exkner

Knowledge . Progress . Optimism . Freedom . Decentralization . Creativity

[exkner @ExKnTheory]

microgpt:

Art project from @karpathy

Why is it Significant?

Radical Demystification: Karpathy describes the script as the culmination of a "decade-long obsession to simplify LLMs to their bare essentials." By stripping away all the complex efficiency optimizations and massive libraries used in production, MicroGPT exposes the raw mathematical core of modern AI. It proves that the "magic" behind tools like ChatGPT is fundamentally just basic calculus and linear algebra operations applied iteratively.

https://t.co/b6GrxafSzG
https://t.co/VTbzO7KgZa

[exkner @ExKnTheory]

@ToKTeacher https://t.co/26Zbw2Sd1B

Not enough people take the idea of consciousness as an illusion seriously enough …

[exkner @ExKnTheory]

https://t.co/L7GFS7m4s8

[exkner @ExKnTheory]

@fchollet https://t.co/L7GFS7m4s8

[exkner @ExKnTheory]

@ShanuMathew93 https://t.co/L7GFS7m4s8

[exkner @ExKnTheory]

@dwarkesh_sp Semi interested but not sure I'm the right fit. My recent writing resides here: https://t.co/pGb2jEMEAW

[exkner @ExKnTheory]

@dwarkesh_sp My favourite classic book!

[exkner @ExKnTheory]

@GavinSBaker @patrick_oshag Great conversation that @jvisserlabs highlighted!
Started listening and was soon going down some rabbit holes with Gemini that I needed to get down in writing:)
https://t.co/RiP7vJ5Ynr

https://t.co/L7GFS7m4s8

[exkner @ExKnTheory]

Thread: The Intelligence Mirage

1/5: The Modern Egyptian: Why are the world's smartest AI researchers surprised that their models work? They are like Ancient Egyptians measuring the sun: they have perfect empirical measurement (they know that it works) but zero theoretical understanding of the underlying mechanism.

We are gazing at a glowing pyramid of data, but we don't know how it was built.

[exkner @ExKnTheory]

5/5: Conclusion: We are at a crossroads. Current AI is a brilliant librarian living in a power-hungry, path-dependent simulation of intelligence. To create a true "scientist," we need a new architecture that embraces epistemological reality.

The future with AGI isn't just about more data and more compute. It's about a fundamental shift in how we define and build intelligence. That path will have to detour from the current one.

Read the full version here: https://t.co/yzGhEXL46S

[exkner @ExKnTheory]

Thread: The Intelligence Mirage

1/5: The Modern Egyptian: Why are the world's smartest AI researchers surprised that their models work? They are like Ancient Egyptians measuring the sun: they have perfect empirical measurement (they know that it works) but zero theoretical understanding of the underlying mechanism.

We are gazing at a glowing pyramid of data, but we don't know how it was built.

[exkner @ExKnTheory]

4/5: The Hardware Lottery: Are we building the Cathedral of AGI, or just the scaffolding? The current GPU datacenter buildout is like the ENIAC—a massive, inefficient, vacuum-tube era machine we need to build to discover the transistor-era algorithms of the future.

The danger is that we get addicted to the scaffolding. We are using a brute-force, industrial-era tugboat to pull the sleek, elegant vessel of future intelligence. It could be a longer journey than we anticipate.

[exkner @ExKnTheory]

@dwarkesh_sp Kudos that you are willing to revise your priors. Would be good to go back and talk to @DavidDeutschOxf again. This is what he was trying to explain the last time you talked. We don't know how human intelligence works yet.

[exkner @ExKnTheory]

@arjunkhemani @ChipkinLogan Congrats!

[Arjun Khemani @arjunkhemani]

Knowledge is the most powerful force in the universe. With it, humanity can create any object the laws of physics allow.

That’s the central idea of my new book with @ChipkinLogan, Lords of the Cosmos.

It explains why suffering is bound to staticity—and why creativity is the only path out of it.

It also offers a knowledge-centric history of the universe—a novel approach to history we haven’t seen anyone else take.

Available now in Kindle, Paperback, and Hardcover. Link below.

If you can’t afford it for any reason, DM me and I’ll send you a free digital copy.

[David Kedmey · a/op @DKedmey]

The war was unavoidable: Death-cult-genocidal Iran vs refuse-to-be-annihilated Israel.

[Dan Burmawi @DanBurmawy]

Israel’s nuclear program was born not out of conquest, but survival.

In the 1960s, surrounded by regimes openly calling for its annihilation, Israeli leaders pursued a doctrine of deterrence, a last line of defense in a region where threats were existential.

Since then, Israel has quietly stood as a nuclear power. And yet, never used its strength to expand, conquer, or subjugate.

On the contrary, Israel returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt. It unilaterally withdrew from southern Lebanon. It pulled out of Gaza, removing every soldier and citizen. It offered to return the Golan Heights. It even put Judea and Samaria, the cradle of Jewish history, on the table for peace.

Iran, without a single nuclear warhead, has managed to destroy four Arab countries, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, turning them into playgrounds for its militias and laboratories for its jihad.

What would a nuclear-armed Iran look like?

What would a regime that chants "Death to America" and "Wipe Israel off the map" do if it held the same military capabilities as Israel?

[Bari Weiss @bariweiss]

"One of the many things that have died in the past 20 months is the idea of the West as a coherent force that can act in its own interests. A few quiet generations in the free world have produced leaders who don’t seem to grasp what extraordinarily brutal and ugly things had to be done to make them free, or what must be done to stay that way. This realization is dispiriting, but it does give us some clarity. Netanyahu understands this, and on this point—unlike so many others—the vast majority of Israel’s citizens agree. This is why, at least for now, Israelis are hunkering down with a rare unity as missiles streak down at us from the sky. This war is unavoidable, and no one will wage it but us."

Read @MattiFriedman in @TheFP:

https://t.co/vujpyvNZXU