Greg's recent activity
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Comment on Given everything we know about AI so far, what do you think it can or cannot be good for? in ~tech
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Comment on Our AI midwife in ~health
Greg (edited )Link ParentAlthough as an interesting tangent for this specific topic, a lot more negative scans, especially ones subtly close enough to positive scans that humans might misjudge them, is exactly what we...Although as an interesting tangent for this specific topic, a lot more negative scans, especially ones subtly close enough to positive scans that humans might misjudge them, is exactly what we need to feed into an image classifier to negate that problem. It’s obviously not ethical to scan people for that reason alone if it’d require more invasive follow ups to identify positive/negative definitively, but it is worth keeping in mind as an actively changing level of risk at the individual and population level right now.
Depending on how good the stats are right now (my knowledge on this specific subtopic is a couple of years stale at this point), the classifiers may already be good enough from existing data to reduce the false positive rate to an acceptable level and justify, say, 20% more scanning of uncertain cases than would be done now because the signal to noise ratio has already shifted in the right direction and the individual risk of missing a diagnosis is now higher than the risk of a false positive. Thus giving more scans to analyse, thus giving better classifiers, thus reducing the risk of doing scans!
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Comment on Our AI midwife in ~health
Greg Link ParentWholeheartedly agree. But. There are known and widespread flaws in how medicine is practiced relating to women’s health. There are known and widespread flaws in how medicine is practiced in...Wholeheartedly agree. But. There are known and widespread flaws in how medicine is practiced relating to women’s health. There are known and widespread flaws in how medicine is practiced in general. And in how academic research is disseminated, and in how software is documented and tested, and in how business information is managed, and in how organisational knowledge is used, and in how…
And I really do get you, I’ve been the one hand wringing at obvious failures for most of my life because they bother me. But that’s the thing, I’ve been doing it for all those decades and these problems aren’t getting fixed because the fix is often “if people would just…”, and people generally don’t collectively “just <whatever>” even when the outcome would benefit them and everyone else.
So if we can use the machine to quickly and broadly patch human process gaps that’ve been embedding themselves for decades or centuries, I see it as a massive win. Perhaps not to the level the AI execs are promising, because I’m increasingly convinced most of them have lost their goddamn minds, but certainly to a level that’ll bring world-changing positives (will they outweigh the world-changing negatives those execs are pushing along the same path? Unclear, if I’m honest).
So yeah, it shouldn’t have happened, but if we’ve got an individual-level fix here and now and it can change things when all the plausible systematic fixes are just being ignored that’s still pretty exciting to me.
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Comment on Do you think you're special? in ~talk
Greg Link ParentI really appreciate this, all of it, and I wanted to say a big thank you in particular for ”I try to focus less on how far I am from what I could be, and more on how far I am from where my worst...I really appreciate this, all of it, and I wanted to say a big thank you in particular for ”I try to focus less on how far I am from what I could be, and more on how far I am from where my worst traits would like to drag me”. It’s such a succinct framing of a concept that’ll do me a lot of good to hold on to, and that’s very meaningful to have.
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Comment on Do you think you're special? in ~talk
Greg Link ParentThis is a beautiful take that I agree with wholeheartedly. And for what it’s worth I did always read the optimistic view on Arthur Dent and his sandwich making, I saw it as a glimmer of hope even...This is a beautiful take that I agree with wholeheartedly. And for what it’s worth I did always read the optimistic view on Arthur Dent and his sandwich making, I saw it as a glimmer of hope even in Adams’ clearly deeply depressed writing in that last book.
So, with the hope that people will understand the context I’m coming from when I say this and the deeply mixed feelings I have about it: I was the “gifted kid” who never hit that wall, who people kept seeing that way well into my adulthood and career. And I am proud of that, it does drive me in a lot of ways, I do have some of the material rewards to show for it. I’d be colossally ungrateful to really complain about it.
But it’s deeply isolating in a lot of ways too, it creates a distance that my decidedly unexceptional and frankly somewhat below average social skills often aren’t up to bridging. It comes with a host of mental illnesses and related struggles that I have to believe are the other side of the coin on whatever parts of my brain and mind make certain technical skills feel more natural to me than talking, like all my capacity was dumped into the latter at the cost of the former. And even then, I’ve never once felt I’m really living up to my potential, however hard I try and whatever other people tell me.
