• 3 Posts
  • 88 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 19th, 2023

help-circle





  • It cannot “analyze” it. It’s fundamentally not how LLM’s work. The LLM has a finite set of “tokens”: words and word-pieces like “dog”, “house”, but also like “berry” and “straw” or “rasp”. When it reads the input it splits the words into the recognized tokens. It’s like a lookup table. The input becomes “token15, token20043, token1923, token984, token1234, …” and so on. The LLM “thinks” of these tokens as coordinates in a very high dimensional space. But it cannot go back and examine the actual contents (letters) in each token. It has to get the information about the number or “r” from somewhere else. So it has likely ingested some texts where the number of "r"s in strawberry is discussed. But it can never actually “test” it.

    A completely new architecture or paradigm is needed to make these LLM’s capable of reading letter by letter and keep some kind of count-memory.


  • We long left the era where we “own” things that we buy. As everything is a computer now it has become very simple to control stuff that remotely that was working on its own before.

    So the answer to “why would <CORPORATION> do this” is simply: “Because they can”.

    Every tiny decision is guided by increasing profit. No matter the side effects (short or long term ). Because with many shareholders administering pressure to maximize profits there’s only one way to go (even if it’s a dumb and shortsighted decision) maximizing profits NOW. If you are not doing that because you can see that increasing profits now will hurt profits in the future then you are hindering the project. You have to increase profits now, because if you are not then your competitor is doing it and that is a problem. If you are not going with the project you will be out of a job sooner or later. Then someone will take over that will make the decision you couldn’t do.

    This is a race to the bottom. Morals, integrity, honesty, responsibility and foresight are only obstacles in this logic (because the competition is not bound by them which gains them an advantage).

    It’s simply cheaper now to build everything in the car always and run an operating system that manages all these things and can control what you are doing in your car.

    Cory Doctorow held a great keynote about this some ~10-ish years (?) ago with the title “The coming war on general computation” where he explained the side effects of putting DRM in every stupid appliance. The side effect here is that we cannot hack our cars to switch on the heated seats (or whatever other feature BMW is not allowing us to use for free) because of DRM. It is not “our” car, even though we bought it.


  • I agree, but as long as we still have capitalism I support measures that at least slow down the destructiveness of capitalism. AI is like a new powertool in capitalism’s arsenal to dismantle our humanity. Sure we can use it for cool things as well. But right now it’s used mostly to automate stuff that makes us human - art, music and so on. Not useful stuff like loading the dishwasher for me. More like writing a letter for me to invite my friends to my birthday. Very cool. But maybe the work I put in doing this myself is making my friends feel appreciated?

    Edit: It’s also nice to at least have an app that takes this maximalist approach. Then people can choose. If they’re half-assing it there will be more and more ai-features creeping in over time. One compromise after the next until it’s like all the other apps. It’s also important to have such a maximalist stand in order to gauge the scale in a way.


  • Honestly, do yourself a favor and watch the OG Alien from start to finish with no distractions. Then do the same with Aliens as well. Those two are masterpieces with Aliens being much different in tone. Every sequel or prequel made afterward tried to rekindle the fire/brilliance of those two. Unfortunately Alien was made worse by the later films where the Xenomorphs origin is basically explained as human in origin (caused by humans). So pretend that you didn’t see any movie from the franchise and try to be “fresh”.





  • It’s also a great example why these mega corps should be broken up into smaller pieces.

    If forced arbitration persists (and this argumentation from Disney is successful and then used as precedence) any service used from one company can be used to forever ban you from taking legal action against that company again even if the service and the reason for the legal action have nothing to do with each other.

    Am I right in understanding that this case is about someone dying from eating in a Disney owned restaurant that by accident was a Disney+ subscriber?

    If one company owns everything like Amazon, Google, Apple and in the future maybe even water supply, garbage collection, operates my car and is my insurer or bank account (and owner of one of the 4 remaining fast food chains in the country) how can people actually sue a company then ?


