108. Last Week In AI — 2021: The (full) year in review

2021 has been a wild ride in many ways, but its wildest features might actually be AI-related. We’ve seen major advances in everything from language modeling to multi-modal learning, open-ended learning and even AI alignment. So, we thought, what better way to take stock of the big AI-related milestones we’ve reached in 2021 than a cross-over episode with our friends over at the Last Week In AI podcast. *** Intro music: - Artist: Ron Gelinas - Track Title: Daybreak Chill Blend (original mix) - Link to Track: https://youtu.be/d8Y2sKIgFWc *** Chapters: 0:00 Intro 2:15 Rise of multi-modal models 7:40 Growth of hardware and compute 13:20 Reinforcement learning 20:45 Open-ended learning 26:15 Power seeking paper 32:30 Safety and assumptions 35:20 Intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation 42:00 Mapping natural language 46:20 Timnit Gebru’s research institute 49:20 Wrap-up