mindbleach
@mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
- Comment on ChatGPT Is Still a Bullshit Machine 49 minutes ago:
Charles Babbage was once asked, ‘But if someone puts in the numbers wrong, how will your calculator get the right answer?’
Using a chatbot to code is useful if you don’t know how to code. You still need to know how to chatbot. You can’t grunt at the machine and expect it to read your mind.
Have you never edited a Google search, because the first try didn’t work?
- Comment on ChatGPT Is Still a Bullshit Machine 1 hour ago:
This kind of assertion wildly overestimates how well we understand intelligence.
Higher levels of bullshitting require more abstraction and self-reference. Meaning must be inferred from observation, to make certain decisions, even when picking words from a list.
Current models are abstract enough to see a chessboard in an Atari screenshot, figure out which pieces each jumble of pixels represents, and provide a valid move. Scoffing because it’s not actually good at chess is a bizarre line to draw, to say there’s zero understanding involved.
Current models might be abstract enough to teach them a new game by explaining the rules.
Current models are not abstract enough to explain why they’re bad at a game and expect them to improve.
- Comment on GPT-5: Overdue, overhyped and underwhelming. And that’s not the worst of it. 18 hours ago:
Seriously. Neural networks can approximate literally any function, and the lumbering giants have all decided ‘what’s the next word?’ is the only function worth pursuing.
It’d take a sliver of their current budget to try starting over like it’s 2020. Compare with benchmarks that now look quaint. Enjoy some wisdom where previously they could only guess. Buuut nope: all LLM, all the time, and big big big.
- Comment on GPT-5: Overdue, overhyped and underwhelming. And that’s not the worst of it. 22 hours ago:
It’s a chatbot that can see and draw, but rich idiots keep pushing it as an oracle. As if “a chatbot that can see and draw” isn’t impressive enough.
Three years ago, ‘label a tandem bicycle’ would’ve produced a tricycle covered in squiggles. Four years ago it was impossible. I don’t mean ‘really really hard.’ I mean we had no fucking idea how to make that program. People have been trying since code came on punchcards.
LLMs can almost-sorta-kinda do it, despite being completely the wrong approach. It’s shocking that ‘guess the next word’ works this well. I’m confused by the lack of experimentation in, just… asking a different question. Diffusion’s doing miracles with ‘estimate the noise.’ Video generators can do photorealism faster and cheaper than an actual camera.
The problem is, rich idiots claim this makes it an actual camera. In that context, it’s fair to point out when a video shows the Eiffel Tower with in Berlin. It’s deeply impressive that computers can do that, now. But it might ruin people’s vacation plans.
- Comment on LEAKED: A New List Reveals Top Websites Meta Is Scraping of Copyrighted Content to Train Its AI 2 days ago:
Outright piracy? It’s not allowed, but it’s supposed to be a civil matter.
Videos posted without permission? I don’t think the audience is liable for that.
Scraping despite robots.txt? If that’s illegal for its own sake, then it’s overreaching on ‘unauthorized access.’
Training on any of this? … nah, it’s probably fine.
A pile of linear algebra that knows what pornography looks like does not serve the same function as any particular example. No more than one video infringes on another for the general idea of cameras pointed at naked people. Producing the same kind of thing is not infringement. (Though if it involves Shrek, the trademark people will have angry and confusing questions.)
Reproducing any particular input is a failure of training. Even the Bible should be paraphrased past about Genesis 1:9. The whole idea is getting the vibe of everything we’ve ever published. Cliff notes, passable imitation of the writing style, couple passages everyone’s quoted verbatim.
An encyclopedia article about a book doesn’t become illegal if we learn the author shoplifted it.
- Comment on LEAKED: A New List Reveals Top Websites Meta Is Scraping of Copyrighted Content to Train Its AI 2 days ago:
Arguments are easy when you make shit up.
- Comment on LEAKED: A New List Reveals Top Websites Meta Is Scraping of Copyrighted Content to Train Its AI 2 days ago:
Correct - only the filesharing is against the law. Training is transformative use.
You can’t cram a billion images into one gigabyte. They’d be one byte each. What these models do is very different from the bootlegging you’re trying to make it sound like.