I guess what I’m saying is I wish more people shared your understanding and looked for the whole diverse array of niches and contexts that people can excel in. Not only would it be much needed recognition for the people who fit within those niches, it’d take some of the laser focused pressure off the areas that people do already think of too.
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Comment on Off the Norwegian island of Fedje lies a German World War II submarine believed to contain a huge load of mercury – why salvaging it has become a race against time in ~humanities.history
Greg LinkI wonder why they can’t freeze the containers to prevent leaks before lifting them? I’m guessing they can’t, because they know what they’re doing and I very much don’t, but video game logic...I wonder why they can’t freeze the containers to prevent leaks before lifting them? I’m guessing they can’t, because they know what they’re doing and I very much don’t, but video game logic absolutely makes me want to see them pulling up giant mercury-filled ice cubes until the wreck is safe.
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Comment on Do you iron your clothes? in ~life
Greg Link ParentTrousers category definitely covers leg wear that isn’t shorts or skirts in general, so yeah actually I guess that’s the broad equivalent and it just doesn’t have the confusingly more specific...Trousers category definitely covers leg wear that isn’t shorts or skirts in general, so yeah actually I guess that’s the broad equivalent and it just doesn’t have the confusingly more specific meaning attached as well like shirt does! Although I guess I probably would say “jeans” or whatever if I were referring to a specific pair someone was wearing, so maybe it’s the opposite in that it sounds natural for the category as a whole but not for a specific instance? I think… maybe? It’s also occurring to me that I don’t even remember when I last had a conversation about trousers and the semantic satiation is really setting in.
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Comment on Do you iron your clothes? in ~life
Greg (edited )Link ParentI am indeed British, so that’s probably part of it, although I’m like 98% sure I’ve heard people use it similarly in the US (I work in tech where the assumed default is jeans and t-shirt and most...I am indeed British, so that’s probably part of it, although I’m like 98% sure I’ve heard people use it similarly in the US (I work in tech where the assumed default is jeans and t-shirt and most of the people are on the West coast, and am male, if those add context!).
And yeah linguistically fuzzy even then. “Shirt” as a category, especially when considering dress codes like the post above? Totally clear delineation in my mind it implies buttons and a collar, wouldn’t question it. Friend is wearing a cool band t-shirt? “That’s an awesome shirt, did you get it at the gig?” is also totally clear in my mind and doesn’t sound weird at all referring to something without buttons or a collar. Once again, yay language!
[Edit] And now you’ve got me thinking about it, polos are a wildcard because they do have buttons and a collar but I wouldn’t default them into the shirt category for that specific example. But I might in other situations where t-shirts would still be implicitly excluded 🤔
But then only upper-body-wear gets this privilege of flexibility! Pants exclusively refers to underwear in British English (except if you’re from Liverpool, I think?), there’s no “pants category means underwear but you might compliment someone’s pants meaning outerwear” option there, you’d just be assumed to be American, ESL, or just weird if you have a local accent!
Don’t even get me started on bread rolls or small connecting alleyways between streets…
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Comment on Do you iron your clothes? in ~life
Greg Link ParentFor me shirt implies buttons, t-shirt is not within the category “shirt” (yay language!).For me shirt implies buttons, t-shirt is not within the category “shirt” (yay language!).
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Comment on Where do we go from here? (Regarding AI) in ~tech
Greg Link ParentA wonderful quote to live by, from a faith I know less about than I’d like to, so thank you for that. Framing personal salvation as not the purpose of religion appeals to me in a meaningful way...A wonderful quote to live by, from a faith I know less about than I’d like to, so thank you for that.
Framing personal salvation as not the purpose of religion appeals to me in a meaningful way (not that I’m going to find myself becoming religious, but in terms of where the philosophical purpose can be found). It’s hard to say that most faiths are embodying that: I rarely to never hear religious people or leaders putting service over salvation, I see them “selling” salvation and if we’re lucky using that as a means to encourage service to earn the reward. If more religions (as practiced, not just “no true Scotsman” readings of scripture) framed earthly good as an end rather than a means, I’d be substantially more comfortable with them.
