Two images from the record
Data augmentation aimed at the exact weaknesses the robustness runs exposed pushes the eye model to 99.9% on MNIST, two images shy of the published record. His first reaction is the right one: either I'm cheating or I'm a genius, audit accordingly. And the one failed experiment points at the next question: how do you reward stopping early?
// trace: where this idea came from
- ↳ video diary @ 25:24 (el 99.9)
- ↳ video diary @ 26:36 (Fashion-MNIST: la prueba de extrapolación)
- ↳ Entry 177-1: The curriculum that waits for you (el curículo que precedió esto)
The move that does it is data augmentation with a memory: earlier experiments showed the model wobbling when a digit shifted slightly, so the AI proposed training on edited variants, translations, inversions, targeting the exact observed weaknesses ▸ 23:36. That experiment returns 99.9% accuracy ▸ 25:24, and the arc that started at 69% and “basurita” is suddenly two misclassified images from the best published result he can find, around 99.92 ▸ 26:12.
His epistemics are the teachable part. First reaction: “o estoy haciendo trampa acá en los tests o realmente soy muy crack” ▸ 26:00, and the audit he runs respects the failure mode: he asks Gemini to review the code in a different chat, because the chat that produced the result will of course bless it ▸ 25:44. The generalization check matters more than the headline: trained on Fashion-MNIST, same 28x28 canvas but clothes instead of digits, the architecture scores in the mid-nineties, evidence it isn’t a digit-shaped trick but a mechanism that extrapolates across datasets ▸ 26:36.
el único experimento fallido del día es la mejor pregunta de la semana →
The day’s one failure is the seed of the next paper. Forcing the trained model to classify in five glances instead of ten collapsed performance, but the model had spent its whole life being paid to look ten times ▸ 28:42. His hypothesis: train one from scratch with the ability to stop when it’s sure, the way a human glances at an apple and says apple, and only stares longer at the ambiguous chalice ▸ 29:26. What he doesn’t yet know how to do is the honest last line: how do you shape a reward for finishing faster without teaching it to guess ▸ 30:20? For now: write the paper, send it to Bryan, publish…
Postscript, nine days later: the record was never real. A deep audit, prompted by Gemini’s own doubts in its chain of thought, found the leak: the agent was receiving the per-step error as input, the answer whispered into its ear. His separate-chat review and the Fashion-MNIST check were the right instincts aimed at the wrong layer. The reckoning is entry 186-1 ▸ 15:55.