Benjamin Bowman

Applied Math Ph.D. candidate @ UCLA. Deep (shallow) learning theory.

[Benjamin Bowman @b_njam_n]

@s8mb From my experience the difficulty depends significantly on the child and there’s huge variance, just by observing those among my family/friends.

[Benjamin Bowman @b_njam_n]

Similar dynamic for government regulation, as a society becomes wealthier regulations can afford to get stricter increasing costs. Examples include US healthcare and US cars being more expensive than Indian cars due to stricter safety regulations etc.

[Benjamin Bowman @b_njam_n]

Jevon’s paradox for admin: as technology makes admin easier / streamlined, the amount of admin desired goes up. People want to track more and more things. Before you used to just purchase things at a store, now even small chains have user accounts / loyalty programs etc.

[Benjamin Bowman @b_njam_n]

Twitter offers signal that you wouldn’t get through traditional channels such as traditional news / media, but the noise is much higher and has also been gamed+corrupted. There’s still a lot of room for less noisy community led journalism with less misinfo etc

[Benjamin Bowman @b_njam_n]

Apple turned seamless bluetooth pairing into billions of cashflow.

[Benjamin Bowman @b_njam_n]

It is possible that in work from home setups each individual contributor gets more done, but the work is less impactful due to decreased coordination. Thus in office can be more productive even if each individual is “doing less”.

[Benjamin Bowman @b_njam_n]

How past data can or should be used is an open question, but future licenses and incentive mechanisms can potentially address some of these problems

[Benjamin Bowman @b_njam_n]

Future web data (urls, images) will likely have metadata outlining how it can be used in AI models. This leads to interesting incentives as a less permissive license could reduce visibility but also gives you more ownership of the data.

[Benjamin Bowman @b_njam_n]

@paulg Indeed, income discrimination becomes apparent. Source: https://t.co/TtdHKiU3uw

[Benjamin Bowman @b_njam_n]

I think some version of an internet browser focused on this might already exist?

[Benjamin Bowman @b_njam_n]

I would love to see phone or laptop OS’s or interfaces specifically designed for focus or minimizing notifications/ distractions. With android this should be possible, does it exist?

[Amjad Masad @amasad]

@Duderichy The ai hype bois are out of control

[Benjamin Bowman @b_njam_n]

As large neural networks seem to increase in intelligence faster than in creativity, for humans creativity may be more valuable than intelligence.

[Benjamin Bowman @b_njam_n]

Say 1 is correct vote, 0 is incorrect. For n large majority vote of n independent binomial random variables with mean p = 0.51 will outperform small number with p=0.99. Now think about what this means for democracy, peer review, etc.

[Benjamin Bowman @b_njam_n]

I’d be curious of the mechanics around hype. Obviously people raising money for a startup or lab have an incentive to oversell a technology, but what’s the incentive for random “thought leadership” hype threads for people without direct incentive?

[Benjamin Bowman @b_njam_n]

Rule #1 of the internet, don’t argue with people on the internet.

[Benjamin Bowman @b_njam_n]

I’ve become convinced that social media is only beneficial in extreme moderation ~15-30 mins per day. Overload of information, and lots of drama and shit talking. Deleted all apps and just login through browser.

[Benjamin Bowman @b_njam_n]

@vintrotweets SEO optimization becomes constructing adversarial perturbations :)

[Benjamin Bowman @b_njam_n]

If search engines become based on embeddings then those doing SEO optimization will likely come up with crazy tricks to favorably perturb their embedding. Would be an interesting dynamic

[Benjamin Bowman @b_njam_n]

@jordwalke I read a study once that by inserting an imperceptible delay to a software program participants were less productive. They had a psychological explanation, wish I could retrieve the study