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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Open Source LLM-techs Unite!
IBM Meta are launching the AI Alliance to advance *open* reliable AI.The list of over 50 founding members from industry, government, and academia include... Read more
Posted on 05 December 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Moby Dick Speaks (has Vowels)
Previously it was thought that mostly the number of clicks and their timing matters.We identify two discrete patterns that we call the a-vowel and the i-vowel. Read more
Posted on 05 December 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Cage Match in the Valley 2: Google Suits Up, Others Join the Fray
Karen Weise, Cade Metz, Nico Grant and Mike Isaac, Big Tech Muscles In: The 12 Months That Changed Silicon Valley Forever, NYTimes, Dec. Read more
Posted on 05 December 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Sam Altman's Brain Chips
OpenAI signed $51M deal to buy ‘brain’ chips from Sam Altman portfolio firm Sam Reynolds, Computerworld, Dec, 3, 2023. A story that got left out of the corporat... Read more
Posted on 04 December 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
GOAT Literary Critics: Part I, What Do You Mean, Literary Critic?
Back in October of this year, the 23rd to be exact, Tyler Cowen posted a link to a book he’d just written and put on the web, along with connections to current... Read more
Posted on 04 December 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
On the Street: Christmas and Shoe Repair
Posted on 04 December 2023
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Experimental Google LLM for Medical Diagnosis
There has been work applying AI to medical decision-making, but all used other forms of AI, not LLMs. Now Google trained LLM for diagnoses.In a trial, AI... Read more
Posted on 04 December 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Cage Match in the Valley: Many Men Enter, One Man Leaves.
Cade Metz, Karen Weise, Nico Grant and Mike Isaac, Ego, Fear and Money: How the A.I. Fuse Was Lit, December 3, 2023: The question of whether artificial... Read more
Posted on 03 December 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Sunrise Serenade
* * * * * Read more
Posted on 03 December 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The OpenAI Affair and the Nature of Business in an Era of Intelligent Machines
I’ve been listening to a podcast by Ezra Klein with guests Kevin Roose and Casey Newton. Here’s one bit that I think is important. Ezra Klein Yeah, I first agre... Read more
Posted on 02 December 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Method of Loci: With Some Brief Remarks, Including Transformers and...
The method of loci is a memory technique used from ancient Greece and Rome up through the Middle Ages, into the Early Modern Era, and still in use today,... Read more
Posted on 02 December 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Play It Again, Sam. What Happened at OpenAI? [+throwin' Shade on superAI]
What Really Happened at OpenAI? | Robert Wright Timothy B. Lee 0:05 Bob and Tim seek Substack synergy 2:03 What was the OpenAI drama really about? Read more
Posted on 01 December 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
St. Augustine on Memory, Confessions, Book Ten, Chapter VIII
Great is this power of memory, exceedingly great, O my God–a large and boundless inner hall! Who has plumbed the depths of it? Yet it is a power of my mind,... Read more
Posted on 01 December 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: 5 Guys [4 Guys and a Gal?]
Posted on 01 December 2023
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Whoops! Is Thinking Fast/slow out of Control?
Leif Weatherby, You Can’t Nudge Human Behavior Into Perfection, NYTimes, Nov. 30, 2023: Behavioral economics is at the center of the so-called replication... Read more
Posted on 30 November 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
What AI Experts Think About the Possibility of AI Doom
P(doom) roundup: what probability do people put on AI killing everyone?- Vitalik Buterin (Ethereum): 10%- Zvi Mowshowitz: 60%- Elon Musk: 20-30%- Scott... Read more
Posted on 30 November 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The OpenWHALE Rounds the Horn and Vanishes, An Allegory About the Age of...
In less than a week I’ll be posting a new essay to 3 Quarks Daily. The current working title: “Investing in AI is like buying shares in a whaling voyage helmed... Read more
Posted on 30 November 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Seasonal Ceremony [Hoboken]
Posted on 29 November 2023
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Distinctive Features in Phonology and "polysemanticity" in Neural Networks
Scott Alexander has started a discussion of recent paper mechanical interpretability paper over at Astral Codex Ten: Towards Monosemanticity: Decomposing... Read more
Posted on 28 November 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Beyond Transformers [Back to the Future V]
H/t Language Log. Read more
Posted on 28 November 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
