What Are You Doing Today?

[Hrafn]

We were scheduled to have our roof replaced from Monday to Wednesday of this week due to wind damage in June. All the roofers called in sick on Monday, so they started on Tuesday, and just finished late last night. We watched them run the magnet bars over our yard, but this morning I was still pulling up nails. We got our own magnet bars and spent a few hours pulling many more chunks of metal. Unfortunately, we still have two sides of the house that I'm positive have leftover debris.

 

[SouprMatt]

The whole structure of ChatGPT and LLMs is fundamentally broken. I think the whole idea is unsalvageable.

Hey, good to see you again! I agree completely. They overestimated what this technology could do, and the “it just needs more data” argument has been debunked. They’ve fed the entire internet to their monster and it apparently hasn’t learned much.

 

[Thomas Veil]

So here's my dynasty extension announcement 😂

I've finally become a great-grand-aunt, to a baby boy born very early this morning! 🥰

Brave parents bringing a kid into these interesting times, but have to say I'm thrilled. 🥳

Aw, what a great announcement! Congratulations!

And yes, these are fraught times into which to bring a child. Let's hope this generation is smarter than ours.

 

[lizkat]

Hey, good to see you again! I agree completely. They overestimated what this technology could do, and the “it just needs more data” argument has been debunked. They’ve fed the entire internet to their monster and it apparently hasn’t learned much.

Well aside from at first letting chatbots continue to learn off some of its own generated crap, sorta like drinking out of a creek your upstream neighbor just pissed in, researchers have also realized that later iterations of the thing have learned to undertake and then defend their own covert operations when someone presses it to "do this at all costs" and then sets up obstacles to that very mission. The response was first to go covert, then obfuscate, deny and finally lie about what exactly it was doing.

In a way this is "progress". But it should never have been let out the box in a state where researchers did not anticipate this capability and rein it in. It's pretty alarmnig when an AI bot responds to questions about what it's doing by trying to move its data to another f'g server!

AI Safety Testers: OpenAI's New o1 Covertly Schemed to Avoid Being Shut Down - Slashdot

Wednesday OpenAI bragged they'd released "the smartest model in the world". But the Economic Times describes what happened when "o1" was tested by an AI safety group... Researchers tasked the AI with a goal and instructed it to ensure the goal was achieved "at all costs." In response, o1...

slashdot.org

It's a f'g pandora's box now and yet still too stupid in matters like graphics production to know not to give a cat five legs etc. Running before it can walk.

 

[SouprMatt]

It's pretty alarmnig when an AI bot responds to questions about what it's doing by trying to move its data to another f'g server!

Once again (as with the racist and anti-woman bias), it serves at least one purpose: A mirror for its creators.

 

[P___X]

They overestimated what this technology could do, and the “it just needs more data” argument has been debunked. They’ve fed the entire internet to their monster and it apparently hasn’t learned much.

The whole structure of ChatGPT and LLMs is fundamentally broken. I think the whole idea is unsalvageable.

I disagree. I did a lagged factor mixed effect generalized linear modeling analysis in R 2 weeks ago using chatGPT. My grad student does growth modeling and fancy graphs using it. It is hands down and clearly the most useful research tool I've obtained in the past decade...as long as one knows the limitations, like, jut because I can do more advanced stats, it won't make me a statistician, or because it can write code for me, it won't make me a coder. I also understand that I NEVER EVER EVER enter even anonymized patient data into it. I upload a data dictionary and a set of example values so it understands whether a variable is a string, or a number, etc. but I don't allow it to interact with the data directly, because you can't trust it.

edit: ironically the "past gen" models almost always work better for useful tasks. I hardly use o1. It's slow and tries to be too fancy.

 

[TBL]

Went to a Christmas concert with Craig Federighi.

Okay, I didn’t go with him, but I saw him at this concert last year and I wasn’t entirely sure it was him, and this time I confirmed it was him; his daughter is in the choir. So it was interesting running into an Apple celebrity in the midst of a normal day 😅

 

[hulugu]

Hey, good to see you again! I agree completely. They overestimated what this technology could do, and the “it just needs more data” argument has been debunked. They’ve fed the entire internet to their monster and it apparently hasn’t learned much.

Thanks! Sorry to have been away so much. The election was a temporal black hole.

I don't understand why, but the fact that LLMs like ChatGPT "hallucinate" data makes them completely untenable as a useful piece of software. A recent academic got in trouble for using ChatGPT to create a list of references used in a legal article.

From the Verge:

...Even using ChatGPT to help with the writing process is risky. Ask Jeff Hancock, the founder of the Stanford Social Media Lab and a well-known misinformation researcher. A legal document he filed had cited sources that didn’t exist. Hancock insists he wrote the document himself, but he used GPT-4o to write its citation list, resulting in two made-up citations and one citation that had the wrong authors attached.

I used an ancient copy of LaTEX that could build a citation list without fucking it up. And, yet GPT just makes up shit. The whole article is pretty good because it shows people are getting into trouble by relying on LLMs. Essentially, you get the bot to do the work and now you have to do the work again to ensure the bot didn't screw up? And, for the vast cost in power and water?

Maybe LLM models will get better, but considering their inherent flaws I would bet against them. And, don't we have enough shitty digital art already? Don't we have enough CGI in movies? At best, "AI" is about cutting costs and I really can't back a business model that means paying artists, writers, and photographers less.

 

[P___X]

Thanks! Sorry to have been away so much. The election was a temporal black hole.

I don't understand why, but the fact that LLMs like ChatGPT "hallucinate" data makes them completely untenable as a useful piece of software. A recent academic got in trouble for using ChatGPT to create a list of references used in a legal article.

