#effective acceleration

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The real AI fight

Tonight (November 27), I'm appearing at the Toronto Metro Reference Library with Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen.

On November 29, I'm at NYC's Strand Books with my novel The Lost Cause, a solarpunk tale of hope and danger that Rebecca Solnit called "completely delightful."

Last week's spectacular OpenAI soap-opera hijacked the attention of millions of normal, productive people and nonsensually crammed them full of the fine details of the debate between "Effective Altruism" (doomers) and "Effective Accelerationism" (AKA e/acc), a genuinely absurd debate that was allegedly at the center of the drama.

Very broadly speaking: the Effective Altruists are doomers, who believe that Large Language Models (AKA "spicy autocomplete") will someday become so advanced that it could wake up and annihilate or enslave the human race. To prevent this, we need to employ "AI Safety" – measures that will turn superintelligence into a servant or a partner, nor an adversary.

Contrast this with the Effective Accelerationists, who also believe that LLMs will someday become superintelligences with the potential to annihilate or enslave humanity – but they nevertheless advocate for faster AI development, with fewer "safety" measures, in order to produce an "upward spiral" in the "techno-capital machine."

Once-and-future OpenAI CEO Altman is said to be an accelerationists who was forced out of the company by the Altruists, who were subsequently bested, ousted, and replaced by Larry fucking Summers. This, we're told, is the ideological battle over AI: should cautiously progress our LLMs into superintelligences with safety in mind, or go full speed ahead and trust to market forces to tame and harness the superintelligences to come?

This "AI debate" is pretty stupid, proceeding as it does from the foregone conclusion that adding compute power and data to the next-word-predictor program will eventually create a conscious being, which will then inevitably become a superbeing. This is a proposition akin to the idea that if we keep breeding faster and faster horses, we'll get a locomotive:

https://locusmag.com/2020/07/cory-doctorow-full-employment/

As Molly White writes, this isn't much of a debate. The "two sides" of this debate are as similar as Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Yes, they're arrayed against each other in battle, so furious with each other that they're tearing their hair out. But for people who don't take any of this mystical nonsense about spontaneous consciousness arising from applied statistics seriously, these two sides are nearly indistinguishable, sharing as they do this extremely weird belief. The fact that they've split into warring factions on its particulars is less important than their unified belief in the certain coming of the paperclip-maximizing apocalypse:

https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/p/effective-obfuscation

White points out that there's another, much more distinct side in this AI debate – as different and distant from Dee and Dum as a Beamish Boy and a Jabberwork. This is the side of AI Ethics – the side that worries about "today’s issues of ghost labor, algorithmic bias, and erosion of the rights of artists and others." As White says, shifting the debate to existential risk from a future, hypothetical superintelligence "is incredibly convenient for the powerful individuals and companies who stand to profit from AI."

After all, both sides plan to make money selling AI tools to corporations, whose track record in deploying algorithmic "decision support" systems and other AI-based automation is pretty poor – like the claims-evaluation engine that Cigna uses to deny insurance claims:

https://www.propublica.org/article/cigna-pxdx-medical-health-insurance-rejection-claims

On a graph that plots the various positions on AI, the two groups of weirdos who disagree about how to create the inevitable superintelligence are effectively standing on the same spot, and the people who worry about the actual way that AI harms actual people right now are about a million miles away from that spot.

There's that old programmer joke, "There are 10 kinds of people, those who understand binary and those who don't." But of course, that joke could just as well be, "There are 10 kinds of people, those who understand ternary, those who understand binary, and those who don't understand either":

https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/11/the-ten-types-of-people/

What's more, the joke could be, "there are 10 kinds of people, those who understand hexadecenary, those who understand pentadecenary, those who understand tetradecenary [und so weiter] those who understand ternary, those who understand binary, and those who don't." That is to say, a "polarized" debate often has people who hold positions so far from the ones everyone is talking about that those belligerents' concerns are basically indistinguishable from one another.

The act of identifying these distant positions is a radical opening up of possibilities. Take the indigenous philosopher chief Red Jacket's response to the Christian missionaries who sought permission to proselytize to Red Jacket's people:

https://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5790/

Red Jacket's whole rebuttal is a superb dunk, but it gets especially interesting where he points to the sectarian differences among Christians as evidence against the missionary's claim to having a single true faith, and in favor of the idea that his own people's traditional faith could be co-equal among Christian doctrines.

