Ian Mulvany

Hi, I'm Ian - I work on academic publishing systems. You can find out more about me at mulvany.net. I'm always interested in engaging with folk on these topics, if you have made your way here don't hesitate to reach out if there is anything you want to share, discuss, or ask for help with!
July 20, 2023

How likely is it to generate a copyrighted image using a Generative ai tool such a stable diffusion?

How likely is it to generate a copyrighted image using a Generative ai tool such a stable diffusion? This question came up in a work context last week and I've been thinking about it. I asked GPT how these tools work, and it came back with "generative image models like Stable Diffusion learn from data to generate new images by applying...
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July 20, 2023

LLMs evolve, they are not predictable, and that's challenging for product development

This tweet thread is worth looking at: https://twitter.com/random_walker/status/1681748271163912194 What this tells us, and what is worth paying attention to, is that when building on top of LLMs that are outside of your control, the fine-tuning, or model, can move underneath you. If you have strategies for making the LLM work for you ...
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July 15, 2023

The BMJ is requiring code sharing.

This is the editorial https://www.bmj.com/content/382/bmj.p1609, which includes the fantastic line “We are not extracting sunbeams from cucumbers; we are shining a light for the public good.” That’s it, that’s the blog post - the bmj - code sharing. P.s. - if you plug a cucumber into a high voltage source you do get it to glow! https:/...
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July 14, 2023

Dryad is seeking new additions to the board.

Dryad has a call out for new members to join our board of directors - https://blog.datadryad.org/2023/07/05/join-us-call-for-nominations-to-the-dryad-board-of-directors/, if you are interested in scholarly infrastructure, and you want to contribute to a community initiative, then this is a great opportunity to get involved. In particul...
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June 27, 2023

In our time - megaliths.

Episode link: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001jkzg My rating: B- This episode was about megaliths. Overall we know very little about the people’s who built these, and that comes across in the episode. The episode was not terrible, but not great either. I learnt the following: • there are a lot more megaliths around than I had appr...
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June 26, 2023

Acting on the world, and understanding the world.

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2023/06/what-does-geoffrey-hinton-believe-about-agi-existential-risk.html what does Geoffrey Hinton believe about AGI risk is a short post by Tyler Cowen about an interview with Geoffrey Hinton. The interview is here, but I don’t have access. There is one quote I want to reflect on. The...
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June 24, 2023

Precision vs recall when looking for fake research papers

Adam day recently posted a very good overview of the role of precision and recall in detecting fake papers. I’m just going to point directly to his post: https://clearskiesadam.medium.com/where-to-draw-the-line-precision-and-recall-3c39a131c14b The main thing for me is that we always need to be clear about what question we are asking w...
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June 24, 2023

In our time - Stevie Smith

Episode link - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001j45h My rating - a solid A rating. I’d not heard of Stevie Smith before, and found this episode truly delightful. The participants of the episode had a clear fondness for the writing, and their enthusiasm shone through. I ordered a copy of the collected works, and I love them. There i...
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June 24, 2023

In our time - John Donne

Episode link - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001gx0k In the house that I grew up in we had a book of poetry of Donne, but I payed little account to it, and I had only the vaguest knowledge of who he was. I’d rate this episode B-. This episode did a great job of going over his life and works. I’d not realised when exactly he was wor...
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May 26, 2023

SAGE 10 year impact awards

I just noticed that SAGE are continuing to announce the 10 year impact awards - https://group.sagepub.com/press-releases/sages-10-year-impact-awards-recognize-research-with-long-term-influence. The pull quote from Ziyad covers it well “Short-term measures of research impact fail to account for the many ways in which scholarship continu...
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May 22, 2023

In our time - Persuasion

#Inourtime the title was [[title]] The tags were: [[hashtags]] episode link I know very little about the life or world of Jane Austin, so it was a delight to listen to this episode. My aim with this series of posts is to note down things that I had learnt, however as I knew so little before it would take too long to write, so I’ll keep...
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May 21, 2023

Will AIs be scared if AIs, who cares?

There is a line of thinking about AI that fears the emergence of super-powerful AI. This paper https://www.econtalk.org/tyler-cowen-on-the-risks-and-impact-of-artificial-intelligence/ says that an AI that is capable of building a super powerful AI won’t do that because it will be as scared of the negative consequences as we are. Look, ...
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May 12, 2023

things I've been reading - week 19 - 2023

Things I’ve been reading this week: • https://www.semianalysis.com/p/google-we-have-no-moat-and-neither - the cost of fine-tuning GPT-capable models is going from $100M dollars to $600!! • https://magazine.sebastianraschka.com/p/finetuning-large-language-models - a good overview of approaches on fine-tuning • https://www.lorcandempsey....
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May 8, 2023

NIH Data Science Scholarships

The NIH has a set of data science scholarships for US citizens or residents. Tyler Beck writes: "Please check out this year’s topics here: https://datascience.nih.gov/data-scholars-2023 Specifically related to LitCoin, one scholar will have the opportunity to take the output NLP systems from the LitCoin NLP Challenge and coalesce the b...
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May 6, 2023

in our time notes - Tycho Brahe

#inourtime/notes #astronomy Episode - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001hnlf I’d give this episode a solid B. I already knew quite a bit about Brahe from my background in astrophysics. Much of my internal impression came from reading Arthur Koestler’s the sleepwalkers many years ago - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sleepwalkers-History-Ch...
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May 5, 2023

