One of the biggest statistical biases one encounters when trying to assess the true success rate of AI tools is the strong reporting bias against disclosing negative results. If an individual or AI company research group applies their AI tool to an open problem, but makes no substantial progress, there is little incentive for the user of that tool to report the negative statement; furthermore, even if such results are reported, they are less likely to go "viral" on social media than positive results. As a consequence, the results one actually hears about on such media is inevitably highly skewed towards the positive results.

With that in mind, I commend this recent initiative of Paata Ivanisvili and Mehmet Mars Seven to systematically document the outcomes (both positive and negative) of applying frontier LLMs to open problems, such as the Erdos problems: https://mehmetmars7.github.io/Erdosproblems-llm-hunter/index.html

As one can see, the true success rate of these tools for, say, the Erdos problems is actually only on the level of a percentage point or two; but with over 600 outstanding open problems, this still leads to an impressively large (and non-trivial) set of actual AI contributions to these problems, though overwhelmingly concentrated near the easy end of the difficulty spectrum, and not yet a harbinger that the median Erdos problem is anywhere within reach of these tools.

Wondering why Trump is murdering alleged (no proof) drug traffickers on the open seas while pardoning a mega-crook head of state who was helping to smuggle tons of drugs into the US?

Krugman has a compelling theory. It involves the slimy crypto crowd.

https://www.nationalmemo.com/donald-trump-crimes

Six congressional Democrats released a video advising members of the U.S. military to “refuse illegal orders.” Trump posted this was sedition punishable by death.

This week, news reports have alleged that the U.S. military carried out a strike to kill two survivors of an initial missile strike on a boat in the Caribbean.

Fun fact: Firing on shipwrecked survivors is *specifically* called out as an illegal order that service members must refuse.

https://ogc.osd.mil/Portals/99/department_of_defense_law_of_war_manual.pdf

I was using mastodon before it was cool.

Narrator: that's currently.

Beavers are really important.

After the huge wildfires in Oregon in 2022, a biologist went out to survey the damage. Not only were the forests blackened, thriving trout populations in the streams were gone, choked to death by ash. “I was in total shock. It just looked like devastation.”

Then he stumbled upon something even more surprising: roughly five acres of pristine greenery in an otherwise burned-out area! At the center were eight active beaver dams.

But this was more than a refuge from the fire. While fish had disappeared upstream of these dams, the downstream water was crystal clear — and trout were thriving as though the fire had never happened! The beaver dams were acting as a water treatment plant.

[Paraphrased from this article: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/beaver-dams-help-wildfire-ravaged-ecosystems-recover-long-after-flames-subside/]