Anil Ananthaswamy @anilananth Twitter profile | Pikagi

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Anil Ananthaswamy

@anilananth

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Sci journalist/TED speaker/MIT KSJ Fellow/Books: The Edge of Physics, The Man Who Wasn't There, Through Two Doors at Once / Mastodon: @anil @sciencemastodon .com

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https://t.co/V3rY5DYEEB

Joined April 2010

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@anilananth

Anil Ananthaswamy

4 months

Don't know how other authors feel, but seeing the first physical copy of your book, after years of looking at Word files and PDFs... Seems surreal. It's as if someone else wrote it... Anyway, this advance copy arrived in the mail. One more month to pub date

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@anilananth

Anil Ananthaswamy

2 months

Imagine being 𝐚𝐜𝐜𝐮𝐬𝐞𝐝, even in jest, of being the man who 𝘴𝘦𝘵 𝘣𝘢𝘤𝘬 𝘥𝘦𝘦𝘱 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘣𝘺 𝘵𝘸𝘰 𝘥𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘴. 𝐆𝐞𝐨𝐫𝐠𝐞 𝐂𝐲𝐛𝐞𝐧𝐤𝐨, who proved one of the seminal 𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐚𝐥 𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐱𝐢𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐨𝐫𝐞𝐦𝐬, showed that a 1-hidden

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@anilananth

Anil Ananthaswamy

3 months

Before one groks it, 𝐦𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 (𝐌𝐋) can seem abstruse, even for those with software and math backgrounds (I found it so, despite having once learned the necessary skills). But once you get it, the simplicity of the conceptual building blocks is striking.

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@anilananth

Anil Ananthaswamy

3 months

There must be a 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 𝐆𝐞𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐧 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝 for how authors feel the day their book is released :-) Today is pub date for 𝐖𝐇𝐘 𝐌𝐀𝐂𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐒 𝐋𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐍: 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘌𝘭𝘦𝘨𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘔𝘢𝘵𝘩 𝘉𝘦𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘥 𝘔𝘰𝘥𝘦𝘳n 𝘈𝘐. Nearly 4-5 yrs of work in relative obscurity sees

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@anilananth

Anil Ananthaswamy

2 months

Sometimes, when writing a book, you encounter an idea so mind-bending, it doesn't leave you. For me, it was the answer this question: Why are deep neural networks universal function approximators? Turns out, understanding why functions are vectors is key; it's a truly eye-opening

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Anil Ananthaswamy

13 days

Some scientists I met and wrote about in 3 of my 4 books have won Nobel Prizes in physics after the book came out :-) The joy of writing about cutting-edge science! Not saying anything more, just in case anyone thinks otherwise. I'm trying to figure out who is most likely to win

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@anilananth

Anil Ananthaswamy

14 days

I'm never going to get another chance for this particular humble brag, so I'll take it :-) When Geoff Hinton endorsed WHY MACHINES LEARN sometime back in March/April, my impostor syndrome came to the fore (yes, writers have it too, not just scientists). Surely not, I thought at

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Anil Ananthaswamy

5 months

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐨𝐫𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐌𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐦𝐮𝐦⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ I owe a huge debt to two books that inspired 𝐖𝐇𝐘 𝐌𝐀𝐂𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐒 𝐋𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐍. Leonard Susskind's THE THEORETICAL MINIMUM (for classical mechanics) and Steven Strogatz's 𝐈𝐍𝐅𝐈𝐍𝐈𝐓𝐄 𝐏𝐎𝐖𝐄𝐑𝐒. They are different

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@anilananth

Anil Ananthaswamy

4 years

How do brains learn if not via the backpropagation algorithm that powers #DeepLearning and #ArtificialIntelligence ? Computational neuroscientists are closing in on some answers. My story for @QuantaMagazine

Artificial Neural Nets Finally Yield Clues to How Brains Learn

The learning algorithm that enables the runaway success of deep neural networks doesn’t work in biological brains, but researchers are finding alternatives that could.

