Does quantum mechanics allow the future to retroactively influence the past, as in the infamous delayed choice quantum eraser experiment? How about we get an actual quantum physicist–who many of you already know–to show us how to do this experiment at home, and hopefully set this matter to rest.
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If you used every particle in the observable universe to do a full quantum simulation, how big would that simulation be? At best a large molecule. That’s how insanely information dense the quantum wavefunction really is. And yet we routinely simulate systems with thousands, even millions of particles. How? By cheating. Using the ultimate compression algorithm: Density Functional Theory (DFT). Let’s learn how to cheat the universe.
Ultrafinitism, a philosophy that rejects the infinite, has long been dismissed as mathematical heresy. But it is also producing new insights in math and beyond.
Sections 0:00 — Intro 2:28 — The Problem with Deep Learning 4:17 — Intelligence is a Cake 5:15 — The Rise of Generative AI 8:00 — Blurry Images 8:54 — HRT is an awesome place to work 11:16 — But why so Blurry? 13:30 — Do our models need to be generative? 15:16 — Siamese Networks 17:53 — Representation Collapse 19:54 — Yann’s Epiphany & Barlow Twins 27:22 — DINO 28:58 — JEPA & World Models 34:09 — But is JEPA good? 36:19 — Welch Labs Book.
Special thanks to: Yann LeCun, Stephane Deny, David Fan, Nicolas Ballas.
Clip of Yann from 1989: • Convolutional Network Demo from 1989
CNN Paper: http://yann.lecun.com/exdb/publis/pdf… LeNet-5 paper: http://vision.stanford.edu/cs598_spri… Dashcam video https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi… Image Credits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File: Do… https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi… https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi… https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi… https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi… V-JEPA2 Robot Arm Videos https://ai.meta.com/research/vjepa/ PATRONS Juan Benet, Ross Hanson, Yan Babitski, AJ Englehardt, Alvin Khaled, Eduardo Barraza, Hitoshi Yamauchi, Jaewon Jung, Mrgoodlight, Shinichi Hayashi, Sid Sarasvati, Dominic Beaumont, Shannon Prater, Ubiquity Ventures, Matias Forti, Brian Henry, Tim Palade, Petar Vecutin, Nicolas baumann, Jason Singh, Robert Riley, vornska, Barry Silverman, Jake Ehrlich, Mitch Jacobs, Lauren Steely, Jeff Eastman, Rodolfo Ibarra, Clark Barrus, Rob Napier, Andrew White, Richard B Johnston, abhiteja mandava, Burt Humburg, Kevin Mitchell, Daniel Sanchez, Ferdie Wang, Tripp Hill, Richard Harbaugh Jr, Prasad Raje, Kalle Aaltonen, Midori Switch Hound, Zach Wilson, Chris Seltzer, Ven Popov, Hunter Nelson, Amit Bueno, Scott Olsen, Johan Rimez, Shehryar Saroya, Tyler Christensen, Beckett Madden-Woods, Darrell Thomas, Javier Soto, U007D, Caleb Begly, Rick Rubenstein, Brent Hunsaker, Dan Patterson, Tchsurvives, Alex Adai, Walter Reade, Zyansheep, Walter Reade, Duncan Stannett, Reginald Carey, Jean-Manuel Izaret, dh71633, Adrian Rodriguez, Dimitar Stojanovski, Michael Harder, Peter Maldonado, Emily Pesce, David Johnston, Insang Song, FaeTheWolf, Stephen Taylor, KittenKaboodle, EMatter, PATRICKMCCORMACK, John Beahan, Cameron, Cole Jones, Garrett Thornburg, Jeroen W, Rohit Sharma, GlennB, Emmanuel Cortes, Katie Quinn, Karina C, Cakra WW, Mike Ton, Eric Gometz, MacCallister Higgins, Niko Drossos, David Eraso, Tom Zehle, Steve, Brian Lineburg, rjbl, Michael Loh, Perry Vais, Bengal0, Farhad Manjoo, Sara Chipps, Ellis Driscoll, William Taysom, Will Harmon, CK, Abdullah, Peter Cho, Leo Nikora, Griffin Smith, Ash Katnoria, Alex, Markus Hays Nielsen, Catherine H., Vi, David Dobáš, Peter Wang, Sina Sohangir, Danny Thomas, Julian Francis, Hans Adler, Jiayu Peng, Weston M, Youssouf da Silva, John Thomas, Samuel Costello, Sam Adams, Bryan Liles, Malaya Zemlya, Karl, Vahe Andonians, Mike Doughty, Larry Novelo, Jonas Acres, Ludicrum Rex, Robert Blumofe, Anthony Z, Alex Zhao, Dan Babitch, Nikko Patten Supporting code: https://github.com/WelchLabs/videos Created by: Sam Baskin, Pranav Gundu, and Stephen Welch Content ID: CFAQJOTYQHT7JYIT.
April 9, 2026 This seminar covers: • How world models are increasingly moving away from reconstruction and toward prediction in latent space. • Two recent JEPA-based approaches that illustrate this shift from complementary angles.
Guest Speakers: Hazel Nam & Lucas Maes (Brown University)
Instructors: • Steven Feng, Stanford Computer Science PhD student and NSERC PGS-D scholar. • Karan P. Singh, Electrical Engineering PhD student and NSF Graduate Research Fellow in the Stanford Translational AI Lab. • Michael C. Frank, Benjamin Scott Crocker Professor of Human Biology Director, Symbolic Systems Program. • Christopher Manning, Thomas M. Siebel Professor in Machine Learning, Professor of Linguistics and of Computer Science, Co-Founder and Senior Fellow of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI)
Recent research published in Communications Biology marks an advance in structural biology by enhancing understanding of protein regulation mechanisms in Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), a global health threat. The team led by the University of Melbourne combined several advanced techniques at the Australian Synchrotron and the National Deuteration Facility to reveal the hidden allosteric mechanism that activates a key enzyme, ICL2.
The study opens a target pathway to treat drug-resistant TB with modulators that can interfere with the enzyme’s “on switch.” Traditional drugs often targeted the enzyme’s active site, which is difficult to block effectively.
However, ICL2 is unique to mycobacteria and is essential for the survival of the TB bacterium during infection, especially when it is starved of sugar and forced to live on fats.
Van Toorn et al. show that CDK1-mediated phosphorylation of NuMA at serine 203 promotes stable dynein-dynactin-NuMA assembly in human cells. This mitotic phosphorylation thereby contributes to robust spindle formation and accurate chromosome segregation.
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The Cybertruck bomber’s mention of a “gravitic device” ignited rumours that the U.S. government might be trying to hide developments in physics, similar to what it did when the country was developing the nuclear bomb. Would that even be possible? Here’s what I think.