The split that White identifies isn't a split about whether AI tools can be useful. Plenty of us AI skeptics are happy to stipulate that there are good uses for AI. For example, I'm 100% in favor of the Human Rights Data Analysis Group using an LLM to classify and extract information from the Innocence Project New Orleans' wrongful conviction case files:

https://hrdag.org/tech-notes/large-language-models-IPNO.html

Automating "extracting officer information from documents – specifically, the officer's name and the role the officer played in the wrongful conviction" was a key step to freeing innocent people from prison, and an LLM allowed HRDAG – a tiny, cash-strapped, excellent nonprofit – to make a giant leap forward in a vital project. I'm a donor to HRDAG and you should donate to them too:

https://hrdag.networkforgood.com/

Good data-analysis is key to addressing many of our thorniest, most pressing problems. As Ben Goldacre recounts in his inaugural Oxford lecture, it is both possible and desirable to build ethical, privacy-preserving systems for analyzing the most sensitive personal data (NHS patient records) that yield scores of solid, ground-breaking medical and scientific insights:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-eaV8SWdjQ

The difference between this kind of work – HRDAG's exoneration work and Goldacre's medical research – and the approach that OpenAI and its competitors take boils down to how they treat humans. The former treats all humans as worthy of respect and consideration. The latter treats humans as instruments – for profit in the short term, and for creating a hypothetical superintelligence in the (very) long term.

As Terry Pratchett's Granny Weatherwax reminds us, this is the root of all sin: "sin is when you treat people like things":

https://brer-powerofbabel.blogspot.com/2009/02/granny-weatherwax-on-sin-favorite.html

So much of the criticism of AI misses this distinction – instead, this criticism starts by accepting the self-serving marketing claim of the "AI safety" crowd – that their software is on the verge of becoming self-aware, and is thus valuable, a good investment, and a good product to purchase. This is Lee Vinsel's "Criti-Hype": "taking press releases from startups and covering them with hellscapes":

https://sts-news.medium.com/youre-doing-it-wrong-notes-on-criticism-and-technology-hype-18b08b4307e5

Criti-hype and AI were made for each other. Emily M Bender is a tireless cataloger of criti-hypeists, like the newspaper reporters who breathlessly repeat " completely unsubstantiated claims (marketing)…sourced to Altman":

https://dair-community.social/@emilymbender/111464030855880383

Bender, like White, is at pains to point out that the real debate isn't doomers vs accelerationists. That's just "billionaires throwing money at the hope of bringing about the speculative fiction stories they grew up reading – and philosophers and others feeling important by dressing these same silly ideas up in fancy words":

https://dair-community.social/@emilymbender/111464024432217299

All of this is just a distraction from real and important scientific questions about how (and whether) to make automation tools that steer clear of Granny Weatherwax's sin of "treating people like things." Bender – a computational linguist – isn't a reactionary who hates automation for its own sake. On Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 – the excellent podcast she co-hosts with Alex Hanna – there is a machine-generated transcript:

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2126417

There is a serious, meaty debate to be had about the costs and possibilities of different forms of automation. But the superintelligence true-believers and their criti-hyping critics keep dragging us away from these important questions and into fanciful and pointless discussions of whether and how to appease the godlike computers we will create when we disassemble the solar system and turn it into computronium.

The question of machine intelligence isn't intrinsically unserious. As a materialist, I believe that whatever makes me "me" is the result of the physics and chemistry of processes inside and around my body. My disbelief in the existence of a soul means that I'm prepared to think that it might be possible for something made by humans to replicate something like whatever process makes me "me."

Ironically, the AI doomers and accelerationists claim that they, too, are materialists – and that's why they're so consumed with the idea of machine superintelligence. But it's precisely because I'm a materialist that I understand these hypotheticals about self-aware software are less important and less urgent than the material lives of people today.

