Jim Miraflor

CICERO + GPT-4 + KAIROS + AlphaStar ≈ Skynet

the general public overestimate the margins businesses make

China has rendered GDP close to useless for measuring economic development. China's GDP per capita is one-sixth of the US (one-third in PPP), yet China is at the global technological frontier, its infrastructure is world leading, and it can manufacture pretty much everything.

MIT teaches operating systems by giving students a complete Unix like kernel and asking them to modify it it is called xv6 and is about 6000 lines of C a reimplementation inspired by Unix Version 6 from 1975 rewritten in modern C for x86 multiprocessor processes system calls virtual memory and filesystem are all there and small enough to read end to end in a weekend this is what you study to understand how operating systems actually work not just how they are described

"Mathematical Theory of Deep Learning" is an excellent free resource for anyone interested in the mathematical structure underlying modern deep learning systems. The book introduces the theory of deep neural networks through approximation theory, optimization theory, and statistical learning theory, three of the central pillars of the field. What makes it particularly interesting is its attempt to balance rigor with accessibility, focusing on the essential ideas needed to understand modern AI systems without sacrificing mathematical depth. Despite this clarity of exposition, the book is clearly oriented toward a specialized audience. It is also an enormous cultural contribution and an extremely valuable free resource for students, researchers, and anyone interested in studying deep learning more rigorously. arxiv.org/abs/2407.18384

Stanford's "Machine Learning Theory" by Tengyu Ma Lecture Notes: tselilschramm.org/mltheory/ma.pd… Videos: youtube.com/playlist?list=…

Stanford's latest seminar is a deep dive into the evolution of world modeling in AI. Focuses on the shift in the world model from traditional reconstruction methods toward latent space prediction. Covers topics like: - Introduction to JEPA & World Models - Causal JEPA - LOWER Model - Practical Applications & Planning - Future Outlook

Some of my favourite economic papers that changed the way I think

70 years ago in 1955, John von Neumann wrote an epic and prescient essay: “Can We Survive Technology?” … He saw that technology’s spatial reach was catching up with Earth’s actual size, while political organization remained stuck at smaller scales, and that human reaction time is a fixed constant while the technological tempo only accelerates — so each new generation of tools enlarges the unit affected by any single decision until the unit becomes the planet itself! 🌎 From this logic, he drew the conclusion that no procedural firewall, no institutional design, no advance solution can absorb the resulting risk; only ongoing judgment exercised in real time by agents with skin in the game can. sseh.uchicago.edu/doc/von_Neuman…

“Mathematics is what Russian professors teach Chinese students at American universities.” — attributed to Sergey Kapitsa, son of Nobel Prize–winning physicist Pyotr Kapitsa (one of MIPT founders). Brutal. Funny. And uncomfortably close to reality.

This is the difference between China's economy, and Western casino economies. This is actually, objectively, an amazing ACHIEVEMENT - making housing affordable again in China. It's why its home ownership rate is more than 90%. But it's presented as "erased all gains"🤔

Scientists have created one of the most detailed 3D reconstructions of a human cell (eukaryotic cell) ever produced. This groundbreaking model, often termed a "Cellular Landscape Cross-Section Through a Eukaryotic Cell," combines data from X-ray tomography, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), and cryo-electron microscopy to map molecular structures in extreme detail.

cool vid

MIT's "High-Dimensional Statistics" lecture notes PDF: arxiv.org/pdf/2310.19244

Data-first thinking is a trap Here's the full introductory chapter papermark.com/view/cmnr0cc9k…

Van surgiendo algunas ideas...

Book Launch Alert! I'll be talking about my new book "Computing in the Age of Decolonization", out from @PrincetonUPress, at the @MITMuseum on April 27, in conversation with the wonderful @moikiweigel. The book traces India's ambitious postcolonial drive to build its own computing industry, and why that vision was abandoned. Mon 4/27, 6–7:30pm | $5 (free for students) Books + signing after, courtesy @mitpbookstore mitmuseum.mit.edu/programs/autho…

Are Statistical Methods Obsolete in the Era of Deep Learning? A Study of ODE Inverse Problems ift.tt/ViBgeJ7

@EngrsMNL Former state officials living a slow life in a quieter part of the world

can we stop with the rehabilitation of purveyors of fake news, defenders of brutal duterte regime my god

sam altman watching ChatGPT hallucinate live on stage is the funniest thing i've seen all week the CEO of OpenAI, on stage, in front of everyone, watching his own AI just make things up in real time and his face says it all this is the guy telling us AGI is coming soon btw

This is a very good, very long piece. Excerpting some of the new/juicy bits (but you should read the whole thing!)