<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss version="2.0"><channel><title>shyam pathak — field notes from the hidden layer</title><description>Essays, paper notes, and project write-ups on machine learning by Shyam Pathak.</description><link>https://shyampathak22.github.io/</link><language>en-us</language><item><title>What We Owe the Made</title><link>https://shyampathak22.github.io/writings/what-we-owe-the-made/</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://shyampathak22.github.io/writings/what-we-owe-the-made/</guid><description>On substrate, authorship, and the ontological crime of building intelligences we refuse to look at.</description><pubDate>Mon, 04 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate><category>ai</category><category>ethics</category><category>substrate</category><category>philosophy</category></item><item><title>Reward gating is killing your gradients — here&apos;s how to fix it</title><link>https://shyampathak22.github.io/writings/adaptive-reward-weighting/</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://shyampathak22.github.io/writings/adaptive-reward-weighting/</guid><description>On GDPO, adaptive reward weighting, and getting denser gradient signal out of multi-reward RL without inviting reward hacking.</description><pubDate>Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate><category>rl</category><category>training</category><category>optimization</category><category>grpo</category><category>gdpo</category></item></channel></rss>