#AcademicRunPlaylist - 6/28/24

It finally cooled off a bit, and I was able to cap off possibly my most active weekday stretch ever (around 110 miles/177 km) with a bunch of talks for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was an interesting talk by Osbert Bastani on using LLMs for program optimization at the Stanford University Department of Computer Science https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvxeEEmc1ZM

Next was an intriguing talk by Liu Yang on using looped transformers to learn algorithms at UW-Madison Computer Sciences https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3et5AZ_j8bA

Next was a thought provoking talk by Kerstin Hoette and Anastasia Mantziou on using inter-industry payment data for economic nowcasting at INET Oxford https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPhBxpizsb4

Next was a compelling panel on decolonizing economic development at the Cambridge Society for Economic Pluralism with Cheryl McEwan, Hazel Gray, and Sian Lazar https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6HEiFvZLDc

Next was a great conversation with Jake Quilty-Dunn on the language of thought hypothesis, the importance for a plurality of cognitive models, and why it's unlikely that natural language is a precursor to thought on the Stanford Psychology Podcast https://www.stanfordpsychologypodcast.com/episodes/episode/7a7d3d22/135-jake-quilty-dunn-the-language-of-thought-hypothesis-in-cognitive-science

Next was a nice talk by Iacopo Masi on the bringing robustness approaches to generative modeling at the USC Information Sciences Institute https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dY9d2oRkU3w

Next was a fantastic talk by Benjamin Spector on the current state of AI hardware, key hardware factors driving the massive performance increases we're seeing in AI, and why it's important for researchers and developers to deeply understand advances and architectures in this space at Stanford. Spector delivers one of the deepest, clearest dives into some of the leading GPU chips, also identifying areas for possible improvement moving forward. Highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlraH57ey4k

Last was an engaging talk by Ekin Akyürek on in-context language learning and n-gram heads at UW Madison https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXLL_-UFZsQ