www.quantamagazine.org

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Anil Ananthaswamy

14 days

Did not have seen this coming! The Physics Nobel goes to John Hopfield and Geoff Hinton. Interviewing them was among the many highlights of writing Why Machines Learn. It took some persuasion to get Hopfield to talk to me--but he did, and it was such a joy! In fact, the chapter

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@anilananth

Anil Ananthaswamy

3 months

As the pub date for a new book approaches, writers harbor conflicting emotions: 𝐣𝐨𝐲𝐟𝐮𝐥 of soon seeing the book out in the wild, 𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐨𝐮𝐬 that it's out in the wild and they can do little now to control its fate. 𝐖𝐇𝐘 𝐌𝐀𝐂𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐒 𝐋𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐍 is a week away from

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@anilananth

Anil Ananthaswamy

2 years

Finally, after a long pandemic-induced hiatus, @NCBS_Bangalore announces its 10th annual science journalism workshop. Application deadline: Jan 5, '23. Workshop dates: Feb 12-25, 2023. Apply! Spread the word!

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Anil Ananthaswamy

4 months

As authors, we have favorite stories that we couldn't somehow fit into our books. In 𝐖𝐇𝐘 𝐌𝐀𝐂𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐒 𝐋𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐍, I failed to find a place to tell the story of how AI pioneers 𝐁𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐞 𝐖𝐢𝐝𝐫𝐨𝐰 and 𝐅𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐤 𝐑𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐛𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐭 had a friendly face-off in the

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@anilananth

Anil Ananthaswamy

9 years

#gravitationalwaves so hard to find because space-time is 1000 billion times stiffer than diamond; it takes immense energy to create ripples

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Anil Ananthaswamy

2 months

A simple 𝐯𝐢𝐬𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐳𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 of why 𝐧𝐞𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐧𝐞𝐭𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐬, despite first being proposed in the late 1950s, remained a side-show in machine learning, until the back-propagation algorithm was developed in 1986. 𝐅𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐤 𝐑𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐛𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐭'𝐬 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐜𝐞𝐩𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐧

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@anilananth

Anil Ananthaswamy

6 months

Dan Dennett is no more.🙁 This is really sad. He touched so many lives, with his deep and uncompromising philosophy, his humor and a gentle kindness that lay beneath it all. I'd say RIP Dan, but he'd have admonished anyone for saying that! From Bacteria to Bach and Back, Dan.

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Anil Ananthaswamy

4 years

Neural networks that map from one infinite-dimensional space to another solve partial differential equations orders of magnitude faster than numerical methods. My story for @QuantaMagazine @unique9881 #DeepLearning #AI #NeuralNetworks

Latest Neural Nets Solve World’s Hardest Equations Faster Than Ever Before

Two new approaches allow deep neural networks to solve entire families of partial differential equations, making it easier to model complicated systems and to do so orders of magnitude faster.

www.quantamagazine.org

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@anilananth

Anil Ananthaswamy

2 years

“We are raising a generation of algorithms that are like undergrads [who] didn’t come to class the whole semester and then the night before the final, they’re cramming." Alexei Efros on supervised learning. My story for @Quanta on self-supervised learning:

Self-Taught AI Shows Similarities to How the Brain Works | Quanta Magazine

Self-supervised learning allows a neural network to figure out for itself what matters. The process might be what makes our own brains so successful.

www.quantamagazine.org

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Anil Ananthaswamy

6 years

1/20 #QuantumPhysics : Test your grasp of the double-slit experiment with this thread. Answer the polls as they come up and then read on to understand the central mystery of the #quantum world (images in this thread © Anil Ananthaswamy, Through Two Doors at Once, @DuttonBooks )

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Anil Ananthaswamy

3 months

You'll often see arguments that 𝐌𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 is "𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵" 𝐠𝐥𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐟𝐢𝐞𝐝 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐬. I respectfully beg to differ. To write 𝐖𝐇𝐘 𝐌𝐀𝐂𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐒 𝐋𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐍, I began coding after a 20-year gap (I was a distributed systems software architect in