On the nation states side of things, I’m not just going on numbers, I’ve spent significant time over the course of a few decades travelling in places right across the spectrum of development and of religiosity. I’ve had incredibly warm welcomes almost universally, and even then some that truly stand out have indeed been in extremely religious countries. I also consciously chose not to name names on the countries I was painting with the less positive brush: I specifically wasn't trying to tie it to economic development alone and for what it’s worth I consider the US as a soft entrant in the “more religious” grouping.
So yeah, I’m absolutely not dismissing the close ties, the community, the togetherness that does genuinely seem to exist more strongly in places that out outside the Western individualist bubble. But. And it’s a big but. I’m also not willing to wear rose tinted glasses when a so called “good person” perpetuates stark sexism, or homophobia, or racism, or corruption, which I’ve also personally witnessed as extremely strong in the more religious parts of the world and, as a microcosm, even the more religious parts of the US since you mentioned it specifically. Those are all longstanding traditions too, explicitly or implicitly baked into many of the same religious structures that bring closeness and community. And bluntly: I’ll toss out the community bonds if the price to pay for them is abuse of an out group. I don’t think it is the price, I think we can have the good without the bad, but that needs a genuine shake up to happen.
I chose the countries and metrics I mentioned in that first post carefully. Not economic powerhouses, not measures of comfort, just measures of trust and happiness that my subjective experience says do exist in those places without the negatives that often come with them in more paternalistic strong communities.
cc @lostwax
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Comment on Where do we go from here? (Regarding AI) in ~tech
Greg Link ParentI don’t think I’ve ever been more ambivalent about something I’ve read! In a lot of ways I agree, the concept of collective societal aspiration and a duty to an abstract sense of morality rather...I don’t think I’ve ever been more ambivalent about something I’ve read!
In a lot of ways I agree, the concept of collective societal aspiration and a duty to an abstract sense of morality rather than to blind and selfish wealth maximisation does (at least subjectively) seem to have declined sharply.
But I see plenty of worse examples historically, plenty of situations where that abstract morality was either rewritten to justify the exact same kind of wealth maximisation (just within a strict hierarchy rather than the more freelance shittiness we see now), or it was used directly as a cause célèbre for atrocities.
I also don’t see what your goal for an outcome is. I’m fascinated by religion, more so in my experience than a lot of people for whom it’s a daily or weekly observance, but I don’t believe any of it and I’d be lying to you and myself if I claimed to. Morality is of deep importance to me, but religion is largely orthogonal to that from what I see in myself and others.
Lastly, I’d be fascinated to know your thoughts on the negative correlation between religiosity and quality of life at a nation state scale. And I’m not talking about GDP or other materialist bullshit, I’m talking societal trust, equality, happiness. I’m talking Denmark or Iceland or New Zealand vs any highly religious country you’d care to mention.
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Comment on Where do we go from here? (Regarding AI) in ~tech
Greg Link ParentAnd it’s the perfect analogy, whether either of you meant it to be or not! A movement triggered by the economic and political concerns you rightly point out, but one that responded by direct...And it’s the perfect analogy, whether either of you meant it to be or not! A movement triggered by the economic and political concerns you rightly point out, but one that responded by direct attack on the automation technology itself.
Then, as now, nuance is hard, and introspective nuance that hits one’s sense of self and sense of purpose is really really hard. I imagine some Luddites saw attacks on equipment as a means of direct action towards political and economic change and equitable distribution of the gains of automation. I also imagine a hell of a lot of them were justifiably scared and unbalanced by a change that shook their economic and social status, and absolutely wanted to hit pause and halt the technological change itself.
I see a lot of breathless corporate bullshit pushing AI in unjustifiable ways, and I see a lot of genuinely transformative power in the technology. I see a lot of very reasonable anti-AI backlash because of that corporate behaviour, and I see a fair amount of unexamined blind anger against the technology itself too.
90% of the time, when someone frames an issue as “taking jobs”, they’re contributing to the anti-technology rather than anti-corporate argument whether they intend to or not. The implication of “taking jobs” is that the jobs should remain, despite a machine being able to do them instead. Sometimes there’s a quality of work argument attached, which is where things get more nuanced again, but often it’s a genuine belief that jobs are a necessity and that blocking technological progress is preferable to eliminating them.
