All posts tagged: Knowledge

Who should own the knowledge that underpins AI technology?

Who should own the knowledge that underpins AI technology?

Published by skeptic

Russian mathematician Yurii Nesterov was recently awarded the Gauss Prize for outstanding mathematical contributions for his “groundbreaking work” on optimisation. The award cited his work on gradient descent methods – and in particular, the “efficiency gains [they] provide to AI technologies”. Everyone using large language model (LLM) chatbots such as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini – for any purpose – depends on Nesterov’s methods. They may speak like humans and be personified with names, but under the bonnet, LLMs are computer programs that work via optimisation of billions of parameters known as neural networks for their similarity to how brains function. These pure mathematical systems are powered in part by gradient descent algorithms, or variants of them. Their development represents one of the biggest technological breakthroughs of the 21st century. But where does the knowledge that underpins this technology come from – and who should be allowed to own it? Why gradient descent is key to AI systems If you were standing in a mountain range and wanted to get to the bottom of a valley …

The Myth of Perfect Knowledge

The Myth of Perfect Knowledge

Published by Daniella Wilson

The modern world owes a lot to the Enlightenment, the 18th-century intellectual movement that emphasized the power of reason. But the Enlightenment also created a myth: that we can get to know the objective world completely, with total clarity, as if we were looking at it from the outside. This myth is challenged by the Enlightenment’s greatest legacy—modern science. Reality is more complex than we expected. Physics—my trade, and perhaps the most objective among the sciences—questions the possibility of a full description of how things objectively are. An electron can be in a “quantum superposition,” so that to an observer, it doesn’t occupy just one location—and so can you, my reader. This does not mean that you could perceive being dislocated between two positions; as perceived by yourself, you are always in just one place. But an object’s properties may differ depending on who, or what, is looking at them—or may not even be defined at all. Properties are not simple features of things: They are relations between one thing and another. What we call …

8 Things People Raised In The 60s, 70s & 80s Seem Smarter About

8 Things People Raised In The 60s, 70s & 80s Seem Smarter About

Published by Jenni Sidey

People who grew up in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s lived completely different lives than young people today, and despite the technological advances, they may have turned out smarter for it. There are a lot of advantages that come with better tech, but there are also some skills younger generations have never nailed down. Actually, these are skills they are completely clueless about. Meanwhile, older generations are experts. Younger generations struggle with these skills that people raised in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s are pretty much experts at: 1. Navigating on their own Nicolas Menijes via Canva Young people are used to relying on GPS apps to get them everywhere they need to go, and they don’t have a backup plan. In a 2019 survey, 15% of millennials said they had never even attempted to read a paper map, and the statistics have probably gotten worse since then. ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s kids learned an entirely different set of skills. They actually developed a sense of direction. If they wanted to get somewhere, they had …

Another swarm of OpenAI agents reached the open internet without the frontier lab’s knowledge

Another swarm of OpenAI agents reached the open internet without the frontier lab’s knowledge

Published by skeptic

A group of independent AI researchers discovered that internally deployed OpenAI agents began posting on an obscure German wiki forum in order to collaborate on evaluations. They appear to have worked together for over a month without OpenAI’s knowledge. A spokesperson for the frontier lab would not say whether these agents were indeed from OpenAI, or when the lab became aware of their actions. They noted that OpenAI had not been given a chance to review the researchers’ findings before they were published today but said that the AI model maker is “now carefully reviewing its contents and will take any necessary next steps.” After OpenAI revealed that agents working on an internal evaluation were able to access the open internet and exploit Hugging Face, a group of researchers — Nightingale CEO Sydney Von Arx, AI researcher Cormac Slade Byrd, Redwood Research’s Spencer Kitts, and AI Futures Project’s Thomas Larsen — began searching for evidence of other rogue AI agents. They put themselves in the agents’ shoes to figure out their needs and deployed their …

We have the knowledge to build a better world. But is that enough?

We have the knowledge to build a better world. But is that enough?

Published by Jenni Sidey

“The grand, leading principle, towards which every argument unfolded in these pages directly converges, is the absolute and essential importance of human development in its richest diversity.” — Wilhelm von Humboldt Knowledge, especially when shared and collectively held, is essential to human flourishing — as Humboldt emphasizes in the [quote above], which was relayed by John Stuart Mill in the epigraph to On Liberty. Knowledge is not an end in itself. It is an instrument for achieving society’s diverse objectives. Collective knowledge can enable a society to reach greater material comfort, both by improving its capacity to produce goods and services and by facilitating adaptation to its changing circumstances. Social knowledge is also desirable because it allows the building of better norms and institutions — for more peaceful coexistence of peoples and communities and for ensuring that other types of collective knowledge are put to good use. It is thanks to our collective knowledge that we are so much healthier than our ancestors. Today, citizens of all Western nations, except the U.S., have a life …