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@anilananth

Anil Ananthaswamy

3 years

More evidence for predictive processing in the brain, from computational models to studies in mice. My story for @QuantaMagazine on work by @bill_lotter @neurobongo @TimKietzmann @tyrell_turing @KanakaRajanPhD @flodlan . Great editing by @tvjrennie

To Be Energy-Efficient, Brains Predict Their Perceptions | Quanta Magazine

Results from neural networks support the idea that brains are “prediction machines” — and that they work that way to conserve energy.

www.quantamagazine.org

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Anil Ananthaswamy

5 years

Wasn't expecting this when my UK publisher, Duckworth Books, decided to publish Through Two Doors at Once and The Man Who Wasn't There. They are bringing out all three of my books as a set (!) @Duckbooks @Matt_Casbourne #QuantumMechanics #consciousness #Self #physics

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Anil Ananthaswamy

2 years

What does physics have to do with #DALL ·E 2? Diffusion models are all the rage; their origins lie in some cool principles from non-equilibrium thermodynamics. Work by @jaschasd @hojonathanho @YSongStanford @AnimaAnandkumar

The Physics Principle That Inspired Modern AI Art | Quanta Magazine

Diffusion models generate incredible images by learning to reverse the process that, among other things, causes ink to spread through water.

www.quantamagazine.org

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Anil Ananthaswamy

6 months

Sometimes, as an author, you get an endorsement that delights because of the endorser's way with words. My sincere thanks to @stevenstrogatz for this lovely blurb; it gets to the heart of why I wrote Why Machines Learn; @DuttonBooks @penguinrandom

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Anil Ananthaswamy

3 years

Back in 2007, Steven Weinberg's casual remark during a chat triggered an entire story, a deep look at supersymmetry(SUSY). Weinberg worried that the LHC would find the Higgs and nothing more. "I'm terrified...Discovering just the Higgs would really be a crisis." He was prescient!

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Anil Ananthaswamy

7 years

We first discovered the laws of gravity, and then those of quantum mechanics. But @seanmcarroll et. al. say nature may go about it the other way around: space-time and gravity could emerge from a fundamental quantum mechanical description of the universe.

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Space-time and gravity might be born from the quantum world

To reconcile quantum mechanics and gravity, a new theory flips the usual script. Space-time and gravity may emerge from quantum effects, not the other way round

www.newscientist.com

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@anilananth

Anil Ananthaswamy

3 years

A graph hypernetwork predicts parameters for other #deepneuralnetworks . Imitates pre-training and cuts down on thousands of steps of stochastic gradient descent. My story for @QuantaMagazine . @BorisAKnyazev @mengyer @thomaskipf & @PetarV_93

Researchers Build AI That Builds AI | Quanta Magazine

By using hypernetworks, researchers can now preemptively fine-tune artificial neural networks, saving some of the time and expense of training.

www.quantamagazine.org

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Anil Ananthaswamy

3 years

1/n When my first book, The Edge of Physics, came out, a filmmaker, Steve Elkins, got in touch. He wanted to film the places I had been to (Siberia, Chile, Antarctica, Ladakh ...) and weave the story of these places and the physics, with other stories about slowness and silence

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Anil Ananthaswamy

6 years

Quantum quiz. Here's a build-up to a simple version of the double-slit experiment. It starts with light falling on a half-silvered mirror, or beamsplitter, which transmits half the light and reflects the rest (images in this thread ©: Anil Ananthaswamy, Through Two Doors at Once)

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@anilananth

Anil Ananthaswamy

5 years

It's been three months of being a fellow at @KSJatMIT , and I still pinch myself. Studying at MIT and Harvard and Tufts... could not have imagined that science journalism would have landed me here, to think about philosophy of mind, machine learning and fiction

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Anil Ananthaswamy

3 years

What LSD, magic mushrooms are telling us about the brain's predictive prowess. My story about #psychedelics , predictive processing, #perception and #hallucination for @KnowableMag . Featuring research by @anilkseth @RCarhartHarris @Artipago @KatrinPreller

