Sci fi as epic poem, you say? Take my money

Holy smoke! Bonobo news—

theguardian.com/science/2024/a…

Something I taught 15 yo: In everyday life, big decisions often occur mixed together with small ones. If you're not careful you'll tend to give them equal weight. So separate decisions as much as you can. There are many techniques for doing this.

We've opened the call for our The British Academy The Leverhulme Trust
small grants scheme offering £10k. We receive so many good applications so awards will be allocated randomly between those applications that meet our quality threshold. Spread the word!
thebritishacademy.ac.uk/funding/ba-lev…

New Zealand cancels research quality evaluation timeshighereducation.com/news/new-zeala… via Times Higher Education

on.ft.com/3PVdehm

Meta ‘discussed buying publisher Simon & Schuster to train AI’ theguardian.com/books/2024/apr…

I tried to get a friend to read the scaling laws paper but they said it was too long so I sent them this gif instead

📝new paper out today! “Global AI governance: barriers and pathways forward” is exactly what it sounds like: we dive into current global AI governance efforts, what they get right & wrong, and where we think it should go (spoiler: not a centralized body!) doi.org/10.1093/ia/iia…

jamanetwork.com/journals/jamai…

Excellent FT interview with Philip E. Tetlock, including using LLMs for forecasting by simulating experts

As Queen Elizabeth II said: 'Long live the difference, but long live the Entente Cordiale.'

Everyone is piling in to sponsor the Hardest Geezer Russ Cook for his astonishing achievement - well done fella! He’s nearly at £1m and I reckon Elon Musk is good for the rest. But just in case, the link is here:

givestar.io/gs/PROJECTAFRI…

Deep in the stack

Not widely enough appreciated how much the UK is being left behind in the deployment of industrial robots.
Half a million new robots in factories across the world;
2,534 in the UK - fewer than Thailand.
(source ifr.org/ifr-press-rele…)