[8th September 2024] Interesting Things I Learnt This Week

1. A Single Gold Bar Is Worth $1 Million for the First Time in History - It discusses why the price has gone up and what this means for the future. The price of a single gold bar has recently reached $1 million for the first time ever. This is because gold is seen as a safe investment during times of economic uncertainty. The article predicts that the price of gold will keep going up.

My Take: Gold has always been seen as a safe investment in India. We have seen the Gold Bond which were introduced by Government of India which has become too popular to be supported by GoI. E-Gold is a safe way to keep gold especially since for folks who are buying to for purely investment purpose and not holding black money in India. I hope that the space becomes more reliable and competitive. Though folks would say that Gold does not give the best returns always, which is true but the fact also is that it provides safety in terms of investment unlike stock market, at least till we are able to create artificial gold. Till then it will remain a valuable investment.

2. Buy Experiences instead of Possessions to Build Social Connection - Shared experiences, more than material things, bring people together

My Take: I guess this is a no-brainer but we are too consumed into buying the next more exclusive and expensive stuff. Think about it: A new pair of shoes might provide a temporary boost, but a weekend trek in the Western Ghats or a cozy evening at a local café with friends creates lasting memories and shared stories. These experiences become a part of your identity, something you can talk about and connect with others over. Experiences over possessions can lead to deeper connections, more meaningful memories, and a richer life.

3. TalkBack uses Gemini Nano to increase image accessibility for users with low vision - Google’s TalkBack uses Gemini Nano to increase image accessibility for users with low vision. It discusses what TalkBack is and how it is always working to make Android more accessible.

My Take: I guess this is one of the better uses of LLMs. With we still struggling to get applications compliant to various standards of accessibility standards. So many of them, even those by governments are not accessible. Not that building accessible apps is not required, but this provides a catch all tool which can make lives of people with visual impairments better. I imagine having smart glasses which relay the current real life visual in an auditory format for people with challenges would really be game changer in many ways.

 

4. Building LLMs from the Ground Up -This YouTube tutorial provides a comprehensive introduction to large language models (LLMs), covering their inner workings, implementation in PyTorch, and practical applications. It begins with an overview of LLMs, their recent advancements, and various use cases. The tutorial then guides viewers through the process of building a small GPT-like LLM from scratch, including data input, architectural components, and pretraining. Once the model is built and trained, the tutorial demonstrates how to load pretrained weights and fine-tune it using open-source libraries.

My Take: I have not gone through this tutorial completely. But its topics are very interesting. Anyone who is interested in learning about architecture of LLMs, pretraining and fine tuning, this is a great place to start. This should probably be part of engineering curriculum and every AI enthusiast should understand these concepts very well and not be just limited to art of prompt engineering.