Sai Prasanna @saiprasanna.in · 10/09/2025Use Beta NLL for regression when you also predict standard deviations, a simple change to NLL that works reliably better. 140
Sai Prasanna @saiprasanna.in · 03/08/2025If open-endedness has to be fundamentally subjectively measured, what are the factors of the agent makes it so if we fix humans as the final arbiter or evaluator. Does embodiment/action space etc of the agent matter for a human evaluator of open-endedness? 010
Sai Prasanna @saiprasanna.in · 25/06/2025🤣 generalrobots.substack.com/p/a-brief-in...generalrobots.substack.comA Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Robotics(An homage to one of my favorite pieces on the internet: A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages) 020
Reposted by Sai PrasannaVenkatesh Rao 🔹 @vgr.bsky.social · 08/03/2025This might be the most fun I’ve had writing an essay in a while. Felt some of that old going-nuts-with-an-idea energy flowing. open.substack.com/pub/contrapt...open.substack.comDiscworld RulesAnd LOTR is brain-rot for technologists 4569
Reposted by Sai PrasannaTom Silver @tomssilver.bsky.social · 02/03/2025This week's #PaperILike is "Model Predictive Control and Reinforcement Learning: A Unified Framework Based on Dynamic Programming" (Bertsekas 2024). If you know 1 of {RL, controls} and want to understand the other, this is a good starting point. PDF: arxiv.org/abs/2406.00592arxiv.orgModel Predictive Control and Reinforcement Learning: A Unified Framework Based on Dynamic ProgrammingIn this paper we describe a new conceptual framework that connects approximate Dynamic Programming (DP), Model Predictive Control (MPC), and Reinforcement Learning (RL). This framework centers around ... 0438
Sai Prasanna @saiprasanna.in · 01/03/2025I realized how I background process tonnes of information, from work/research and emotional stuff. And it works well, leads to good research ideas, wise processing of tough situations! But It's so hard to learn to trust this as conscious thinking for solving problems feels more under my "control" 210
Sai Prasanna @saiprasanna.in · 01/03/2025TIL: "Clever Hans cheat" for next-token prediction. A subtle but interesting issue with next-token prediction. In the purely forward next token prediction objective, teacher forcing can lead to learning dynamics where the models don't even generalize "in-distribution"!! arxiv.org/abs/2403.06963arxiv.orgThe pitfalls of next-token predictionCan a mere next-token predictor faithfully model human intelligence? We crystallize this emerging concern and correct popular misconceptions surrounding it, and advocate a simple multi-token objective... 1112
Sai Prasanna @saiprasanna.in · 27/01/2025Break the Monday Productivity ceiling with this super awesome 4 hour techno set on.soundcloud.com/hXTcWTTsYUNK...on.soundcloud.comYetti Meissner @ Sisyphos Hammerhalle 09/08/14🖤 BOOKING CONTACT chris@stilvortalent.de 030
Sai Prasanna @saiprasanna.in · 20/01/2025Monday kick starter open.spotify.com/track/6QXjBA...open.spotify.comEnimatekKore-G · Enimatek · Song · 2023 110
Sai Prasanna @saiprasanna.in · 30/12/2024If I have a really good photo that could be potentially used in many contexts, what's the best place to make money with it? My friend has a really good eye for photos and we want to try a side venture selling some of her stuff 020
Reposted by Sai PrasannaVenkatesh Rao 🔹 @vgr.bsky.social · 27/12/2024RIP Manmohan Singh. Dude changed all our lives in 1991 for the better. His stint as turnaround finance minister was revolutionary even if his later stint as PM was rather hapless (for which Nehru dynasty is more to blame).en.wikipedia.orgManmohan Singh - Wikipedia 2212
Reposted by Sai PrasannaRonen Tamari @ronentk.me · 25/12/2024Looks like a cool study. Lots to learn from ants about large scale coordination www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... "Our results exemplify how simple minds can easily enjoy scalability while complex brains require extensive communication to cooperate efficiently." h/t @petersuber.bsky.socialpnas.orgComparing cooperative geometric puzzle solving in ants versus humans | PNASBiological ensembles use collective intelligence to tackle challenges together, but suboptimal coordination can undermine the effectiveness of grou... 2266
