Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: AI #75: Math is Easier, published by Zvi on August 1, 2024 on LessWrong.
Google DeepMind got a silver metal at the IMO, only one point short of the gold. That's really exciting.
We continuously have people saying 'AI progress is stalling, it's all a bubble' and things like that, and I always find remarkable how little curiosity or patience such people are willing to exhibit. Meanwhile GPT-4o-Mini seems excellent, OpenAI is launching proper search integration, by far the best open weights model got released, we got an improved MidJourney 6.1, and that's all in the last two weeks.
Whether or not GPT-5-level models get here in 2024, and whether or not it arrives on a given schedule, make no mistake. It's happening.
This week also had a lot of discourse and events around SB 1047 that I failed to avoid, resulting in not one but four sections devoted to it.
Dan Hendrycks was baselessly attacked - by billionaires with massive conflicts of interest that they admit are driving their actions - as having a conflict of interest because he had advisor shares in an evals startup rather than having earned the millions he could have easily earned building AI capabilities. so Dan gave up those advisor shares, for no compensation, to remove all doubt. Timothy Lee gave us what is clearly the best skeptical take on SB 1047 so far.
And Anthropic sent a 'support if amended' letter on the bill, with some curious details. This was all while we are on the cusp of the final opportunity for the bill to be revised - so my guess is I will soon have a post going over whatever the final version turns out to be and presenting closing arguments.
Meanwhile Sam Altman tried to reframe broken promises while writing a jingoistic op-ed in the Washington Post, but says he is going to do some good things too. And much more.
Oh, and also AB 3211 unanimously passed the California assembly, and would effectively among other things ban all existing LLMs. I presume we're not crazy enough to let it pass, but I made a detailed analysis to help make sure of it.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction.
2. Table of Contents.
3. Language Models Offer Mundane Utility. They're just not that into you.
4. Language Models Don't Offer Mundane Utility. Baba is you and deeply confused.
5. Math is Easier. Google DeepMind claims an IMO silver metal, mostly.
6. Llama Llama Any Good. The rankings are in as are a few use cases.
7. Search for the GPT. Alpha tests begin of SearchGPT, which is what you think it is.
8. Tech Company Will Use Your Data to Train Its AIs. Unless you opt out. Again.
9. Fun With Image Generation. MidJourney 6.1 is available.
10. Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon. Supply rises to match existing demand.
11. The Art of the Jailbreak. A YouTube video that (for now) jailbreaks GPT-4o-voice.
12. Janus on the 405. High weirdness continues behind the scenes.
13. They Took Our Jobs. If that is even possible.
14. Get Involved. Akrose has listings, OpenPhil has a RFP, US AISI is hiring.
15. Introducing. A friend in venture capital is a friend indeed.
16. In Other AI News. Projections of when it's incrementally happening.
17. Quiet Speculations. Reports of OpenAI's imminent demise, except, um, no.
18. The Quest for Sane Regulations. Nick Whitaker has some remarkably good ideas.
19. Death and or Taxes. A little window into insane American anti-innovation policy.
20. SB 1047 (1). The ultimate answer to the baseless attacks on Dan Hendrycks.
21. SB 1047 (2). Timothy Lee analyzes current version of SB 1047, has concerns.
22. SB 1047 (3): Oh Anthropic. They wrote themselves an unexpected letter.
23. What Anthropic's Letter Actually Proposes. Number three may surprise you.
24. Open Weights Are Unsafe And Nothing Can Fix This. Who wants to ban what?
25. The Week in Audio. Vitalik Buterin, Kelsey Piper, Patrick McKenzie.
26. Rheto...
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