Wealth redistribution and work reform are legitimate anti-corporate arguments around properly allocating the gains of automation for the good of society as a whole, but both require an uncomfortable conversation about (a) the fact they probably won’t happen in a serious way without the kind of societal change that’s historically brought a whole lot of bloodshed as well, (b) they require a widespread severing of the “paid employment -> sense of self worth” link that many people hold dear and that needs to happen before a critical mass of people are willing to seriously push for reform (in a hopefully-nonviolent-but-let’s-be-realistic-about-history way).
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Comment on Router recommendations? in ~comp
Greg Link ParentMy view might be skewed from only using their crazy >100GbE stuff, but is Microtik the way to go for someone who considers themselves not that techie? I didn’t think they had a particularly strong...My view might be skewed from only using their crazy >100GbE stuff, but is Microtik the way to go for someone who considers themselves not that techie? I didn’t think they had a particularly strong UX focus even on the more consumer grade stuff.
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Comment on Router recommendations? in ~comp
Greg Link ParentFor what it’s worth the UCG series (their consumer/small office routers), and I think the UDM series as well (same market segment, WiFi integrated rather than separate, although I strongly prefer...Unless they've changed significantly, Ubiquiti makes unfortunate choices with their management software being arranged around needing a constant, and often very heavy, management service, arguably to sell cloud services and extra devices
For what it’s worth the UCG series (their consumer/small office routers), and I think the UDM series as well (same market segment, WiFi integrated rather than separate, although I strongly prefer separate), have pretty solid CPUs for the price and run the controller software locally nowadays.
I get the impression they’re moving away from the separate controller (either software or hardware) that used to be their default and just beefing up the gateway devices to be the controller as a way to either make for a cleaner user experience, or increase vendor lock in, depending on your viewpoint.
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Comment on An AI researcher writes about his crisis of faith in ~tech
Greg Link ParentReally? Maybe it’s my bubble, but I’ve heard a ton of developers in the field discussing the various paths we see future dev work taking, with theories anywhere from “there will be even more human...Really? Maybe it’s my bubble, but I’ve heard a ton of developers in the field discussing the various paths we see future dev work taking, with theories anywhere from “there will be even more human dev work a couple of years when slop code works its way into critical systems and starts imploding”, through “we need architects, but half the jobs are going to be gone soon and nobody’s training juniors anymore”, and right up to “fuck it, I’m off to become an HVAC tech”.
And to put my cards on the table here: I want my job automated away, assuming a machine can do it well enough. We don’t need jobs, we need purpose and we need the means of acquiring food and shelter. The former I can find for myself, and if it really comes to it I’d rather fight tooth and nail for equitable distribution of the latter than waste my life emulating something a computer can (in this hypothetical) do just as well because I’m forced to facilitate some cargo cult justification of wealth distribution.
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Comment on Chinese humanoid robots smash human records in 100m sprint and high jump at Beijing robot games in ~tech
Greg Link ParentI think you’re right about any research aiming for absolute 1:1 human parity, but I do think there will be a genuine market for broadly human shaped and sized robots, with bipedal motion to...I think you’re right about any research aiming for absolute 1:1 human parity, but I do think there will be a genuine market for broadly human shaped and sized robots, with bipedal motion to traverse any human-navigable terrain, a 1m-ish reach on each of two actuators, a roughly similar range of gross motions, a main camera around 170cm from the ground with the associated field of view, etc etc
For what it’s worth I wasn’t even entertaining home use as a possibility, and I was thinking ballpark $25-50k cost. That’s where companies are going to start having them operate existing machines because it’s not even worth the downtime to retrofit those machines with automated controls, let alone the engineering time to design the custom modifications they’d need. Same goes for working in bits of the power plant crawlspace that were sized and shaped with very specific constraints in mind, or carrying equipment across the walkways with all the steps that bounce a little too much and have very specific weight tolerances, or reaching the lever while standing on the foot pedal, or whatever.
Could a skilled engineer design something custom for each of those jobs? Absolutely! Will they even get to the end of the meeting about timelines before the director has seen that engineer time cost > robot cost and bought one of these instead? I doubt it. And that goes triple once companies have a few around from previous projects and know they can repurpose them for new projects without buying again or redesigning.
Task specific robots make sense for home users who need mass produced minimum cost, and for new commercial projects where they can build for automated efficiency from the start. General purpose ones that more or less fit the human mould make sense where you want to automate, but retrofitting your existing warehouse, or fleet of excavators, or printing press, or whatever would cost mid six figures or more.
