I’m still doing interpretability at Anthropic. This year, among many other research updates, we scaled sparse autoencoders to Claude 3 Sonnet. There’s not a whole lot I have to add. I like to think I improved at various clichéd abstract work skills that I don’t have anything insightful to say about, the most front-of-mind being communication and prioritization. It’s good to, uh, communicate what everybody is prioritizing and communicate all the information everybody needs to prioritize things. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
In my personal life, I went to more in-person social events than ever before. I took a bunch of improv classes and might actually end up performing soon™. I went to a Jacob Collier concert and a Bear Ghost concert. I scored 141/150 plus two beers on the AMC 12. I attended three separate furry conventions, one of which I believe I have to credit with indirectly motivating me to hit the gym semiregularly for the first time in my life. (Also I went to Tural for summer vacation.) I’m pretty happy with all that, but it also doesn’t really add up to exciting reflections.
It’s also probably why I didn’t make as much nonwork stuff this year. As usual, I helped with this year’s Galactic Puzzle Hunt. The Galactic Trendsetters quizbowl-adjacent crew wrote another tournament, Lore Dump: Expanded Universe. I cleared one (1) ultimate in FFXIV (The Epic of Alexander). But this blog, for example, has been pretty quiet.
However, I have spent a lot of brain cycles behind the scenes rethinking my relationship with this blog, and social media, and all that jazz. I do this every few years (check the meta tag), so outside view doubts this time is different. But I made a new blog on Bear late November, which somehow now has a dozen posts. If you want to read more reflections and what else I’m thinking about, check it out (and as I’m hoping most readers will understand, especially if you’re in the U.S., let’s just say I expect a lot to think about in 2025).
I’ll just keep it punchy here: happy new year.