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Microsoft research releases Phi-2 and promptbase.

Phi-2 outperforms other existing small language models, yet it’s small enough to run on a laptop or mobile device.


Over the past few months, our Machine Learning Foundations team at Microsoft Research has released a suite of small language models (SLMs) called “Phi” that achieve remarkable performance on a variety of benchmarks. Our first model, the 1.3 billion parameter Phi-1 (opens in new tab), achieved state-of-the-art performance on Python coding among existing SLMs (specifically on the HumanEval and MBPP benchmarks). We then extended our focus to common sense reasoning and language understanding and created a new 1.3 billion parameter model named Phi-1.5 (opens in new tab), with performance comparable to models 5x larger.

We are now releasing Phi-2 (opens in new tab), a 2.7 billion-parameter language model that demonstrates outstanding reasoning and language understanding capabilities, showcasing state-of-the-art performance among base language models with less than 13 billion parameters. On complex benchmarks Phi-2 matches or outperforms models up to 25x larger, thanks to new innovations in model scaling and training data curation.

With its compact size, Phi-2 is an ideal playground for researchers, including for exploration around mechanistic interpretability, safety improvements, or fine-tuning experimentation on a variety of tasks. We have made Phi-2 (opens in new tab) available in the Azure AI Studio model catalog to foster research and development on language models.

Federal funding brings together experts to chart a viable path to realizing fusion energy as a clean power source.

The University of Rochester’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE) has received a four-year, $10 million award from the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Fusion Energy Science (FES) to lead a national research hub dedicated to advancing inertial fusion energy (IFE) science and technology.

The LLE-led inertial fusion energy hub—named IFE-COLoR, which stands for Inertial Fusion Energy-Consortium on LPI (laser-plasma interaction) Research—is one of only three such hubs in the nation selected by the DOE through competitive peer review. The award is part of a recent DOE initiative to stimulate IFE research and development by building on the momentum of scientists’ breakthrough in achieving ignition, or a fusion reaction that creates a net energy gain, last year.

Summary: In a rare sight that captivated local communities, SpaceX Superloads have been reported passing through Kansas. These massive transports are carrying essential components for SpaceX’s ambitious aerospace projects. The transit of such large cargos demonstrates the intricate logistics involved in the space industry and showcases the growing presence of aerospace innovation in the heartland of the United States.

Understanding SpaceX Superloads A “Superload” refers to a cargo that exceeds the standard size and weight limits for road transportation. In the context of SpaceX, these could be parts for their launch vehicles, such as Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy rockets, or perhaps sections of the stainless steel Starship being developed for missions to Mars.

The Passage Through Kansas Reports have surfaced that residents along certain highways in Kansas have witnessed the procession of these massive SpaceX components. The journey necessitates meticulous planning and coordination with local authorities to manage road closures, traffic control, and sometimes even the removal of street signs or lights to facilitate passage.

While we often think of diseases as caused by foreign bodies—bacteria or viruses—there are hundreds of diseases affecting humans that result from errors in cellular production of proteins.

A team of researchers led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst leveraged the power of cutting-edge technology, including an innovative technique called glycoproteomics, to unlock the carbohydrate-based code that governs how certain classes of proteins form themselves into the complex shapes necessary to keep us healthy.

The research, published in the journal Molecular Cell, explores members of a family of proteins called serpins, which are implicated in a number of diseases. The research is the first to investigate how the location and composition of carbohydrates attached to the serpins ensure that they fold correctly.

SOURCE, a US-based company founded by Dr. Cody Friesen, is making waves in the renewable energy sector. They have innovated the one-of-a-kind Hydropanel which is a sustainable water technology that uses the power of the sun to extract an clean drinking water from the air.

This article has been sponsored by SOURCE

“But what if clean water could be conjured from thin air, materialising from nothingness to fill glasses, water dispensers, and reservoirs as pure magic? It’s not mission impossible; it’s science — and it could very well become a not-so-distant reality.”