You probably know, AlphaGo, the 2016 AI program that dominated the game of Go.
Soon after, a software implementation called Leela was made available, to train human Go players.
Data from 750k Go moves from 1,200+ players between 2015-2019 shows a significant improvement in move quality – especially among younger players (see chart) who are likely more open to learn from Leela.
Fascinating and important read about Russian military logistics and what it means for various strategies in Europe.
“No other European nation uses railroads to the extent that the Russian army does.“
“The rub is that Russian railroads are a wider gauge than the rest of Europe. Only former Soviet nations and Finland still use the Russian standard — this includes the Baltic states.“
Interesting side note – Russia can thank the US for this standard, namely George Washington Whistler (father of the famous painter!). The US was looking out for its European allies all the way back in the 1840s.
In summary – “they are not capable of a sustained ground offensive far beyond Russian railroads without a major logistical halt or a massive mobilization of reserves.“
A fascinating read about Jim Casey – the man who built UPS.
“On August 28, 1907, nineteen-year-old James Emmett “Jim” Casey and his friend Claude Ryan borrowed $100 and founded the American Messenger Company in a six-foot by seven-foot basement office below a Seattle saloon.”
From this grew one of the largest transportation companies – delivering 6.3bn packages globally in 2020.
As with all histories there are some fascinating anecdotes
“Merchants Parcel [an earlier name] considered painting their cars and vans bright yellow to attract attention, or even painting them different colors to make people think the company was larger than it was. But Charlie warned that they should not try to show up their retail customers, who were proud of their brightly decorated delivery vehicles. He had studied the more subtle Pullman brown, the color used on railroad sleeping cars to minimize signs of dust and dirt. Thus the partners decided to go with brown—only slightly modified in today’s UPS brown.“
Starship, the fully reusable rocket under development by SpaceX, is a revolution the industry grossly under-appreciates. So goes this fascinating blog post.
“Starship matters. It’s not just a really big rocket, like any other rocket on steroids. It’s a continuing and dedicated attempt to achieve the “Holy Grail” of rocketry, a fully and rapidly reusable orbital class rocket that can be mass manufactured. It is intended to enable a conveyor belt logistical capacity to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) comparable to the Berlin Airlift.“
“Consider the two critical metrics: Dollars per tonne ($/T) and tonnes per year (T/year) … Starship is intended to reach numbers as low as $1m/T and 1000 T/year for cargo soft landed on the Moon. Apollo achieved about $2b/T and 2 T/year for cargo soft landed on the Moon.“
It is developing in leaps – “Two years ago Starship was a design concept and a mock up. Today it’s a 95% complete prototype that will soon fly to space and may even make it back in one piece.“
From only being founded in 1949 to having no AI publication in 1980, the Chinese Academy of Sciences now firmly has the top spot in quality AI research.
Truly remarkable catch up, also by the Chinese universities, now publishing on par with Western leaders.
Source: State of AI Report 2021 (must read report, just overflowing with interesting insights)
