1. May 2023
    1. Open source alternatives can and will eventually eclipse them unless they change their stance. In this respect, at least, we can make the first move.
    2. This necessarily means relinquishing some control over our models. But this compromise is inevitable. We cannot hope to both drive innovation and control it.
    3. But this control is a fiction. Anyone seeking to use LLMs for unsanctioned purposes can simply take their pick of the freely available models.
    4. By owning the platform where innovation happens, Google cements itself as a thought leader and direction-setter, earning the ability to shape the narrative on ideas that are larger than itself.
    5. These models are used and created by people who are deeply immersed in their particular subgenre, lending a depth of knowledge and empathy we cannot hope to match.
    6. But holding on to a competitive advantage in technology becomes even harder now that cutting edge research in LLMs is affordable.
    7. he best are already largely indistinguishable from ChatGPT.
    8. This means that as new and better datasets and tasks become available, the model can be cheaply kept up to date, without ever having to pay the cost of a full run.
    9. Being able to personalize a language model in a few hours on consumer hardware is a big deal, particularly for aspirations that involve incorporating new and diverse knowledge in near real-time.
    10. called low rank adaptation, or LoRA

      ||JovanNj||||anjadjATdiplomacy.edu|| Is this something we should use?

    11. The barrier to entry for training and experimentation has dropped from the total output of a major research organization to one person, an evening, and a beefy laptop.
    12. Giant models are slowing us down.
    13. Open-source models are faster, more customizable, more private, and pound-for-pound more capable.
    14. Scalable Personal AI: You can finetune a personalized AI on your laptop in an evening.

      ||JovanNj||||anjadjATdiplomacy.edu|| Is it possible to have personalised AI in an evening.

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    1. Augmenting the human body and mind

      Human augmenting provides some of the most powerful enhancement AI technology for health and well being. Examples of wearable device with cameras that allows legally blind individuals to see their environment by displaying images on a screen very close to the eye, is quite phenominal. These kind of technologies do not just supplement but enhance our abilities to perform tasks

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    1. he world and preparing for change rather than trying to roll history back
    2. The author, Ganesh Sitaraman, calls for an American “grand strategy of resilience.”(link is external)  
    3. it will be the American responsibility to listen more and collaborate more seriously to ensure broadly supported recommendations. 
    4. its resilience and adaptability.
    5. If we had looked forward decades ago to understand and accept what was going to be happening today in front of our eyes, we would have had time to better manage the adjustment and implement the remedies.
    6. “Tragedy and Mobilization”, the world confronts the cumulative effects of unmanaged climate change. 
    7. In “Separate Silos” the world fails to manage a co-existence model and the global order devolves into regional power blocs - the U.S, the European Union, Japan, Korea, Australia, Russia, China, India and some rising states - focused on self-sufficiency. 
    8. The “Competitive Coexistence” scenario is less dangerous primarily because both the U.S. and China make economic growth a priority and to some extent achieve co-dependency on maintaining a stable global order.
    9. “A World Adrift” scenario, the international system breaks down as the rules and institutions of today’s structures are little used by the major powers, regional states and non-state actors.
    10. The scale of transnational challenges, and the emerging implications of fragmentation, are exceeding the capacity(link is external) of existing systems and structures . . .”
    11. Go global.
    12. Bring in more participants from outside the government in working group formats - private enterprise, institutions, and other stakeholders to start discussions earlier than they might otherwise and to speed up the policy formation process.
    13. Re-establish the diplomacy and science career track at the State Department
    14. Tighten the bond between science and diplomacy. 
    15. the research and policy dimension within the U.S. government five to ten years ahead.
    16. Now soft power has a new role to play, not merely as a cultural tool, but as a science and technology avenue of influence.

      Science as part of soft power influence.

