Amir-massoud Farahmand

Vision: Understanding the computational and statistical principles required to design adaptive agents.
Associate Prof @polymtl @Mila_Quebec 🇨🇦
#MahsaAmini

[Amir-massoud Farahmand @SoloGen]

If we get to that point, the (hyper-) ideas would still matter, but their generation wouldn't be by us, and its mattering may not be for us.

The first (generation by the machines) may be OK; we just need to get over our egos.
The second (mattering for us) would be more serious.

[Amir-massoud Farahmand @SoloGen]

Ideas matter!
Personally, I prefer exploring them and coming up with new ones, instead of scaling up the compute (though that is fun too).
Nowadays, however, there is a chance that the next set of very good ideas comes from the machines.

[Richard Sutton @RichardSSutton]

Brute force computation is not enough for intelligence. Clever new methods are needed. The science of AI is far from finished. IMHO

[Amir-massoud Farahmand @SoloGen]

Imagine a 2D or 3D languages, as in the movie Arrival (and of course, the great story by Ted Chiang) as a concrete hypothetical example.
If that happens, they will be exploring the space of "hyper-ideas", which may not be easily understandable for us.

[Amir-massoud Farahmand @SoloGen]

The Made with AI part is to redact their names.

[Amir-massoud Farahmand @SoloGen]

I don't think this is right, is it?!

[These undergraduate authors withdrew all their 9 submissions to #ICLR2027 as they received negative reviews.]

[Amir-massoud Farahmand @SoloGen]

The Islamic Republic killed many thousands of Iranians. Almost none of the "western" folks whom I'd expected to react said anything meaningful about it.
Seeing Peter, whose books I love, mentioning sth about it, even in passing, is so rare that feels refreshing.
Thank you!

[Peter Godfrey-Smith @pgodfreysmith]

@birchlse An undeniably striking fact. Setting aside the end of the world, a case that bothered me was the January protests in Iran. Ignored nearly everywhere, with the only updates here. A week, at least, ahead of the press on the magnitude of the Nova massacre. Many others.

[Amir-massoud Farahmand @SoloGen]

@evvvvince Yes, inference is more feasible compared to the training.
Though brains seem to be much more efficient in learning too. A child doesn't need to read the whole Wikipedia (and then a few orders of magnitude on top of that) before saying meaningful things.

[Amir-massoud Farahmand @SoloGen]

From a global equality and liberal perspective, it's quite great idea that everyone runs their own local LLM. This isn't possible with current AI architecture and hardware, but we can make it happen, as evident by the 20W devices in your home that are as smart as you are (*).

[Amir-massoud Farahmand @SoloGen]

(*): Your brain!
P.S: This is a reaction to certain CEO's utterances.
If one day I become a CEO, I'd like to say things like above instead of "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home" (Olsen) or "640K ought to be enough for anybody" (misatt to Gates).

[Amir-massoud Farahmand @SoloGen]

I have never really got into Star Trek, but Captain Jean-Luc Picard has been an important part of the cultural fabric of our geekdom. Godspeed Patrick Stewart! 🖖

[Tyler Black, MD @tylerblack32]

Disabled people should not live in poverty.

It makes no sense the way we treat our people with disabilities in Canada. Canada has the full apparatus to implement adjusted payments, yet we typically support disabled people WELL under the poverty line.

/1

[Amir-massoud Farahmand @SoloGen]

Achievement unlocked: an Olympian (Donna Vakalis) cited my work!

What a World Model Represents Is Three Questions
(https://t.co/0elyeQGPZx)

I haven't carefully read the paper to have a strong opinion, but it is interesting nonetheless!

[Amir-massoud Farahmand @SoloGen]

I will also be recruiting students through ELLIS, either as the main advisor or co-advisor.

[ELLIS @ELLISforEurope]

🚨 Apply now for the #ELLISPhD Program!

Work with leading AI/ML researchers across Europe, with exchange visits & joint supervision. The application deadline is 31 Oct.

Get all info & apply now at https://t.co/VEawFTFALc

[Glen Berseth @GlenBerseth]

I'm hiring postdocs at Mila in Montreal: #reinforcementLearning, #robotics & #foundationmodels, and #automatedscience. Apply by Nov. 4.

[Amir-massoud Farahmand @SoloGen]

P.S.1: The suggestion is a joke. Don't fume!
P.S.2: But I still don't understand the reason for residents: Don't we know that people's cognitive performance deteriorates after certain hours of work?

[Amir-massoud Farahmand @SoloGen]

Why do medical residents (and doctors, nurses, etc.) work very long shifts?

Perhaps we should ask grad students to do the same, so they can keep up with the AI slop literature and keep their coding agents running contributing to the creation of new AI slops.