I am quite surprised that the NobAIl committee did not select ChatGPT‘s Sam Altman for their literature prize—since he made a reality of monkeys typing at random on a typewriter, hence bound to a.s. produce past and future masterpieces—, now betting on Twitter’s Dorsey, Williams and Stone for their peace prize— for achieving worldwide harmony if within each single-minded community in only 140 characters—, and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos for their Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel—for produing the ultimate monopoly of a single worldwide convenience store—, given their picks for physics—with spin glass Ising models that have always sounded to me like the worst possible illustration for MCMC techniques— and chemistry—for a deep learning predictor of protein structures, built by large teams and numerous CPU hours, achieving high success rates if not perfection, but prediction is not explanation, reminding me of Nietzsche’s “physics, too, is only an interpretation and exegesis of the world (to suit us, if I may say so!) and not a world-explanation”—… Keeping their sharp focus on AI’s, corporate funded research, and male recipients… (As coïncidences come, I am currently reading a book of the literature 2024 Nobel recipient, Han Kang, The Vegetarian, that I find stunning and immensely original!)
Archive for South Korea
NobAIl prAIzes
Posted in Books, pictures, Travel, University life with tags AI, AlphaFold, Amazon, artificial intelligence, Boltzmann machines, Botlzman models, ChatGPT, Deep Mind, Friedrich Nietzsche, Google, Hopfield networks, Ising model, Markov random field, MCMC algorithms, neural network, Nobel Prize, Nobel Prize in Litterature, protein folding, South Korea, Stockholm, Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, Sweden, twitter, vegetarian diet on October 11, 2024 by xi'anNature snapshots
Posted in Books, Kids, Mountains, pictures, Travel with tags backpropagation, Bern, Brisbane, Christchurch, climate change, deforestation, demographics, ERC, ERC Starting Grant, ERROR, Judean Desert, learning rate, Leipzig, Lonely Planet, Nature, Nature Index, neural networks and learning machines, plasticity, refereeing, South Korea, sustainability, Sydney, US academia, wood pellet heating on September 19, 2024 by xi'an
- a tribune about the declining number of junior researchers in South Korea (with a supplementary Nature Index on its remarkable achievements), due to lower birth rates. The government is trying to make postdoc positions more attractive, to attract international students and postdocs. It has also signed with the EU to become an associate member of the Horizon Europe program, hence potentially benefitting of ERC grants.
- looking for the hottest temperature compatible with humans, alas soon in a theatre near you… (With a heatwave chamber that was driven from Brisbane to Sydney!) I did not understand, though, how the limit of 31⁰C as the minimal temperature at which a healthy, young person would die after six hours of exposure. But agreed with the immediate benefits of skin-wetting, which I use almost constantly on hot days and nights.
- the false good idea of wood pellets, reminding me of a freezing August in Christchurch back in 2005!, as pellets (and other biomass energy) generate more carbon than coal, favour deforestation, impacts the health of communities surrounding facilities, and takes decades to reach neutral outcomes.
- another possibly false good idea, floating and sustainable settlements in coastal regions threatened by sea rises. Not only floating cities are expensive to build, but they are more exposed to extreme weather events, compete with the preservation of wetlands and mangroves, and cannot function without adapted infrastructure, from water and sewage treatment to means of transportation, and enough nearby services.
- the ERROR project that pays for spotting mistakes in published papers, developed by the Universities of Bern and Leipzig. ERROR stands for Estimating the Reliability and Robustness of Research. At 2,500 Swiss francs per paper, this is hardly sustainable…
- the problem of artificial neural networks losing plasticity in continual-learning settings and a potential solution via back-propagation.
