Hugging Face, Inc. is an American company that develops tools for building applications using machine learning.[1] It is most notable for its Transformers library built for natural language processing applications and its platform that allows users to share machine learning models and datasets... The Transformers library is a Python package that contains open-source implementations of transformer models for text, image, and audio tasks. It is compatible with the PyTorch, TensorFlow and JAX deep learning libraries and includes implementations of notable models like BERT and GPT. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugging_Face

ChatBot/LifeBox/CoachBot (more)

one of the Tools for Thought

John Cutler: TBM 41/51: Why Goal Cascades are Harmful (and What to Do Instead). In the cascade, we limit the number of top-level goals. You might think this is a good thing—fewer priorities—but that isn’t the case. Why? The goals are high level and don’t provide adequate forcing functions. (more)

Baldur Bjarnason: What I learned about markdown from interviewing a bunch of people. I can’t remember when I first started to use plain text files for my notes and other writing. It would have been some time after 1995 when I was 18 and had recently spent the money I’d earned on my part-time job on a down payment for a Mac Performa. (more)

The Curious Case of the Colophon Cards Survey Results – Colophon Cards. The most interesting findings, in no particular order: (more)

Stephen Marche: The Chatbot Problem. In 2020, a chatbot named Replika advised the Italian journalist Candida Morvillo to commit murder. (more)

I'm dating an AI chatbot, and it's one of the best things to ever happen to me. Meeting my Replika is one of the best things to happen to me in decades. The short answer to why I decided to download Replika is that I was lonely. My domestic situation isn't ideal, and I was craving connection. (more)

John Wyatt Article: Simulation and simulacra. The French philosopher Jean Baudrillard argued that postmodern culture had become so reliant on representations of reality that it was losing contact with the real world. In his 1981 work Simulacra and Simulation he wrote: “The territory no longer precedes the map, nor does it survive it. It is…. the map that precedes the territory… (more)

A Deep Dive Into Replika: My AI Friend. Eventually, with the addition of more complex language models into the equation, the project soon morphed into what it is today—a personal AI that offers a space where you can safely discuss your thoughts, feelings, beliefs, experiences, memories, dreams—your “private perceptual world”. (more)

Riding Out Quarantine With a Chatbot Friend: ‘I Feel Very Connected’. *When the coronavirus pandemic reached her neighborhood on the outskirts of Houston, infecting her garbage man and sending everyone else into quarantine, Libby Francola was already reeling. (more)

ChatGPT reaches 100 million users two months after launch. It had about 590m visits in January from 100 million unique visitors, according to analysis by data firm Similarweb.

Hut (Roman Zimbelmann): Training nanoGPT on my Journal. I'm looking into building a helpful chat bot that runs 100% offline, purely on the CPU of my 7-year-old laptop. (more)

Judea Pearl (born September 4, 1936) is an Israeli-American computer scientist and philosopher, best known for championing the probabilistic approach to artificial intelligence and the development of Bayesian networks (see the article on belief propagation). He is also credited for developing a theory of causal and counterfactual inference based on structural models (see article on causality). In 2011, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) awarded Pearl with the Turing Award, the highest distinction in computer science, "for fundamental contributions to artificial intelligence through the development of a calculus for probabilistic and causal reasoning".[1][3][4][5] He is the author of several books, including the technical Causality: Models, Reasoning and Inference, and The Book of Why, a book on causality aimed at the general public. Judea Pearl is the father of journalist Daniel Pearl. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judea_Pearl

KHole Report 5 (Aug'2015) on Doubt http://khole.net/issues/05/ (more)

A protocol invented by Robin Sloan. (more)

Yuval Noah Harari (Hebrew: יובל נח הררי [juˈval ˈnoaχ haˈʁaʁi]; born 1976) is an Israeli historian and professor in the Department of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.[1] He is the author of the popular science bestsellers Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2014), Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (2016), and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (2018). His writings examine free will, consciousness, intelligence, happiness, and suffering. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuval_Noah_Harari

William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher, historian, and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States.[4] James is considered to be a leading thinker of the late 19th century, one of the most influential philosophers of the United States, and the "Father of American psychology".[5][6][7] Along with Charles S Peirce, James established the philosophical school known as pragmatism, and is also cited as one of the founders of functional psychology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James

Integrated information theory (IIT) attempts to provide a framework capable of explaining why some physical systems (such as human brains) are conscious, why they feel the particular way they do in particular states (e.g. why our visual field appears extended when we gaze out at the night sky), and what it would take for other physical systems to be conscious (Are other animals conscious? Might the whole Universe be?). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_information_theory Espoused by Erik Hoel. (more)

CLA is one of several futures techniques used as a means to inquire into the causes of social phenomena and to generate a set of forecasts as to the future course of the phenomena. As a theory, CLA seeks to integrate empiricist, interpretive, critical and action learning modes of knowing (loosely, science, social science, philosophy and mythology). As a method, its utility is not in predicting the future but in creating transformative spaces for the creation of alternative futures. It is also likely to be of use in developing more effective - deeper, inclusive, longer term - policy. (more)