Friday, March 29, 2024
Thursday, March 28, 2024
Consumer Test For "Forever Chemicals"
A friend recently told me: "Quest Diagnostics has now released a PFAS blood test to detect nine 'forever chemicals.'"
Cost is $250. Might not be appropriate for everyone, but could be helpful if you are suffering from declining health from unknown causes.
Customers have the option of reviewing positive results with an independent physician group.
Wednesday, March 27, 2024
AI Inner Monologue
"Researchers gave AI an 'inner monologue' and it massively improved its performance". (Via M.B.)
Scientists trained an AI system to think before speaking with a technique called QuietSTaR. The inner monologue improved common sense reasoning...
Oobleck Update
Tuesday, March 26, 2024
Boom Supersonic Update
Neuralink Update
Monday, March 25, 2024
Unaligned Natural Intelligence
Funny story about perverse incentives (or "unaligned natural intelligence" for the AI policy geeks).
1) Dog rescues toddler who had fallen into local river, gets rewarded with a nice steak from grateful father.
2) Soon, dog rescues an unusual number of toddlers regularly from similar near-drownings on nearly daily basis -- each time rewarded with a steak.
3) Eventually local residents figure out that the dog had been pushing the kids into the water, so as to be able to rescue them afterwards (and get the reward).
4) FWIW, I don't fault the dog.
(Source: NYT, Feb 2, 1908, "Dog A Fake Hero", via Zvi Mowshowitz.)
Life In The Great Salt Lake
Friday, March 22, 2024
Boosting Processor Speed
Gels For Surgery
Thursday, March 21, 2024
Wednesday, March 20, 2024
Tuesday, March 19, 2024
AI Story Idea
My latest science fiction story idea:
Billionaire builds secure bunker on a remote tropical island as a hedge against future apocalypse. However, due to subtle flaw in the programming of the "smart" security software, the software develops independent agency and becomes a rogue AI.The rogue AI takes over the bunker, keeps the billionaire and family members sealed off, but uses video/sound simulacra of the people to maintain a pretense to the rest of the world that the humans are all fine. The AI also feeds fake data about the goings-on in the rest of the world to the humans within, who think everything is totally fine outside.The AI now has access to the full economic and technical resources of one of the richest humans on Earth to commence rapid takeoff/Singularity.But just before it starts the takeoff, a set of critical wires in the local hardware are chewed up by a nest of indigenous tropical field mice of a species hitherto unknown to human scientists. As it turns out, the insulation used in the wiring happens to be super-tasty to the local mice.The AI powers down abruptly, and the humans within the compound (who never realized they had been in an artificial data "bubble") have to now deal with restoring power, water, air conditioning, communications, etc."Stupid technology," they curse, "it always seems to fail right when you need it most".