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Psychedelics open a new window on the mechanisms of perception

knowablemagazine.org

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@anilananth

Anil Ananthaswamy

2 years

The 10th annual #sciencejournalism workshop @NCBS_Bangalore wrapped up yesterday. Last Fri, we marked 10 editions of the workshop with a dinner with alumni and faculty who have been a big part of the effort to foster #scicomm in India

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Anil Ananthaswamy

4 years

Anyone who has attended a #RogerPenrose talk will recognize his insanely complicated presentations using multiple overhead projector slides stacked atop each other. He would even attempt animations by jiggling the slides 🙂 #NobelPrize2020

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Anil Ananthaswamy

3 years

Not often do you get to write a quantum physics story that starts in a Viennese café, about an #AI that designs #quantum physics experiments that human imagination had failed to figure out... #MachineLearning My story for @sciam ...

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Anil Ananthaswamy

14 days

One small thing Geoff Hinton and David Rumelhart did -- apropos of his physics #NobelPrize2024 -- that often goes unnoticed when we talk of his neural network work is the idea of symmetry breaking. Granted it's not quite the same as how physicists think of it, but it's worth

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@anilananth

Anil Ananthaswamy

4 months

@josephluria

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@anilananth

Anil Ananthaswamy

10 months

We begin the 2nd decade of our science journalism workshop @NCBS_Bangalore . Application deadline: Feb 19, 2024. Please spread the word!

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@anilananth

Anil Ananthaswamy

2 months

Despite the 𝐜𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐝𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲, sometimes machine learning algorithms work better by pushing data into higher dimensions. But why? Here’s an 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐮𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧.⁣ ⁣ The very first single-layer neural networks, such as

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@anilananth

Anil Ananthaswamy

3 years

"The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts a human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy"-Steven Weinberg in The First Three Minutes. His life was lived with immense grace! 1/n

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@lawrence_wright

Lawrence Wright

@lawrence_wright

3 years

Steven Weinberg, the 1979 Nobel laureate for physics, died today. A delightful companion who loved theater, he could recite the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins by heart, and wrote profoundly about the mysteries of creation. He loved life and left it reluctantly. He’ll be missed.

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@anilananth

Anil Ananthaswamy

1 year

The moments when a book you are writing becomes real, sometimes frighteningly so: 1) When your publisher lists it on Amazon and you are in the dark: And ...(see next tweet)

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Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Math Behind Modern AI

Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Math Behind Modern AI

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@anilananth

Anil Ananthaswamy

5 years

The 9th Annual Science Journalism workshop @NCBS_Bangalore ended today. The class of 2019 below. For the first time we had 2 computer scientists and 2 physicists, a great, diverse group! Good luck to all of you. #Journalism #science Now for some beer 🙂

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Anil Ananthaswamy

4 years

DO WE LIVE IN A SIMULATION? My @sciam story, with a nod to comic @chucknicecomic and @neiltyson and @StarTalkRadio ; shows why @elonmusk is wrong and asks if we test that we are in a matrix. The odds flip the day we create our own sim @LeeBillings

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Anil Ananthaswamy

1 month

There’s no better illustration of how uncertainty messes with our minds than the Monty Hall dilemma. If you haven’t tried answering the question posed by the host of the game show Let’s Make a Deal, give it go and see why it fooled the best of mathematicians. Here’s the

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Anil Ananthaswamy

3 years

Could dark matter as we think we know it be dead? Yet another ultra-diffuse galaxy found with seemingly no #darkmatter . If confirmed--a big if--the galaxy and its ilk pose challenges for theories of cold dark matter and MOND! @sciam @LeeBillings

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Dark Matter May Be Missing from This Newfound Galaxy, Astronomers Say

A growing number of galaxies seem to be bereft of the mysterious substance, posing fresh challenges for some of cosmology’s most cherished theories

www.scientificamerican.com

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@anilananth

Anil Ananthaswamy

4 years

My #Penrose memory: Here's Penrose explaining to me his ideas about gravity-induced collapse of quantum superpositions, using his spectacles. One of the nicest physicists I have met! Congratulations to him on getting the physics #NobelPrize2020

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Anil Ananthaswamy

4 years

This needs widespread attention. A $5 hand centrifuge from @PrakashLab for #SARSCoV2 testing. No electricity! @kvijayraghavan

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@anilananth

Anil Ananthaswamy

6 years

Call for applications for the 9th Science Journalism Workshop @NCBS_Bangalore . The deadline is 10th May! Get application in, or please spread the word. Details here:

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Anil Ananthaswamy

4 years

"Everywhere I went led me to where I didn't want to be. So I was stuck": Paul Simon on writing Bridge Over Troubled Waters. Beautiful!