Sai Prasanna @saiprasanna.in · 26/12/2024This album is going to be timeless open.spotify.com/album/32yQDx...open.spotify.comMahalGlass Beams · EP · 2024 · 5 songs 231
Sai Prasanna @saiprasanna.in · 18/12/2024Wednesday Quirky mood open.spotify.com/track/3RBhQ7...open.spotify.comDoing The Beeston BumpLeafcutter John · Yes! Come Parade With Us · Song · 2019 010
Sai Prasanna @saiprasanna.in · 18/12/2024Does augmenting ourselves with V/LLMs to cognitive gaps make self actualization even more difficult on average? Stands stark in contrast with (more difficult/slower to show positive outcomr) augmentation strategies like meditation or psychedelics 150
Reposted by Sai PrasannaAndreas Kirsch @blackhc.bsky.social · 17/12/2024The slides for my lectures on (Bayesian) Active Learning, Information Theory, and Uncertainty are online now 🥳 They cover quite a bit from basic information theory to some recent papers: blackhc.github.io/balitu/ and I'll try to add proper course notes over time 🤗 317628
Sai Prasanna @saiprasanna.in · 16/12/2024Manifold garden is a trippy game www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLt4...youtube.comManifold Garden - Launch Trailer | PS4YouTube video by PlayStation 130
Reposted by Sai Prasannavmoens @vmoens.bsky.social · 14/12/2024Check out Motivo, a behavioral foundation model for humanoid control by FAIR. It's a one-of-its-kind unsupervised RL project, and it comes with a demo that is SO fun to play with! metamotivo.metademolab.com (for the record, they use compile and cudagraphs -> github.com/facebookrese...) 1305
Reposted by Sai PrasannaVenkatesh Rao 🔹 @vgr.bsky.social · 13/12/2024Modern life is a Turing tarpit: “Everything is possible, but nothing is easy” By contrast any traditional lifestyle is sub-Turing All the people pining for rituals, steady routines, deep work etc etc etc… YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TURING COMPLETENESS en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_...en.wikipedia.orgTuring tarpit - Wikipedia 1415
Reposted by Sai PrasannaReinforcement Learning Conference @rl-conference.bsky.social · 10/12/2024If you're at NeurIPS, RLC is hosting an RL event from 8 till late at The Pearl on Dec. 11th. Join us, meet all the RL researchers, and spread the word! 26318
Sai Prasanna @saiprasanna.in · 11/12/2024One thing coding with LLMs has helped me a lot during the past months is for visualisations. I'm churning out code to visualize many aspects of agent behavior which I wouldn't have done before due to my mental friction in writing such code. Such code to do visualisations is also easy to verify. 100
Sai Prasanna @saiprasanna.in · 11/12/2024When predicting discrete joint distribution of two variables with a neural network, what loss is the best to use? KL on the joint and two marginals? Or is there anything better? 010
Reposted by Sai PrasannaHal Daumé III @haldaume3.bsky.social · 25/11/2024In an effort to play a small part in creating additional value on this site, I'm going to post one-per-day a paper we wrote that was published in 2024. Together with memes. Skipping holidays/weekends. In random order. Would love your thoughts on them. I'll keep them threaded for easy finding! > 1888
Reposted by Sai PrasannaShubhendu Trivedi @shubhendu.bsky.social · 09/12/2024The RL book by Kevin Murphy is finally online (copied shamelessly from the other place) arxiv.org/abs/2412.05265arxiv.orgReinforcement Learning: An OverviewThis manuscript gives a big-picture, up-to-date overview of the field of (deep) reinforcement learning and sequential decision making, covering value-based RL, policy-gradient methods, model-based met... 37218