    17. the ability to guide outcomes with culture, the sciences and by the power of our example – has receded. 
    18. Overemphasis on the  bilateral model of American diplomacy does not provide the best process for dealing with modern large scale over-the-horizon issues.
    19. new ideas are often confronted by old thinking, passive resistance and a wait-it-out state of mind.
    20. has established a policy ideas channel to inspire new views from within and outside the State Department to challenge “groupthink(link is external)
    21. “Bringing America’s Multilateral Diplomacy into the 21st Century(link is external)”,
    22. The UN is the depository of more than 560 multilateral treaties(link is external)
    23. The Law of the Sea Treaty of 1982
    24. The Outer Space Treaty of 1967
    25. Nuclear and non-nuclear weapons limitation treaties
    26. The Antarctic Treaty of 1959
    27. None is perfect; all treaties have to keep up with the times in order to survive, and all treaties leave some gaps to be solved later. 
    28. The event is a call to action on two fronts: ensuring the safe use of near-Earth orbit and dealing with the dangerous escalation of anti-satellite technology(link is external).
    29. Seeing America pulling back from the world and divided, China announced its plans to replace the United States as the most powerful nation on earth. 
    30. resentment of the middle class.
    31. Young Americans who came of age in the 2000’s have never known a time of peace and tranquility. 
    32. five elements are required: (1) involvement of all the essential stakeholders (those that could make or break an agreement), (2) consensus definition of the problem, (3) sufficient common interests to generate a productive dialogue, (4) a shared commitment by the stakeholders to finding a solution, and (5) successful post-agreement implementation that stands the test of time.
    33. The lack of a genuine partnership between the worlds of science and diplomacy to integrate multidisciplinary subject-matter
    34. Today our diplomats are not trained in the scientific aspects of dealing with issues of global health, climate change, energy renewal, cyber threats, food and water resources, regional or global supply chains and outer space among others.
    35. No global issue of significance today or for the foreseeable future will be solely national - allocating more of the diplomatic circle graph to the multilateral slice is both in our interest and more likely than ever to be the methodology of the future.
    36. to engage with the larger issues looming just over the horizon.
    37. is consumed with managing the moment, the immediate.
    38. by engaging with others at the “early stages” of issues to keep us on the front lines of managing global trends.
    39. one that recognizes the changing nature of the challenges we will inevitably face in the future – not just the problems we face now.
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    1. The Luddites were not anti-technology; what they wanted was economic justice.
    2. A.I. researchers are increasing the concentration of wealth to such extreme levels that the only way to avoid societal collapse is for the government to step in.
    3. the only way to make things better is to make things worse.
    4. What Žižek advocated for is an example of an idea in political philosophy known as accelerationism
    5. it seems like a way for the people developing A.I. to pass the buck to the government.
    6. A.I. assists capital at the expense of labor.
    7. by hiring consultants, management can say that they were just following independent, expert advice.
    8. we rely on metaphor,
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    1. it triggers a mental shortcut in the minds of users that we call a “machine heuristic.” This shortcut is the belief that machines are accurate, objective, unbiased, infallible and so on.

      An interesting conceput of machine heuristic.

    2. Copyleft licensing allows for content to be used, reused or modified easily under the terms of a license – for example, open-source software.
    3. But with self-driving cars, the engineers can never be sure how it will perform in novel situations.
    4. that people treat computers as social beings when the machines show even the slightest hint of humanness, such as the use of conversational language.
    5. Such beliefs build on “automation bias” or the tendency to let your guard down when machines are performing a task
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    1. However, if not coupled with resources and pressure to actually perform this sector-specific adaptation, this approach runs the risk of resulting in no meaningfully binding regulation at all.
    2. a unique blend of horizontal and vertical elements
    3. sectoral regulators will be outmatched in their efforts to meaningfully constrain businesses applying AI.
    4. If agencies do not coordinate to build common regulatory tools, they risk reinventing the wheel each time a new department is tasked with regulating a specific application of AI.
    5. if industry-dominated standards bodies set weak standards for compliance, the regulation itself becomes weak.
    6. Their legislative bodies will need the ability to amend or add to its main horizontal regulation in order to keep pace with the technology.
    7. the heavy lifting of articulating specific compliance thresholds will be done by Europe’s main standardization bodies

      ||sorina|| Here is again focus on standardisation bodies.

    8. the EU’s broad approach will stifle innovation, and analysts correctly assert that China’s targeted regulations will be used to tighten information controls.
    9. they effectively function to shift power from technology companies to government regulators
    10. such as their sources for training data and potential security risks.
    11. the algorithm registry
    12. disseminating information, as well as setting prices and dispatching workers.
    13. has taken a fundamentally vertical approach: picking specific algorithm applications and writing regulations that address their deployment in certain contexts.
    14. the standards process has historically been driven by industry, and it will be a challenge to ensure governments and the public have a meaningful seat at the table.
    15. Another factor is whether the proposed central and horizontal European AI Office will be effective in supplementing the capacity of national and sectoral regulators.
    16. risk-based approach
    17. the dual imperatives of providing predictability and keeping pace with AI developments.
    18. the requirements in the AI Act with co-regulatory strategies
    19. The easiest way for developers to satisfy these mandates will be for them to adhere to technical standards that are being formulated by European standards-setting bodies.

      ||sorina|| Here is an explanation why EU is focusing a lot on technical standards. They are likely to play critical role in AI regulation.