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Anil Ananthaswamy

2 years

Renewing call for applications. @NCBS_Bangalore hosts the 10th Annual Science Journalism Workshop, after 2 years of pandemic-induced absence. Apply by Jan 10, 2023, to learn the nuts-and-bolts of science journalism. Details here: #SciComm

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Anil Ananthaswamy

7 months

An intense 2 wks of @NCBS_Bangalore 's journalism workshop ended. A fab cohort. I'm sure we'll see them write for others and for themselves @Shubawrite @prarabdh2804 @charudatta_n @dbdttpl @malavikakkumar @mahimasamraik_ @RithikaFernand7 Nishant Singh, Karthik Vinod, Hardi Talwani

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Anil Ananthaswamy

6 years

. @NCBS_Bangalore announces the 9th edition of its Annual Science Journalism Workshop. We are open for applications. For details see: @thattai @stpalli @kvijayraghavan

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Anil Ananthaswamy

6 years

AN AI-based transcription service I am using just transcribed "Lorentz boost symmetry" as "Orange Juice Cemetery" 😀

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Anil Ananthaswamy

2 months

Why does 𝐦𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 suffer from the 𝐜𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐝𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲? Because, as Julie Delon of the Université Paris–Descartes says in her talks, "𝘐𝘯 𝘩𝘪𝘨𝘩-𝘥𝘪𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘴𝘱𝘢𝘤𝘦𝘴, 𝘯𝘰𝘣𝘰𝘥𝘺 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘳 𝘺𝘰𝘶

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@anilananth

Anil Ananthaswamy

2 months

The awesome 𝐬𝐮𝐩𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐯𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫 𝐦𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬 that ruled the roost in 2000s, before 𝐧𝐞𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐧𝐞𝐭𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐬 became the darlings of 𝐦𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠, can be traced back to 𝘝𝘭𝘢𝘥𝘪𝘮𝘪𝘳 𝘝𝘢𝘱𝘯𝘪𝘬'𝘴 algorithm, which was an appendix in his 1964

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@anilananth

Anil Ananthaswamy

10 years

"Smarty Plants!" Are plants intelligent, maybe conscious even? @newscientist cover feature http://t.co/EejYLiusMv http://t.co/VrjnCZReYO

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Anil Ananthaswamy

6 years

Why the double-slit experiment should NOT be used to make definitive statements about #consciousness or the nature of #quantum reality: The experiment can be interpreted in many different ways and each offers a different view of what's going on. @sciam

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Anil Ananthaswamy

2 years

To add to the research done at Bell Labs-it had an amazing group of #MachineLearning researchers in the 80s & 90s, who pioneered SVMs, neural networks, etc. Some I can think of : Sara Solla, Isabel Guyon, Yann LeCun, Corinna Cortes, Vladimir Vapnik... ML owes much to Bell Labs

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Philip Ball

2 years

Nice to see this question raised. Bell Labs was such an intellectual powerhouse at least up to and through the 1990s.

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Anil Ananthaswamy

3 months

Adam Becker ( @FreelanceAstro ) and I, almost at the end of our stay @sfiscience , as journalism fellows attending the complex systems summer school in Santa Fe, NM...

