gpt-3 for science,what motivates humans & qr codes
CC#46 - The Moral Machine Monster, Gratitude and Happiness & Vanlife
Hey there and welcome to ✨ CuratedCuriosity - a bi-weekly newsletter delivering inspiration from all over the internet to the notoriously curious.
Things I Enjoyed Reading.
🧪 How to Build a GPT-3 for Science
I believe this idea has immense potential - if we manage to build sth like this, we’d be able to do research much more efficiently on a global scale.
Can you imagine if a researcher could propose an experiment and an AI model could instantly tell them if it had been done before (and better yet, give them the result)? Then, once they have data from a novel experiment, the AI could suggest a follow-up experiment based on the result. Finally, imagine the time that could be saved if the researcher could upload their results and the AI model could write the resulting manuscript for them. (…) For the kind of value unlock I’m describing, we need long-term investment, commitment, and vision. (…) we need to treat scientific publications as substrates to be combined and analyzed at scale. Once we remove the barriers, we will be able to use science to feed data-hungry generative AI models. These models have immense potential to accelerate science and increase scientific literacy, such as through training them to generate new scientific ideas, helping scientists manage and navigate the vast scientific literature, help identify flawed or even falsified research, and synthesize and translate complex research findings into ordinary human speech.
🇮🇳 #141 Kunal Shah: Core Human Motivations
Fascinating conversation about entrepreneurship, India and cultural differences in what motivates humans.
My guest is Indian entrepreneur and venture capitalist Kunal Shah who calls on his decades of entrepreneurial experience to discuss what he’s learned about what motivates people, and how observing trends hiding in plain sight has made him a runaway success in business.
We also discuss the many cultural differences between India and the West, what he learned growing up in the family business and how he applies it today, observing reality, why he dropped out of an MBA program, strategies for decision-making, and so much more.
🚘 Why the moral machine is a monster
MIT’s ‘moral machine’ has gotten a lot of attention for collecting moral judgement from people all over the world on how an AI-driven car should react in situations of moral dilemma - this article makes the case why this experiment may in fact not be a good way to approach rule making for autonomous driving.
Suppose we choose to spare a young doctor. She may be a
kind and dedicated practitioner who saves many lives. But if one of the lives
she saves is that of a man who goes on to become a new Hitler, then the
world would have been better—in the kind of consequentialist way that talk
of ‘social value’ is supposed to speak to—if the kind young doctor had died,
because then Hitler II would have as well. And to really track down any
person’s social value, you’d have to know about every causal chain in which
they participate, all the way to the heat death of the universe. Given an
infinite universe and some chaos theory, this isn’t just beyond our ken, it’s
beyond the reach of computation.
So the categories the Moral Machine is using just aren’t suited to capturing ‘social value;’ social value isn’t calculable anyway; and, as noted above,
neither social value itself nor the particular features we’re hoping to use as
proxies for it are the kind of thing you can tell by looking at someone.
Food for Thought.
🙀 Are extreme stress tolerance and emotional resilience necessary (but not sufficient) traits for achieving high status?
😊 Does gratitude increase happiness? An interesting summary of what we now about the relationship of happiness and gratitude.
To summarize: Gratitude is correlated with happiness, but this doesn’t mean it’s causing happiness and it’s not clear if that statement even makes sense. When you look at gratitude exercises, they look good when compared to “negative” controls like listing all the ways your life is bad. But when compared to positive controls—basically anything that sounds good—the effects become pretty small.
💼 Interesting finding or at least something soothing to tell yourself if your job application got rejected.
Random Stuff.
🧑💻 Ever wondered how a QR code works? Here you can find a short explanation (spoiler: it’s actually quite impressive!)
🚚 The diary of a guy who moved full-time into a VAN. You can read up on everything - from building the VAN to his travel routes - but I think his conclusions about (the meaning of [van]) life are actually the most impressive part.
⚖️ How to loose weight the hard way - how much of earth’s mass would you need to get rid of in order to loose weight simply by gravity becoming less?
Personal Update.
Not much news over here - lot’s of beatiful fall colors and lots of work atm but all good.