    20. Applications deemed to pose an “unacceptable risk” (such as social scoring and certain types of biometrics) are banned. “High risk” applications that pose a threat to safety or fundamental rights (think law enforcement or hiring procedures) are subject to certain pre- and post-market requirements. Applications seen as “limited risk” (emotion detection and chatbots, for instance) face only transparency requirements. The majority of AI uses are classified as “minimal risk” and subject only to voluntary measures.

      Four level of risks in the EU AI regulation.

    21. In a horizontal approach, regulators create one comprehensive regulation that covers the many impacts AI can have. In a vertical strategy, policymakers take a bespoke approach, creating different regulations to target different applications or types of AI.

      ||sorina|| Here is an interesting distinction between horistonal (EU) and vertical (China) approaches to AI regulation.

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    1. in July last year that about 40% of young people turn to TikTok or Meta Platforms-owned Instagram when searching for restaurants, citing an internal study.
    2. Bing’s share of the search market has remained below 3%
    3. to ask follow-up questions or swipe through visuals such as TikTok videos in response to their queries.

      There will be video answers to quesitons.

    4. an advertising business that made more than $162 billion in revenue last year.
    5. It plans to incorporate more human voices as part of the shift, supporting content creators in the same way it has historically done with websites, the documents say.
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    1. The hardware, hilariously, became very easy to procure because of the recent crypto mining boom and bust. Several companies offering AI hardware in the cloud were actually crypto mining operations until recently.
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    1. The people who are already well versed in something are going to be the ones capable of making the most helpful applications for that particular field or industry.

      ||VladaR|| This is our main advantage which we should activate via cognitive proximity. We know what we are talking about and we know how to use AI.

    2. arent there already LLM models that cite their sources? or I heard that new plugin with chat GPT can cite its sources

      ||JovanNj|| Are there models that can cite sources?

    3. The general consensus is that, especially customer facing automation, MUST be "explainable." Meaning whenever a chat bot or autonomous system writes something or makes a decision, we have to know exactly how and why it came to that conclusion.

      explainability is critical

    4. They are caught up in the hype and just like everyone else have zero clue what's actually going to happen.

      narrative

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    1. Across the global South, the conflict in Ukraine is seen largely as a European affair, one without an obvious hero or villain.
    2. The overwhelming majority, 720 million, lived in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. More than 400 million lived in Latin America alone. By 2025, only one in five Catholics will be a non-Hispanic Caucasian.
    3. the Holy See has practiced what academics call the “great power” model of diplomacy, attaching itself to the superpower of the day.
    4. More Catholics than ever before live outside the West and don’t see the war in Ukraine on the same terms as Europe and the United States do.
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    1. the Stanford Politeness Dataset,
    2. ensuring the LLM produces reliable outputs for a particular business use-case often requires additional training on actual data from this domain labeled with the desired outputs.

      Importance of additional training and data labelling.

