scrchngwsl

@scrchngwsl@feddit.uk

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨CouLSDon gets cancelled by Facebook’s algorithm police⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  It doesn’t actually give any examples of removed posts or screenshots of the reasons why? Surely it can’t just be because a town name happens to contain “lsd” in the middle of it?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Aldi price match at Tesco - dozens of goods not like-for-like⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s funny because this means that Aldi has better quality food than Tesco. That’s not something I would have thought before. Before, I would have just assumed Aldi was cheaper, but now I assume that Aldi is cheaper AND better.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨They encouraged us to insulate our home. Now it’s unmortgageable⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I looked into spray foam insulation but not only were there lots of risks, but it was more expensive than traditional warm roof insulation with PIR boards or similar. I do think people should research what they put in their own homes.

  Having said that, there is clearly some sort of regulatory gap here as not being able to mortgage your home is a very serious consequence of a relatively small and seemingly innocuous home improvement decision.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AI Ruined My Year - Robert Miles⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve followed Robert Miles’ YouTube channel for years and watched his old numberphile videos before that. He’s a great communicator and a genuinely thoughtful guy. I think he’s overly keen on anthropomorphising what AI is doing, partly because it makes it easier to communicate, but also because I think it suits the field of research he’s dedicated himself to. In this particular video, he ascribes a “theory of mind” based on the LLM’s response to a traditional and well-known theory of mind test. The test is included in the training data, and ChatGPT3.5 successfully recognises it and responds correctly. However, when the details of the test (i.e. specific names, items, etc.) are changed, but the form of the problem is the same, ChatGPT3.5 fails. ChatGPT 4, however, still succeeds – which Miles concludes means that ChatGPT 4 has a stronger theory of mind.

  My view is that this is obviously wrong. I mean, just prima facie absurd. ChatGPT3.5 correctly recognises the problem as a classic psychology question, and responds with the standard psychology answer. Miles says that the test is found in the training data. So it’s in ChatGPT4’s training data, too. And ChatGPT 4’s LLM is good enough that, even if you change the nouns used in the problem, it is still able to recognise that the problem is the same one found in its training data. That does not in any way prove it has a theory of mind! It just proves that the problem is in its training set! If 3.5 doesn’t have a theory of mind because a small change can break the link between training set and test set, how can 4.0 have a theory of mind, if 4.0 is doing the same thing that 3.5 is doing, just with the link intact?

  The most obvious problem is that the theory of mind test is designed for determining whether children have developed a theory of mind yet. That is, they test whether the development of the human brain has reached a stage that is common among other human brains, in which they can correctly understand that other people may have different internal mental states. We know that humans are, generally, capable of doing this, that this understanding is developed during childhood years, and that some children develop it sooner than others. So we have devised a test to distinguish between those children who have developed this capability and those children who have not yet.

  It would be absurd to apply the same test to anything other than a human child. It would be like giving the LLM the “mirror test” for animal self-awareness. Clearly, since the LLM cannot recognise itself in a mirror, it is not self-aware. Is that a reasonable conclusion too? Or do we cherry-pick the existing tests to suit the LLM’s capabilities?

  Now, Miles’ substantial point is that the “overton window” for AI Safety has shifted, bringing it into the mainstream of tech and political discourse. To that extent, it doesn’t matter whether ChatGPT has consciousness or not, or a theory of mind, as long as enough people in mainstream tech and political discourse believe it does for it to warrant greater attention on AI Safety. Miles further believes that AI Safety is important in its own right, so perhaps he doesn’t mind whether or not the overton window has shifted on the basis of AI’s true capability or its imagined capability. He hints at, but doesn’t really explore, the ulterior motives for large tech companies to suggest that the tools they are developing are so powerful that they might destroy the world. (He doesn’t even say it as explicitly as I did just then, which I think is a failing.) But maybe that’s ok for him, as long as AI Safety research is being taken seriously.