It's because I'm a materialist that my primary concerns about AI are things like the climate impact of AI data-centers and the human impact of biased, opaque, incompetent and unfit algorithmic systems – not science fiction-inspired, self-induced panics over the human race being enslaved by our robot overlords.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/27/10-types-of-people/#taking-up-a-lot-of-space

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

#pluralistic #criti-hype #ai doomers #doomers #eacc #effective acceleration #effective altruism #materialism #ai #10 types of people #data science #llms #large language models #patrick ball #ben goldacre #trusted research environments #science #hrdag #human rights data analysis group #red jacket #religion #emily bender #emily m bender #molly white

[buttfrovski]

playing laser with tweek

#NASCAAAARRRR #tweek ends up going so fast it creates so particle accelerator effect #south park #craig tucker #tweek tweak #sp creek

[gorgynei]

NEED a werewolf movie thats extremely similar in concept to ginger snaps except its about a trans guy. at the beginning of the movie the person starts hormones and later that day gets bit by a werewolf and then the lycanthropy coincides with all their testosterone stuff and its a metaphor for how society reacts to trans bodies and queerness in general. "im growing hair. lots of it. and my voice feels hoarse. and i think im a lot stronger and have more energy than before." "thats all very normal, dont worry :)" <- about to be mauled by a werewolf

#picture it with me. lets hold hands. do u visualize what im saying #it would also have to be a lot longer form than gs. just bc hrt is also extremely long term #but to be fair! puberty is also extremely long term and gs accelerated that so it could work on the month time table too #also it doesnt HAVE to be a trans guy. its just that estrogen's effects r harder to map onto a werewolf metaphor #ramblings #werewolfisms

[thebreakfastgenie]

I know this is an unpopular opinion on here but my giftedness really does affect my neurotype in so many ways, even as an adult. Call it whatever you want, gifted is the official term on my paperwork, but it's been so relevant in my ADHD journey. Even if the only thing IQ tests measure is how well you perform on an IQ test, that says something about how a brain works. I don't really care how that data is interpreted but it exists and it affects my life. It's not that I think I'm special or better because of it, I really don't, and it doesn't translate to success the same way it does when you're a kid because adult success is much more complicated. It's just there.

#i don't like the 'former gifted kid' memes #most of the people making those have no idea what they're talking about #and of course there are downstream effects of gifted identification that affect your life too #and being in the gifted program at your school is not one of them #i'm talking about being homeschooled or accelerated etc

[autogeneity]

the olympic lifts seem so fkin cool but those are actually genuinely scary. and probably a suboptimal approach in terms of my objectives at this time. but. shiny.

#m #like a whole different skill to learn over a long time probably #with relatively low generalisability #like aiui the general aspects trained are more effectively achieved by just focusing on those things directly #like strength and power and so on largely independently #have I mentioned yet how irritated I am that max strength lifting is the one called powerlifting? why #this is the thing that incorporates power #(as in high acceleration force)

[ovcii-doodles]

trying new things with mugino (my beloved) as my test subject <3

edit: updated bc i redid the whole thing from scratch lol

#toaru majutsu no index #toaru kagaku no railgun #toaru kagaku no accelerator #toaru #raildex #mugino shizuri #by new things i mean digital painting w/o using a super clean/refined sketch and focusing more on form and shape without relying on lines #this is by no means finished and its pretty flat but i'm super happy w how this turned out! #i did use a layer w an edge effect for the hair though bc i need some lines when it comes to hair #unrelated but since i had to get a new laptop bc i accidently fried my old one im just realizing how god damn NEON some of my finished- #stuff looks #like. JEEZ. im so sorry to everyones eyeballs #for comparison the brightest setting on my old laptop is basically near the lowest setting on my new one #anyway i think i'll mess around with this some more tomorrow :) #im off to take a scalding hot shower bc my neck is BIG CRUMCHY #i just cant get away with horrible posture and no back support in a chair anymore like teenage me could lmao

