Neil Traft @ntraft.bsky.social · 29/12/2025Astonishing: the default behavior of Chrome's "Listen to this page" feature is NOT to simply read you the page, LIKE YOU WOULD EXPECT, but instead to make one of those goofy NotebookLM AI podcasts... and I had to search the Help docs to figure out how to change it. Thanks, Google. 000
Neil Traft @ntraft.bsky.social · 16/12/2025Random observation: did you know this?! I knew about how Einstein's general relativity is required to make GPS navigation work, but I'm not as familiar with how quantum mechanics factors into semiconductor technology. Remarkable. 220
Neil Traft @ntraft.bsky.social · 06/12/2025I thought this was a fascinating way to motivate model merging: to be able to *interpolate* between model classes, rather than be forced into discrete choices. (models trained on different datasets, models of different sizes, etc.) "Interpolation and alignment are two sides of the same coin." 042
Neil Traft @ntraft.bsky.social · 06/12/2025Did you know that you could create hybrids across different neural net architectures—*without* updating the weights?? Come check out my poster at the UniReps @unireps.bsky.social workshop at 3:45pm today at #NeurIPS! (Or you can already browse the posters on the wall in 20D throughout the day.) 😃 041
Neil Traft @ntraft.bsky.social · 01/12/2025Link to the full paper: openreview.net/pdf?id=e4wKQ... I think there's a lot of very interesting potential applications of "model stitching". Have a look. Plus, you get to feel like a mad scientist. IT'S ALIVE! 010
Neil Traft @ntraft.bsky.social · 01/12/2025I’ll have a poster at @unireps.bsky.social 🔵🔴 It’s a terrific workshop at the intersection of neuroscience and DL: across both biological and artificial NNs, how can we measure / compare / align / merge neural representations? Should be fascinating! Check it out if you're around! unireps.org/2025 101
Neil Traft @ntraft.bsky.social · 01/12/2025So stoked to be going to my first #NeurIPS!! It’s crazy that in 10+ years of robotics and AI, I've never been to the great Lollapalooza of Machine Learning. 🥳🎆 I’m presenting my Frankensteinian efforts to stitch together parts of different neural networks! 🧪 120
Neil Traft @ntraft.bsky.social · 12/09/2025Every single part of this website is solid gold. 😂 Thank you! 060
Neil Traft @ntraft.bsky.social · 03/08/2025In reality, all environments are only partially observable, so this is the only regime in which RL should be evaluated. 240
Neil Traft @ntraft.bsky.social · 29/07/2025I just realized that all these hyped-up “AI scientist” concepts all concentrate on the idea of *discovery*—new algorithms, new materials, new products—without exception. Not a one of them focus on *understanding*—arguably the larger role of a scientist! 🧐 140
Neil Traft @ntraft.bsky.social · 25/07/2025Been studying Mixture of Experts recently. It's baffling to learn that typically different tokens are routed to *different* experts. How can you be an "expert" at a particular word?? I suspect this name lends us very poor intuition for what these models actually do! (shows 2 tokens and 4 "experts") 021
Neil Traft @ntraft.bsky.social · 28/02/2025Don't know which pub you're referencing (having a hard time finding on my phone), but he also discusses this in his "Studying Artificial Life With Cellular Automata". I.e., molecules are parallel so alife should be too. (Later mentions why traditional computers are not so parallel, even w many CPU.) 120
Neil Traft @ntraft.bsky.social · 15/02/2025That process for making a decision? THAT'S the free will! That's just you. Deciding. 273
Neil Traft @ntraft.bsky.social · 02/01/2025Yeah I think I got a pretty good one... #bsky_builds_bots 041
Neil Traft @ntraft.bsky.social · 16/12/2024Sutton's Bitter Lesson is that simple algorithms win *IF* they can scale. But the whole point is we don't all agree on what will scale. 000
Neil Traft @ntraft.bsky.social · 03/12/2024A new foundational infrastructure is needed to achieve the Internet as the participatory, self-organized collective we initially dreamed it would be... rather than the centralized, uncustomizable, ad-choked Internet we've ended up with. 034
Neil Traft @ntraft.bsky.social · 19/11/2024Look, I do machine learning, but I'm not happy about it. 110
Neil Traft @ntraft.bsky.social · 25/09/2024The technology we could have vs. the technology we got. 000