Moreover, the model tends to generalize well to unseen tasks that did not appear in the training data.

Moreover, the model tends to generalize well to unseen tasks that did not appear in the training data.

Science Archaeology Ancient Egypt's cemetery police blew bone whistles made from cow toes The 3,300-year-old artifact was found in the capital of the'Heretic King.' Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Ancient Egyptian royal cemetery guards may have relied on an ear-splitting accessory to signal suspicious behavior. According to archaeologists writing in the, a 3,300-year-old cow toe bone excavated among the ruins at the city of Aketaten likely functioned as a high-pitched whistle for patrolling police. If true, the small security accessory is the first of its kind discovered in an Egyptian dynastic context, and suggests the need for further investigations into the kingdom's other potential osseous technologies. Located about 194 miles south of Cairo, Akhetaten was founded in 1346 BCE under the direction of Pharaoh Akhenaten .

Large language models are trained in two stages: (1) unsupervised pretraining from raw text, to learn general-purpose representations, and (2) large scale instruction tuning and reinforcement learning, to better align to end tasks and user preferences. We measure the relative importance of these two stages by training LIMA, a 65B parameter LLaMa language model fine-tuned with the standard supervised loss on only 1,000 carefully curated prompts and responses, without any reinforcement learning or human preference modeling. LIMA demonstrates remarkably strong performance, learning to follow specific response formats from only a handful of examples in the training data, including complex queries that range from planning trip itineraries to speculating about alternate history. Moreover, the model tends to generalize well to unseen tasks that did not appear in the training data. In a controlled human study, responses from LIMA are either equivalent or strictly preferred to GPT-4 in 43% of cases; this statistic is as high as 58% when compared to Bard and 65% versus DaVinci003, which was trained with human feedback. Taken together, these results strongly suggest that almost all knowledge in large language models is learned during pretraining, and only limited instruction tuning data is necessary to teach models to produce high quality output.

Three mummified animals from ancient Egypt have been digitally unwrapped and dissected by researchers using high-resolution 3D scans. The snake, bird and cat, from the Egypt Centre's collection at Swansea University, are at least 2,000 years old. Ancient texts suggest they were offerings to the souls of the departed, but little was known of their fate. Researchers said the details revealed by the scans were "extraordinary". Using micro CT scanners, which generate 3D images with 100 times the resolution of medical CT scans, the animals' remains were analysed in previously unseen detail, giving an insight into how they were killed and the ritual behind it.

Columnist Kaity Kline says a serious Assassin's Creed: Black Flag habit helped her ace a surprise quiz on the Caribbean. Columnist Kaity Kline says a serious Assassin's Creed: Black Flag habit helped her ace a surprise quiz on the Caribbean. When I was in high school, the best way I could describe myself was as a parent's worst nightmare: I didn't care about my education, didn't do homework, and was known to sleep in class. My SAT score was so bad that I still don't know how I did! My very frustrated mom threw that letter in the trash.

Even if you're not particularly interested in video games, you'll probably have heard of Assassin's Creed. They're a series of historically themed action games that take place in digital recreations of places such as Revolution-era Paris, medieval Jerusalem and 1860s London. Playing Assassin's Creed involves climbing up ancient buildings and mingling with the residents of cities of the past, meeting (and occasionally assassinating) historical figures as a member of an ancient, clandestine brotherhood working against the Templars. The games have been around since 2007 and have made an awful lot of money for their publisher, Ubisoft. The company employs a team of hundreds of artists, historians, writers, coders, sound designers and more to create these virtual places.

The Assassin's Creed series is known for its vast and richly detailed historical environments, and well... lots of murder. What you might not realize is just how much work goes into making these virtual windows into the past somewhat realistic. That's something Ubisoft is aiming to highlight with Assassin's Creed Origins' Discovery Tour. You can think of it as a museum-like experience set within the game's meticulous rendition of ancient Egypt. To turn one of the most popular gaming franchises in the world into a truly useful educational tool.

With the final war of the Roman Republic brewing, the period has proven hugely influential in fine art, theatre and film, from Shakespeare to Hollywood. But later this year it may be subject to its most rigorous investigation yet: a video game. Out at the end of October, Assassin's Creed: Origins, follows the story of Bayek, a military officer looking to protect his people as Julius Caesar's Roman army threatens invasion. The game is set to feature a vast open-world recreation of ancient Egypt, featuring several cities as well as stretches of wilderness and ocean. As with all titles in the series, historical events and figures are set to figure, but this time, the gargantuan project isn't just about the game – Ubisoft has more ambitious plans for its rich simulation.

When Ubisoft announced last year that the Assassin's Creed series would take a year off, retool, and return in 2017, I anticipated huge sweeping differences. The series needs huge sweeping differences--with a grueling yearly release schedule, Assassin's Creed has suffered from consumer and critical malaise more than perhaps any Ubisoft property. But after playing Assassin's Creed: Origins for 20 or so minutes during E3, I don't think we're getting huge sweeping differences. Assassin's Creed: Origins has been tweaked in places, and its Cleopatra-era Egypt setting is certainly the most creative we've seen in years, but it doesn't feel like a true rebirth or a reimagining. First and foremost, the usual disclaimer applies: We played 20 minutes of an hours-long experience, so maybe the seeds of Assassin's Creed's redemption come later in the game.