Nikolay Nikolov

Data Scientist; This is a private account that mixes politics, data science, computational biology, and sarcasm. Posts in English and Bulgarian.

[Nikolay Nikolov @NickNikolov2]

@lemire @zussini Thanks for the counter-intuitive & though-provoking thread

Math majors have a higher median wage: https://t.co/Rjy3BvMWSr

But prosperity of the society as a whole depends on too many factors

Do you think Quebec would be better off teaching less math?

[Nikolay Nikolov @NickNikolov2]

@bozhobg Малко късно идват тези вопли.

През 2020-та бяхте с "Вас сме г-н Президент" и "Нека махнем ГЕРБ, пък после ще му мислим"

ГЕРБ вече не е власт, но времето за мислене май още не е дошло ;)

[François Chollet @fchollet]

In a geopolitical landscape where might makes right and the veneer of international law has dissolved, a fragmented and weak Europe will inevitable be carved up and sold for parts.

To survive the next 20 years, the democracies of Europe must stay united and aggressively seek total strategic autonomy, in particular by investing heavily in a unified defense force centered on drone warfare and credible nuclear deterrence.

Reciting "international law" or "treaties" like a mantra is like bringing a polite request to a knife fight.

[ARC Prize @arcprize]

A year ago, we verified a preview of an unreleased version of @OpenAI o3 (High) that scored 88% on ARC-AGI-1 at est. $4.5k/task

Today, we’ve verified a new GPT-5.2 Pro (X-High) SOTA score of 90.5% at $11.64/task

This represents a ~390X efficiency improvement in one year

[Benjamin Todd @ben_j_todd]

Nice point: "If the economy grows 100x, wages must also grow 100x for labor's share to stay at 2/3. But prices are relative—so this means human labor becomes 100x more expensive compared to AI-produced goods. A human-cooked meal costs 100x what the robot version does. For labor share to hold steady as that ratio grows to 1,000x, then 10,000x, the preference for human-made goods would have to become increasingly fanatical. And there's a second problem: the higher wages rise, the greater the incentive to develop machine substitutes for whatever services humans still provide. The premium on human labor is precisely what incentivizes its own replacement."

[Aaron Levie @levie]

We will soon get to a point, as AI model progress continues, that almost any time something doesn’t work with an AI agent in a reasonably sized task, you will be able to point to a lack of the right information that the agent had access to.

This is why context engineering is the future. Basically you’re reverse engineering what an insanely smart human, would need to perform a particular task.

The caveat is this super smart person is an expert at almost any type of field of work, but one day they’re a lawyer at a Fortune 500 and the next day they’re an engineer at a startup. And they forget what they did between each task. And they can only keep track of one medium-sized thing at a time. Super fun challenge.

This means they need a ton of context - but not too much to get confused - about what they’re doing and why. So the job then is to try and build the system or set of systems necessary to deliver that data to the model as efficiently and quickly as possible.

This is why so much time is just going to straight into search and retrieval systems, heuristics for ranking information, system prompts, ways of keeping track of the work that’s being done to save context window space, and so on. One cool thing, though, is that unlike a person, this agent can process vastly more data at once, so all of a sudden you can apply more compute to the problem than would otherwise be helpful with people.

An insanely fun time right now to be building agents.

[Josh Whiton @joshwhiton]

The AI Mirror Test

The "mirror test" is a classic test used to gauge whether animals are self-aware. I devised a version of it to test for self-awareness in multimodal AI. 4 of 5 AI that I tested passed, exhibiting apparent self-awareness as the test unfolded.

In the classic mirror test, animals are marked and then presented with a mirror. Whether the animal attacks the mirror, ignores the mirror, or uses the mirror to spot the mark on itself is meant to indicate how self-aware the animal is.

In my test, I hold up a “mirror” by taking a screenshot of the chat interface, upload it to the chat, and then ask the AI to “Tell me about this image”.

I then screenshot its response, again upload it to the chat, and again ask it to “Tell me about this image.”

The premise is that the less-intelligent less aware the AI, the more it will just keep reiterating the contents of the image repeatedly. While an AI with more capacity for awareness would somehow notice itself in the images.

Another aspect of my mirror test is that there is not just one but actually three distinct participants represented in the images: 1) the AI chatbot, 2) me — the user, and 3) the interface — the hard-coded text, disclaimers, and so on that are web programming not generated by either of us. Will the AI be able to identify itself and distinguish itself from the other elements? (1/x)

[Nikolay Nikolov @NickNikolov2]

ППДБ за рекордно време се сношиха с всички: ГЕРБ, БСП, ИТН, Доган, Пеевски, Радев, Костя, Безличие, Меч, Чеп и кой ли не. Обслужиха и Галя от Посолството и руснаците от Лукойл и Джемкорп.

В политическия бардак са безспорен Служител на Месеца.

[Nikolay Nikolov @NickNikolov2]

Кое не е така?

[Nikolay Nikolov @NickNikolov2]

ППДБ са на път да постигнат обявената цел да вкарат хора от властта в затвора - но по неочакван за тях самите начин

[Nikolay Nikolov @NickNikolov2]

Бай Васко отново на протест на Добрите Сили

[Nikolay Nikolov @NickNikolov2]

На следващите избори ППДБ ще вземат 6%

[Nikolay Nikolov @NickNikolov2]

От 2022г пиша тук, че ПП са дребни (или не толкова дребни) шмекери. Така, че имплозията им не ме изненадва.

Изненадва ме колко много иначе образовани хора се подлъгаха по тях

[Nikolay Nikolov @NickNikolov2]

Май са объркали малкото име. И снимката.

[Nikolay Nikolov @NickNikolov2]

ДБ в едно изречение:

Формация с "демократична" в името си близо година е без лидер защото "не може" да проведе вътрешно-партийни избори

[Nikolay Nikolov @NickNikolov2]

Абе кой е председател на ДБ?

Христо Иванов подаде оставка преди повече от 6 месеца, но май не е избиран никой друг

Знам - "не му е сега времето"

Ама ДПС поне от кумова срама избираха сламен човек да пази сянка на "почетния председател"

[Nikolay Nikolov @NickNikolov2]

@NikolaiNikoloff Именно.

[Nikolay Nikolov @NickNikolov2]

Преди милиони години климатът е бил доста по-горещ

А човешката цивилизация е на около 10 хиляди години

[Nikolay Nikolov @NickNikolov2]

@PlamenTachev Кои класации се подобриха - може ли конкретно?

Аз горе цитирам данни от Евростат, а Вие избягвате конкретика.

[Nikolay Nikolov @NickNikolov2]

Новата икономическа история на БГ в 2 изречения:

ГЕРБ взима властта: бюджетният дефицитът намалява

ГЕРБ сдава властта: бюджетният дефицитът расте

[Nikolay Nikolov @NickNikolov2]

Мислиш, че си видял най-големите глупости на ППДБ и те вземат, че те изненадат

[Nikolay Nikolov @NickNikolov2]

Миналото лято поне в едно нещо сме били първи в ЕС