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Anil Ananthaswamy

6 years

The hardcover of Through Two Doors at Once arrived yesterday @DuttonBooks @EmilyCanders @penguinrandom @PenguinRH_News

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Anil Ananthaswamy

3 months

Many folks asked about the level of 𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐡 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰𝐥𝐞𝐝𝐠𝐞 assumed of the reader of 𝐖𝐇𝐘 𝐌𝐀𝐂𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐒 𝐋𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐍. Anyone with exposure to high school-level math (mainly basic 𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐠 and 𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐜𝐮𝐥𝐮𝐬) can follow along easily. More important, I'm targeting the

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Anil Ananthaswamy

5 years

We knew of the three possible fates for our universe: Big Freeze, Big Rip and Big Crunch. But there's a kid on the block, a possible unfurling of an extra dimension, making the cosmos indescribable with the physics we have: A @newscientist cover feature

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Welcome to the 5th dimension: Our universe's radical new fate

Our best models of cosmology suggest the universe will either go on forever, implode or rip itself apart. A new proposal suggests an even weirder destiny

www.newscientist.com

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Anil Ananthaswamy

2 months

Bangalore folks who were asking about WHY MACHINES LEARN being available in local bookstores, looks like @blossombookhous (yes, that Blossom book house!) has a few :-)

@blossombookhous

Blossom book house

@blossombookhous

2 months

#NewArrival 📚 Dive into the fascinating world of mathematics that has paved the way for machine learning and the rapid growth of artificial intelligence! 🤖✨ Machine-learning systems are now making life-changing decisions: from approving mortgages to diagnosing cancer, and

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Anil Ananthaswamy

6 years

Never thought I'd author 3 books when I became a writer. It's Pub Day for Through Two Doors at Once. Please share/re-tweet--it's much appreciated. Available at local indie booksellers and at @DuttonBooks @penguinrandom @PenguinRH_News @EmilyCanders

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Anil Ananthaswamy

3 years

We might soon see neural networks that sip rather than gulp energy. My story on spiking #neuralnetworks for @SimonsInstitute , featuring work by @SanderBohte , @hisspikeness (Friedemann Zenke), @neuralreckoning (Dan Goodman) and @ChristianPehle :

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Spiking Neural Networks

by Anil Ananthaswamy (Simons Institute Science Communicator in Residence)

simons.berkeley.edu

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Anil Ananthaswamy

5 years

Of all the joys of @KSJatMIT fellowship, I did not expect this: talking about quantum mechanics to @danieldennett 's class on Free Will. Loving the class, in which we grapple with the nuances of whether or not we have free will. Did I have any choice in taking this class? 😀

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Anil Ananthaswamy

3 years

Huge congrats to @aathiperinchery for winning the 2021 #Kavli #AAAS Science Journalism Award for her story Succession (). Her journey began with the @NCBS_Bangalore science journalism workshop (our first batch, 2011; @paldhous missing in this group photo):

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Anil Ananthaswamy

6 years

I wish I had found out about this murderous double-slit before I wrote THROUGH TWO DOORS AT ONCE 😀

@memecrashes

A meme page to check every time MatLab crashes

6 years

This is deep philosophical shit...

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Anil Ananthaswamy

6 years

Relieved! The 8th edition of the science journalism workshop @NCBS_Bangalore comes to a happy ending...all of us celebrating after a hard two weeks

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Anil Ananthaswamy

2 years

What a place to think and write about consciousness! Beginning my writer's residency at The Bellagio Center, Lake Como, Italy! #RFBellagio @RockefellerFdn ...

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Anil Ananthaswamy

6 years

Science journalism workshop @NCBS_Bangalore . Deadline for applications is 15th May. Announcement at: .Please spread the word again: @thattai @1amnerd @sandygrains @SekarSandhya @PriyankaPulla @TIFRScience @ViditaVaidya @stpalli @kvijayraghavan

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Anil Ananthaswamy

6 months

A generous endorsement from @skdh , gratefully received, for Why Machines Learn. “If you were looking for a way to make sense of the AI revolution that is well underway, look no further." Preorder from your favorite indie bookstore or from, where else,

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Anil Ananthaswamy

5 years

A Quantum Cheshire Cat was separated from its grin in 2013. Now, a controversial thought experiment says two quantum Cheshire cats can exchange their grins. The upshot: properties of particles, such as their spin, may not belong to the particles. @sciam

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Spin-Swapping Particles Could Be "Quantum Cheshire Cats"

A proposed experiment to swap fundamental properties between photons carries profound implications for our understanding of reality itself

www.scientificamerican.com

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Anil Ananthaswamy

1 month

One of the joys of opening boxes of books that I hadn't seen for 2 years+... And finding gems I want to reread. The late Dan Dennett's Intuition Pumps and @anilkseth 's Being You.

