enkers

Appreciate the correction. Happen to know of any whitepapers or articles I could read on it?

Here’s the thing, I went out of my way to say I don’t know shit from bananas in this context, and I could very well be wrong. But the article certainly doesn’t sufficiently demonstrate why it’s right.

Most technical articles I click on go through step by step processes to show how they gained understanding of the subject material, and it’s layed out in a manner that less technical people can still follow. And the payoff is you come out with a feeling that you understand a little bit more than what you went in with.

This article is just full on “trust me bro”. I went in with a mediocre understanding, and came out about the same, but with a nasty taste in my mouth. Nothing of value was learned.

I’ll preface this by saying I’m not an expert, and I don’t like to speak authoritatively on things that I’m not an expert in, so it’s possible I’m mistaken. Also I’ve had a drink or two, so that’s not helping, but here we go anyways.

In the article, the author quips on a tweet where they seem to fundamentally misunderstand how LLMs work:

I tabbed over to another tab, and the top post on my Bluesky feed was something along these lines:

ChatGPT is not a search engine. It does not scan the web for information. You cannot use it as a search engine. LLMs only generate statistically likely sentences.

The thing is… ChatGPT was over there, in the other tab, searching the web. And the answer I got was pretty good.

The tweet is correct. The LLM has a snapshot understanding of the internet based on its training data. It’s not what we would generally consider a true index based search.

Training LLMs is a costly and time consuming process, so it’s fundamentally impossible to regenerate an LLM in the same order of magnitude of time it takes to make a simple index.

The author fails to address any of these issues, which suggests to me that they don’t know what they’re talking about.

I suppose I could conceded that an LLM can fulfill a similar role that a search engine traditionally has, but it’d kinda be like saying that a toaster is an oven. They’re both confined boxes which heat food, but good luck if you try to bake 2 pies at once in a toaster.

God, that was a bad read. Not only is this person woefully misinformed, they’re complaining about the state of discourse while directly contributing to the problem.

If you’re going to write about tech, at least take some time to have a pasaable understanding of it, not just “I use the product for shits and giggles occasionally.”

“Stop resisting!”

Cool cool cool. I’ll just continue not using chatgpt and we’ll call it a wash.

There is still no good definition for what “consciousness” is

We don’t have a fully concise definition, but we have a strong general understanding that is supported by a large body of scientists:

https://fcmconference.org/img/CambridgeDeclarationOnConsciousness.pdf

It doesn’t seem to me that this would preclude AI, and you’re certainly right that there’s a lot of ongoing sensationalism on the topic.

I have a hard time considering something that has an immutable state as sentient, but since there’s no real definition of sentience, that’s a personal decision.

Technical challenges aside, there’s no explicit reason that LLMs can’t do self-reinforcement of their own models.

I think animal brains are also “fairly” deterministic, but their behaviour is also dependent on the presence of various neurotransmitters, so there’s a temporal/contextual element to it, so situationally our emotions can affect our thoughts which LLMs don’t really have either.

I guess it’d be possible to forward feed an “emotional state” as part of the LLM’s context to emulate that sort of animal brain behaviour.

Not them, but static in this context means it doesn’t have the ability to update its own model on the fly. If you want a model to learn something new, it has to be retrained.

By contrast, an animal brain is dynamic because it reinforces neural pathways that get used more.

Unless you’re in comp sci, and AI is a field, not a marketing term. And in that case everyone already knows that’s not “it”.

And the video isn’t even THAT scary. When I first saw this video with a headline about a robot going “berserk”, I expected something closer to terminator like behaviour instead of erratic hand waving. It was clearly just a software bug with no “intent” behind it (apologies for the anthropomorphism).

I think what’s interesting here is that the family was requesting the maximum sentence, yet they submitted the AI delivered impact statement which asked for compassion, if not leniency, in sentencing. That tells me they did their best to earnestly represent the victim, as it contradicted their stated desired outcome.

If they’d actually wanted a lenient sentence, they could have just asked for one.

Just to be clear, they were fully transparent about it:

“Hello, just to be clear for everyone seeing this, I am a version of Chris Pelkey recreated through AI that uses my picture and my voice profile,” the stilted avatar says. “I was able to be digitally regenerated to share with you today. Here is insight into who I actually was in real life.”

However, I think the following is somewhat misleading:

The video goes back to the AI avatar. “I would like to make my own impact statement,” the avatar says.

I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. It seems that the motivation was genuine compassion from the victim’s family, and a desire to honestly represent victim to the best of their ability. But ultimately, it’s still the victim’s sister’s impact statement, not his.

Here’s what the judge had to say:

“I loved that AI, and thank you for that. As angry as you are, and as justifiably angry as the family is, I heard the forgiveness, and I know Mr. Horcasitas could appreciate it, but so did I,” Lang said immediately before sentencing Horcasitas. “I love the beauty in what Christopher, and I call him Christopher—I always call people by their last names, it’s a formality of the court—but I feel like calling him Christopher as we’ve gotten to know him today. I feel that that was genuine, because obviously the forgiveness of Mr. Horcasitas reflects the character I heard about today. But it also says something about the family, because you told me how angry you were, and you demanded the maximum sentence. And even though that’s what you wanted, you allowed Chris to speak from his heart as you saw it. I didn’t hear him asking for the maximum sentence.”

I am concerned that it could set a precedent for misuse, though. The whole thing seems like very grey to me. I’d suggest everyone read the whole article before passing judgement.

Huh, did Sundar not pay his protection money this month, or something?

Good news regardless, though.

We shall cry ‘Havoc!’, and let slip the geese of war.

Yeah, I don’t quite get it myself. The only thing I can think of is that it might be designed for American citizens living abroad, but I can’t quite figure out why there either.

Maybe it’s just being onerous enough to discourage all but the most serious attempts.

I’d imagine that’s because of the STCA, but there seems to be a loophole where it doesn’t apply if you enter via water and don’t claim refugee status before 14 days.

If I were really determined, I’d at least ask an immigration lawyer about it, and then I’d plan on taking a 2 week camping trip in Canada when I thought shit was likely to go down.

If you face:

• danger of torture
• risk to your life
• risk of cruel and unusual treatment or punishment

https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/asylum/in-canada/eligibility.html

If you enter Canada from the U.S.
[…]
Your claim may not be eligible if you entered Canada from the U.S.:

• at an official land border crossing
  or
• anywhere along the border, including rivers, lakes and other waterways, and made a refugee claim less than 14 days after the day that you entered

How about neither, lol. They’ll come up with some healthy synthetic dye fast enough if enough money is on the line.

Why are Republicans so enthralled with eating bugs? I’ll take the beet juice, but I’d rather eat some oil than bugs.

yesss, I guess we’ll have toooo

*laughs awkwardly in totally not already vegan*