[poptartmochi]

the quest for claudia's birthday takes me to strange and unknown places

#sriracha.txt #the original way i understood the timeline allowed for a much Slower building of events #there were originally 5 years after claudia's death + 7 years of agu living in hiding after cesare's death #but if she dies at 12 that means a whole 12 years has passed. so she'd be 24 in the modern day.. roughly wyll's age #it simply couldn't work.. wyll is Older. he's like the super cool cousin she orbited around at social gatherings until he disappeared #and then. well </3 #i don't know if the satie-gortie-augie hellabonanza trip will stick but i think the accelerated timeline Will #because now it's 3 years between claudia's death and the start of the game. which imo makes more sense.. the grief and longing agu would #feel for his departed daughter would be MUCH stronger in that time frame + thus make him easier to manipulate via the dream guardian #i never thought about it being a 12 year gap before but now that i do.. idk i think he would simply live w the grief and be immediately #suspicious of the emperor instead ykwim #this is fun as well bc WHAT effect does this have on the agu-ketheric beef... before it was him being pissed that ketheric wrought so much #suffering because he lost isobel. but now?? #unsure. HOWEVER it's funny that he gets ketheric's netherstone on account of ALSO being a father who does some Higher Being's bidding with #the promise of getting their daughter back. and it ends well for Neither of Them </3 #bg3 spoilers

[daswarschonkaputt]

so im pretty excited abt ur abo kp fic which is new to me bc i normally dont care abt abo? this isnt shade or bullshit btw i hope i just wanted to ask how u conceptualize gender and sex in abo? tags on the notfic r 100% right btw more trans abo. im always put off by most abo for the idea that cis male omegas basically?? have a cloacae for an anus but also a dick? it feels too alien for a non paranormal genre. do u think anatomy ought to be addressed more or left to suspension of disbelief?

right straight off the bat we're putting this one behind a readmore, because i don't want to wig anyone out. a/b/o be weird.

essentially, the way i conceptualise a/b/o and how gender and sex work is:

male/female - usually identifiable at birth, with obviously some grey area in there for intersex people.

alpha/beta/omega - surfaces during puberty, at which point the body changes in whichever way the subgender inclines.

i usually write it that it's not really possible to tell how someone's subgender will present until it does, because i think the inherent tension between "this is how i was treated growing up" vs. "this is how people treat me now" gives the most room for social commentary, and character growth, which is one of my favourite parts of a/b/o. so everyone's body has the base potential to go any subgender way.

relatedly, one of my least favourite tropes in a/b/o is the trope where a character unexpectedly discovers they're an omega and they hate it and take drugs to make themselves a beta, and they wish they were a beta/alpha and as a reader i just have to sit there like, and the logical ending to this story ISN'T that they're trans????

in fact, this trope irritated me so much that i fully outlined and started writing an original fic where the main character gets the whoops! all omega! reveal and instead of hating it and hiding it, feels fulfilled and more comfortable in himself, because it enables him to put into words and be accepted for aspects of his gender identity that have existed his entire life.

ahem. omega biology. back on track.

male omegas are one of those fandom tropes that i just... choose not to look at too closely. science brain well and truly turned off. because of how the kinnporsche mpreg fic is structured (porsche not knowing he's pregnant, and not knowing he could become pregnant) -- we're probably looking at assbabies for that one, though i usually prefer to go the male omegas are intersex (and female alphas are, as well) route, just because it makes most sense to me. but -- this is fanfic. things only make sparing amounts of sense 20% of the time.

truthfully, i think the question of anatomy depends on the fic. i do think there is a level of suspension of disbelief that is needed to read a/b/o, but to me that's true of all sci-fi. a lot of genre studies essays on sci-fi talk about this idea of a novum, a point of divergence that makes the sci-fi story different from our world. it can be a thing, an idea, a hypothetical. for example, in mass effect, the novum is the mass drivers. in star trek it's the warp core. in the martian, it's leaving a man behind on mars. and with sci-fi, you're not meant to question the novum. it's the foundational part of the universe. sci-fi is the question, "what if [x] was different?"

so with a/b/o, the novum is, well, it's the a/b/o dynamics. "what if human reproductive biology was on crack?" the bits i'm interested in are the answers that spiral out from that question -- i'm not really focused all that much on the question itself.

but, like i said, it depends on the fic. if the fic's question is, "so, if we do have these a/b/o dynamics, how does the biology actually work?" then obviously it's a bit more relevant. but i've only seen one or two a/b/o fic that approach the matter like that.

hope that makes sense!

