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A batch of the best highlights from what J's read, .
The world does not need to be perfectly utopian to see progress. Some portion of our actions, such as war, are destructive. A bunch of what we produce is crap. Maybe nearly half of what we do. But if we create only 1 percent or 2 percent (or even one-tenth of 1 percent) more positive stuff than we destroy, then we have progress. This differential could be so small as to be almost imperceptible, and this may be why progress is not universally acknowledged. When measured against the large-scale imperfections of our society, 1 percent better seems trivial.
What Technology Wants
Kevin Kelly
The deep learning pioneers, the ones who stuck with it in the wilderness years, believe that better neural network architectures will eventually lead to a re-creation of all aspects of human intelligence, including symbolic manipulation, causal inference and common sense (Dickson, 2021).
Resisting AI
Dan McQuillan
Gemini also appears to be a very good software engineer. Last year, using an older language model, DeepMind [introduced an AI system named AlphaCode that outperformed 54 percent of human coders](https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/2/22914085/alphacode-ai-coding-program-automatic-deepmind-codeforce) in coding competitions. Using Gemini, Google built a next-generation version named AlphaCode 2. The sequel outperformed an estimated 85 percent of humans, the company said.
Google Unveils Gemini
Casey Newton
...catch up on these, and many more highlights
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