    3. a fine-tuned Large Language Model (LLM; a.k.a. Foundation Model).
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    1. Open source alternatives can and will eventually eclipse them unless they change their stance. In this respect, at least, we can make the first move.
    2. Research institutions all over the world are building on each other’s work, exploring the solution space in a breadth-first way that far outstrips our own capacity. We can try to hold tightly to our secrets while outside innovation dilutes their value, or we can try to learn from each other.
    3. Part of what makes LoRA so effective is that—like other forms of fine-tuning—it’s stackable. Improvements like instruction tuning can be applied and then leveraged as other contributors add on dialogue, or reasoning, or tool use. While the individual fine tunings are low rank, their sum need not be, allowing full-rank updates to the model to accumulate over time.
    4. calling this the "Stable Diffusion moment" for LLMs.
    5. their efforts are rapidly being eclipsed by the work happening in the open source community.
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    1. The Vedic principles have influenced the Indian psyche for many centuries. These principles have underpinned the socio-cultural-religious framework for the development of individual and social moral principles. The Indian psyche and society is in a phase of rapid evolution. Pursuit of Artha and Kama are overtaking the responsibility of Dharma.
    2. Dharma embraces every type of righteous conduct, covering every aspect of life, both religious and secular, that is essential for the sustenance and welfare of the individual, society and creation.
    3. Ontological nature of existence and Dharma (which approximately translates into morality).
    4. These teachings comprehensively bring out the essence of Vedas, primarily Upanishads, in a language that is less terse than that in the original Upanishads
    5. It is then that Lord Krishna enlightens him through the teachings that together form the Bhagavad Gita.
    6. It forms a part of the great epic, Mahabharata which is traditionally ascribed to the sage Vyasa.
    7. The Bhagavad Gita
    8. set of dialogues
    9. Upanishads are passages from the Jnana-kanda section of the Vedas. They are the core of Vedic wisdom and are essentially philosophical in nature
    10. These four Vedas are further divided into two parts, Karma-Kanda and Jnana-Kanda. Karma Kanda is the section dealing with rituals and prayers while Jnana-Kanda deals only with the ontological realities – the nature of world, consciousness (or self) and God known as Brahman in the Vedas
    11. Gilligan argued that females act from concerns about social relationships and that their moral development has elements of compassion and caring strongly built in. On the other hand, according to her, justice dominates men's morality.
    12. The next stage is that of “Autonomous morality”, in which they are able to move beyond the consequences and are able to see morality as linked to intentions and that rules are flexible.
    13. The first stage is that of “Heteronomous morality” in which children are able to see rules as fixed and dictated by authority
    14. both our genetic makeup and the environment we experience would influence our overall development, including our moral development.
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    1. AI platforms such as ChatGPT
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  2. Apr 2023
    1. The policy response has been different, too, with the European Union has taken a predictably tougher stance by proposing to bring in a new AI Act that segregates artificial intelligence as per use case scenarios, based broadly on the degree of invasiveness and risk

      It seems that this is interesting||JovanK|| test

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    1. Do we want a world filled with A. I. systems that are designed to seem human in their interactions with human beings?
    2. Making them bear at least some liability for what their models do would encourage a lot more caution.
    3. liability.
    4. The government needs to do more here than just write up some standards. It needs to make investments and build institutions to conduct the monitoring.
    5. evaluations and audits.
    6. Any firm building A.I. systems above a certain scale should be operating with hardened cybersecurity

      ||VladaR|| Vlado, this should be an important shift in our cybersecurity training and research.

      ||anastasiyakATdiplomacy.edu||

    7. security
    8. whether this problem is solvable.
    9. interpretability
    10. China seems perfectly willing to cripple the development of general A.I. so it can concentrate on systems that will more reliably serve state interests.
    11. Should there be an opt-out from A.I. systems?
    12. “you should be able to opt out from automated systems in favor of a human alternative, where appropriate.”
    13. This, too, is essential, but we do not understand these systems well enough to test and audit them effectively.
    14. For now, we have no idea what is happening inside these prediction systems.
    15. But where the European Commission’s approach is much too tailored, the White House blueprint may well be too broad.
    16. “alignment risk,”
    17. Choosing this strategy meant “repeatedly catching on fire, crashing into other boats, and going the wrong way on the track,” but it also meant the highest scores, so that’s what the model did.
    18. Those sets can’t plausibly be free of error, and it’s not clear what it would mean for them to be representative.
    19. “training, validation and testing data sets shall be relevant, representative, free of errors and complete.”
    20. as new A.I. systems have already thrown the bill’s clean definitions into chaos.
    21. That’s where the government comes in — or so they hope.
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    1. The United States-India technology corridor will give India the skills, technology, markets, and confidence to become a global player. 
    2. the United States must openly communicate the path for reduced controls toward India, and India should dismantle barriers through exceptions for American technology companies to enable true partnerships to form
    3. Policymakers in the United States and India should both work to reform trade policies and promote an open system of technology transfer and innovation between the two countries.
    4. They must also think in more ambitious terms, planning for massive expansions that would rival China in terms of the size and scope of their factories, fabrications, labs, and operations.
    5. Take India’s Aadhaar, for example, the world’s largest and most sophisticated biometric identification system that remarkably enables efficient and secure payments using just an ID number (compared to the near-century old American Social Security number standard)
    6. India is poised to be an increasingly influential economic actor, and its growth can help compensate for America’s loss of trade with China under re-globalization. 
    7. from one of outsourcing to one of radical collaboration
    8. But by collaborating with American companies and encouraging reciprocal cycles of innovation, more Indian companies can become genuine technological leaders, developing original intellectual property with its deep wells of talent.
    9. In 2020, after a series of border disputes with China, the Indian government banned dozens of well-known Chinese apps, including TikTok, from India.
    10. If India’s technology sector wants to continue expanding and modernizing, public officials in India need to think strategically about India’s relations with international partners in this next stage. 
    11. Thanks to the establishment of technical education through the Indian Institutes of Technology in the 1950s and 60s, India was able to cultivate a large pool of skilled professionals
    12. But when it comes to technology, a sector in which clear decoupling has begun, India must choose which partner it wants to prioritize. 
    13. Trade relations with the United States are important at $100 billion a year but trade with neighboring China is double that
    14. While globalization will continue as normal for certain industries — basic consumer goods where consumer surplus is high and existential risk is low, for example — other sectors are moving toward some degree of decoupling, chief among them technology
    15. It is neither complete interconnection nor complete decoupling, but rather a mix of the two. 
    16. Re-globalization is distinctive from the economic systems which preceded it: During the period before World War I, and then again over the past 30 years, global interconnection was the norm, as goods and services proliferated easily across the world thanks to open markets and favorable regulatory environments.