#fic: kp mpreg au #guys pls don't get me started on the a/b/o as sci-fi again #kaputt writes stuff #asked and answered #a/b/o cw #omegaverse cw #totally respect not being able to turn off science brain tho #there are some sci fi movies i have to turn off bc i Cannot #things spiralling out from the novum is one of the best parts of sci fi tho #like in mass effect there's no ammo bc the mass driver means they can use grains of sand as ammo #just accelerating them to NYOOM speeds #so they're functionally bullets #genuinely one of my favourite parts of worldbuiling #i rave about it all the time to people who know me

[sbnkalny]

It stopped! there's no such effect singly, combined anti- and proapoptotic stimuli inhibit Akt activity, leaving the cells susceptible to accelerated apoptosis

#TEXT #DAY 8 #Eighteenth century: No such effect singly #Combined anti- and proapoptotic stimuli inhibit Akt activity #leaving the cells susceptible to accelerated apoptosis

[alectoperdita]

Ball biting you say? 👀

Ball biting.

Under the cut

"Feel 'em?" he asked. "I'm ready to burst from how full they are."

---

Through the haze, he realized Kaiba had focused his attention elsewhere. His lithe tongue swathed Katsuya's inflated balls in saliva. A curious almost numbness settled in.

"Yes, you are." Kaiba's words rumbled against his scrotum.

Katsuya's eyes flew wide. He couldn't stop himself from pulling on Kaiba's hair. Slowly, carefully, fangs punctured his ball. The bright pinpoints of pain danced in his vision like stars. The dam burst, and he came in hot pulsing ribbons. His cock kicked and pumped and pumped until his chest and stomach were drenched.

When his vision cleared, it was to the sight of an infuriatingly smug-looking vampire licking his thighs clean of blood.

"Sadistic jerk," he croaked, even as elation cottoned his brain.

"Masochistic slut," Kaiba retorted with a shining scarlet smile.

#replies #anonymous #fic: Two monsters walk into the club #joukai asks #is this even remotely realistic? i dunno #they're monsters #i'm just going to go with that 😂 #incubus!Jou has accelerated healing anyway #I'M TRYING SOMETHING NEW #EFFECT MAY VARY FROM THE USUAL

[kajmasterclass]

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[jcmarchi]

Researchers Craft New Way to Make High-Temperature Superconductors – With a Twist - Technology Org

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/researchers-craft-new-way-to-make-high-temperature-superconductors-with-a-twist-technology-org/

Researchers Craft New Way to Make High-Temperature Superconductors – With a Twist - Technology Org

Theory becomes reality when Rutgers–New Brunswick scientists help develop process for twisting materials in ways never thought possible

An international team that includes Rutgers University–New Brunswick scientists has developed a new method for making and manipulating a widely studied class of high-temperature superconductors.

This technique should pave the way for the creation of unusual forms of superconductivity in previously unattainable materials.

Superconductors can conduct electricity without resistance or energy loss when cooled to a critical temperature. These materials have intrigued physicists for decades because they can achieve a state of perfect conductivity allowing an electric current to flow indefinitely. But most superconductors only exhibit this peculiarity at low temperatures – a few degrees above absolute zero – which renders them impractical.

The new work, published in Science, describes experiments that grew out of theoretical calculations that included those by a Rutgers team led by Jedediah Pixley, an associate professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences.

The experiments confirmed predictions by Pixley and Pavel Volkov, who were a postdoctoral fellow at the Rutgers Center for Materials Theory at the time. These predictions, based on mathematical models Pixley and Volkov (now at the University of Connecticut) devised to represent the underlying quantum physical behavior, projected how cuprate superconductors would behave if they were placed in proximity in specific configurations and at varying angles.

Superconductors are already in use today. Since the 1970s, scientists have employed superconducting magnets to generate the powerful magnetic fields needed for the operation of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines. Maglev trains using the technology were introduced in the 1980s. More recently, scientists have harnessed the power of superconducting magnets to guide electron beams in experimental devices such as synchrotrons and accelerators.

In the future, scientists envision a world where ultra-efficient electricity grids, ultrafast and energy-efficient computer chips, and even quantum computers are powered by new kinds of superconducting materials.

