Benjamin Laufer

1/10. In a new paper with @didaoh and Jon Kleinberg, we mapped the family trees of 1.86 million AI models on Hugging Face — the largest open-model ecosystem in the world.

AI evolution looks kind of like biology, but with some strange twists. 🧬🤖

Graduate school application deadlines are approaching. A friend recently asked me for advice on applying to PhD programs, and I ended up writing a novella over text.

Much of it is advice I wish I’d heard myself when I was applying. With his permission, I am sharing it here in case it’s useful to others.

My brother Will found time to write something down, and it is thought provoking!

Thrilled that my blog has now reached 10 unpaid subscribers!

open.substack.com/pub/appliedove…

OpenAI's most cited mathematician is OpenAI.

Yesterday OpenAI published 722 math papers. I explored the citation network underneath them.

OpenAI is a serial self-citer: more than half of the papers cite another OpenAI-authored work. I also found many instances of citation "cycles," where for example paper A cites to B, B cites to C, and C cites back to A. These observations don't necessarily mean that the proofs or logic in these papers are faulty, but they raise questions about how citation and publication norms may change.

There's lots of interesting structure to analyze in the network representing these papers and their citations. I wrote up the findings, with plots and code, in my latest post.