"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."--Clarke's First Law

Thanks, it's tough to grasp even for the curious. As I take it, representations are spread out across populations of neurons, patterns of activation across multiple layers, on which sparse autoencoders can shed some light. But the mathematical 'language' of these embeddings is still largely obscure.

AlphaEvolve: A coding agent for scientific and algorithmic discovery In this white paper, we present AlphaEvolve, an evolutionary coding agent that substantially enhances capabilities of state-of-the-art LLMs on highly challenging tasks such as tackling open scientific...

Explain how AlphaEvolve (essentially an LLM cluster directed by an evolutionary algorithm) could discover improved solutions in computing infrastructure, chip design, and mathematical algorithms if it had no intelligence at all. arxiv.org/abs/2506.13131

YouTube video by The Neuron OpenAI Beats EVERY Human Team at World's Hardest Coding Competition

Explain how "nonsense" won gold at the international math olympiad or beat every human team at the ICPC world finals. These competitions present original tasks an AI cannot lift from its training data. Acing them in the absence of intelligence would be an ineffable miracle. youtu.be/1XJafbCO8iI

YouTube video by The Neuron OpenAI Beats EVERY Human Team at World's Hardest Coding Competition

Meaningless patterns cannot win gold at the international math olympiad or beat every human team at the ICPC world finals. These competitions present original tasks an AI cannot lift from its training data. Acing them in the absence of intelligence would be an ineffable miracle. youtu.be/1XJafbCO8iI

Doesn't matter. Biological brains are special only insofar as they can evolve naturally. There is no logical or scientific reason why ability to generate consciousness should be = ability to evolve. The secret sauce is in the patterns. I doubt conscious AI exists right now but it most probably will.

Life on Earth emerged fast. Far quicker than we thought | Aeon Essays It’s time to rethink how we study life’s origins. It emerged far earlier, and far quicker, than we once thought possible

For decades, palaeontologists and geologists have told the story that early Earth was a lifeless, volcanic hellscape for hundreds of millions of years. But a raft of evidence suggests this story is completely wrong

Advanced version of Gemini with Deep Think officially achieves gold-medal standard at the International Mathematical Olympiad Our advanced model officially achieved a gold-medal level performance on problems from the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO), the world’s most prestigious competition for young...

It wasn't just OpenAI.

Google also used a general purpose model to solve the very hard math problems of the International Math Olympiad in plain language. Last year they used specialized tool use

Increasing evidence of LLMs generalizing to novel problem solving deepmind.google/discover/blo...

Schluss mit der Hetzkampagne – Solidarität mit Brosius-Gersdorf! Wenn rechte Netzwerke gezielt demokratische Institutionen angreifen, ist unsere gesamte Gesellschaft in Gefahr. Die Kampagne gegen Brosius-Gersdorf zeigt, wie orchestriert und wirksam Desinformation h...

Dieses Thema liegt mir am Herzen. Bitte hier unterzeichnen: weact.campact.de/petitions/ki...

The longer the political left refuses to engage with AI - or transhumanism, space exploration, abundance, or any number of other pieces of tech - the more they will simply continue to cede these grounds to neolibs and fascists.

Man muss nicht mal ein Atheist sein, um zu erkennen, dass eine Religion, derzufolge gute und intellektuell aufrichtige Nichtgläubige--Bertrand Russell, Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking--auf ewig in der Hölle brennen, für eine auf Geistesfreiheit & Aufklärung gründende Zivilisation ein Klotz am Bein ist.

Mit "Modernisieren statt aussteigen" hätte die deutsche #Energiewende ein Erfolg werden können. China entwickelt gerade einen #Thoriumreaktor (TMSR-LF1), ab 2030 sollen kommerzielle Reaktoren folgen. Thorium braucht keine neuen Bergwerke, es fällt als Nebenprodukt beim Abbau von Seltenen Erden an.

Noch ein Grund, warum mein Lieblingspolitspruch "wer nicht rechts ist, ist nicht links, sondern bei Verstand" lautet. Ohne Kernenergie wird sich die Deindustrialisierung Deutschlands fortsetzen. Dann ist es mit dem sozialen Frieden vorbei und bald danach mit der liberalen Demokratie.

The Putinization of the USA continues. Now scientists are self-censoring for fear that Trump's Christofascist minions may disapprove of their discoveries.