The new experiments that validated Pixley and Volkov’s ideas were conducted by a team at Harvard University led by professor and physicist Philip Kim.

“We took two cuprate superconductors – materials that already were interesting – and, in placing them together and twisting them in a precise way, made something else that was very interesting: another superconductor which could have lots of technological applications,” said Pixley, a condensed matter theorist.

Because of its unique properties, the new superconductor is a promising candidate for the world’s first high-temperature, superconducting diode, essentially a switch that controls the flow of electrical current, the researchers said.

Such a device could potentially fuel fledgling industries such as quantum computing, which rely on fleeting phenomena produced in materials like superconductors, they added.

Pixley, who joined the Rutgers faculty in 2017, earned his doctoral degree by studying the conditions involved in producing superconductivity in unconventional materials. The latest research extends the field of “twistronics,” which involves twisting flat layers of two-dimensional materials to produce physical effects at the subatomic level that are observable on the macroscopic scale.

To Pixley, the study enlarges the paradigm of what materials can exhibit superconducting properties when twisted. The work yields other insights, as well.

“At the same time, we have found that this leads to a novel type of ‘magnetic’ superconducting state that has been long sought after, showing definitively that different superconducting phases can be reached via a twist,” he said.

The experimentalists first split an extremely thin film of a superconductive cuprate – nicknamed “BSCCO” and made of bismuth strontium calcium copper oxide – into two layers. Then, maintaining frigid conditions, they stacked the layers at a 45-degree twist, like an ice cream sandwich with askew wafers, retaining superconductivity at the fragile interface.

Cuprates are copper oxides that, decades ago, upended the physics world by showing they become superconducting at much higher temperatures than theorists had thought possible. BSCCO is considered a high-temperature superconductor because it starts superconducting at about -288 Fahrenheit. That is very cold by practical standards, but astonishingly high among classical superconductors, which typically must be cooled to about -400 Fahrenheit.

The work opens the door to more experiments, Pixley said.

“It will be very exciting to extend these experiments to other configurations of superconductors – twisted monolayers and a few twisted multilayers of superconductors at small twist angles,” Pixley said.

Source: Rutgers University

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[liltizzymandarin]

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[reasonsforhope]

"A century of gradual reforestation across the American East and Southeast has kept the region cooler than it otherwise would have become, a new study shows.

The pioneering study of progress shows how the last 25 years of accelerated reforestation around the world might significantly pay off in the second half of the 21st century.

Using a variety of calculative methods and estimations based on satellite and temperature data from weather stations, the authors determined that forests in the eastern United States cool the land surface by 1.8 – 3.6°F annually compared to nearby grasslands and croplands, with the strongest effect seen in summer, when cooling amounts to 3.6 – 9°F.

The younger the forest, the more this cooling effect was detected, with forest trees between 20 and 40 years old offering the coolest temperatures underneath.

“The reforestation has been remarkable and we have shown this has translated into the surrounding air temperature,” Mallory Barnes, an environmental scientist at Indiana University who led the research, told The Guardian.

“Moving forward, we need to think about tree planting not just as a way to absorb carbon dioxide but also the cooling effects in adapting for climate change, to help cities be resilient against these very hot temperatures.”

The cooling of the land surface affected the air near ground level as well, with a stepwise reduction in heat linked to reductions in near-surface air temps.

“Analyses of historical land cover and air temperature trends showed that the cooling benefits of reforestation extend across the landscape,” the authors write. “Locations surrounded by reforestation were up to 1.8°F cooler than neighboring locations that did not undergo land cover change, and areas dominated by regrowing forests were associated with cooling temperature trends in much of the Eastern United States.”

By the 1930s, forest cover loss in the eastern states like the Carolinas and Mississippi had stopped, as the descendants of European settlers moved in greater and greater numbers into cities and marginal agricultural land was abandoned.

The Civilian Conservation Corps undertook large replanting efforts of forests that had been cleared, and this is believed to be what is causing the lower average temperatures observed in the study data.

However, the authors note that other causes, like more sophisticated crop irrigation and increases in airborne pollutants that block incoming sunlight, may have also contributed to the lowering of temperatures over time. They also note that tree planting might not always produce this effect, such as in the boreal zone where increases in trees are linked with increases in humidity that way raise average temperatures."

