TikTok has an open computational chemistry position
careers.tiktok.com
careers.tiktok.com
Responsibilities
• Follow the latest progress in computational science such as material and biology.
• Solve real-world problems in material and biology, with computational approaches such as molecular dynamics, quantum chemistry, and machine learning.
• Optimize and speed up classical molecular dynamics and quantum chemistry algorithms with artificial intelligence and high-throughput computational methods.
My money is on bio-engineering “experience” into human memory.
It’s the least materially wasteful as the materials are in the process, not outputs. The outputs are not stuff but modified organic matter state.
https://elorganillero.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/canine-...
Just pulled “Hound of the Far Side” off a shelf last night after not looking at a Larson comic in a long time - reminds me of the one where a car of cows are driving by a field of humans yelling “yakkity yak yak” out the window
I don't see why it's necessary to have a potentially unrelated PHD to do basic linear algebra.
I don’t know about this assertion. It does not ring true to real life for me.
"Better to Die on Your Feet Than Live on Your Knees" as they say.
Advertising probably kills that many people most months when you consider things like:
* Convincing people that various groups needs to be genocided
* Convincing people to use cars instead of less dangerous methods of transportation
* Convincing people to use fossil fuels instead of less polluting forms of energy
* Convincing people to eat unhealthy foods
* Convincing people to smoke cigarettes
I'm not convinced that advertising is less dangerous than nuclear weapons.
So far. Present performance is not indicative of future returns. All it will take is one nut job (who could still be Putin depending on how this turns out) escalating to even a "regional" nuclear war to add a zero or two to that number, and it could happen very quickly.
The original is an amazing poem well worth reading
Which is a good thing, since the sociology we had before clickable ads was unequivocally less scientific and useful.
I'm not sure I see the connection to sociology though, do yo mean behavioral economics?
Also, it is a loudness war, that is a race to the bottom in various ways.
As an individual business owner you want it, as society you don't.
Technically it is true, but good luck on your crusade of abolishing money.
“We choose to do these things not because they are easy but because they are hard”
But I’d be happy with a little Bell Labs at a few more companies
“We choose to do these things not because they are easy but because they are profitable”
That's why there isn't a lot of it around.
Non-scientific example: I just read The Box, a history of container shipping. It's remarkable how many transportation incumbents tried to put the kibosh on containerization because they believed it was either not practical or not profitable.
In the end containerization hurt many existing power structures, but it reinvented global commerce and opened unfathomable financial doors for the world as a whole, creating financial empires that were impossible before.
Team Introduction
Scientific Computing team has been focusing on tackling challenges in natural sciences including biology, physics, and materials, with computational tools such as Machine Learning, Computational Chemistry, High-throughput Computation. Our goal is to create breakthroughs in natural science with new methodology and help the world.
Responsibilities
• Follow the latest progress in computational science such as material and biology.
• Solve real-world problems in material and biology, with computational approaches such as molecular dynamics, quantum chemistry, and machine learning.
• Optimize and speed up classical molecular dynamics and quantum chemistry algorithms with artificial intelligence and high-throughput computational methods.
---
Maybe they do some research related with biology and they need a Computational Chemistry expert?
It looks like some of their people have recently left for academia, so maybe it's just trying to get people into their AI lab with the necessary skills? Honestly doesn't seem like a very promising role for someone primarily interested in chem/bio applications, though.
I think you need a better discussion tool here.
Tiktok and the like are highly addictive for some people and the dopamine kicks are real and unhealthy.
Reading books does not give the same release of dopamine as TikTok/Instagram.. hence why most people don’t read for 2 hours a day but many people easily spend that much time on insta/tik.
Modulating behavior can cause physical withdrawals.. you don’t need a pill. I.e lovers, gambling addicts, porn addicted.
But take gambling.. gambling is considered addictive and its disorder classified in the DSM-5. (Gambling is probably also most like TikTok/Instagram in terms of activating reward seeking and pleasure in the brain). In the US we do heavily regulate gambling and some legislations have required warning labels for the risks involved with gambling.
So no, if would not be unreasonable to me if we as a society discussed potentially regulating social media in some way.. be it as non-invasive as warning messaging.
From first hand experience: what used take weeks with traditional DFT MD on CPUs are only taking few minutes with GPUs right now if you have trained a good ML potential. They achieved near DFT accuracy.
And you have to repeat DFT results as far as you can do DFT on it.
Modeling liquid water by climbing up Jacob's ladder in density functional theory facilitated by using deep neural network potentials
https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.14410
The software that are used are DeePMD-kit: https://github.com/deepmodeling/deepmd-kit the corresponding paper is https://arxiv.org/pdf/1712.03641.pdf
Hypothesis 1) Tik Tok believes AI/machine learning algorithms themselves are converging across fields, and the company is finding that its internal AI innovations can be applied to biology and materials sciences algos and, possibly, vice versa. We'll call this one the "data are data" hypothesis.
