Notices by myrmepropagandist (futurebird@sauropods.win), page 18

@david_chisnall @CptSuperlative @emilymbender

It can summarize scientific papers well in part because they have a clear style and even come with an abstract.

The words and phrases in the abstract of a paper reliably predict the content and main ideas of the paper.

Moreover, even if you remove the abstracts, it has lots of training data of papers with abstracts.

@david_chisnall @CptSuperlative @emilymbender

But, if I ask it, say, to organize papers into groups based on which hypothesis about eusocial evolution they support. LOL. It tries to give me what a want, on the surface the result had me excited for a moment because it was worded like just what I wanted.

But, some of the papers in the set didn't talk about eusocial evolution, yet they'd been placed in a camp. Some papers were in the wrong camp, and worst? It made up a paper not in the set.

@Jirikiha @nazokiyoubinbou @joby @CptSuperlative @emilymbender

"Confidently Wrong: The Brave New World of LLMs"

This would be a good title for a mini-essay for the faculty newsletter on this topic. I'm deeply unsettled when people use these systems in ways that imply a deep misunderstanding about their limitations and design. Can we please just understand what this system *is* doing and what it is not doing?

@Jirikiha @nazokiyoubinbou @joby @CptSuperlative @emilymbender

If I asked chat GPT to "turn off the porch light" and it said "OK, I've turned off the light on your porch." I would know that it has not really done this. It has no way to access my porch light. I would realize that it is just giving a text answer that fits the context of the previous prompts.

So, why do people think it makes sense to ask chat GPT to explain how it produced a response?

Google's "NotebookLM" it's a sandbox where you can have a set of documents and ask questions about them.

It still relies on a much wider set of training data.

@CptSuperlative @emilymbender

I have found one use case. Although, I wonder if it's cost effective. Give an LLM a bunch of scientific papers and ask for a summary. It makes a kind of nice summary to help you decide what order to read the papers in.

It's also OK at low stakes language translation.

I also tried to ask it for a vocabulary list for the papers. Some of it was good but it had a lot of serious but subtile and hard to catch errors.

It's kind of like a gaussian blur for text.

@nazokiyoubinbou @CptSuperlative @emilymbender

If I don't have the experience of "finding it useful" I can't possibly communicate clearly what's *wrong* with asking a LLM "can you simulate what it would be like if you didn't have X in your data set" and just going with the response like it could possibly be what you thought you asked for.

It's not going away.

And right now a lot of people give it more trust and respect than they do other people *because* its a machine.

@nazokiyoubinbou @CptSuperlative @emilymbender

Consider the whole genre of "We asked an AI what love was... and this is what it said!"

It's a bit like a magic 8 ball, but I think people are more realistic about the limitations of the 8 ball.

And maybe it's that gloss of perceived machine "objectivity" that makes me kind of angry at those making this error.

@dalias

Maybe but that still implies some kind of organization of concepts beyond just through language or the shape of their output.

I don't see any reason why it should be impossible to design a program with concepts, that could do something like reasoning ... you might even use an LLM to make the output more human readable.

Though I guess this metaphor works in that to the extent there is a "goal" it's to "make it pass" rather than to convey any idea or express anything.

Chat GPT will say things if you ask it what it did, the answers will be similar to texts it has processed about describing how things are done, some in the context of describing how a computer program might do something.

It might even give you a good run down of how LLMs work mixed in there, it might not. But it's not able to ... interrogate it's own process this simply isn't possible. It's not part of how it's designed.

Half a million views and from a day ago. Good lord.

When photography was invented many people thought it might capture the human soul... and that's about how this will sound some day.

@FediThing

I think people are in denial about the level of brute force operating here. There is a reason it uses so much electricity. If you make big enough tables you can make plausible text about *anything*

But it's just ... plausible text that seems like the kind of answer people would expect.

"Chat GPT told me that it *can't* alter its data set but it did say it could simulate what it would be like if it altered it's data set"

NO. It has no idea if it's telling the truth or not and when it says "I can simulate what this would be like"

This guy is pretty sharp about philosophy but people really really really do not *get* how this works.

"Chat GPT told me this is what it did"

No! It told you what you thought it should say if your asked it what it did!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=160F8F8mXlo

@cdarwin

I dislike how they are being called "savants" ... maybe it's just to help people understand what the attraction to this gang is about, but come on.

What did they do to warrant this implied exceptionalism and awe that word carries?

(also dislike the pathologizing of criminals with autism-adjacent notions. )

It's a criminal gang and cult that did crimes and exploited people as gangs/cults will do. Just because they are white guys with long hair on computers doesn't change that.

@cdarwin

I'm reflecting on exactly what the difference between a "gang" and a "cult" really is. They are both economic enterprises that exploit people. They both use indoctrination and trap people.

Cults are just gangs with more fancy "lore."

I’m so proud of Pica. She has done a great job recovering from her #hyperthyroidism and becoming a potato again. #PicaTheCat #catsofmastodon #cats #cat #potato

A massive potato or perhaps a petite melon. Either way 10/10

No one ever cheered me on for becoming more like a potato. I can admit that at times I envy her a little.

I hate protests generally but this one was OK. Nice to see you can still yell and creep around without getting kettled in like four seconds. They only sent like 5 cops and none of them wanted to wrestle with a bunch of cranky 50 something’s.

I refuse to do that “hold a us flag” thing though. Don’t be so frightened. come on.

Things have been so much better since they started congestion pricing and I can't help but think the attempts to break it are just... petty.

Anyways there is a rally @3 in NYC times square. Gotta get my wingtips on and catch the bus down there.