Bbenzon
Description
Humankind got its start on the African savannas some hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years ago. At various times in our cultural history we’ve moved to distinctly new cultural ground, as it were. And so we are moving now, and have been for the past half century. This blog is how I see that move. Intellectually, I'm broadly interested in culture and the brain. Within that compass, anything could show up here. Literature and films (including animation), certainly, music as well, and graffiti. But, other things may show up as well. It's a blog, don't you know, it moves.
MY BLOGS
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New Savanna
http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/
Humankind got its start on the African savannas some hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years ago. At various times in our cultural history we’ve moved to distinctly new cultural ground, as it were. And so we are moving now, and have been for the past half century. This blog is how I see that move. I'm broadly interested in culture and the brain. Within that compass, anything could show up here. Literature and films (including animation), certainly, music as well, and graffiti. But, other things may show up as well. It's a blog, don't you know, it moves.
LATEST ARTICLES ( 7356 )
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Here Come the Sun
Posted on 10 October 2024
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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How to Say “No” to Our A.I. Overlords
The NYTimes has a useful article about how to avoid the AI that Google, Microsoft and Meta are foisting on us: Big tech brands like Google, Apple, Microsoft... Read more
Posted on 10 October 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Nobel House [Media Notes 139]
I’m talking about the miniseries from 1988, not the James Clavell novel on which it is based. Yikes! Not sure why I sat through all four episodes, but it did. Read more
Posted on 09 October 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Hossenfelder: The 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics Did Not Go To Physics -- This...
Hossenfelder comments: "A quick comment on the 2024 Nobel Prize in physics which was awarded for the basis of neural networks and artificial intelligence. Well... Read more
Posted on 08 October 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Do LLMs Memorize? 25% of "memorized" Tokens Are Actually Predicted Using...
Turns out LLMs don't simply memorize verbatim; 25% of "memorized" tokens are actually predicted using general language modeling featuresYouTube:... Read more
Posted on 05 October 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Music and the Origins of Language: Neil deGrasse Tyson Talks with Daniel Levitin
From the YouTube page: Did early humans sing before they could talk? Neil deGrasse Tyson and Chuck Nice discover how music helps us recall memories, the... Read more
Posted on 05 October 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
How Might LLMs Store Facts? [Multilayer Perceptrons, MLP]
Time stamps: 0:00 - Where facts in LLMs live 2:15 - Quick refresher on transformers 4:39 - Assumptions for our toy example 6:07 - Inside a multilayer... Read more
Posted on 04 October 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
On the Dockworkers Strike, Labor on the Rise
Sohrab Ahmari, In Praise of the Dockworkers Shutting Down Our Ports, The Free Press, October 2, 2024. The International Longshoremen’s Association, whose... Read more
Posted on 03 October 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Blown-out Flicks of Flowers
Posted on 03 October 2024
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Problems with So-called AI Scaling Laws
Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor, AI Scaling Myths, AI Snake Oil, June 27, 2024. The introduction: So far, bigger and bigger language models have proven more... Read more
Posted on 03 October 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
OpenAI’s $6.6B Raise: What Were They Thinking?
Cory Weinberg, The Briefing: The Cynic’s Guide to OpenAI’s Megaround, The Information, Oct. 2, 2024: The biggest question is: Will OpenAI ever be a good... Read more
Posted on 03 October 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Formal Structure of “And Your Bird Can Sing”
Around the corner at Crooked Timber Belle waring has an interesting post, Final Choruses and Outros Apparently. Her first example is a Beatles tune from Rubber... Read more
Posted on 30 September 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
FutureWorld on the Hudson?
Posted on 30 September 2024
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Wolfram on Machine Learning
Wolfram has a post in which he reflects on the work he’s done in the last five years: Five Most Productive Years: What Happened and What’s Next. Read more
Posted on 30 September 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Aaron Sorkin: As a Fictional President, Trump Would Be "simply Implausible"
Marc Tracy, Aaron Sorkin Thinks Life Still Imitates ‘The West Wing’, NYTimes, Sept. 19, 2024. We are speaking to each other the day after the only scheduled... Read more
Posted on 19 September 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Emergence
đđşđ˛đżđ´đ˛đ... Read more
Posted on 18 September 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
LLMS Are Not Fundamentally About Language [Karpathy]
It's a bit sad and confusing that LLMs ("Large Language Models") have little to do with language; It's just historical. They are highly general purpose... Read more
Posted on 15 September 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Tree Stump and Water, Two Versions
Posted on 14 September 2024
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Can We Make an AI Scientist?
Sam Rodriques, What does it take to build an AI Scientist? August 15, 2024: What will it take to build an AI Scientist? I run FutureHouse, a non-profit... Read more
Posted on 14 September 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
There Are No AI-shaped Holes Lying Around
“There are no AI-shaped holes lying around”-> this is how I reconcile the facts that (a) AI is already powerful and (b) it’s having relatively little impact... Read more
Posted on 13 September 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
