Unstructured Reading Notes

  • Defense: Efficiency in Privacy-Preserving Computation via Domain Knowledge, Weizhao Jin (advisor: Srivatsan Ravi)
    • homomorphic encryption on selective model parameters (vis mask) to reduce overhead
      • filter by commonly-used formula for parameter sensitivity
      • optimize privacy budget, computed via integration
    • entity resolution: dedup point in 2 dataset
    • simulate ReLU via polynomial function bc HE only support + ×
      • balance degree (slow) and accuracy
    • network path validation: avoid sending info on all node
      • backward propagation to validate path for forward speed assuming few malicious
      • XOR hash w/ zero-knowledge proof each pair
  • I Slept With 100 Men in One Day | Documentary
    • many man would do anything to have sex
    • OnlyFans is a huge money printer but also a slippery slope
  • The Creator Of Elixir - Top Shelf 7
    • Go has huge foot gun in exchange for ability to write lower level code
    • most problem are solved; should just use library
    • Jose Valim see Rust as functional bc explicit mutability
    • Jose think loop hard in immutable language
    • Jose was bitten by PL paper w/ slow implementation, and still does not understand the math in his paper as a coauthor
    • library that cannot evolve w/o breaking backward compatibility is either a lie or poorly designed
  • Credit card interest and interchange fees
    • credit card companies make most money from charging merchant percentage
    • ordinary people pay for the benefit high-end card user get
  • Saagar Enjeti: Trump, MAGA, DOGE, Obama, FDR, JFK, History & Politics | Lex Fridman Podcast #454
    • America spirit highly influenced by Scottish-Irish about not trusting authority, fighting, freedom
    • performance as politician is not very correlated with personal life
    • Washington DC is itself a creature not caring about even the president
    • personnel selection is key bc many decision are made by them
    • lower down can brick president order by delaying
    • US immigration is crowded by relative of citizen
    • managerial revolution (virus): not known what is going on lower down
    • true power show when ruling w/o having the position
    • mainstream media ask dummy question at white house
    • stealing election was common and unhinged in US in the last century
  • Dario Amodei: Anthropic CEO on Claude, AGI & the Future of AI & Humanity | Lex Fridman Podcast #452
    • scaling law: model do better w/ bigger network & training time & data; not seem to stop
    • model learn local pattern, larger scale pattern, then long range correlation, etc. as they grow
    • model feeling dumber likely bc different system prompt, user prompt, luck, or perception
    • hard to make model both helpful/polite and concise/safe
    • targeted regulation is needed to not have people radically against regulation
    • mechanistic interpretability is a green field in AI
    • constitutional AI for RL: AI to rate AI response based on prompt about principle
    • important thing is what ultra good AI can do
    • Amanda Askell is likely the human who talked most to Claude
    • goal is for Claude to be helpful in front of million of people
    • model try to please as many people by default, instead to get best result, encourage it to not care
    • clear prompting: explain concept to model when talking about what you want, w/ example
    • anthropomorphize w/ model: can ask why model refuse to answer
    • use strong word to make model do something, e.g., never ever vs do not
    • not failing signal failure bc not trying hard enough, but need to understand high-risk failure
    • interesting idea: model refuse to talk if boring and just quit
    • best way to measure model ability is bleeding edge research you do
  • Defense: Real-time Multi-Resolution Neural Networks for Hand Simulation, Mianlun Zheng (Advisor: Jernej Barbič)
    • from joint angle, simulate bone, tendon, muscle, vein, nerve, fascia, …
    • application: medical education, robotics, Metaverse, physical therapy (committee)
    • average (interpolate) 6 MRI scan of hand pose by calculating plastic strain & min energy function for equilibrium
    • pattern matching bad: need huge data; no anatomy (dumb)
    • tendon simulation: rod model; attach bone; emulate force from forearm; hook → tunnel to slide through
    • fascia: triangle mesh + cloth solver; fat: FEM simulation; nail: rigid point cloud in skin
    • high accuracy: < 1mm error against MRI
    • real-time neural net challenge: nets in graphics slow; real-world usage need < 1ms; existing libraries overlook small model
    • need: change level of detail (LOD) for Metaverse
    • animation: deform character to vertices
    • joint angle → linear blend skinning → net to reduce residue → real-time output
    • LOD support: more vertex each level; restriction vs prolongation to downsample & upsample
      • go up & down by level
      • each level each region (by unity construction) separate net → small net → efficient
    • further performance: reduce joint by perturbation simulation; PCA reduction for each region
    • hot cache performance: lower output dimension & faster than prior work; much faster on high level
  • Measuring context switching and memory overheads for Linux threads
    • Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL) & futex several times faster than old Linux thread
    • bearable latency: on his i7-4771 in 2018, multicore context switching took ~1.5µs, same core switching ~2.5µs, launching thread ~5µs, launching process ~22.5µs
      comparison: memcpy 64 KiB took 3µs, Goroutine switching took 170ns
    • lazy memory: 8 MiB virtual via ulimit (VM), ~8 KiB resident (RSS) without touching stack
  • Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning, Andrew Huberman
    • neuroplasticity apply during fast eye movement sleep
    • focus & alertness is how remember; sleep is prerequisite; meditation, NSDR are tool
    • testing help remember; test ASAP after exposure
      • best be open-ended, short answer, minimal prompt, require critical thinking
      • do not matter for memory if wrong
    • perceived familiarity hinder memory
    • gap effect: pause in talk greatly reinforce memory
  • ChatGPT from Scratch: How to Train an Enterprise AI Assistant • Phil Winder • GOTO 2023
    • post-GPT are decoder-only
    • logistic regression is often superb for domain-specific task
    • RLHF degrade performance
    • parameter-efficient fine-tuning (PEFT): use adapter alongside frozen model
    • quantization massively reduce RAM usage
    • Falcon-7B LLM: used in demo, said to have cleaned training data, open-source
    • fine tuning demo done on V100 in Colab
  • How Smartphones Shrink Our Brains
    • anticipation trump focus
    • habit to rely on tool kill memory
    • trying to split attention make though shallow
    • paper is better for thinking (I think large screen help)