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Anil Ananthaswamy

4 years

If this is not theory of mind, I don't know what is! #animal minds...

@conor64

Conor Friedersdorf

4 years

Dogs.

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Anil Ananthaswamy

4 years

Redshift: things are moving away from each other. Blueshift: things are moving toward each other. Make of it what you will. This is what's written in the stars!

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Anil Ananthaswamy

2 months

Sep 5 is Teacher's Day in India. As it happens, WHY MACHINES LEARN is dedicated to "Teachers everywhere, sung and unsung"--as a way of acknowledging the enormous debt I owe to so many from whom I learned about machine learning and the math of it! And I got to squeeze into the

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Anil Ananthaswamy

2 months

To further admire @physicsworld 's awesome graphic about the Monty Hall problem: Each panel is one trial, and if you do 1000s of trials, you'll see the probabilities emerge: switching wins 2/3rds of the time. It's such a simulation that convinced the reluctant Paul Erdős (who

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@anilananth

Anil Ananthaswamy

2 months

Goat or no Goat! This graphic in @DrMattHodgson 's review of WHY MACHINES LEARN in @PhysicsWorld is a superb illustration of the Monty Hall Problem, and why you should switch your choice. Wish I had thought of it first :) Review here:

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Anil Ananthaswamy

6 years

This is how science should be taught!

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Anil Ananthaswamy

6 years

The class of 2018, science journalism workshop @NCBS_Bangalore , taking a break from feature writing! #scicomm

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Anil Ananthaswamy

29 days

How to use a large language model to teach yourself #MachineLearning . In the beginning there was the perceptron. So, first steps: Get an LLM to generate code for an interactive user interface that let's you create two clusters of data, and then activate and visualize a perceptron

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Anil Ananthaswamy

3 months

Writers are always finding inspiration in the work of other writers. In 𝐖𝐇𝐘 𝐌𝐀𝐂𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐒 𝐋𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐍, I borrowed a technique from the British writer 𝘚𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘦𝘵 𝘔𝘢𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘢𝘮'𝘴 novel 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘙𝘢𝘻𝘰𝘳'𝘴 𝘌𝘥𝘨𝘦, to make the case that while it's okay to skip the

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Anil Ananthaswamy

1 year

Thomas Young was born 250 years ago this week...A good excuse to revisit the double-slit experiment that he designed :) Starting with Young's classical version and the far more confounding quantum variants. My essay for @Nature

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Particle, wave, both or neither? The experiment that challenges all we know about reality

Nature - Thomas Young’s double-slit experiment originally served to prove that light is a wave — but later quantum versions have made for a much fuzzier picture.

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Anil Ananthaswamy

6 years

Two slits and one hell of a quantum conundrum: Philip Ball lauds a study of a famous experiment and the insights it offers into a thoroughly maddening theory. @philipcball reviews Through Two Doors at Once for @NatureNews @DuttonBooks @penguinrandom

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Anil Ananthaswamy

6 years

Sabine Hossenfelder reviews Through Two Doors: "I like Anil’s writing because he doesn’t waste your time. He says what he has to say, doesn’t make excuses when it gets technical, and doesn’t wrap the science into layers of flowery cushions." @skdh

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Anil Ananthaswamy

3 years

Had an intense and amazing time, as a #TED2022 speaker last week. Spoke about the human sense of self, the topic of my book, The Man Who Wasn't There. Among the many unexpected intangibles of writing a book! Photo: Gilberto Tadday. A nod to @dbiello

