kenjackson

Who is using this on the SAT when there is Desmos?

So is this a 2400% reduction in the number of NSF board members?

> At some point, because these models are trained on existing data, you cease significant technological advancement

What makes you think that they can't incrementally improve the state of the art... and by running at scale continuously can't do it faster than we as humans?

The potentially sad outcome is that we continue to do less and less, because they eventually will build better and better robots, so even activities like building the datacenters and fabs are things they can do w/o us.

And eventually most of what they do is to construct scenarios so that we can simulate living a normal life.

I agree the article is smarter than the title makes it seem. And honestly, much better than comments on HN. The articles keeps diving deeper and asking questions. The comments here take hold of a single theory, without even thinking about the counters that article mentions. This is probably the best example of read the article, and not the comments.

What does this mean?

This was a masterclass in science writing for laypeople. Going to find more from this author.

I don’t think these companies are hurting for access to code.

You can set your prompt to do that. You can have it be extremely skeptical. You can even make it contrarian, if you wanted to be extreme. My current prompt challenges me often, and wants to find weaknesses in my argument.

LLMs will need to develop a notion of trustworthiness. Interesting that part of the process of learning isn’t just learning, but also learning what to learn and how much value to put into data that crosses your path.

The economics for the company aren't great for people that make high frequency use of it. And I suspect that people that would pay for such a service nowadays would make good use of it.

Regarding the 5d guarantee -- I suspect that most disks would show up in 2-3 days, but if you're going to guarantee you'll need some buffer (as I think US Mail says first class is 1-5 days). And I think Netflix was just counting on it mostly being shorter (and may have even had distribution centers at some point in its history).

Protected speech can be beyond politics. Politics doesn't subsume all protected speech.

So private companies shouldn’t get to determine who they provide services to? Assuming no extremely malicious intent, I’d be fine if they said it was only going to McDonalds because the founders like Big Macs.

I think it’s also that contrarianism generates an argument they can follow - it’s often much more simplistic along some axis. For example, flat earthers superficially have a really simple model. Throw a ball up, of course it comes down. You look straight ahead and it looks flat. Ask them how GPS works and they can’t follow the math anyways.

While I agree with the sentiment, using AI to write the final draft of the article isn’t cheating. People may not like it, but it’s more a stylistic preference.

OK, I didn't think to disable switch to thinking (didn't know this was a mode). When I did that then it did get it wrong -- oddly it took about the same amount of time, so thinking mode wasn't taking longer, but it was more accurate.

Weird. I tried in chatGPT auto and it worked perfectly. I tried like 10 variations. I also did the letters in words. Got all of them right.

The one thing I did trip it up on was "Is there the sh sound in the word transportation". It said no. And then realized I asked for "sound" not letters. It then subsequently got the rest of the "sounds-like" tests I did.

Clearly, my ChatGPT is just better than yours.

Whenveer I see these papers and try them, they always work. This paper is two months old, which in LLM years is like 10 years of progress.

It would be interesting to actively track how far long each progressive model gets...

I learn a lot from code I read, but don’t write. Did the author not read the code and simply threw it over the fence?

Not revisionist at all.

or Netflix, or Amazon, or Uber, or PayPal, etc… Netflix and Amazon both were competing against brick and morter that were everywhere. Blockbuster was in every town, usually in every major neighborhood. The thought was that on Friday night people wanted to get a movie they wanted, not just happen to have the movie that was shipped to them. And then with streaming it was "the content on Netflix is old and dated, who would want this?" They slowly ate from below. Blockbuster scrambled with their own mailed disc offering. And died before it even had a chance to confront streaming.

Repeat this story with B&N where people said that you had to browse the books physically. You couldn't just blindly order online and wait two weeks to get the book (remember they got big before "2 Day Prime").

With PayPal it was about "they don't understand banking or payment -- and it wants to be both?!".

For this OpenAI experience, it doesn't sound great. I have accounts with these places I buy things from. I want to make sure I get my Prime shipping and digital discount via using the Amazon app. But if you could find a way to integrate my accounts all into ChatGPT things might be different. In the same way I used to never use Apple Wallet, but now it really is my go to place for everything I have a card for. I don't have to worry about having my grocery loyalty card or my football season tickets with me or my car insurance card. It's all in wallet. The Apple Wallet sucked until it was suddenly great.

This is all valid (except probably the last sentence), but it also describes so many attempted changes right until they become darn near the default.

This sounds like why I heard Redfin wouldn’t work, or Netflix, or Amazon, or Uber, or PayPal, etc…. There are always these business complexities that make it seem like these spaces have too much friction, but if there’s enough money - if it can be done then people will figure it out.

I’ve read your posts for the past 25 years - originally on slashdot (not literally you). As you proposed, I think you’re fundamentally wrong. I got my MIL a Chromebook and it was probably the single worst technical support decision I ever made. For some, it will always be the year of Linux on the desktop. But rather the reality is the desktop will run its course before Linux has a foothold there.

Code is usually over specified. I recently used AI to build an app for some HS kids. It built what I spec’wd and it was great. Is it what I would’ve coded? Definitely not. In code I have to make a bunch of decisions that I don’t care about. And some of the decisions will seem important to some, but not to others. For example, it built a web page whereas I would’ve built a native app. I didn’t care either way and it doesn’t matter either way. But those sorts of things matter when coding and often don’t matter at all for the goal of the implementation.

Well I think there are some people that disagree.

It may be unreliable to you. I see the life of most people around me getting better. Even people that are somewhat poor (not dirt poor, but free lunch poor) have homes, three squares and snacks, PS5, mobile phones with cellular data, and cable tv. The biggest life issues I see are usually strongly related to substance abuse and mental health.

Transplanting to even just the 80s would be a culture shock for most people.

Allergies are not simply overactive immune response. It’s the wrong type of response. What’s really intriguing is how much we can do innate immunity that we have done relatively little with.

> The phrasing "HR isn't there to protect you, it's there to protect the company" applies more here.

I agree (although had interpreted the statement originally differently). Unfortunately, the part about "XYZ isn't there to protect you" applies to so much in life. Even police don't have a responsibility to you protect you (but just the public as a whole). The lesson from stuff like this is often to make sure your best interest are aligned with the most powerful and active stakeholder in the "room".

> His first mistake was complaining to HR about another employee griefing him. HR is always going to consider the initial complainer as "the problem."

I can say this definitely isn't always true. In the companies I've worked at HR has always been extremely reasonable and cooperative with harassment claims. But corporate culture probably matters here, and I've never worked at a place like Uber.

That said, I would be curious to actual know the correspondence that was sent between the two. I can also say being a manager who has had to deal with a situation between two employees (more than once), they often both claim to be the one being harassed -- and usually even a little bit of digging reveals really clearly who the aggressor is.

Wait -- I'm fairly certain this is obvious to the person you were responding to. It may not be obvious to a lay person (who may not even know LLMs are trained at all). But I think this is obvious to almost all people with even a small understanding of LLMs.

The most frustrating part for me is that this is how I used to write. I was always doing, "Why X works, but Y doesn't" and stuff like that. I may have seemed trite or pompous (or both) in the past, but now it seems like I'm copying an LLM -- which actually feels worse. One thing I haven't seen ChatGPT do much of is use sound-effects, so swoosh here we go with my new writing style schwing!

OK, someone needs to write up an accurate version. This is a fascinating topic, especially for those of us where C64 was one of our first computers. The Vic20 was my first-- I sold my computer games door-to-door on cassette... "sold" is maybe a strong word here. I sold one total.