Rami's Readings #48 - Swifties take over Japan
The latest on AI, LLMs, Code Llama 70B, OLMo, Nvidia, Fashion & AI, Taylor Swift & the Japanese Embassy, Luxury Real Estate Slump, Meta, Flow State & Efficiency at Work, and more.
Welcome to Rami’s Readings #48 - a weekly digest of interesting articles, papers, videos, and X (formerly known as Twitter) threads from my various sources across the Internet. Expect a list of reads covering AI, technology, business, culture, fashion, travel, and more. Learn about what I do at ramisayar.com/about.
🤖 AI Reads
Meta Releases Code Llama 70B
Notes: It’s here! The 70B model reaches GPT-4’s initial performance with a larger context window. And there is a fine-tuned Python version.
MM-LLMs: Recent Advances in MultiModal Large Language Models
Notes: Published on January 25th.
Open Language Model: OLMo
Notes: An open source model from the Allen Institute in #Seattle! Paper on arXiv.
Prompting Guide for Code Llama
Notes: I love this prompt engineering guide. They recently updated it for Code Llama 70B.
SQLCoder-70B
Notes: Will SQL ever go extinct? ORMs tried to replace SQL queries, now LLMs. Thoughts?
The Little Book of Deep Learning
Notes: Actually little.
Nvidia CEO Says Nations Seeking Own AI Systems Will Raise Demand
Notes: Expect this trend to continue.
AI in Rx - from Weill Cornell Medicine
Notes: Sent in by a classmate.
A Comprehensive Survey of Compression Algorithms for Language Models
Notes: Also see LLMLingua.
🎨 Fashion & Culture Reads
My Mom the Janitor: How ‘Invisible’ Workers Keep Our Cities Clean
Notes: From Sixth Tone #China
Japan Assures Fans Taylor Swift Can Make It to the Super Bowl
Notes: Swifties take over the Japanese Embassy in the US. #Fearless Also The Rolling Stones on the matter.
💼 Business Reads
High-End Home Prices Set for Slump From Hong Kong to New York
Notes: San Francisco real estate is still declining. You would think with many RTO mandates that this would stop.
Evergrande’s Liquidation Is a New Low in China’s Property Crisis
Notes: Skeptical this court ordered liquidation will be upheld.
Meta’s $197 Billion Surge Is Biggest in Stock-Market History
Notes: Congratulations to friends at Meta. 😲 But also… Zuck…
Companies Need a Better Read on What Their Workers Actually Do
Notes: The only metric I care about is how often I am in a flow state at work.
One efficiency expert made a splash last year with a book that simply argued that “feeling good” was the best path to productivity.
I dream of coffee shop coding vibes post surfing and hot yoga in San Diego. My best flow-state day ever. (Not me on the surfboard).
That is all for this week. Signing off from Redmond, WA.