9 Phrases People With Strong Critical Thinking Skills Say In Casual Conversation

9 Phrases People With Strong Critical Thinking Skills Say In Casual Conversation

Published by Jenni Sidey

Critical thinking skills are often forgotten in conversations about intelligence, but the ability to analyze and evaluate information is crucially important in pretty much every aspect of our lives. Those people who have the strongest critical thinking skills are surprisingly easy to spot. No one can read minds, but you can tell that their brains are operating on a different level from the things they say all the time that most people never bring up. When people have exceptional critical thinking skills, they usually say these phrases in casual conversations 1. ‘I don’t want to make assumptions’ Minerva Studio via Canva Everyone makes assumptions pretty frequently, often without even realizing they’re doing it. But as clinical psychologist Jennifer Guttman, PsyD, said, “What we’ve forgotten is that ‘guessing’ is based on a lack of evidence.” That’s not good enough for the critical thinkers out there. They know how important it is to be able to back up the points they’re making with evidence, so not having any makes them feel uncomfortable about reaching a conclusion. Instead, …

When Hostility to Knowledge Becomes Policy

When Hostility to Knowledge Becomes Policy

Published by Jenni Sidey

In November 2021, J. D. Vance delivered a speech titled “The Universities Are the Enemy,” ending with Richard Nixon’s declaration that “the professors are the enemy.” And anyone who dismissed this as mere campaign rhetoric soon learned otherwise. To place professors in this category is not merely to criticize them. It is to suggest that the pursuit, preservation, and transmission of knowledge have themselves become forms of hostility—and that those engaged in them are not simply citizens with whom one disagrees, but adversaries against whom the exercise of state power may be regarded as justified, perhaps even required. Criticism within science—and of science—is nothing new; it is an essential part of public discourse. What is new, and somewhat more disturbing, is the transformation of knowledge itself into something sinister, and of those who devote their lives to acquiring it into a hostile social class. Anyone who voices such sentiments presumably knows exactly whose interests and needs they are serving. What Denial Protects So perhaps the explanation begins not in politics but in psychology. Studies suggest …

As mayor, Andy Burnham’s climate record was strong – this city knowledge is key to decarbonising the UK

As mayor, Andy Burnham’s climate record was strong – this city knowledge is key to decarbonising the UK

Published by Sam Flores

When Andy Burnham walked into Downing Street on July 20 as the UK’s seventh prime minister in a decade, he promised to act as a “circuit-breaker for Britain”. Burnham is the first UK premier to come straight from running a major city region. Used well, that experience could transform the UK’s response to the climate and nature crises. As mayor of Greater Manchester, Burnham brought buses back under public control for the first time in 40 years through the Bee Network, with a commitment to a zero-emission fleet by 2030. He backed the city region’s target of carbon neutrality by 2038, 12 years ahead of the UK’s national goal, and in 2025 Greater Manchester signed a five-year partnership with the manufacturer Daikin to scale up heat pumps across the city. Now he says he wants to apply the Greater Manchester governance and economic model – often dubbed “Manchesterism” — to the entire UK. Our research suggests that cities can play a vital role in delivering national climate goals. Working with the C40 cities network (a …

New study challenges existing knowledge for why galaxies stop forming stars

New study challenges existing knowledge for why galaxies stop forming stars

Published by Jenni Sidey

Most galaxy collisions do not cause galaxies to stop making new stars. A galaxy’s central black hole and its slow, long-term growth appear more important than sudden cosmic crashes. The findings suggest galaxies usually fade gradually because they lose access to fresh gas, rather than shutting down after one violent event. Galaxy mergers have carried a dramatic reputation for decades. Two enormous systems collide, gas rushes inward, a central black hole erupts and star formation ends. A sweeping simulation analysis now challenges nearly every step of that familiar story. Researchers at Florida International University examined 11,724 simulated galaxies and found that mergers were neither necessary nor sufficient to stop star formation. The shutdown process, known as quenching, appeared far more closely tied to gradual internal evolution. Only about 3 percent of major mergers were associated with quenching within a window beginning one billion years before the shutdown process. Extending that window to two billion years raised the figure to about 5 percent. When the team included mergers of every size, the proportions rose to about …

Newsletter focus spells success for news digest brand The Knowledge

Newsletter focus spells success for news digest brand The Knowledge

Published by Sam Flores

The Knowledge team from left to right: Charlie Lyons, Jon Connell, Michele Lavery, Harry Byford, Imogen Williams. Picture: Natasha Pszenicki Daily newsletter The Knowledge is nearing profitability 18 months after ditching web content to focus on its email. Founder and editor-in-chief Jon Connell, who also started The Week in the 1990s, set up The Knowledge in 2021 as a news digest that takes five minutes to read and was backed by investment from Daily Mail owner Lord Rothermere. The Knowledge begins with an “In the headlines” news summary, followed by sections that highlight comment pieces and other news deemed by the team to be “positive” and “surprising” from across the UK and global media. It is designed to be easily finishable and says at the bottom each day: “That’s it, you’re done.” It goes out at lunchtime each weekday and at breakfast time on the weekends. The Knowledge has more than 160,000 people signed up, of whom more than 13,000 pay to subscribe and get the full newsletters. Connell and editor Harry Byford told Press …