Three Notes

One: Do AI Models Have Lightbulb Moments?

An article in Technology Review describes how scientists tried to teach Large Language Models (what are commonly called AI) to add two numbers.

They found It was much, much harder than they thought it would be to teach the LLMs the principles of addition.

The end goal was to teach the LLMs so that they could add any new and novel numbers – rather than just copy the information from an addition that has been done before.

When scientists inadvertently left the problem running for days, they found that the LLM had learned how to add numbers. 

But when they analysed the data it seemed that the understanding just fell in all at one point, as though the LLM had a lightbulb moment.

What scientists are left with is not knowing how the LLMs learned, or to put it another way – how the lightbulb got turned on.

In the words of one of the analysts – 

“My assumption was that scientists know what they’re doing. Like, they’d get the theories and then they’d build the models. That wasn’t the case at all.”

Two: Gene Kelly and Sugar Ray Robinson Tap Dancing

Three: A social network for athletes

I was watching a YouTube video about an action cam, (the Insta360 Ace Pro). Near the end of the video, the YouTuber put up this Instagram icon and below it, another icon I didn’t recognise, with his name next to the icon.

What does the little tent and upside down ten orange icon refer to? I clipped it, put it into Google image search and it came up with Strava.

Here’s the blurb on the Strava homepage:

Record. Sweat, Share. Kudos.
Record an activity and it goes to your Strava feed, where your friends and followers can share their own races and workouts, give kudos to great performances and leave comments on each other’s activities.
We’re the largest sports community in the world.
Over 100 million athletes in 195 countries use Strava – so whatever your activity and goals, you’ll have a community at your back.

In 2009, Michael Horvath and Mark Gainey set out to recapture the camaraderie and competition of their days as college athletes. That vision has connected over 100 million athletes – and it’s still growing.

I see it is located in two centres in the US and one in England and one in Ireland.

One hundred million athletes plus all the people with whom they are associated, and I didn’t recognise the icon? I have dozens of icons in my head that I didn’t ask to remember, but I do.

What exactly does it take before an icon becomes recognisable in the way that the Instagram icon is recognisable?

Here’s the link to Strava.