Computational Mechanics Hackathon (June 1 & 2)

post by Adam Shai (adam-shai) · 2024-05-24T22:18:44.352Z · LW · GW · 5 comments

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Join our Computational Mechanics Hackathon, organized with the support of APART, PIBBSS and Simplex. 

This is an opportunity to learn more about Computational Mechanics, its applications to AI interpretability & safety, and to get your hands dirty by working on a concrete project together with a team and supported by Adam & Paul. Also, there will be cash prizes for the best projects!
 

Read more and sign up for the event here. 

We’re excited about Computational Mechanics as a framework because it provides a rigorous notion of structure that can be applied to both data and model internals. In, Transformers Represent Belief State Geometry in their Residual Stream [LW · GW] , we validated that Computational Mechanics can help us understand fundamentally what computational structures transformers implement when trained on next-token prediction - a belief updating process over the hidden structure of the data generating process. We then found the fractal geometry underlying this process in the residual stream of transformers.
 

This opens up a large number of potential projects in interpretability. There’s a lot of work to do!

Key things to know: 

• Dates: Weekend of June 1st & 2nd, starting with an opening talk on Friday May 31st 
• Format: Hybrid — join either online or in person in Berkeley! If you are interested in joining in person please contact Adam.
• Program: 
  • Keynote Opening by @Adam Shai [LW · GW]  and @Paul Riechers [LW · GW]  —  Friday 10:30 AM PDT
  • Online Office Hours with  Adam and Paul on Discord — Saturday and Sunday 10:30 PDT 
  • Ending session — Sunday at 17:30 PDT
  • Project presentations — Wednesday at 10:30 PDT
• Projects: 
  • After that, you will form teams of 1-5 people and submit a project on the entry submission page. By the end of the hackathon, you will submit: 1) The PDF report, 2) a maximum 10-minute video overview, 3) title, summary, and descriptions. You will present your work on the following Wednesday.
• Sign up: You can sign up on this website. After signing up, you will receive a link to the discord where we will be coordinating over the course of the weekend. Feel free to introduce yourself on the discord and begin brainstorming ideas and interests.
• Resources: 
  • You’re welcome to engage with this selection of resources before the hackathon starts. 
  • Check out our (living) Open Problems in Comp Mech document, and in particular the section with Shovel Ready Problems.
  • If you are starting a project or just want to express interest in it, fill out a row in this spreadsheet 

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