AI is driving this market.

https://thenextweb.com/news/marvel-fusion-breaks-ground-on-150m-laser-facility-in-colorado

Marvel Fusion breaks ground on $150M laser facility in Colorado

German startup Marvel Fusion and Colorado State University have broken ground on a $150M laser facility in a bid to commercialise fusion energy.

Dubbed ATLAS, the facility will use three ultra-high intensity lasers to fire 7 petawatts of power — over 5,000 times the electrical generation capacity of the US — at a target roughly the width of a human hair.  

The blast will last approximately 100 quadrillionths of a second. However, it will produce enough heat and pressure to fuse atoms together, initiating the same reaction that powers the Sun and stars.

Tools & Techniques. Useful as an evidence gatherer?

https://simonwillison.net/2024/Oct/17/video-scraping/

Video scraping: extracting JSON data from a 35 second screen capture for less than 1/10th of a cent

The other day I found myself needing to add up some numeric values that were scattered across twelve different emails.

I didn’t particularly feel like copying and pasting all of the numbers out one at a time, so I decided to try something different: could I record a screen capture while browsing around my Gmail account and then extract the numbers from that video using Google Gemini?

This turned out to work incredibly well.

Long story short, I couldn’t agree more. I use Feedly.

https://www.bespacific.com/you-should-be-using-an-rss-reader/

You should be using an RSS reader

Pluralistic: “…RSS (one of those ancient internet acronyms with multiple definitions, including, but not limited to, “Really Simple Syndication”) is an invisible, automatic way for internet-connected systems to public “feeds.” For example, rather than reloading the Wired homepage every day and trying to figure out which stories are new (their layout makes this very hard to do!), you can just sign up for Wired‘s RSS feed, and use an RSS reader to monitor the site and preview new stories the moment they’re published.  Wired pushes about 600 words from each article into that feed, stripped of the usual stuff that makes Wired nearly impossible to read: no 20-second delay subscription pop-up, text in a font and size of your choosing. You can follow Wired‘s feed without any cookies, and Wired gets no information about which of its stories you read.  Wired doesn’t even get to know that you’re monitoring its feed. I don’t mean to pick on Wired here. This goes for every news source I follow – from CNN to the New York Times. But RSS isn’t just good for the news! It’s good for everything. Your friends’ blogs? Every blogging platform emits an RSS feed by default. You can follow every one of them in your reader. Not just blogs. Do you follow a bunch of substackers or other newsletters? They’ve all got RSS feeds. You can read those newsletters without ever registering in the analytics of the platforms that host them. The text shows up in black and white (not the sadistic, 8-point, 80% grey-on-white type these things all default to). It is always delivered, without any risk of your email provider misclassifying an update as spam: https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/10/dead-letters/

Did you know that, by default, your email sends information to mailing list platforms about your reading activity? The platform gets to know if you opened the message, and often how far along you’ve read in it. On top of that, they get all the private information your browser or app leaks about you, including your location. This is unbelievably gross, and you get to bypass all of it, just by reading in RSS…”

Broad implications… How much research is enough? How much information can I withhold?

https://www.bespacific.com/the-illusion-of-information-adequacy/

The illusion of information adequacy

Gehlbach H, Robinson CD, Fletcher A (2024) The illusion of information adequacy. PLoS ONE 19(10): e0310216.  https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0310216: “How individuals navigate perspectives and attitudes that diverge from their own affects an array of interpersonal outcomes from the health of marriages to the unfolding of international conflicts. The finesse with which people negotiate these differing perceptions depends critically upon their tacit assumptions—e.g., in the bias of naïve realism people assume that their subjective construal of a situation represents objective truth. The present study adds an important assumption to this list of biases: the illusion of information adequacy. Specifically, because individuals rarely pause to consider what information they may be missing, they assume that the cross-section of relevant information to which they are privy is sufficient to adequately understand the situation. Participants in our preregistered study (N = 1261) responded to a hypothetical scenario in which control participants received full information and treatment participants received approximately half of that same information. We found that treatment participants assumed that they possessed comparably adequate information and presumed that they were just as competent to make thoughtful decisions based on that information. Participants’ decisions were heavily influenced by which cross-section of information they received. Finally, participants believed that most other people would make a similar decision to the one they made. We discuss the implications in the context of naïve realism and other biases that implicate how people navigate differences of perspective.”

