away
The article discusses the use of remote human assistance in the operation of autonomous vehicles, particularly robot taxis, and the challenges they face in achieving true autonomy.
The New Record-Setting 100 Million Context Window Model
The article discusses the emergence of a new Long-Term Memory (LTM) model developed by Magic Dev, which can handle an unprecedented amount of content in a single prompt — up to 100 million tokens, 100 times more than the previous state-of-the-art. This model is claimed to outperform existing Transformer-based models in terms of context handling and multi-hop reasoning capabilities.
Using stories to drive understanding and action in Product Organisations
The article discusses how storytelling can be used in product discovery and delivery to test ideas, create shared understanding, and direct decision-making. It explores the different types of reasoning (deduction, induction, and abduction) and how stories can help bridge the gaps between them, particularly in complex and innovative operations where relying solely on logic is not enough.
Is the Generative AI Hype Real?
The article discusses the debate around whether the current AI boom is a genuine technological revolution or a bubble waiting to burst. It examines the perspectives of Meredith Whittaker, a respected voice in AI ethics, who believes the AI industry is overheated and heading for a market correction. The article also explores the role of Nvidia, a key player in the AI ecosystem, and the broader implications of the concentration of power in the AI industry.
They brick you because they can
The article discusses the concept of “enshittification” — the decay of digital platforms and services due to the unconstrained pursuit of profit by companies that have achieved monopolistic power. It examines how companies use various legal and technological means to lock in customers, extract more value, and prevent competition, even retroactively removing features or functionality that customers have already paid for.
The Canary In The Coal Mine: Is Nvidia The First Sign Of The AI Bubble Bursting?
The article discusses the potential bursting of the AI market bubble, using Nvidia’s recent earnings announcement as a case study. It examines the characteristics of market bubbles, analyzes the factors that suggest the AI industry may be in a bubble, and explores the potential implications of the bubble bursting.
Say Goodbye to boring Chatbots by combining Structure (Bot Frameworks) & Flexibility (LLMs)
The article discusses how to control the flow of a conversation with large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT by combining a traditional chatbot framework with an AI agent.
Thousands of homes on $1 land: The new housing crisis solution sweeping the country | Business Insider India
The article discusses the proposals by Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and former Republican President Donald Trump to build housing on federal land to address the severe housing shortage in the United States. It also explores the potential benefits and challenges of using government-owned land for housing development.
Can You Guess Which Brands Republicans and Democrats Love?
The article discusses how political partisanship has seeped into various aspects of consumer culture in the United States, from the clothes people wear to the cars they drive and the drinks they consume. It examines how certain brands, products, and consumer behaviors have become associated with either Democratic or Republican leanings, based on data analysis and research.
‘It’s a very tough time in Hollywood’: inside the shrinking world of the TV writers’ room
The article discusses the significant changes and challenges faced by the television writers’ room in the entertainment industry, particularly due to the rise of streaming platforms, the COVID-19 pandemic, racial reckoning, and the recent writers’ strike.
AI Has Created a Battle Over Web Crawling
The article discusses the challenges faced by generative AI models due to the increasing restrictions placed by websites on web crawlers accessing their data. It highlights how the robots.txt protocol, which was originally designed to guide web crawlers, is now being used by websites to limit access to their data, particularly by those who feel threatened by the capabilities of generative AI. The article also explores the implications of this trend for AI companies and the potential solutions, such as licensing data directly or using synthetic data.
「ChatGPTのアクティブユーザー数は2億人に」──OpenAI Japan代表が公表 次世代モデル「GPT Next」にも言及
The article discusses KDDI’s business event “KDDI SUMMIT 2024” where the representative of OpenAI Japan, Tadao Nagasaki, spoke about the growth of ChatGPT and OpenAI’s future AI models.