  I disagree. It would be better to base policy on things that are true, and if you have to believe that LLMs have a theory of mind in order to gain mainstream attention on AI Safety, then I think this will lead us to bad policymaking. It will miss the real harms that AI pose – facial recognition used to bar people from shops that have a disproportionately high error rate for black people, resumé scanners and other hiring tools that, again, disproportionately discriminate against black people and other minorities, non-consensual AI porn, etc etc. We may well need policies to regulate this stuff, but focus on hypothetical existential risk of AGI in the future, over the very real and present harms that AI is doing right now, is misguided and dangerous.

  Now, if policymakers actually understood the tech and the risks to the extent that Miles’s YouTube viewers did, maybe they’d come to the same conclusion that he does about the risk of AGI, and would be able to balance these risks against all of the other things that the government should be regulating. But, call me a sceptic, but I do not believe that politicians actually get any of this at all, and they just like being on stage with Elon Musk…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The summary is total rubbish and completely misrepresents what it’s actually about. I’m not sure why anyone would bother including that poorly AI-generated summary, if they had already watched the video. Useless AI bullshit.

  The video is actually about the movement of AI Safety over the past year from something of fringe academic interest or curiosity into the mainstream of tech discourse, and even into active government policy. He discusses the advancements in AI in the past year in the context of AI Safety, namely, that they are moving faster than expected and that this increases the urgency of AI Safety research.

  I’ve followed Robert Miles’ YouTube channel for years and watched his old numberphile videos before “GenAI” was really a thing. He’s a great communicator and a genuinely thoughtful guy. I think he’s overly keen on anthropomorphising what AI is doing, partly because it makes it easier to communicate, but also because I think it suits the field of research he’s dedicated himself to. In this particular video, he ascribes a “theory of mind” based on the LLM’s response to a traditional and well-known theory of mind test. The test is included in the training data, and ChatGPT3.5 successfully recognises it and responds correctly. However, when the details of the test (i.e. specific names, items, etc.) are changed, but the form of the problem is the same, ChatGPT3.5 fails. ChatGPT 4, however, still succeeds – which Miles concludes means that ChatGPT 4 has a stronger theory of mind.

  My view is that this is obviously wrong. I mean, just prima facie absurd. ChatGPT3.5 correctly recognises the problem as a classic psychology question, and responds with the standard psychology answer. Miles says that the test is found in the training data. So it’s in ChatGPT4’s training data, too. And ChatGPT 4’s LLM is good enough that, even if you change the nouns used in the problem, it is still able to recognise that the problem is the same one found in its training data. That does not in any way prove it has a theory of mind! It just proves that the problem is in its training set! If 3.5 doesn’t have a theory of mind because a small change can mess up its answer, how can 4.0 have a theory of mind, if 4.0 is doing the same thing that 3.5 is doing, just a bit better?

  The most obvious problem is that the theory of mind test is designed for determining whether children have developed a theory of mind yet. That is, they test whether the development of the human brain has reached a stage that is common among other human brains, in which they can correctly understand that other people may have different internal mental states. We know that humans are, generally, capable of doing this, that this understanding is developed during childhood years, and that some children develop it sooner than others. So we have devised a test to distinguish between those children who have developed this capability and those children who have not.

  It would be absurd to apply the same test to anything other than a human child. It would be like giving the LLM the “mirror test” for animal self-awareness. Clearly, since the LLM cannot recognise itself in a mirror, it is not self-aware. Is that a reasonable conclusion too? Or do we cherry-pick the existing tests to suit the LLM’s capabilities?

  Now, Miles’ substantial point is that the “overton window” for AI Safety has shifted, bringing it into the mainstream of tech and political discourse. To that extent, it doesn’t matter whether ChatGPT has consciousness or not, or a theory of mind, as long as enough people in mainstream tech and political discourse believe it does for it to warrant greater attention on AI Safety. Miles further believes that AI Safety is important in its own right, so perhaps he doesn’t mind whether or not the overton window has shifted on the basis of true AI capability or imagined capability. He hints at, but doesn’t really explore, the ulterior motives for large tech companies to suggest that the tools they are developing are so powerful that they might destroy the world. (He doesn’t even say it as explicitly as I did just then, which I think is a failing.) But maybe that’s ok for him, as long as AI Safety research is being taken seriously.