  • Well, but general relativity teaches us that all coordinate systems (also constantly moving, but not accelerating ones) are equally relevant. This means that the one with earth as it’s origin is as correct as one where with the center of the galaxy (or the sun ) as is every other. So the one where earth moves somehow through space is just as random as any other.


  • me too! I shattered the screen of my pixel 4a and without much thinking I bought a used Pixel 6a off ebay. (I needed a phone quick that worked and the shattered screen was somehow disrupting the touch -accuracy. Now I have a phone without a headphone jack and its seriously an issue. Bluetooth is still not usable. There’s so many situations where it suddenly doesn’t work. Then I have to restart my headphones or fiddle around with bluetooth. It’s seriously annoying. A fucking cable is the superior technology - still!


  • I’m pretty similar. I don’t have an analog camera myself, but I’m using one. I Like that the cost of a picture (both in money and in Work that i have to do for getting and developing Film ) forces me to BE more considerate about what to Photograph.

    I also have an old Tapedeck (Yamaha K350) where I’m still planning to replace the ribbon as well. I started making Mixtapes a few years Back.

    And I buy CDs. It’s the best time to buy them IMHO. People sell them very cheap on eBay.

    Edit: And I have an old iPod 6th gen with Rockbox that I use almost every day. -> 3.5mm jack is also apparently an old technology that I find Superior.


  • I was like that for a long time. I think I solved my problem by mostly thinking about my situation and the reasons for it and managed to separate fact from fiction. Something that also played a role was to - for a while - literally giving up. For a while I thought I would stay alone forever. For a while I was able to relax a little and not be that desparate, stressed guy who thought his time was running out. Who had to always think about opportunities to meet someone. I could just be myself. Desparation isn’t a very attractive trait. I realized that there actually where quite a few women who seemed to show interest in me, but I never was able to see it, because I felt so beneath them. Them showing interest in me was unbelievable. In times where I didn’t try to desparately meet women or get them to be interested in me I was much better at talking and being interested.

    I think I was lucky in having a rather rational way of thinking about problems. That’s how i was able to understand myself and find a way out of this whole. What were the things that (I think) got me out of it:

    • I was able to think of women as just other humans.
    • They are not automatically miles above me and i would have to hope to get their attention out of luck
    • They sometimes are as desparate or unsure of themselves as I was. They were actually pretty glad if I was showing interest in them (previously I never dared to talk to them just for the sake of it, because I feared they would be annoyed as they would always be talked to by idiots like me).
    • I remembered something someone said to me as a teenager: " You will make 10 times as many friends in the time you try to get people to be interested in you If you instead show interest in other people". I realized that for a long while I had the mindset of “please pick me!” when i thought about women. I was the low being who would have to hope to be chosen. I was thinking about wearing interesting shirts, or doing interesting things so that someone of the “upper class” would find me worthy enough and talk to me. Only late in life I realized that other people - especially women - weren’t some higher level being - some mythical alien creatures. They were a lot like myself, yearning to be recognized by other human beings. And that I wasn’t that low as well and a lot of other people - especially ( again:) women - were quite happy if I showed interest in them. So for anyone reading this: It might be strange to ask other people their name or from where they are, what they do, what they like. what problems they have. But after a while your thinking changes. Then you might actually genuinely be interested in them. And a lot of them greatly appreaciates it. So: try to be for other people what you want them to be to you. And don’t only talk to people who you want to get into bed. Just expand your perspective. talk to people.

    It’s mostly just the mindset. If you’re thinking your worthless and other people are unreachable, then your behavior will mirror this thinking.

    Another thing: I am quite glad that when I had this phase in my life “incel” culture wasn’t a thing. At least there were no dark corners in the Internet offering me easy explanations for my problems. I came from a strange place, believing that women where heavenly creatures miles above my sorry existence, so maybe not that typical incel-vibe, but I am still not 100% sure that these women-hating incel-idiots would have turned me against 50% of the population.