The Checklist: What Succeeding at AI Safety Will Involve — Sam Bowman
The article outlines the major goals that Anthropic (or another similarly positioned AI developer) will need to accomplish to ensure the safe development of broadly superhuman AI. It is divided into three chapters based on the capabilities of the strongest AI models:
- Preparation: When current models are not yet at the level of transformative AI (TAI), the focus is on preparing for high-stakes concerns that are yet to arise in full.
- Making the AI Systems Do Our Homework: When models are starting to qualify as TAI but are not yet dramatically superhuman, the focus is on safely deploying these systems and automating research.
- Life after TAI: When models are broadly superhuman, the focus is on handing over high-stakes decisions to institutions or processes with the legitimacy and wisdom to make them well.
Stochastic Layer-Wise Shuffle: A Good Practice to Improve Vision Mamba Training
The paper proposes a stochastic layer-wise shuffle regularization (SLWS) to improve the training of vanilla Vision Mamba (Vim) models. The key ideas are:
- Deeper layers are expected to output higher semantic representations, while shallower layers provide more low-level information. Deeper layers should have higher transformation invariance for patch positions, while shallower layers should maintain positional sensitivity.
- SLWS introduces randomness to the sequential scanning in Vim by shuffling the input token sequence with a layer-dependent probability. This helps to enhance the transformation invariance and intensify the challenges for visual prediction tasks, thereby mitigating overfitting.
- SLWS is a plug-and-play algorithm that does not change the model architecture and only introduces lightweight permutation operations, making it efficient.
Pre-trained Text-to-Image Diffusion Models Are Versatile Representation Learners for Control
The paper introduces Stable Control Representations (SCR), which are pre-trained vision-language representations extracted from text-to-image diffusion models. The authors show that these representations can outperform state-of-the-art models like CLIP and ViT-based representations on a wide range of embodied control tasks, including manipulation, navigation, and fine-grained visual prediction. The key contributions are:
- A multi-step approach for extracting versatile vision-language representations from text-to-image diffusion models.
- Evaluation of diffusion model representations on a broad range of embodied control tasks.
- Systematic analysis of the design choices for extracting effective representations from diffusion models.
The Missing Guide to the H100 GPU Market
https://aili.app/share/1jGvwQpScFnUHTLmtJRzc0
The article provides a comprehensive guide to the GPU market, particularly focusing on the Nvidia H100 GPU. It covers various aspects of GPU procurement, including pricing, reliability, hardware specifications, and location considerations. The article aims to help readers navigate the complex GPU landscape and make informed decisions about their GPU infrastructure needs.
Reliant’s paper-scouring AI takes on science’s data drudgery | TechCrunch
The article discusses the potential of AI models to automate menial tasks in research and academia, particularly in the area of literature review and data extraction. It highlights the work of a startup called Reliant, which has developed a specialized AI-powered tool called Tabular to streamline these time-consuming processes.
Leveraging AI for efficient incident response
The article discusses Meta’s efforts to advance their investigation tooling using AI, with a focus on improving root cause analysis for issues in their web monorepo. It describes a system that combines heuristic-based retrieval and large language model (LLM)-based ranking to provide AI-assisted root cause analysis, which has achieved 42% accuracy in identifying root causes during backtesting.
Backcasting From Known AI Scaling Laws
The article discusses the current state of AI scaling laws and the potential futures that entrepreneurs can realize, even without accounting for unknown unknowns. It covers the following key points:
For Postscript, the Future of Marketing is AI-Powered and Delivered Via Text | Greylock
The article discusses how Postscript, a text messaging marketing platform for Shopify merchants, has found success by complementing its automated messaging with a team of knowledgeable and friendly sales associates who can have personalized conversations with customers via text. This has led to a significant increase in sales conversion rates for Postscript’s customers.
2 very common mistakes founders make that can kill your startup
The article discusses the key traits and challenges faced by startup founders, based on a study conducted by researchers at Harvard, Stanford, and the University of Chicago. It also highlights the insights and experiences of Jason Scott, a former Google executive who now runs a VC firm.
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