No, the "Kalam cosmological argument" doesn't prove God's existence The Kalam cosmological argument asserts that everything that exists must have a cause, and the "first" cause must be God. Is that valid?

No, the “Kalam cosmological argument” doesn’t prove God’s existence

No, you can't use what's known about the Universe to prove the existence of God.

Whatever underlying assumptions you make aren't necessarily valid in a very weird Universe.
bigthink.com/starts-with-...
#space #physics #philosophy

Trump Admin Nixed Contract Helping Kidnapped Ukrainian Children The fate of abducted Ukrainian children is a white-hot issue for peace negotiations—and it looks like the State Department may have just undercut the cause.

U.S. State Department terminated the program investigating and documenting evidence of Russian genocide via abduction of Ukrainian children.
These are literally the crimes for which the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Putin.
newrepublic.com/article/1927...

The United States Should Make Putin Beg for Negotiations The path is obvious once we finally dismiss Putin's nuclear blackmail and overcome our irrational fear of Russia's collapse

"At this time, no negotiations will succeed because Putin does not have any incentives to end his imperial ambitions to conquer Europe."
Ukraine must be armed to win and Russia must be bankrupted before the negotiations can take place.
open.substack.com/pub/igorsush...

NASA to eliminate chief scientist position Long-running advisory role cut along with two dozen others in agencywide reduction

In den USA ist viel von einem "Deep State" die Rede, von einer angeblichen Schattenstruktur, die von der Politik nicht gesteuert werden kann. Das Gegenteil ist der Fall: Die Politik hat viel zu viel Macht, in Institutionen hineinzuregieren, die eigentlich eigenständig sein sollten - die NASA etwa.

Countless emails asking how Americans can directly aid Ukrainian soldiers. Here’s an easy answer:
savelife.in.ua/en/

A Trump administration insider has leveraged a 50x Bitcoin and Etherium position bought just hours prior to the admin announcing their strategic crypto reserve into millions.

Remember that crime is no longer illegal in the United States and when this administration ends they will all be pardoned.

The truth about banning "dangerous gain-of-function" research A new bill introduced into the US Senate claims to make us safer. Instead, it would destroy all virology research, and for no real cause.

The truth about banning “dangerous gain-of-function” research

So, the US Senate has introduced a bill to ban "dangerous gain-of-function" research.

But virology is already more tightly and sanely regulated; this would merely end life-saving research.

bigthink.com/starts-with-...
#science #biology

YouTube video by KalkTV Kalkofes Mattscheibe - Hymne mit Bildungsauftrag

youtu.be/jz6XXnoBkss?...

Vor drei Jahren hat man mir auch schon erklärt, in zwei Jahren käme für die Ukraine jede Hilfe zu spät.

Einfach machen.

HEY EVERYONE REMEMBER WHEN TRUMP WAS IMPEACHED FOR DENYING AID TO UKRAINE BECAUSE HE WANTED ZELENSKY TO LIE AND SAY BAD THINGS ABOUT BIDEN AND ZELENKSY WOULDN’T DO IT?

Maybe literally one fucking American newspapers could mention this in their, “think pieces,” about what happened yesterday.

"Trump...eine sehr klare Neigung zu Russland und autokratischen Herrschern wie Putin hat"

Ja, zudem war Schattenpräsident und Trump-Einflüsterer Elon Musk schon bald nach Putins Überfall auf einen Anti-Ukraine-Kurs eingeschwenkt. Und Musk lässt sich nicht durch Schmeichelei steuern.

I'm not shocked. This betrayal has been a foregone conclusion since Nov 5.

But I will be disgusted if my German government does not take the opportunity to make lemonade from lemons. We must rebuild our military, work with France and Britain on nuclear deterrence, and #armUkraineNow any way we can.

Apology for what, betraying and backstabbing a people fighting for their survival against a genocidal invader? Spewing Kremlin-scripted mendacity in the face of Ukraine's elected leader? Yes, Caligula & his horse, I mean Trump & his VP have plenty to apologize for. These gaslighters fool no one.

Zelensky is a wartime leader watching his people suffer and die under Russian attacks every day. To be lectured and lied to by Trump and Vance, as they defend the war criminal dictator committing these atrocities, is unimaginable agony. An everlasting shame for America.