- Comment on LEAKED: A New List Reveals Top Websites Meta Is Scraping of Copyrighted Content to Train Its AI 2 days ago:
Seeking distinctions is pretense. They’re just shuffling cards.
You can ask about models made from public-domain data, and most critics will not budge an inch. Mentioning copyright is working backwards from a gut feeling. The ones who say, sure, okay, it’d be different if– - maybe they have a consistent rationale. But even some of them haven’t examined how they’d feel about this technology, if all their complaints were addressed.
- Comment on LEAKED: A New List Reveals Top Websites Meta Is Scraping of Copyrighted Content to Train Its AI 2 days ago:
Lemmy really hates piracy… in this specific context.
And a lot of the extreme and extremist content going into these things is just Twitter. People post all kinds of shit from all kinds of places. At what point is this like clutching pearls over what the Internet Archive has saved? They’re trying to grab anything you could see.
It’s not some hacking and exfiltration campaign. Meta’s just bad at spidering. How do you go breadth-first across the entire internet and still DDoS any particular site? You don’t decide to check every DeviantArt account, at the same time, you dolts.
- Comment on 70 seconds makes all the difference under the new Marvel Rivals approach to rage-quitters 6 days ago:
This is a weird use of MOBA-style punishment games, if we’re talking about an entire minute of wasted time. Surely you’d be better-off making repeat disconnectors more likely to pair with other disconnectors. Just teach them that it sucks… or leave them mad at each other. Like pairing cheaters with other cheaters.
- Comment on Anon learns a new spell 6 days ago:
Harry Potter and the Rocket Equation.
- Comment on Anon learns a new spell 6 days ago:
Joanne really gave her child army some bulletproof t-shirts.
- Comment on Anon learns a new spell 6 days ago:
with both hands behind her back.
… a gun in each of them, killing two targets at once, mid-backflip, while delivering innuendo.
- Comment on Anon learns a new spell 1 week ago:
Fun version: Harry Potter and the Deathly Weapons.
Weird version: the final chapters of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.
- Comment on Anon starts to believe 1 week ago:
> Trust everything on 4chan
Possibly the worst lesson imaginable.
- Comment on Echelon kills smart home gym equipment offline capabilities with update 2 weeks ago:
Theft.
- Comment on be gay, do computers 2 weeks ago:
Konrad Zuse invented the first proper computer.
Alan Turing later invented computing.
This distinction is why computer science exists.
- Comment on Grim and joyful deckbuilder The Royal Writ is coming for genre king Balatro next month 2 weeks ago:
Rule of thumb: anything that’s pushed as ‘the X killer’ won’t.
- Comment on Ozzy Osbourne dies at age of 76 2 weeks ago:
Judas Priest had a scheduling conflict for… The Scorpions.
Mammoth had a scheduling conflict for Creed.
“Megadeth was not invited to the event despite expressing interest.”
- Comment on [deleted] 3 weeks ago:
Counterpoint: David Mitchell’s Soapbox.
- Comment on the living dead 3 weeks ago:
- Comment on the living dead 3 weeks ago:
Have another.
- Comment on salty child 3 weeks ago:
Team Rocket coded.
- Comment on the living dead 3 weeks ago:
Rookie move.
- Comment on the living dead 3 weeks ago:
Traditional search engines are fucking garbage lately. You search for two words and it gives you generic results for whichever’s more popular. Or it decides a brief phrase, however generic, must mean exactly one thing, so you only see results related to a song by that title.
- Comment on the living dead 3 weeks ago:
Probably not getting buried, though.
Probably.
- Comment on Delta Air Lines is using AI to set the maximum price you’re willing to pay 3 weeks ago:
Blaming AI is not what makes this a crime.
- Comment on Well, I mean they probably... Maybe they... 3 weeks ago:
See also perfectly smooth rock labeled “ancient stone tool.”
- Comment on Come slide with me through loopy shooter maps in this homage to Counter-Strike's beloved Source engine surfing 3 weeks ago:
Put the name in the goddamn title.
- Comment on Now Microsoft’s Copilot Vision AI can scan everything on your screen 3 weeks ago:
