Ok, this is really cool. The fact that the robot can use pointing to decide where to go is a great design decision, and robotics really is the next frontier. Definitely cheering on Mistral here!
I think it depends on your workflow. I've had a great experience with the trial. I work in research, and have set up something similar to Kaparthy's auto research. I, with Fable, have managed to get an image generation model down from 80M parameters to 10M and keep the quality of the generated images on par (similar FID). And, importantly, every change was modular, explained by Fable, reviewed by myself, and understood and documented. If not understood, I read relevant docs until I did it didn't accept it as part of the plan. So it ended up being a simple composition of existing ideas which I had previously encountered, but stacked much more rapidly than I could have.
The structure of the code is easily readable as I enforce concenventions followed by good libraries. And I can easily plug in new datasets. It's pretty good frankly.
I read the Economist for over a decade growing up. It was a great way to learn about the world, who was in power where, and the challenges facing economies at the time. I found their exposition to be pretty good given the fact they were restricted to a few pages for important events. However, their proposed solutions were always the same. More market freedom, etc.
I did feel with the change in editorial direction a while back that they lost some of their edge. I've since mostly just stuck to the Financial Times. It feels less worldly, but the content of the articles feels better.
Agreed. Which is also odd, if you think about it. Surely with the amount of compute Anthropic and others have available, they could test each of the solutions in the SO data they surely have and rank them based on efficiency/elegance/other criteria and remove poor solutions from their training data.
It may feel that way due to the iterative nature of medical improvements, but over the past few decades there has been a consistent reduction in cancer mortality rates across most types of cancer [0]. Treatments really are getting better and more targeted. Immunotherapy has made huge breakthroughs. Combination treatments allow for significantly improved lifespans and better quality of life during treatments. There are a few cancers that remain hard to treat, but I have a lot of confidence that in the coming decades we will make strides in attacking them. That being said, I'm very sorry to hear about the pain you and your family must be going through. I've had a few close loved ones undergo cancer treatment and it was tough.
This seems like such an easy way to create perverse incentives and profit off people who are already down on their luck. Imagine being told that the only way to get considered is to pay a fee. Then later on you get told to pay the gold fee for priority. Oh you're still not getting hired? Go for our platinum package that will definitely make the difference! Not enough money? No worries, we'll take 30% of your salary for the first few years. Or maybe we'll just give you some a fixed debt at a high interest rate. Aren't you glad you used us?
Agreed. One at a time testing (OAT) has been outdated for almost a century at this point. Factorial and fractional factorial experiments have been around for that long and give detailed insights into the effect of not just single changes but the interaction between changes, which means you can superpower your learnings as many variables in DL do in fact interact.
Or, more modern Bayesian methods if you're more interested in getting the best results for a given hyperparameter sweep.
However, that is not to detract from the excellent effort made here and the great science being investigated. Write ups like this offer so much gold to the community.
I guess that's the crux of it. From an individual perspective it makes sense to stay in a stable environment, especially if a family is involved. However, I think from a societal perspective it is desirable to have people who gamble on creating new products which can raise the bar in their given industries.
Also, just because the start up fails doesn't mean it was a waste of time. If you manage to provide employment for even just 3 or 4 people for a few years, help them and yourself develop, that is a valuable success.
I would add an aspect that is not covered here but is often ignored: the strong labour protection laws result in a mentality where if you get a good job you are much less likely to want to take risks e.g. start your own business. There was a post on the HENRY (high earner, not rich yet) UK subreddit the other day from someone who had a wealth of experience and had the opportunity to join a start up as a CTO. It honestly sounded like a great chance to initiate change. All of the comments were telling the poster that they had it good, that 99% of start ups fail, that the hours would be gruelling. I feel as though the conversation would have been quite different in a US subreddit.
This is all great advice. One thing I would add to this is to deliberately steer your team to avoid making big decisions on calls or in meetings. Instead, make it so that your team prioritises asynchronous communication methods to discuss the lay of the land, and only make decisions after everyone has had time to contribute to the discussion.
I've found that creating a shared document or flowchart can work wonders if key team members engage and build upon it. And once everyone has said their share you can then have a meeting to discuss how to progress. I've found this method to work well as you can take your time to reply to suggestions and comments and research them better. It also removes and element of emotionality from the decision making: everyone can see the suggestions and counter points, but the conversation is often less defensive and more considered as people have time to second guess themselves. So by the time you hold the meeting the benefits and drawbacks of the contending options in meeting your goals are clearer.