Did I miss this?

https://www.bespacific.com/civil-rights-implications-of-federal-use-of-facial-recognition-technology/

The Civil Rights Implications of Federal Use of Facial Recognition Technology

The Civil Rights Implications of the Federal Use of Facial Recognition Technology. September 19, 2024. Meaningful federal guidelines and oversight for responsible FRT use have lagged behind the application of this technology in real-world scenarios. With the advent of biometric technology and its widespread use by both private and government entities, the Commission studied how the Department of Justice (DOJ), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) are utilizing this technology, in compliance with existing civil rights laws. Currently, there are no laws that expressly regulate the use of FRT or other AI by the federal government, and no constitutional provisions governing its use.

Report

Fact Sheet

Press Release

I knew it!

https://www.bespacific.com/how-social-media-distorts-perceptions-of-norms/

How social media distorts perceptions of norms

Claire E. Robertson, Kareena S. del Rosario, Jay J. Van Bavel, Inside the funhouse mirror factory: How social media distorts perceptions of norms, Current Opinion in Psychology, Volume 60, 2024, 101918, ISSN 2352-250X, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2024.101918.  “The current paper explains how modern technology interacts with human psychology to create a funhouse mirror version of social norms. We argue that norms generated on social media often tend to be more extreme than offline norms which can create false perceptions of norms–known as pluralistic ignorance. We integrate research from political science, psychology, and cognitive science to explain how online environments become saturated with false norms, who is misrepresented online, what happens when online norms deviate from offline norms, where people are affected online, and why expressions are more extreme online. We provide a framework for understanding and correcting for the distortions in our perceptions of social norms that are created by social media platforms. We argue the funhouse mirror nature of social media can be pernicious for individuals and society by increasing pluralistic ignorance and false polarization.”

Resource.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/10/15/1105441/intro-ai-beginners-guide-artificial-intelligence-course/

Intro to AI: a beginner’s guide to artificial intelligence from MIT Technology Review

It feels as though AI is moving a million miles a minute. Every week, it seems, there are product launches, fresh features and other innovations, and new concerns over ethics and privacy. It’s a lot to keep up with. Maybe you wish someone would just take a step back and explain some of the basics.

Look no further. Intro to AI is MIT Technology Review’s first newsletter that also serves as a mini-course. You’ll get one email a week for six weeks, and each edition will walk you through a different topic in AI.

Sign up here to receive it for free. 

Perspective.

https://sifted.eu/articles/state-of-ai-report-2024-air-street

State of AI report 2024: Where is Europe winning?

London-based AI investment firm Air Street Capital has released its latest State of AI report, an annual deep dive into the big themes shaping what has become the VC industry’s favourite sector.

The seventh edition of the report describes how entrepreneurs are starting to get to grips with large language models (LLMs) and other generative technologies in video, image and audio, learning how to get the best out of them, as well as addressing their shortcomings.

And while it’s US tech giants like Google, Microsoft, Meta — not to mention ChatGPT maker OpenAI — that get the lion’s share of attention in the report (particularly when it comes to research), there are some notable European success stories.

Perspective.

https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2024/10/15/escalating-cyber-threats-demand-stronger-global-defense-and-cooperation/

Escalating Cyber Threats Demand Stronger Global Defense and Cooperation

Microsoft customers face more than 600 million cybercriminal and nation-state attacks every day, ranging from ransomware to phishing to identity attacks. Once again, nation-state affiliated threat actors demonstrated that cyber operations—whether for espionage, destruction, or influence—play a persistent supporting role in broader geopolitical conflicts. Also fueling the escalation in cyberattacks, we are seeing increasing evidence of the collusion of cybercrime gangs with nation-state groups sharing tools and techniques.  

We must find a way to stem the tide of this malicious cyber activity. That includes continuing to harden our digital domains to protect our networks, data, and people at all levels. However, this challenge will not be accomplished solely by executing a checklist of cyber hygiene measures but only through a focus on and commitment to the foundations of cyber defense from the individual user to the corporate executive and to government leaders.