Some recent reads from around the web - week18

• Last week I attend the Dryad (Dryad) board meeting - Dryad is a not for profit that helps researchers share research data. This is a topic I’ve been thinking about for some time (a deck I presented on the topic 10 years ago - https://speakerdeck.com/ianmulvany/connecting-data-and-literature). The meeting was generously hosted by the ...
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April 29, 2023

Dryad board meeting 2023

I’ve just landed back in london after attending the dryad board meeting. I have the great privilege of being the treasurer of dryad. We worked hard for two and a half days to assess the current state of dryad and to draft sone strategic goals for the next three years. I feel folk left with the feeling of a job well done. It was a great...
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April 29, 2023

Rawls - in our time.

#inourtime/notes #blog This was another great episode of in our time about Rawls’ theory of justice. Episode link: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001h4bz This is what I learnt: • he was a fully 20th century philosopher, born 1921, died 2002. For sone reason I’d always assumed that he was 19th century. • the podcast points to the dea...
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April 27, 2023

London Generative AI hackathon - some reflections

Last weekend I took part in a generative AI hackathon in london. Huge thanks to xx and Victoria Stoyanova and Sarah Drinkwater for organising it. (Sarah's writeup - https://betterprogramming.pub/how-to-run-a-generative-ai-hackathon-dc27f8d4fdd0). It was hosted by Entrepreneur First and sponsored by Amazon, the British Medical Journal, ...
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April 21, 2023

Some recent reads about how to think about large language models

I have been doing a lot of reading about large language models in the last few weeks. Here are some of the more thought provoking pieces that I’ve read. I’m pulling out quotes from these pieces, what I think is important about them, and some reflections on them. I don’t fully agree with everything in these posts, but they have all been...
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April 20, 2023

In our time - superconductivity

#inourtime/notes #blog/draft #superconductivity #physics A few weeks ago I listened to the in our time episode on superconductivity. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001hfpc It was a really enjoyable episode, though I can’t recall a lot from the episode, I did learn a few things. The phenomenon was discovered accidentally in 1911 by K...
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April 19, 2023

I have just built my first Safari Extension!

I often have a desire to copy a bunch of URLS from my current safari window, for example if I am opening tabs while at a meeting, to look at the resources that are being mentioned. I might want to capture them later in some notes. I was wondering whether there might be a way to easily grab all links that I have open in my tabs, but ins...
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March 8, 2023

The Challenger Expedition - 1872

I listened to the episode about the 1872 four-year long Challenger expedition to investigate the oceans of the earth. I’d not known much about this before listening to the episode. In 1870, Charles Wyville Thomson (right), Professor of Natural History at Edinburgh University, persuaded the Royal Society of London to ask the British Gov...
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March 7, 2023

BMJ is sponsoring an AI Hackathon in London in April

Generative AI, characterised by tools like GhatGPT and MidJourney, has been taking the internet by storm, and they raise so many interesting questions about the nature of expertise, tools to support human creativity, and how AI is going to intersect with humans in the near and long term. There is a world of a difference between reading...
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March 4, 2023

In our time - The philippics.

#inourtime/notes/greece The most recent episode of in our time that I listened to was about Demosthenes' Philippics - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001f4ws. This is what I learnt. I’d hear about these works before but hadn’t realised that they are named after a person - Philipp of Macedon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_II_of_...
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February 8, 2023

A note on technological disruption, unintended consequences, and poo

#blog #inourtime/notes/poo I enjoy listening to in our time ( https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qykl), a radio show touching on all things cultural and scientific. I’ve listened to many episodes, but rarely retain any information. I’m going to blog short notes on what I learn from the episodes. This post is about the great stink of ...
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February 5, 2023

A nee way of structuring a phd

Deep science ventures opened up applications for its phd program - https://apply.workable.com/deep-science-ventures/j/58DD353058/. The idea is to embed a PhD program within a startup incubator, with a focus on transformative technologies that can help with challenges such as climate change. Their portfolio of projects is inspirational ...
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February 2, 2023

What are the hard problems in innovating in healthcare?

Someone pointed out GlassHealth to me - https://blog.glass.health/company/ - a new startup that is building tools to help doctors. Their first tool is Glass Notebook, an online notebook for doctors to track their information, inspired by tooling like Notion, and dare I say it tools like ToddlyWiki. This whole area of semi-structured do...
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January 26, 2023

usage shapes computing, computing shapes usage

Our knowledge world is in the process of a shift in affordances. The development of large language models is creating tools and assistants that will change how we interact with information. I feel sometimes that I have a seat near the window, looking out at these changes happening before my eyes, but being separated from them, as I'm n...
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January 7, 2023

A scaled way to step back from twitter.

Following a post on the topic from Nate Mattis, I realised that it’s not enough to just use twitter less. You kind of have to tell folks that you are using it less. The reason is that it’s important to how our decision effect the network, for the network to be able to sense what is happening (broadly). One way to do this is to use a bo...
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