      What is re-globalisation?

    17. the most important potential geo-economic partner for the United States today as it “re-globalizes” with greater concern for national security and resilience.
    18. And as the United States’ concerns about China grow, India shines as a promising alternative in supply chains, innovation hubs, and joint-ventures.
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    1. the BRICS are looking to progressively develop and encourage the production of medicines and vaccines, with the aim of eventually breaking away from their dependance on Western pharmaceutical companies
    2. Xi now wants the club to expand and admit Saudi Arabia, Iran, Indonesia and Argentina.
    3. The two countries signed a total of 15 agreements, covering technology, satellites, semiconductors, 6G, artificial intelligence, internet expansion, climate, tourism, investments in clean energy, and other strategic sectors
    4. The two countries signed a total of 15 agreements, covering technology, satellites, semiconductors, 6G, artificial intelligence, internet expansion, climate, tourism, investments in clean energy, and other strategic sectors.
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    1. Cable breaks and damage happen all the time on UK broadband networks the size of Openreach’s, and they’re usually caused by accidents, such as third-party contractors ramming their diggers into the wrong patch of ground. But only very rarely do we see damage as bad as the one caused by a landslip in Kent this week.

      ||JovanK||

      This seems interesting, please reflect

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    1. the Moscow-backed International North South Transport Corridor (INSTC), a 7,200-kilometere network of trains, roads and sea routes to connect Russia to India through Iran and Central Asia.
    2. the maiden India-Central Asia Joint Working Group (JWG) meeting on Chabahar in Mumbai
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    1. The risk is that this coming together deepens the estrangement of the global south from the international order. It would be a tragic result if, in uniting the West, America alienates the rest.
    2. China can undermine the effectiveness of global institutions
    3. Western unity to hold
    4. It will prioritise relations with its core democratic allies in Europe and Asia (which it hopes might one day include India)—and then try to maintain creaking global institutions in order to mediate meet the needs of a broader group of countries, including most non-aligned ones, whether on development, debt relief, security or finance.
    5. Chinese visitors bring loans and engineers while Americans bring playlists.
    6. “Countries don’t want to choose, and we don’t want them to,” Jake Sullivan, Mr Biden’s national security adviser
    7. AidData also finds that a 10% increase in voting similarity with Beijing at the un is associated with an increase in the number of Chinese projects in that country.
    8. Between 2007 and 2020 it provided more infrastructure financing in sub-Saharan Africa than the next eight lenders combined
    9. China is the main trading partner for around 120 countries.
    10. It draws a contrast with the West, which it says prefers smaller clubs (like the g7). “China shows up where and when the West will not,” says Yemi Osinbajo, Nigeria’s outgoing vice-president.
    11. The non-aligned countries want to avoid taking sides.
    12. China offers “hardware”: bridges, roads, ports—and the loans to build them.
    13. West has generally been the preferred source of “software”: support for schooling, health and, should the African government want it, human rights
    14. audi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates
    15. Qatar is playing novel diplomatic roles.
    16. Last month Saudi Arabia signed a Chinese-brokered deal with Iran and joined the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, a Eurasian talking shop.
    17. Saudi Arabia,
    18. Turkish exports to Russia reached $7.6bn in 2022, a 45% increase on the previous year.
    19. he “New Turkey” can select its partners.
    20. Turkey also wants to be more influential across the global south
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