These are some of the insights from the fifth annual Microsoft Digital Defense Report, which covers trends between July 2023 and June 2024. 

For your consideration…

https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/10/14/1105249/data-strategies-for-ai-leaders/

Data strategies for AI leaders

… The expectation that generative AI could fundamentally upend business models and product offerings is driven by the technology’s power to unlock vast amounts of data that were previously inaccessible. “Eighty to 90% of the world’s data is unstructured,” says Baris Gultekin, head of AI at AI data cloud company Snowflake. “But what’s exciting is that AI is opening the door for organizations to gain insights from this data that they simply couldn’t before.”

https://www.snowflake.com/resource/data-strategies-for-ai-leaders/?utm_source=mit&utm_medium=web-lp-mit-site&utm_campaign=na-us-en&utm_content=mit-report-data-strategies-for-ai-leaders

I suppose artificial intelligence is better than no intelligence…

https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202410.0360/v1

The Use of Artificial Intelligence in Political Decision-Making

The use of artificial intelligence for political decision-making is in an early stage of development; however, there are several questions that arise about its current and hypothetical uses. These questions often come from areas of philosophy such as ethics, political philosophy, and logic. In this article, first, the theoretical approaches from which the current and hypothetical uses of artificial intelligence for political decision-making can be interpreted will be presented. These approaches include realistic politics, bureaucracy theory, and conflict theory. Then, the possible uses that artificial intelligence could have in politics, as well as the attempts that have already been made, will be discussed. Subsequently, the logical, ethical, and political problems that the use of artificial intelligence for political decision-making could cause will be outlined. Next, a basic experiment will be presented on what kind of political decisions artificial intelligence could suggest. Finally, the points previously discussed will be analyzed from the mentioned theories. The conclusion reached was that, at the present time, the use of artificial intelligence for political decision-making could align more with the approaches of Machiavelli, focusing primarily on achieving goals such as maintaining power, while downplaying moral dilemmas.

Avoiding dystopia does not result in utopia.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Douglas-Youvan/publication/384665784_Orwell_Huxley_and_AI_Dystopian_Fiction/links/6701d398b753fa724d5fa84b/Orwell-Huxley-and-AI-Dystopian-Fiction.pdf

Orwell, Huxley, and AI Dystopian Fiction

In the realm of dystopian fiction, few authors have shaped our collective imagination as profoundly as George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World present chilling visions of future societies, each shaped by technological control yet distinct in their methods. 1984 illustrates a world dominated by surveillance and truth manipulation, while Brave New World explores the dangers of a comfort-driven society where individuality is sacrificed for convenience. These classic works offer cautionary insights into the ethical implications of technology, surveillance, and control. As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes increasingly integrated into modern life, the themes explored by Orwell and Huxley remain profoundly relevant. Modern AI-driven dystopian fiction builds on these authors' legacies, prompting questions about data privacy, personal autonomy, and social responsibility. By examining the intersection of AI and dystopian themes, we can explore pathways for ethical AI development that respect human dignity and uphold freedom, drawing inspiration from cautionary tales to foster a balanced, conscientious approach to technology.

Another look at the uses of AI.

https://appinventiv.com/blog/machine-learning-in-retail/

How Machine Learning in Retail is Redefining the Sector - Key Business Opportunities and Challenge

… To help you gain a better understanding of how ML is changing the retail industry, here are some of the key applications that make it a game-changing solution for retailers:

Keep AI in perspective.

https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/llms-dont-do-formal-reasoning-and

LLMs don’t do formal reasoning - and that is a HUGE problem

A superb new article on LLMs from six AI researchers at Apple who were brave enough to challenge the dominant paradigm has just come out.

Everyone actively working with AI should read it, or at least this terrific X thread by senior author, Mehrdad Farajtabar, that summarizes what they observed. One key passage:

“we found no evidence of formal reasoning in language models …. Their behavior is better explained by sophisticated pattern matching—so fragile, in fact, that changing names can alter results by ~10%!”

One particularly damning result was a new task the Apple team developed, called GSM-NoOp