QuadratureSurfer

QuadratureSurfer , 1 month ago to technology in Google is losing it

OK, but we’re discussing whether computers are “reliable, predictable, idempotent”. Statements like this about computers are generally made when discussing the internal workings of a computer among developers or at even lower levels among computer engineers and such.

This isn’t something you would say at a higher level for end-users because there are any number of reasons why an application can spit out different outputs even when seemingly given the “same input”.

And while I could point out that Llama.cpp is open source (so you could just go in and test this by forcing the same seed every time…) it doesn’t matter because your statement effectively boils down to something like this:

“I clicked the button (input) for the random number generator and got a different number (output) every time, thus computers are not reliable or predictable!”

If you wanted to make a better argument about computers not always being reliable/predictable, you’re better off pointing at how radiation can flip bits in our electronics (which is one reason why we have implemented checksums and other tools to verify that information hasn’t been altered over time or in transition). Take, for instance, the example of what happened to some voting machines in Belgium in 2003: businessinsider.com/cosmic-rays-harm-computers-sm…

Anyway, thanks if you read this far, I enjoy discussing things like this.

QuadratureSurfer , 1 month ago to technology in Study finds a quarter of all webpages from 2013 to 2023 no longer exist

Shout-out to Archive.org for all the awesome work they do to backup what they can from the internet.

(Especially when some stack overflow answer to a question is just a link to some website that has either changed or no longer exists).

QuadratureSurfer , 2 months ago to technology in CEO of Google Says It Has No Solution for Its AI Providing Wildly Incorrect Information

What I mean is that Journalists feel threatened by it in someway (whether I use the word “potential” here or not is mostly irrelevant).

In the end this is just a theory, but it makes sense to me.

I absolutely agree that management has greatly misunderstood how LLMs should be used. They should be used as a tool, but treated like an intern who’s speaking out loud without citing any sources. All of their statements and work should be double checked.

QuadratureSurfer , 2 months ago to technology in CEO of Google Says It Has No Solution for Its AI Providing Wildly Incorrect Information

Journalists are also in a panic about LLMs, they feel their jobs are threatened by its potential. This is why (in my opinion) we’re seeing a lot of news stories that will focus on any imperfections that can be found in LLMs.

QuadratureSurfer , 2 months ago to technology in Google is losing it

They still are. Giving a generative AI the same input and the same seed results in the same output every time.

QuadratureSurfer , 2 months ago to technology in Google is losing it

Technically, generative AI will always give the same answer when given the same input. But, what happens is a “seed” is mixed in to help randomize things, that way it can give different answers every time even if you ask it the same question.

QuadratureSurfer , 2 months ago to technology in Rabbit Gaslit Me, So I Dug Deeper

Sure, but don’t let that feed into the sentiment that AI = scams. It’s way too broad of a term that covers a ton of different applications (that already work) to be used in that way.

And there are plenty of popular commercial AI products out there that work as well, so trying to say that “pretty much everything that’s commercial AI is a scam” is also inaccurate.

We have:
Suno’s music generation
NVidia’s upscaling
Midjourney’s Image Generation
OpenAI’s ChatGPT
Etc.

So instead of trying to tear down everything and anything “AI”, we should probably just point out that startups using a lot of buzzwords (like “AI”) should be treated with a healthy dose of skepticism, until they can prove their product in a live environment.

QuadratureSurfer , 2 months ago to technology in Rabbit Gaslit Me, So I Dug Deeper

If you think that “pretty much everything AI is a scam”, then you’re either setting your expectations way too high, or you’re only looking at startups trying to get the attention of investors.

There are plenty of AI models out there today that are open source and can be used for a number of purposes: Generating images (stable diffusion), transcribing audio (whisper), audio generation, object detection, upscaling, downscaling, etc.

Part of the problem might be with how you define AI… It’s way more broad of a term than what I think you’re trying to convey.

QuadratureSurfer , 2 months ago to pcgaming in King under the Mountain (Mountaincore) went open source as developer shuts down

I wish more companies would do something like this, rather than just shutting everything down and leaving everyone with nothing.

QuadratureSurfer , 2 months ago to technology in New Windows AI feature records everything you’ve done on your PC

Very true… what I meant to say was:
[…] then this means our data shouldn’t need to leave the device at all […]

QuadratureSurfer , 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago) to gaming in Crazy rumour suggests Microsoft are preparing $16 billion offer for Valve

Well… good thing I’ve been buying what I can through GOG… but this is terrible news, especially with the way Microsoft has been shutting down gaming studios recently.

Edit: meh, this just sounds like clickbait:

• The leak comes from an unknown and unreliable source in the gaming industry.
• Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard faced regulatory challenges, making the merger with Valve unlikely.

QuadratureSurfer , 2 months ago to technology in New Windows AI feature records everything you’ve done on your PC

The whole thing is going to be run on a local LLM. They don’t have to upload that data anywhere for this to work (it will work offline). But considering what they already do, Microsoft is going to have to do a lot to prove that they aren’t doing this.

QuadratureSurfer , 2 months ago to technology in New Windows AI feature records everything you’ve done on your PC

Since everything is being run in a local LLM, most likely this will be some extra RAM usage rather than SSD usage, but that is assuming that they aren’t saving these images to file anywhere.

QuadratureSurfer , 2 months ago to technology in New Windows AI feature records everything you’ve done on your PC

Actually, if this is the requirement, then this means our data isn’t leaving the device at all (for this purpose) since everything is being run locally.

QuadratureSurfer , 2 months ago to technology in Google’s AI search results are already getting ads

Looks like a separate element that comes after the LLM summary which can be removed by ad blockers. That is, if you’re still using Google search…