Around the Web #14
Around the Web #14
Vlad Dracula ⚔, AI Frenzy 🤖, and Pope Benedict’s 🇻🇦 Last Testament.
I am launching a new blog on data science with the intent of covering content (primarily) on machine learning and AI, and occasionally some statistics and mathematics. It’s called The Epsilon you can subscribe here. I will also start a variant of “Around the Web” on The Epsilon, as such I will discontinue AI entries on Bifarin V for future issues and move it to The Epsilon.
1. [Movies] 🎥🍿🎬
[I]: Rise of Empires: Ottoman Season 2
I recently watched the second season of the rise of empires: Ottoman Empire, really enjoyed it. I never knew 'Dracula' was an actual flesh and blood human, in this case Vlad III (Vlad Dracula).
This thread is an excellent summary of the docuseries.
[II]: The Night Agent
I am currently watching The Night Agent on Netflix, and I like it so far.
“While monitoring an emergency line, an FBI agent answers a call that plunges him into a deadly conspiracy involving a mole at the White House.”
2. [AI] 🤖🖥👨🏿💻
[I]: Feature importance X Feature selection in Machine Learning.
Feature selection and feature interpretation are different modeling steps, with different goals. They are, however, complementary and if you get feature selection right, you can boost interpretability.
[II]: Generative AI in Law practice
Problems with hallucinations, need for validation. Privacy rights violation (via training data), etc.
“Small tasks that would otherwise take valuable minutes out of a lawyer’s day can now be outsourced to AI.”
[III]: You Can Break a Predictive Model by Using It
Great content on performative predictions: a phenomenon where predictions made by a machine learning model can influence the outcome they aim to predict.
[IV]: Your friend the language model
One of the best essays I have read on large language models.
[V]: chatGPT- The Hydra with the many heads
[VI]: The Real potential of generative AI
The CEO of Human Loop discusses the future of tech with generative AI at YC.
[V]: Why didn't we get GPT-2 in 2005?
How did we get GPT-2? And skepticism about the idea that “keeping AI systems’ details secret makes any meaningful contribution to AI safety.”
[V]: The End of Front-End Development
Interesting take on the rise of LLMs and front-end development, the same argument will go for a lot of knowledge workers, I think.
“Certain tasks might be delegated to an AI, but not many jobs.”
“LLMs aren't able to validate their assumptions, or test their hypotheses. They can't confirm whether what they're saying is true or not. They're playing a probability game, and estimating that this string of characters seems to be compatible with the string of characters from the prompt.”
3. [Biomedicine] 🩺🥼🧑🏻⚕️
[I]: Biology is a Burrito
All my formal training is in biology, so naturally, I have told many complicated tales about the complexity at the heart of biology. So, I know a good one when I see one.
This is a really good ‘tale’ (plus it’s beginner friendly) about the complexity of biology
[II]: Report on Apple’s blood glucose tracking tech.
“Apple is taking a different approach, using a chip technology known as silicon photonics and a measurement process called optical absorption spectroscopy. The system uses lasers to emit specific wavelengths of light into an area below the skin where there is interstitial fluid — substances that leak out of capillaries — that can be absorbed by glucose. The light is then reflected back to the sensor in a way that indicates the concentration of glucose. An algorithm then determines a person’s blood glucose level.”
[III]: More Younger People Are Getting Colorectal Cancers
“I see so many young patients who live really healthy lifestyles that get diagnosed with metastatic colon cancer,” said Dr. Ng. “There are other environmental exposures that need to be looked at.”
[IV]: Metformin on Longevity
[V]: Scientists treated heart attacks in mice — before they happened.
The promise of preemptive treatment of heart attack was displayed in this study via the dedifferentiation–redifferentiation in adult mouse hearts.
4. [Sports] 🏀 ⚽️ 🏈
[I]: Ronaldinho Clips
I know people these days will fight themselves over Messi vs. Ronaldo. I hear you, but Ronaldinho is a magician.
5. [Theology] ⛪️✝️⛪️
[I]: Pope Benedict’s Last Testament
Pope Benedicts on science and faith
“…are irrationality, lack of freedom and pure chance the origin of everything, or are reason, freedom and love at the origin of being? Does the primacy belong to unreason or to reason? This is what everything hinges on in the final analysis.”
[II]: Christianity, History, The Modern Age
Bishop Barron, in conversation with Tom Holland
6. [Nigeria] 🇳🇬
[I]: Sowore on elections
Sowore, in my opinion, is the one of the few people articulating the Nigerian problem the most, and not because he is more intelligent than all Nigerians, but because he has got some balls, and less willing to delude himself.
[II]: On Nigeria
[II]: Igi Oyin
A commentary on the just concluded elections in Nigeria.
“You are not suspending logic for one of your finest sons. You are not putting your heart over your head for someone who summons emotions of pride in you. You are doing it for Bola Tinubu. Bola Tinubu. Because, make no mistake about it, this is hardly about Sanwo-Olu returning as governor of Lagos. It is about ensuring the survival of the patronage network, the layers of thuggery, the political ‘structure’ and the troughs from which the various snouts feed from in Lagos and which all combine to ensure that any kind of transformative development of Lagos is simply impossible.”
7. [Philosophy] 🧐🧠🧐
[I]: One long circular argument
Brilliant essay by Ed Feser arguing against materialism – Feser on Dennett on materialism.
“What would be truly revolutionary—and what Dennett never even considers—would be to reverse Descartes’s fundamental move and put qualitative features back into the material world. This would in no way require us to abandon the findings of modern mathematical physics. What it would require is merely the recognition that, while what physics tells us about the natural world is true, it is not the whole truth, but must be supplemented by philosophy.”
8. [Startups/Business] 🚀®️👨🏾💻
[I]: Turning side projects into profitable startups
Great content on indie hacking here, the essay is ~five years old, but the ideas are still very relevant. It’s a long read too, quite comprehensive, from ideation to marketing, and everything in between.
“While building all these projects, there was one framework and pattern that kept happening, which was like, you have an idea, or I would have a problem and make it into an idea. I would build it, I would launch it, I would grow it, and then I would monetize it to make money from it, and then, if I got really annoyed with working on it, I would automate it with robots, so today, I wanna tell you about all these processes.”
[II]: Jack Dorsey’s New 'Decentralized' Twitter Hits the App Store
Bluesky, Twitter decentralized alternative is live.
[III]: Silicon Valley tech crashed Silicon Valley Bank
Informative twitter thread on Silicon Valley bank collapse
[IV]: Trends to Mine
[V]: Why AI won’t Cause Unemployment
Marc Andreessen on AI, industry regulation, and unemployment.
“Fears about new technology replacing human labor and causing overall unemployment have raged across industrialized societies for hundreds of years, despite a nearly continual rise in both jobs and wages in capitalist economies. The jobs apocalypse is always right around the corner; just ask the Luddites…”
We had two such anti-technology jobs moral panics in the last 20 years — “outsourcing” enabled by the Internet in the 2000’s, and “robots” in the 2010’s. The result was the best national and global economy in human history in pre-COVID 2019, with the most jobs at the highest wages ever.”
[VI]: On Availability Cascades
Marc Andresseen on Availability cascades.
I can’t help but think of mimesis while reading the essay.
[VII]: The modern economy is built on addiction
“The biggest tech companies in the world are built on the psychology of addiction: the craving for that next notification, that like, that retweet, the ping of an incoming email, the not-quite fulfilment of dinging another level on Candy Crush.”