Reposted by Sai PrasannaBlake Richards @tyrellturing.bsky.social · 09/12/2024As an analogy, I also think we should prioritize decarbonizing electricity over making it renewable (e.g. I think we should use nuclear power for the foreseeable future). And the reason is simple: resources are finite, and climate change is the more pressing problem. 141
Reposted by Sai PrasannaProPublica @propublica.org · 09/12/20241/ You may have seen us talk about formaldehyde — a chemical that causes an inescapable cancer risk for everyone in America. It’s in the air we breathe. And it’s in our homes: our couches, our clothes, even babies’ cribs. So what can you do to reduce your exposure? THREAD 🧵 1061852613
Sai Prasanna @saiprasanna.in · 09/12/2024How much of the benefit of learning purely in simulations like Dreamer etc, comes from the fact that the shitty model at the start of the training somehow allows the agent to explore large parts of the state space efficiently? 110
Reposted by Sai PrasannaEugene Vinitsky 🍒 @eugenevinitsky.bsky.social · 09/12/2024An updated intro to reinforcement learning by Kevin Murphy: arxiv.org/abs/2412.05265! Like their books, it covers a lot and is quite up to date with modern approaches. It also is pretty unique in coverage, I don't think a lot of this is synthesized anywhere else yetarxiv.orgReinforcement Learning: An OverviewThis manuscript gives a big-picture, up-to-date overview of the field of (deep) reinforcement learning and sequential decision making, covering value-based RL, policy-gradient methods, model-based met... 926974
Sai Prasanna @saiprasanna.in · 09/12/2024If you're in NeurIPS, you gotta meet Lennart! He's one of the friendliest folks who can describe a new concept to you in a must clear, & intuitive way, while also listening to your ideas with a similar intensity! Maybe your next nobel collaborator, you never know 😉 130
Reposted by Sai PrasannaLennart Purucker @lennartpurucker.bsky.social · 09/12/2024Excited to be at #NeurIPS2024 tomorrow! 🎉 Let’s connect if you are interested in tabular data and: 🤖 AutoML (e.g., AutoGluon) 📊 Data Science (e.g., LLMs for Feature Engineering) 🏛️ Foundation Models (e.g., TabPFN) Looking forward to insightful discussions—feel free to reach out! 082
Sai Prasanna @saiprasanna.in · 09/12/2024DnB + code = Productive Monday open.spotify.com/track/1zfp3y...open.spotify.comChubrubEd Rush, Optical · Travel the Galaxy · Song · 2009 110
Reposted by Sai PrasannaJeremy Howard @howard.fm · 05/12/2024I can't begin to describe how life-changing this new project, ShellSage, has been for me over the last few weeks. ShellSage is an LLM that lives in your terminal. It can see what directory you're in, what commands you've typed, what output you got, & your previous AI Q&A's.🧵 518521
Reposted by Sai PrasannaMarco Fumero @marcofm.bsky.social · 05/12/2024Excited to present "Latent Functional Maps" at #NeurIPS ! We show how neural models can be aligned by matching function spaces on representation manifolds, providing a unified framework for model comparison, matching, and information transfer. 📜: arxiv.org/abs/2406.14183 👇🧵 1176
Reposted by Sai PrasannaLukas Muttenthaler @lukasmut.bsky.social · 27/11/2024🚨 We just updated our perspective on representational alignment. The most recent version is both more crisp and more comprehensive. We try to find common language across research disciplines for aligning the representations from different info processing systems! arxiv.org/abs/2310.13018arxiv.orgGetting aligned on representational alignmentBiological and artificial information processing systems form representations of the world that they can use to categorize, reason, plan, navigate, and make decisions. How can we measure the similarit... 04613
Sai Prasanna @saiprasanna.in · 05/12/2024Great blog post, just learnt about Mask Atari! arxiv.org/abs/2203.16777arxiv.orgMask Atari for Deep Reinforcement Learning as POMDP BenchmarksWe present Mask Atari, a new benchmark to help solve partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP) problems with Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL)-based approaches. To achieve a simulation envi... 130