  I disagree. It would be better to base policy on things that are true, and if you have to believe that LLMs have a theory of mind in order to gain mainstream attention on AI Safety, then I think this will lead us to bad policymaking. It will miss the real harms that AI pose – facial recognition used to bar people from shops that have a disproportionately high error rate for black people, resumé scanners and other hiring tools that, again, disproportionately discriminate against black people and other minorities, non-consensual AI porn, etc etc. We may well need policies to regulate this stuff, but focus on hypothetical existential risk of AGI in the future, over the very real and present harms that AI is doing right now, is misguided and dangerous.

  It’s a pity, because if AI Safety had just stayed an academic curiosity (as Rob says it was for him), maybe we’d have the policy resources to tackle the real and present problems that AI is causing for people.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Conservatives plan to bring back mandatory National Service⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  People who say there’s no difference between Tories and Labour can get in the sea. Or do some national service, idk.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Leasehold charges to be capped at £250 rather than cut to zero: Report   – Mortgage Strategy⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Honestly this is better than nothing.

  The real thing that cripples me as a leaseholder though is the service charges, which have doubled since I bought the place. The whole thing is a total con.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Channel 4 responds after calls to sack Rachel Riley for Sydney stabbing post⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Thanks, that at least makes some sense!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Channel 4 responds after calls to sack Rachel Riley for Sydney stabbing post⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Even in her “apology” and longer “clarification” it’s incredibly hard to understand what her substantial point is. I bet you could give her 10 years to try to explain how the Sydney stabbing was in any serious way related to pro-Palestine marches and it still wouldn’t make sense. Does she tweet the same thing any time there is a stabbing somewhere in the world? “Oh look, a stabbing in South Korea – perfect time to tweet about intifada?”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Best printer 2024, best printer for home use, office use, printing labels, printer for school, homework printer you are a printer we are all printers⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I have a similar printer but with duplex printing, which I bought because it fits under my sofa. It does everything I wanted it to do; namely, to print double-sided black and white documents and fit under my sofa.

  BTW I also recommend the Brother ADS-2xxx series of document scanners, which I bought to scan multi-page double-sided documents automatically. I put the stack of papers in the top, press Go, and it scans to PDF in a few seconds.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Amazon Ditches 'Just Walk Out' Checkouts at Its Grocery Stores⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I had assumed it was a Uniqlo style thing using tags. That truly is magical, like living in the future.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Electric car sales in UK flatline, prompting calls for VAT cut⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Frankly I think they are still too expensive for most people up front. It’s a lot cheaper to run if you can charge at home, but if you can’t afford the extra £5k-£10k vs an equivalent petrol car then you’re not going to buy it. New EVs in particular are overpriced IMO, whereas the used market is actually pretty good value right now. There’s just no point in spending £37k-42k on a new Kia Niro EV when you can get a 3 year old model for £15k-20k that’s just as good.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Recycling: Plans for electrical goods to be included in UK collections⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  my actual biggest wish, which I will never get because the administrative costs would be astronomical, is that the cost added to goods be directly tied to their recyclability (both in materials and labor) as it would incentivize building more easily recycled products by manufacturers to keep costs competitive.

  Interesting point. I guess the price of the individual product won’t be differentiated based on cost of recycling, but there will still be an incentive for retailers and therefore manufacturers to make products last longer, which might be better in the long run?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Pint of wine anyone? UK looks to bring back ‘silly measure’⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  But of course it’s optional? I don’t understand why it’s scandalous that they’ve put that in the middle? Did you want it in the headline?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Key Boris Johnson aide set key WhatsApp group to auto-delete⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I see this as analogous to having a telephone conversation that isn’t recorded. I don’t really see a problem with that, other than whatever legal requirement there is to record and secure government communications. I doubt the obligation extends to every single discussion that takes place in the halls of government or by phone.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Labour U-turns on promise of Scottish-style right to roam in England⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah it seems obvious that this is designed to preemptively avoid Tory campaign leaflets in the heartlands with scare stories about Labour being bad for rural communities etc.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Cap on bankers' bonuses to be scrapped - BBC News⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Thank goodness!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Woman slams selfish paragliders who 'made her think Hamas were invading Doncaster'⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Frankly that’s even more insane.