James' World 2

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A team of computer scientists has created a nimbler, more flexible type of machine learning model. The trick: It must periodically forget what it knows. And while this new approach won’t displace the huge models that undergird the biggest apps, it could reveal more about how these programs understand language.

The new research marks “a significant advance in the field,” said Jea Kwon, an AI engineer at the Institute for Basic Science in South Korea.

The AI language engines in use today are mostly powered by artificial neural networks. Each “neuron” in the network is a mathematical function that receives signals from other such neurons, runs some calculations, and sends signals on through multiple layers of neurons. Initially, the flow of information is more or less random, but through training, the information flow between neurons improves as the network adapts to the training data. If an AI researcher wants to create a bilingual model, for example, she would train the model with a big pile of text from both languages, which would adjust the connections between neurons in such a way as to relate the text in one language with equivalent words in the other.

But this training process takes a lot of computing power. If the model doesn’t work very well, or if the user’s needs change later on, it’s hard to adapt it. “Say you have a model that has 100 languages, but imagine that one language you want is not covered,” said Mikel Artetxe, a co-author of the new research and founder of the AI startup Reka. “You could start over from scratch, but it’s not ideal.”Artetxe and his colleagues have tried to circumvent these limitations. A few years ago, Artetxe and others trained a neural network in one language, then erased what it knew about the building blocks of words, called tokens. These are stored in the first layer of the neural network, called the embedding layer. They left all the other layers of the model alone. After erasing the tokens of the first language, they retrained the model on the second language, which filled the embedding layer with new tokens from that language.

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Valentin Tkach for Quanta Magazine

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At a wedding last weekend the conversation around the table turned, as it so often does in the presence of a freshly minted marriage, to finding love. “Where am I supposed to meet people?” the man to my left despaired, as though someone on table eight was holding all eligible women hostage from him. “I speak to girls on Tinder but I barely ever actually meet them.”

Foregoing dating apps for the old-school method of seeking out a partner without your phone can be a daunting proposition. But while bad romantic comedies would have you believe you need to go out six nights a week and speak to every person in the post office to find love, even the time and inspiration-poor can find someone in real life.

Firstly, delete the apps

Tinder et al are a sinkhole of energy and, for many, a boom-bust exercise of conversations that go nowhere and just serve to boost the ego of one party. If you have found Tinder successful and are confident selling yourself on a few holiday pictures and a bio, don’t stop. If it’s not really working out – which is probably why you clicked on this article – banish it from your phone and give yourself the impetus to meet people in real life without the safety net of Tinder distracting you from your pocket.

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Dating App

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I’ve been obsessed with celebrity technology usage, or lack thereof, for years. In so many cases, it seems that once you become sufficiently famous — with millions of people hanging on your every word, millions of others talking about you all the time, and countless people in your life scrambling for your time, energy, and money — the only sane way to manage it all is to sever as much as possible. So many celebrities ditch their phone, disconnect from their social media, log off entirely. Everyone from Tom Cruise to Elton John to Sarah Jessica Parker to Michael Cera to Dolly Parton to George Clooney has extolled the virtues of a phone-free life. The internet practically revolves around A-list celebrities, and they often don’t even know.

For most of us, ditching our phones and moving into the woods or whatever is a fantasy. We don’t have managers and personal assistants and accountants to handle all of our calls; we have family members and bosses who need to reach us. Plus, phones are useful and cool and fun! Even some of these celebrities end up going back — a few recent pictures of Bieber indicate he might once again be a phone-haver. But I’ve still found myself looking for lessons from the celebrities, wondering what they’ve discovered about the internet and themselves by disconnecting a bit. I’ve also been looking for tips on how to do the same. And I think I might have figured it out.

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Do you have a bad habit of biting your nails whenever you’re anxious, stressed, or bored? You’re not alone. In fact, nearly 20 to 30% of the population have the same habit — but the seemingly innocuous behavior is actually not as harmless as you might think. When left untreated, chronic nail-biting can lead to a slew of health problems, including infections and other hygiene issues (not to mention you’ll never get those dream nails you always wanted!)

Of course, if you’re one of the many people who can’t help but constantly nibble on their nails, you already know that it’s an extremely tough habit to kick — especially since most of the time you’re doing it without realizing it. Luckily, there are a few ways to overcome the urge once and for all. If you’re wondering how to stop nail-biting for good and finally get strong, healthy nails that haven’t been incessantly gnawed on, here are some of the best expert-approved tips to finally kick the bad habit to the curb.

Why do I bite my nails?

Before trying to stop your nail-biting habit, it’s important to know the causes behind the behavior — or onychophagia, as medical experts call it in clinical settings. According to Rebecca Rialon Berry, Ph.D., a licensed psychologist and director of the Tics, Tourette Disorder, and Trichotillomania Program at the Child Study Center at NYU Langone Health, nail-biting falls along the lines of a type of behavior in the clinical world called body-focused repetitive behaviors, or BFRBs, which refer to any repetitive self-grooming behaviors that damage the skin, hair or nails.

Why is it that we engage in these types of behaviors? Research suggests that more likely than not, there’s a genetic cause behind this tick. But there are also a number of environmental triggers that manifest the onset of nail-biting behavior — including stress, anxiety, boredom, and other forms of emotional distress. “Sometimes people engage in these behaviors because they’re actually feeling underwhelmed, under-stimulated or bored,” adds Berry. “And then there is a subset of people that could be working more automatically as part of a stress response.”

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