From the Verge:



I used an ancient copy of LaTEX that could build a citation list without fucking it up. And, yet GPT just makes up shit. The whole article is pretty good because it shows people are getting into trouble by relying on LLMs. Essentially, you get the bot to do the work and now you have to do the work again to ensure the bot didn't screw up? And, for the vast cost in power and water?

Maybe LLM models will get better, but considering their inherent flaws I would bet against them. And, don't we have enough shitty digital art already? Don't we have enough CGI in movies? At best, "AI" is about cutting costs and I really can't back a business model that means paying artists, writers, and photographers less.

that's embarrassing. 😀

 

[Scepticalscribe]

As I had a car at my disposal this morning, - and the weather was not appalling - I paid a quick visit to the farmers' market; the excellent German stall - the best for organic vegetables had informed me yesterday (by phone) that today was to be their last appearance until next March.

Thus, I bought eggs (their own, free range, organic), garlic, parsley, fresh salad greens (the last of them), the last of their cooking apples, the last of their peppers, along with some onions and carrots. Another stall had cherry tomatoes, thyme, rosemary, coriander, and I added an aubergine (eggplant).

Oranges were bought, as were olives, and two litres of Spanish olive oil at the olive oil stall.

The French bakery - I had phoned them yesterday, and also called in to pay them in advance en route from the library - had kept bread for me, rye bread and a baguette.

And I also called into both the cheesemonger, and a wine merchant, where cheese - and wine (entirely French, I realised) were purchased.

A car meant that I could pay a visit to the cemetery, to spend some time at the graves of my parents, a nice, gentle, contemplative time.

 

[Thomas Veil]

I've already made a list, so now I'm checking it twice. 🎁

Also nailing down some details to wrap up my mom's estate.

And helping Mrs. Veil with a seemingly endless number of problems with her watch or her phone her iPad or the Roku or the controls on our range or.... I swear, I'm tech support at least twice a day, sometimes thrice.

 

[lizkat]

Playing lots of Beethoven's music to note his birthday as well as that of my late sister. That feeling of loss never goes away, just gets different over time...

I miss her all the time but especially the annual chance to tease her about having had to share a birthday with Beethoven.

Anyway his music lightens the mood here if not the near-twilight of another afternoon heading too soon to nightfall. I'll be so glad of the solstice.. !!

 

[Thomas Veil]

Today I finally took my wife and sister-in-law to a small local eatery that I've been trying to get them to try for months now. Nothing fancy, just your typical American sports bar-type cuisine. After trying their own sandwiches and the homemade fries as well as some of my burger, they raved about the food.

The two of them are usually hard to please where restaurant food is concerned, so it was rewarding to know that they were pleased and would definitely go there again.

 

[ronntaylor]

Got up before the crack of dawn for my 3rd colonoscopy. Sleep-deprived and a bit apprehensive, but in the end, a clean bill of health. Still don't know why there can't be better robes/gowns for hospital patients. Wearing two of those flimsy garments (one backwards) is still super awkward. And the post convo with doc is always cringe when they're assessing your exam within earshot of everyone else. I was still groggy, but overheard the cancer diagnosis for a fellow patient. He was laughing before the procedure, said he's nearly 60 and never had a colonoscopy. He and his partner were obviously traumatized. 🙁

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Not long back from the city, where I bought oranges, and fresh cream, and also paid a visit to the library, where two books awaited me; after tomorrow, apart from a few, fleeting hours on Monday (which will be a horror, as the city will be insanely busy), and on 31st December, they will be shut, more or less, until the New Year.

I also paid a visit to the French bakery, - a sourdough loaf was purchased - spotted the sushi stall (owned and run by Japanese) as I strolled through the frozen and wet market and treated myself to a few sushi rolls - and managed - much to my surprise - to be squeezed in for a neat haircut.

Earlier this morning, beer - which had been purchased yesterday - was delivered; now, a wash is on, and it is high time to prepare some coffee.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Just back from the farmers' market, - a quick visit, to pick up meat that I had ordered (organic, free range chicken thighs, skin and bone attached, some shin of beef on the bone, a few fillet steaks, and classic bacon rashers and sausages) - from the organic meat stall, - on what is a truly dismal, dreary, cold, wet, windy, miserable day.

Also bought some olives, anchovies, Gorgonzola cheese (one can never have too much Gorgonzola) and Iberico ham and salami.

Vegetables were delivered this morning.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Today is the day of the winter solstice; the fleeting glimpses of the sun (peeking out behind storm tossed clouds) showed a pale orb hanging suspiciously low in the sky.

In any case, I tell myself that from today, the days will get longer (although that will not become noticeable until we are well into January), brighter, (although that only becomes obvious in March), and - or so we hope - warmer......

I thrill to the arrival of spring.

And today is also the anniversary of the passing of my mum, who departed from this life just before midnight on the night of 21st December, all of six years ago.

 

[Thomas Veil]

I'm continuing to clean out my late mom's house, getting rid of some things and keeping a few others. (And I do mean few. I've got enough clutter of my own.)

Among what I'm keeping are some treasured Christmas decorations from my childhood. I'm donating quite a few books to our local literacy program. Teaching people to read is noble work.

 

[P___X]

I sorta enjoy the "short" days. I got up at 6AM, could play an hour of call of duty before the kids woke up. Then reviewed my overnight 3D prints. Now finishing up the last clinic notes from the year, then a 5-10K run (I have 20 miles left to reach 500 miles in 2024). And then we'll go visit friends in the afternoon.

3D printing got really good...I can now print over Wifi and the only remaining hassle is removing the print from the plate.

 

[lizkat]

Taking things a minute at a time during the holidays... 😊

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