a journal of the conquest, war, famine, and death [almost new] year
Posted in Books, Kids, pictures, Running, Travel with tags Australia, book review, books, cannoli, chili pepper, COVID-19, Daniel Defoe, eggplants, film review, Journal of the Plague Year, kimchi, Kouign-Amann, mandu, miso, oysters, Russian invasion, South Korea, South Melbourne market, Tasmania, teen culture, Ukraine on January 9, 2024 by xi'an
Read the fabulous Exhaltation over the trip to Australia [which deserved a post of its own!] and not much more, as I tried House of Earth and Blood. A terrible book I fortunately bought second-hand and which I returned to the seller at the South Melbourne market after one evening reading thru the first 100+ dreary pages. Terrible scenario, terrible style, with a caricature of characters behaving like college students without the least creativity in making a proper alternate universe for their acting. Hard to believe this could have been on the New York Times bestseller list….
Cooked more stir-fries both away and at home, returning to Fall veggies like cabbages and gourds, along local mushrooms and fortunately had to get rid of a large lot of kimchi, making kimchi mandu and kimchi fried rice for the first time. And miso glazed eggplant (nasu degaku) after eating some in Eke, the local Japanese restaurant. Sample fares at the great South Melbourne market, from fabulous Tasmanian oysters [albeit generating their own weight in plastic containers!] to a decent kouign-amann and a disappointing cannolo! Bringing home local fruits and fiery birdseye chili peppers.
Watched Vagabond, a conspiracy story set in modern South Korea, frankly disappointing both in the lameness of the scenario, the obvious red herrings, the disregard for human life with endless executions, and the underlying racist tones for the scenes shot in North Africa and the Middle East…
a journal of the plague, sword, and famine year [far North]
Posted in Books, Kids, pictures, Statistics, Travel, University life with tags book review, books, COVID-19, crab, Daniel Defoe, film review, flight, Inoue Yasushi, Journal of the Plague Year, kindle, Lapland, North Korea, pandemics, Russian invasion, South Korea, The Guardian, The New York Times, Toshirō Mifune, Ukraine, young adult books on April 12, 2023 by xi'anRead Le sabre des Takeda (Furin kazan, 風林火山) by Inoue Yasushi, a very interesting book set between Japanese history and feudal novel, with surgical descriptions of battles and psychological tensions. This book reminded me in some aspects of a novel of Yoshimura Akira on the earthquake of Kantô by its insistence on minutiae. Even though the style may be destabilizing, the central character, Yamamoto Kansuke, is fascinating. This is the first book by the author that I read, but I am now considering reading his Hunting Gun (as well as watching the 1969 movie with Mifune that was inspired from that book, if I can locate a copy). I also came across A Winter’s Promise, by Christelle Dabos. This is the first volume in The Mirror Visitor, which I bought in the airport in Milano. In English, despite the original being in French, which may help in distancing from the YA tone that sometimes permeates the style. An interesting creation nonetheless, hopefully keeping up till the fourth volume! As an aside, I found my Kindle inexplicably covered by condensation one evening, although this did not prevent it from working. Possibly correlated with my falling asleep while reading from it the night before.
Had great reindeer dishes in Lapland, as well as poorly cooked Arctic crab, despite magnificent specimen displayed in the aquarium of the restaurant. And made a trip back to the Ethiopian restaurant we visited for my 60th B party, this time without the excitement of having our laptops stolen and then retrieved. (Just as well since Tony Lelièvre was not part of the dinner party this time!)
Watched World War Z on a lazy Sunday night upon my return from Lapland, which I found appalling at many levels and unbearably US-centric (or just plainly racist). The scene where the zombies assail the West Bank separation wall is particularly shocking! I also watched Steel Rain, a South Korean manga turned into a movie about a fantasy coup in North Korea. Very fantasist and detached from reality, but still manageable.
Hellbound [지옥]
Posted in Books, Kids with tags dark fantasy, Hellbound, Jansenism, Korea TV series, Netflix, original sin, posterior likelihood ratio, predestination, religious cult, South Korea, thriller, Yeon Sang-ho on December 24, 2021 by xi'an
