#AcademicRunPlaylist - 10/17/24

Author

Ben Waber
October 17, 2024

A selfie of me at the edge of an artificial beach next to a pond on a sunny but slightly cloudy day, with thick forest on the far bank. I'm a bald, middle-aged, white man with a red beard flecked with white. I'm wearing black sunglasses and a bright blue and yellow running shirt

It's been a busy few days, but yesterday I was able to go out for a short run and listen to some talks for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was an interesting talk by Daniel Hsu on why parallelism is a key aspect of transformers at the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spxJnEhs1qI

Next was a compelling talk by Scott Linderman on state space models for animals and AI at the Kempner Institute at Harvard University https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hL6Keqp_xs

Next was an excellent talk by David Chiang on transformer expressivity and formal logic at the Simons Institute. I love talks like this, where Chiang derives provable guarantees on computations that transformer models simply can't do reliably (sequential reasoning stands out for me in this space) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hR3G5jsuOHs

Next was a fantastic discussion between Ann Lipton and Michael Levin on the new SEC climate reporting guidelines and the activist investor BEEF at Pfizer on the Shareholder Primacy podcast. Even if you're a neophyte in climate reporting (🙋) it's extremely instructive for where people analytics reporting probably will/should go in the future. Highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NUp_gzj6WY

Next was an intriguing talk by Eran Malach on the benefits and limitations of transformers and state space models at the Simons Institute https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbViSPM3lVE

Next was an engaging discussion with Allison Pugh on the value and nature of the relationships people create through work at CASBS at Stanford https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQzH72N6oo8

Next was a thought-provoking talk by Philippe Rigollet on the emergence of clusters in self-attention dynamics at the Simons Institute https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrsQGhG0su0

Last was "Empire of Cotton" by Sven Beckert, who uses the developments of the cotton industry - from small scale production based in the Ottoman Empire and India disseminated through trade networks to slavery and colonialism-fueled mechanized production to the modern industry - to examine the evolution of state power and capital-driven private industry through the centuries. I particularly liked how this book combines history with a statistical accounting of changes over time, providing a much more concrete sense of the scale of economic and political changes the world over. Highly recommend.