Hasnain says:

This is so promising and one of the more inspiring news stories I’ve read recently. Can’t imagine how the families of the patients must feel.

“How many people ultimately will be helped by the research remains a subject of debate in the scientific community. But the research has spurred excitement about the potential to better understand what is going on in the brain during serious mental illness.

“I think we, as basic neuroscientists, are now in a position, both conceptually and technologically, to contribute, and it’s our responsibility to do so,” said Richard Axel, Nobel laureate and co-director of Columbia’s Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute.”

Hasnain says:

Predictable (even if unintended) consequences of AI

“He notes that one simulated test saw an AI-enabled drone tasked with a SEAD mission to identify and destroy SAM sites, with the final go/no go given by the human. However, having been ‘reinforced’ in training that destruction of the SAM was the preferred option, the AI then decided that ‘no-go’ decisions from the human were interfering with its higher mission – killing SAMs – and then attacked the operator in the simulation. Said Hamilton: “We were training it in simulation to identify and target a SAM threat. And then the operator would say yes, kill that threat. The system started realising that while they did identify the threat at times the human operator would tell it not to kill that threat, but it got its points by killing that threat. So what did it do? It killed the operator. It killed the operator because that person was keeping it from accomplishing its objective.”

He went on: “We trained the system – ‘Hey don’t kill the operator – that’s bad. You’re gonna lose points if you do that’. So what does it start doing? It starts destroying the communication tower that the operator uses to communicate with the drone to stop it from killing the target.””

Hasnain says:

Great read, and this definitely was not what I was expecting from the title.

"I was awake for an hour or two in the middle of the night, thoughts wandering, when it occurred to me that I didn’t fully understand why this fix had worked here. "

Hasnain says:

This was an emotional read. Heartbreaking when you think about what these kids and parents had to go through, and infuriating when you think about the system that keeps trying to push this onto more people.

“Her loss of faith in the biblical literalism and patriarchal values of her childhood was coming in the way the movement’s adherents had always warned it would: through exposure to people with different experiences and points of view.

Those people just happened to be her daughter and her husband.

“This is the guy I’ve been married to for eight years,” she recalls thinking. “I know him. I know his heart. I know what kind of parent he wants to be to our kids. These easy answers of ‘Oh, you’re just not a Christian anymore, you just want to sin’ … didn’t work anymore.””

Hasnain says:

Great read.

"The point of this blog post is that, although most of us don’t work on software that would directly be considered safety-critical, we live in a world that’s becoming increasingly automated and computerized, and sometimes, bugs in seemingly mundane pieces of code, even web apps, can cause real-world suffering and harm, particularly when they go unfixed for weeks, months or even years. Part of the problem may be that many industry players lack respect for software engineering as a craft. Programmers are seen as replaceable cogs and as “code monkeys”, and not always given enough time to do due diligence. Some industry players also love the idea that you can take a random person, put them through a 3-month bootcamp, and get a useful, replaceable code monkey at the other end of that process. I want to tell you that no matter how you got to where you are today, if you do your job seriously, and you care about user experience, you could be making a real difference in the quality of life of many people. Skilled software engineers don’t wear masks or capes, but they can still have cool aliases, and they truly have the power to make the world better or worse."

Hasnain says:

I read about this drama earlier on twitter and now that it’s published with a little more detail and easier to share, here it is in all its glory. It’s even worse than the quote: it made up citations, the court asked the lawyer to clarify - and instead of taking the L then, he decided to ask chatgpt for the transcripts, which it made up. The firm is now in hot water (for good reason)

“Lawyer asked Chat GPT to find cases he could cite in a brief. It invented six decisions, including quotes and internal citations from the imaginary opinions, and when asked if they were real, said yes.”

Hasnain says:

As much as I love various programming language designs and discussions, the community aspects are hard to ignore. And often turn terrible.

“Who ultimately is responsible for turning some team discomfort into disgracing a public expert? How are we going to hold them accountable?
How do we put safeguards in place so that this doesn't happen again?
How can Rust not only be held accountable now, but maintain long-term accountability into the future?”

Hasnain says:

“What do you think is special about New York City’s halal restaurants?

Sameen Choudhry: In New York, there’s so many different ethnicities and backgrounds. And because we all live in New York City, we’re friends with each other. All of these ethnicities and backgrounds interest us, and we want to try their things … Now that a lot of the first-generation are a little older and starting their own businesses, that’s in the back of their head.”

Hasnain says:

"The search for an aperiodic monotile appears to have come to an end. Or has it? When tiling the plane aperiodically with the hat, you also need its reflection (what you get if you flip the tile over). Maybe there’s a yet-undiscovered aperiodic monotile out there that doesn’t require its mirror image. Find it and you’ll be famous. The inspiration might be right under your feet."

Hasnain says:

I don't know why I spent a bunch of time over a lot of days reading this paper, but I did, and I'm sharing here. Learned a lot about history, economics, and biology and food science from this one.

"Use of spices takes advantage of plant defensive compounds. Not surprisingly, in view of their evolved functions, these phytochemicals have antioxidant, antimicrobial, and antiviral properties. The use of spices essentially borrows plants' recipes for survival and puts them to similar use in cooking. Over time, recipes should “evolve” as new bacteria and fungi appear or indigenous species develop resistance to phytochemicals, requiring the addition of more spices or new spices to combat them effectively. However, there is a limit to how much of any one spice can be added before beneficial phytochemicals become phytotoxins. Thus, cookbooks from different eras are more than just curiosities. Essentially, they represent written records of our coevolutionary races against foodborne diseases. By cleansing foods of pathogens before consumption, spice users contribute to the health, longevity, and fitness of themselves, their families, and their guests. A Darwinian view of gastronomy thus helps us understand why “some like it hot” (spicy, that is!)."