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Comment on Chinese humanoid robots smash human records in 100m sprint and high jump at Beijing robot games in ~tech
Greg Link ParentThe use case as I understand it is pretty much “drop into the billions of situations that are already designed around humans doing the thing, and have the robot do the thing without needing to...The use case as I understand it is pretty much “drop into the billions of situations that are already designed around humans doing the thing, and have the robot do the thing without needing to retrofit the whole environment for them”. That and it’s goddamn cool, of course.
So as with a lot of tech recently: a kind of amazing leap that would’ve been sci-fi not so long ago, and one that takes the complexity of the human environment as it is (physical now, as well as linguistic and visual over the last few years) rather than fighting a losing battle to impose computational order on chaotic reality. But all the wonder is going to be sucked out of it because we all know it’ll just be used to siphon yet more money up towards like six dudes, despite its huge potential to do actual good otherwise.
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Comment on We economists have done the maths: ‘growth’ is a doomed strategy – there is a better way in ~finance
Greg Link ParentMy bet would be on some kind of market-modulated socialism; I’ve done enough computational modelling of complex shit that I don’t trust myself of anyone else to get it right when it depends...My bet would be on some kind of market-modulated socialism; I’ve done enough computational modelling of complex shit that I don’t trust myself of anyone else to get it right when it depends heavily on predicting human irrationality, but I do trust the ability of large groups of irrational humans to follow incentives. Just need to change the ownership system to align those incentives a bit better rather than trying to fight entropy and control the downstream allocation system.
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Comment on Virgin Galactic wants your help naming its new Delta class spaceship in ~space
Greg Link ParentFrom a company where the CEO’s turned up in drag for more than one major event, built a very silly looking statue of Godzilla with his hairstyle, and flown a blimp with “BA can’t get it up” on the...From a company where the CEO’s turned up in drag for more than one major event, built a very silly looking statue of Godzilla with his hairstyle, and flown a blimp with “BA can’t get it up” on the side when they were having technical problems with the London Eye, I was genuinely expecting Spacey McSpaceface to be an approved option.
[Edit] Or an option to just call it Steve. That feels oddly appropriate too, cheers @JXM.
I suppose either of those are a bit too dry British humour for the specific brand of breathless Bay Area investors they’ll be courting to go up against SpaceX, though…
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Comment on AI data center developers begin suing local jurisdictions behind bans and moratoriums — claims range from officials exceeding authority to violations of due process and equal protection laws in ~tech
Greg Link ParentThat feels like it’d be a result of a poorly written law if that were the case being brought, though. “We ban datacenters” is dumb (as legal drafting, anyway; it’s good PR), and would probably...That feels like it’d be a result of a poorly written law if that were the case being brought, though. “We ban datacenters” is dumb (as legal drafting, anyway; it’s good PR), and would probably fail to do the practical job the community actually wants here even if it did stand up to legal scrutiny. Tightening noise and vibration requirements, power draw limitations, water requirements, etc is the way to do it; it stops someone from filling the space with a non-datacenter business that turns out to be just as bad, and if someone does manage to build a datacenter that complies then problem solved.
For clarity, I haven’t actually checked the legal wording - not sure if it was bad or if the plaintiffs are just chancing it - but it seems like there is a sensible way to write that law.
This is one of those interesting nuances in the “AI” conversation: that’s true of the commercially provided models as configured, not necessarily of the technology itself. RLHF does naturally bias towards certain styles of response in a lot of cases, but even that can be overridden if there’s appetite to do so.
It’s another analogy to the internet itself: the capabilities that actually come from a planet-wide network of billions of interconnected devices are incredible, you can see the depth if you start considering all the ways society would collapse if “get information from A to B quickly without caring where A or B are” went away, but the dominant experience for most people is Reddit, Meta, Amazon, Google, TokTok, and maybe one or two major media conglomerates.
The internet (comms layer) and “the internet” (5-10 major web platforms) are both globally important in different ways, as is the fact that a handful of companies do control so much of it is another important factor in and of itself.
Same goes for AI (imprecise label for a rapidly advancing field of machine learning, usually covering LLMs and often covering other deep neural net developments too) and “AI” (3-4 major LLM providers). The massive providers are shaping the conversation and the economy and it’d be absurd to ignore that, but the tech itself has, is, and will be transformative (heh) independently of them too.