enkers

That’s just a cat thing. Some of them are intent on displaying their poopers whenever possible, especially if it’s right in your face.

Damn, I was with you until the unnecessary vegan bashing.

Appreciate the correction. Happen to know of any whitepapers or articles I could read on it?

Here’s the thing, I went out of my way to say I don’t know shit from bananas in this context, and I could very well be wrong. But the article certainly doesn’t sufficiently demonstrate why it’s right.

Most technical articles I click on go through step by step processes to show how they gained understanding of the subject material, and it’s layed out in a manner that less technical people can still follow. And the payoff is you come out with a feeling that you understand a little bit more than what you went in with.

This article is just full on “trust me bro”. I went in with a mediocre understanding, and came out about the same, but with a nasty taste in my mouth. Nothing of value was learned.

I’ll preface this by saying I’m not an expert, and I don’t like to speak authoritatively on things that I’m not an expert in, so it’s possible I’m mistaken. Also I’ve had a drink or two, so that’s not helping, but here we go anyways.

In the article, the author quips on a tweet where they seem to fundamentally misunderstand how LLMs work:

I tabbed over to another tab, and the top post on my Bluesky feed was something along these lines:

ChatGPT is not a search engine. It does not scan the web for information. You cannot use it as a search engine. LLMs only generate statistically likely sentences.

The thing is… ChatGPT was over there, in the other tab, searching the web. And the answer I got was pretty good.

The tweet is correct. The LLM has a snapshot understanding of the internet based on its training data. It’s not what we would generally consider a true index based search.

Training LLMs is a costly and time consuming process, so it’s fundamentally impossible to regenerate an LLM in the same order of magnitude of time it takes to make a simple index.

The author fails to address any of these issues, which suggests to me that they don’t know what they’re talking about.

I suppose I could conceded that an LLM can fulfill a similar role that a search engine traditionally has, but it’d kinda be like saying that a toaster is an oven. They’re both confined boxes which heat food, but good luck if you try to bake 2 pies at once in a toaster.

God, that was a bad read. Not only is this person woefully misinformed, they’re complaining about the state of discourse while directly contributing to the problem.

If you’re going to write about tech, at least take some time to have a pasaable understanding of it, not just “I use the product for shits and giggles occasionally.”

Cool cool cool. I’ll just continue not using chatgpt and we’ll call it a wash.

There is still no good definition for what “consciousness” is

We don’t have a fully concise definition, but we have a strong general understanding that is supported by a large body of scientists:

https://fcmconference.org/img/CambridgeDeclarationOnConsciousness.pdf

It doesn’t seem to me that this would preclude AI, and you’re certainly right that there’s a lot of ongoing sensationalism on the topic.

Unless you’re in comp sci, and AI is a field, not a marketing term. And in that case everyone already knows that’s not “it”.