-via Good News Network, February 20, 2024

#trees #forests #reforestation #tree planting #global warming #climate change #climate crisis #american south #the south #eastern us #southern usa #conservation #meteorology #global temperature #conservation news #climate news #environment #hope #good news #hope posting #climate action #climate science #climate catastrophe #climate hope

[govindhtech]

Tech Breakdown: What Is a SuperNIC? Get the Inside Scoop!

The most recent development in the rapidly evolving digital realm is generative AI. A relatively new phrase, SuperNIC, is one of the revolutionary inventions that makes it feasible.

Describe a SuperNIC

On order to accelerate hyperscale AI workloads on Ethernet-based clouds, a new family of network accelerators called SuperNIC was created. With remote direct memory access (RDMA) over converged Ethernet (RoCE) technology, it offers extremely rapid network connectivity for GPU-to-GPU communication, with throughputs of up to 400Gb/s.

SuperNICs incorporate the following special qualities:

Ensuring that data packets are received and processed in the same sequence as they were originally delivered through high-speed packet reordering. This keeps the data flow’s sequential integrity intact.

In order to regulate and prevent congestion in AI networks, advanced congestion management uses network-aware algorithms and real-time telemetry data.

In AI cloud data centers, programmable computation on the input/output (I/O) channel facilitates network architecture adaptation and extension.

Low-profile, power-efficient architecture that effectively handles AI workloads under power-constrained budgets.

Optimization for full-stack AI, encompassing system software, communication libraries, application frameworks, networking, computing, and storage.

Recently, NVIDIA revealed the first SuperNIC in the world designed specifically for AI computing, built on the BlueField-3 networking architecture. It is a component of the NVIDIA Spectrum-X platform, which allows for smooth integration with the Ethernet switch system Spectrum-4.

The NVIDIA Spectrum-4 switch system and BlueField-3 SuperNIC work together to provide an accelerated computing fabric that is optimized for AI applications. Spectrum-X outperforms conventional Ethernet settings by continuously delivering high levels of network efficiency.

Yael Shenhav, vice president of DPU and NIC products at NVIDIA, stated, “In a world where AI is driving the next wave of technological innovation, the BlueField-3 SuperNIC is a vital cog in the machinery.” “SuperNICs are essential components for enabling the future of AI computing because they guarantee that your AI workloads are executed with efficiency and speed.”

The Changing Environment of Networking and AI

Large language models and generative AI are causing a seismic change in the area of artificial intelligence. These potent technologies have opened up new avenues and made it possible for computers to perform new functions.

GPU-accelerated computing plays a critical role in the development of AI by processing massive amounts of data, training huge AI models, and enabling real-time inference. While this increased computing capacity has created opportunities, Ethernet cloud networks have also been put to the test.

The internet’s foundational technology, traditional Ethernet, was designed to link loosely connected applications and provide wide compatibility. The complex computational requirements of contemporary AI workloads, which include quickly transferring large amounts of data, closely linked parallel processing, and unusual communication patterns all of which call for optimal network connectivity were not intended for it.

Basic network interface cards (NICs) were created with interoperability, universal data transfer, and general-purpose computing in mind. They were never intended to handle the special difficulties brought on by the high processing demands of AI applications.

The necessary characteristics and capabilities for effective data transmission, low latency, and the predictable performance required for AI activities are absent from standard NICs. In contrast, SuperNICs are designed specifically for contemporary AI workloads.

Benefits of SuperNICs in AI Computing Environments

Data processing units (DPUs) are capable of high throughput, low latency network connectivity, and many other sophisticated characteristics. DPUs have become more and more common in the field of cloud computing since its launch in 2020, mostly because of their ability to separate, speed up, and offload computation from data center hardware.

SuperNICs and DPUs both have many characteristics and functions in common, however SuperNICs are specially designed to speed up networks for artificial intelligence.

The performance of distributed AI training and inference communication flows is highly dependent on the availability of network capacity. Known for their elegant designs, SuperNICs scale better than DPUs and may provide an astounding 400Gb/s of network bandwidth per GPU.