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Anil Ananthaswamy

4 years

. @KSJatMIT fellows of 2019-20 signing off today. It was heartbreaking saying bye without being able to hug each other, but I'm so glad to have you all in my life: @BeeBrookshire @rifish @thiagomedaglia @MollyAudio @sonaliprasad07 @tonyleys @fauber_mjs @evawolfangel @AFiscutean

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Anil Ananthaswamy

6 months

Grateful to get an early endorsement for Why Machines Learn from @MelMitchell1 . Book is due out Jul 16, but can be preordered from you-know-who:

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Anil Ananthaswamy

11 years

How stiff is spacetime? Elastic modulus of rubber is 0.1 GPa; diamond: 1200; spacetime: 10^24 #nordita13

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Anil Ananthaswamy

8 years

The relentless march towards maximum entropy may help explain dark energy @newscientist @seanmcarroll

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Anil Ananthaswamy

7 months

To @Ananyo 's point below, I'm expecting sales of my book, Why Machines Learn, to tend towards zero, given the math in it 🙂 Here's an example page

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@curiouswavefn

Ash Jogalekar

7 months

One of the funny things you often realize when reading popular science, especially popular physics, is that beyond a point, the npn-technical language actually makes it harder to understand abstract ideas and the math actually makes it *simpler*.

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Anil Ananthaswamy

6 months

I first heard @irinarish mention Grokking #neural networks on the @pgmid 's Brain Inspired podcast! That was in early '22. Years later, here's a story on Grokking, about the follow-up detective work of @NeelNanda5 @ZimingLiu11 and others for @QuantaMagazine

How Do Machines ‘Grok’ Data? | Quanta Magazine

By apparently overtraining them, researchers have seen neural networks discover novel solutions to problems.

www.quantamagazine.org

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Anil Ananthaswamy

6 days

A simple insight into not why or how, but what a neural network learns. Let’s say you want to train an ML model to distinguish between two classes of data (top left panel, circles and triangles). A linear classifier—which would find a straight line, plane or hyperplane to

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Anil Ananthaswamy

6 years

My review of @stevenstrogatz 's new book, Infinite Powers in @NatureNews : From counting with stones to artificial intelligence: the story of calculus

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Anil Ananthaswamy

3 years

1/n "If there’s one place in India that offers the best crash course there is on the core elements of good science writing, it’s the NCBS science journalism workshop." Never imagined that the workshop we started @NCBS in 2011 would have such an impact.

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Anil Ananthaswamy

3 months

The contentious/storied history of the 𝐛𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐚𝐠𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 algorithm that ignited the 𝐝𝐞𝐞𝐩 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 revolution: Geoff Hinton and co. are often credited for it, but even he acknowledges the algorithm’s precedents. Why then do we regard the

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Anil Ananthaswamy

13 days

The focus on Hopfield networks takes away from John Hopfield's fabulous earlier work in the dynamics of biochemical reactions--which laid the foundation for his eponymous networks, which led to the #NobelPrize2024 . When I talked to him for WHY MACHINES LEARN, he spoke of the

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Anil Ananthaswamy

3 months

Magazines sometimes publish an issue of their mag with two different covers, to figure out which one appeals to their readers. Well, 𝐖𝐇𝐘 𝐌𝐀𝐂𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐒 𝐋𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐍 is being released on 𝐉𝐮𝐥 𝟏𝟔 𝐢𝐧 𝐔𝐒 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐔𝐊 with different cover designs. Which one catches your

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Anil Ananthaswamy

6 months

It's not without some trepidation that I wrote 𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐌𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧. There's a fair bit of math, equations and all, in it. The impulse to share the beauty of the math was strong. So, it's no small relief to hear 𝐁𝐣ö𝐫𝐧 𝐎𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐫 acknowledge the math, calling it

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Anil Ananthaswamy

7 years

The 8th Annual Science Journalism Workshop @NCBS_Bangalore open for applications. Deadline is 15 May, 2018. See for more details. Please re-tweet @thattai @1amnerd @kvijayraghavan @ViditaVaidya @NCBStheory @VenkRamaswamy

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Anil Ananthaswamy

6 years

For computer science nerds out there 😃From @50NerdsofGrey

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