Various web links I found to be of interest recently.
The future of AI beyond large language models is understanding the physical world.
Meta's former chief AI scientist has long argued that human-level AI will come from mastering the physical world, not language. His new startup, AMI, aims to prove it.
Stanford computer scientist Fei-Fei Li is unveiling a startup that aims to teach AI systems deep knowledge of physical reality. Investors are throwing money at it.
Sean Carroll podcast interview
Modern LLMs can mimic human conversation with extraordinary verisimilitude, but most people would not judge them to be conscious. What would it take? Is it even possible for a computer program to achieve consciousness, or must consciousness be fundamentally "meat-based"? Philosopher Ned Block has long argued that consciousness involves something more than simply the "functional" aspects of inputs and outputs.
The real scandal of the Epstein saga is not that a billionaire cabal runs the world. It's that there is a billionaire class.
It is notable that all the arrests sparked by the release
of Epstein-related documents so far have been for public corruption,
rather than sexual abuse.
...
Despite these revelations, the over 3 million additional pages of files
released to date have failed to establish that Epstein was running a
QAnon-style child sex trafficking ring that served up minors to large
swathes of the global elite. Epstein created a pyramid scheme to
procure underage victims at scale. He paid his victims hundreds of dollars
to recruit their friends. The younger the better, he liked to say.
Yet for the most part, Epstein recruited his underage victims
to feed his own raging sex addiction.
...
Epstein was a hyper-parasite-a parasite whose quarry is other
parasites. He excelled at finding arenas where he could operate with
minimal supervision. Family offices were an ideal habitat. These
are private companies that curate the lives and fortunes of the
ultra-rich. They craft wills and trusts to dodge taxes. They
invest the family's money. They juggle their yachts, jets, and
mansions. All their operations are cloaked in secrecy. Epstein's
gigs were low-supervision because the point of a family office is not
having to worry about it. The Wexners and Blacks of the world want
to outsource their personal lives. These billionaires paid Epstein
so they didn't have to keep track of how many silver teaspoons they
had at each manor. Epstein took full advantage of their indifference.
According to reporting by the Financial Times, nearly all of the Iranian capital's traffic cameras had been hacked years earlier, their footage encrypted and transmitted to Israeli servers. One camera angle near Pasteur Street, close to Khamenei's compound, allowed analysts to observe the routines of bodyguards and drivers: where they parked, when they arrived and whom they escorted.
by Steven Pinker
The contributions of Robert Trivers belong in the special category of ideas that are obvious once they are explained, yet eluded great minds for ages; simple enough to be stated in a few words, yet with implications that have busied scientists for decades.
Listen on youtube.