When GPUs and SuperNICs are matched 1:1 in a system, AI workload efficiency may be greatly increased, resulting in higher productivity and better business outcomes.

SuperNICs are only intended to speed up networking for cloud computing with artificial intelligence. As a result, it uses less processing power than a DPU, which needs a lot of processing power to offload programs from a host CPU.

Less power usage results from the decreased computation needs, which is especially important in systems with up to eight SuperNICs.

One of the SuperNIC’s other unique selling points is its specialized AI networking capabilities. It provides optimal congestion control, adaptive routing, and out-of-order packet handling when tightly connected with an AI-optimized NVIDIA Spectrum-4 switch. Ethernet AI cloud settings are accelerated by these cutting-edge technologies.

Transforming cloud computing with AI

The NVIDIA BlueField-3 SuperNIC is essential for AI-ready infrastructure because of its many advantages.

Maximum efficiency for AI workloads: The BlueField-3 SuperNIC is perfect for AI workloads since it was designed specifically for network-intensive, massively parallel computing. It guarantees bottleneck-free, efficient operation of AI activities.

Performance that is consistent and predictable: The BlueField-3 SuperNIC makes sure that each job and tenant in multi-tenant data centers, where many jobs are executed concurrently, is isolated, predictable, and unaffected by other network operations.

Secure multi-tenant cloud infrastructure: Data centers that handle sensitive data place a high premium on security. High security levels are maintained by the BlueField-3 SuperNIC, allowing different tenants to cohabit with separate data and processing.

Broad network infrastructure: The BlueField-3 SuperNIC is very versatile and can be easily adjusted to meet a wide range of different network infrastructure requirements.

Wide compatibility with server manufacturers: The BlueField-3 SuperNIC integrates easily with the majority of enterprise-class servers without using an excessive amount of power in data centers.

#Describe a SuperNIC #On order to accelerate hyperscale AI workloads on Ethernet-based clouds #a new family of network accelerators called SuperNIC was created. With remote direct memory access (RDMA) over converged Ethernet (RoCE) te #it offers extremely rapid network connectivity for GPU-to-GPU communication #with throughputs of up to 400Gb/s. #SuperNICs incorporate the following special qualities: #Ensuring that data packets are received and processed in the same sequence as they were originally delivered through high-speed packet reor #In order to regulate and prevent congestion in AI networks #advanced congestion management uses network-aware algorithms and real-time telemetry data. #In AI cloud data centers #programmable computation on the input/output (I/O) channel facilitates network architecture adaptation and extension. #Low-profile #power-efficient architecture that effectively handles AI workloads under power-constrained budgets. #Optimization for full-stack AI #encompassing system software #communication libraries #application frameworks #networking #computing #and storage. #Recently #NVIDIA revealed the first SuperNIC in the world designed specifically for AI computing #built on the BlueField-3 networking architecture. It is a component of the NVIDIA Spectrum-X platform #which allows for smooth integration with the Ethernet switch system Spectrum-4. #The NVIDIA Spectrum-4 switch system and BlueField-3 SuperNIC work together to provide an accelerated computing fabric that is optimized for #Yael Shenhav #vice president of DPU and NIC products at NVIDIA #stated #“In a world where AI is driving the next wave of technological innovation #the BlueField-3 SuperNIC is a vital cog in the machinery.” “SuperNICs are essential components for enabling the future of AI computing beca

[prokopetz]

Like, I'm not saying that this is a good thing, but it's kind of bleakly entertaining how over the course of my life my skill set as an online researcher has gone from being:

Hugely valuable in the late 1990s and early 2000s because the discoverability of information in public-facing databases was fucking terrible and nobody knew how to organise anything; to

Effectively useless throughout the 2010s because search engines enormously and rapidly improved and computer literacy was at an all-time high; and

Back to being hugely valuable once again because SEO bullshit and the proliferation of AI-generated content have degraded online discoverability back to pre-2000 levels and computer literacy is in accelerating decline due to mobile devices deliberately obfuscating basic functionality so that app vendors can sell it back to you with embedded advertising.

#life #computers #technology #seo #ui design #ux design #capitalism #swearing