Reposted by Sai PrasannaAutoML Conference @automl-conf.bsky.social · 05/12/2024Big news! The AutoML Conference is back! 🎉 Next year, we’re heading to the city that never sleeps: New York City🗽. Save the date: Sept 8–11, 2025. Stay tuned for updates, and in the meantime, check out our website: 2025.automl.cc. See you there? #AutoML25 #AutoMLConf #NYC #AutoML2025.automl.ccAutoML 0195
Sai Prasanna @saiprasanna.in · 05/12/2024My brain on coffee sounds exactly like this album open.spotify.com/album/0o8LTj...open.spotify.comASDFEPINFRA · EP · 2019 · 4 songs 000
Sai Prasanna @saiprasanna.in · 05/12/2024Hear the gnomes and their Irreversible Echoes open.spotify.com/album/4Ei7fn...open.spotify.comIrreversible Echoes 000
Sai Prasanna @saiprasanna.in · 05/12/2024Is this a rave/trippy album poster or is it a biology poster? Or both 🤣 010
Sai Prasanna @saiprasanna.in · 04/12/2024This is impressive but also makes me wonder where Gen AI is going. Cane modeling things in the observation space lead to same level of interestingness as the source games or the real world? Can these model generate long tail events consistently compared to the real world/ human created games 110
Reposted by Sai PrasannaAmeya Salvi @ameyasalvi.bsky.social · 04/12/2024Key arguments from the ICRA debate “Generative AI will make a lot of traditional robotics approaches obsolete” (1/6) A thread 🧵 Have to say, just like my own mind, both the parties eventually seemed pretty on the fence and waiting for time to decide on this one. www.roboticsdebates.orgroboticsdebates.orgRobotics DebatesDebates on the Future of Robotics Research Full-Day Hybrid Workshop | May 13th at ICRA 2024 Time: 10:00-16:35 JST | Pacific Convention Plaza Yokohama, Room G411 + Live streaming here! 282
Reposted by Sai PrasannaJack Parker-Holder @jparkerholder.bsky.social · 04/12/2024Introducing 🧞Genie 2 🧞 - our most capable large-scale foundation world model, which can generate a diverse array of consistent worlds, playable for up to a minute. We believe Genie 2 could unlock the next wave of capabilities for embodied agents 🧠. 1523461
Reposted by Sai PrasannaVincent Mai @vincentmai.bsky.social · 03/12/2024It has worked for text, images, and weather. Why not for power grids? Here's our perspective in Joule for a grid foundation model authors.elsevier.com/c/1kCag925JE... This large research effort will be Open Source, as the GridFM project hosted under Linux Foundation Energy!authors.elsevier.com 021
Sai Prasanna @saiprasanna.in · 04/12/2024📌 Thread of threads for research ideas 💡 Collaborations are most welcome 😁 550
Reposted by Sai PrasannaReinforcement Learning Conference @rl-conference.bsky.social · 02/12/2024The call for papers for RLC is now up! Abstract deadline of 2/14, submission deadline of 2/21! Please help us spread the word. rl-conference.cc/callforpaper...rl-conference.ccRLJ | RLC Call for Papers 15518
Reposted by Sai PrasannaGaspard Lambrechts @gsprd.be · 03/12/2024How come I didn't know about this BeNeRL seminar series? It focuses on practical RL and seems really great! www.benerl.org/seminar-seri... I would have loved to hear Benjamin Eysenbach, Chris Lu and Edward Hu... Next one is on December 19th. 092
Reposted by Sai PrasannaHank Green @hankgreen.bsky.social · 03/12/2024The deep goal of bluesky is to decentralize the social internet so that every individual controls their experience of it rather than having it be controlled by 5 random billionaires. Everyone thinks they signed up for a demuskified twitter...we actually signed an exciting and bizarre experiment. 1275572346309
Reposted by Sai PrasannaBálint Mucsányi @bmucsanyi.bsky.social · 03/12/2024Thrilled to share our NeurIPS spotlight on uncertainty disentanglement! ✨ We study how well existing methods disentangle different sources of uncertainty, like epistemic and aleatoric. While all tested methods fail at this task, there are promising avenues ahead. 🧵 👇 1/7 📖: arxiv.org/abs/2402.19460 4566
Reposted by Sai PrasannaKonrad Kording @kordinglab.bsky.social · 02/12/2024Who is the best professor at managing their lab that you know? 348823