Hypothesis 2) Tik Tok has decided that it's an AI company, not a content platform company. This is subtly different, as the locus of intersection between social media and materials sciences is in the company's human capital, not the algorithms used. Call this the "Data Scientists are Data Scientists" hypothesis.
Hypothesis 3) Tik Tok, as an avatar of the CCP, is deliberately adding fuel to the narrative that its a national security threat, thus baiting Biden to shut it down, which would be hugely unpopular with one of his critical voting blocks. Call this the "Troll Biden" hypothesis.
All of these hypotheses seem really important from a geopolitical perspective. If social media companies become our primary engines of applied sciences, that would be a pretty huge shift. If the CCP is using Tik Tok to use cultural popularity to play chicken in the trade war with the US government, that's a pretty major development as well.
Any other ideas? Am I missing something obvious?
Big Tech's algorithms have long been tapping into illegal surveillance of an unprecedented kind - besides the cliques of insiders who misuse this for stalking and harassment of children, human rights defenders, activists, minorities and everyone else.
Don't expect them to be honest about their surveillance.
> Our team studies the electronic structure and other quantum chemistry topics using machine-learning-based ab initio methods as well as quantum computing technology. We aim at applications intractable for classical methods and expect to achieve breakthroughs in areas like chemistry and materials.
[1] https://careers.tiktok.com/position/7150350193095002382/deta...
They cannot verify them directly because they cannot publish their algorithms and data. So let them do science and figure out who knows his algorithms.
*edit: actually:
>Optimize and speed up classical molecular dynamics and quantum chemistry algorithms with artificial intelligence and high-throughput computational methods.
They are building an algorithm library
It could be for helping them moderate vaccine or climate misinformation, e.g., https://www.tiktok.com/safety/en/covid-19/
It could be part of establishing or expanding their research division mainly devoted to getting smart people inside the company, having publications and patents in their portfolio, or inventing algorithms that scale better with big data. There are open quantum computing and scientific computing jobs too.
Physics may have nothing to do with financial markets but the math tools and research skills physicists have are useful in finance.
The same goes for Computational chemistry and analysing of data for a video streaming site
Use the TikTok brand to attract top global talent and perform research in areas of general interest for government agencies.
They only need to build a backdoor for Chinese officials to access the research data.
Sounds far fetched but I believe this is well within the realm of possibilities.
It isn't covert.
They only need to build a backdoor for Chinese officials to access the research data.
If it's located in China the Chinese government can access it, period. It's not secret or a conspiracy; it's how business is done.
I’m self-deprecating because I’m on the fence on whether or not this is real or just some fictional plot I want to believe.
Chill, alright?
There is no need for the CCP to conspire to control businesses. They have ultimate control of business law.
The idea that companies and governments are independent things is a pretty capitalist perspective. There’s a wide range of other perspectives on this issue.
Varying economic and legal systems are different in the specifics about how they work, even if self interested individuals exist everywhere.
The differences you mention are an implementation detail - in some countries you have the rules written down as law, in others you got shady three letter agencies, kangaroo "FISA courts", and In-Q-Tel.
And? How's that different from China?
US, on the other hand, definitely doesn't - everyone from the top is chosen by politicians.
I’m not claiming anything controversial. The SPC openly says that they follow the guidance of the Party. https://qz.com/886665/xi-jinping-promised-legal-reform-in-ch...
The US has a judiciary comprising of judges picked by politicians from two competing parties.
Which, translated to western terms, is like guidance of the Department of Justice.
>politicians from two competing parties
Here the term “party” means something completely different from above. If you imagine the political system as layers, China places boundaries between those layers differently from the West, and if you continue to use the terms for those layers (“party”) without realizing this, you’ll arrive at silly conclusions.
Or more likely to merely work remotely as an employee of a captive company?
Looks like a minimum of 7 staggered projects where each one may already have a defined objective which needs to remain obscure to the actual participants under this program.
>Our goal is to create breakthroughs in natural science with new methodology
Directly straightforward, everybody wants this. It's completely true and challenging enough that the recruits will need to be immersed in this to the max, given anything they want in pursuit of this objective, with no stone unturned.
>and help the world.
Help the world do what?
None of these recruits will have any influence as to "what" turns out to be, and will be expected to never concern themseleves with this other side of the equation. Those that conform can be rewarded over the long term better than any non-monopoly can compare to, increasing the likelihood of having their challenging scientific objectives being eventually met.
Naievete looks so important that upcoming graduates appear to have precedece over established professionals. Rather than the proven performance that businesses can count on, there could instead be emphasis on freshly proven potential, willing to be indoctrinated into a "company" culture that is "humble, intelligent, compassionate and creative" on the party's own (carefully crafted) terms so any alternative cultural features can be nipped in the bud.
This is intended to be someone's first job [0] and they definitely want to see if they can find the kind of people who would have ordinarily worked for Bell Labs if it was still a monopoly.
As always you've got to carefully choose what kind of monopolies and their labs you want to promote, or even support at all.
If the monopolistic salvos are large enough, it might even be possible to fully brain-drain the competition while exponentially increasing their own chances of complete domination.
[0] Well actually almost every one of them's first job.