skybrian's recent activity

  1. Comment on Idea having is not art in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link
    Looks like Neal Stephenson has a substack. From the blog post: Found via Tyler Cowen's interview with Stephenson.

    Looks like Neal Stephenson has a substack. From the blog post:

    That intermediate zone, where all of the decisions get made, is poorly understood by non-writers. Many published novelists, including myself, have stories about being approached by someone who “has an idea for a book” and who proposes that the writer should actually do all of the writing and then split the proceeds with the idea haver.

    Moviemakers and architects, who understand the grammar of their artforms as well as I do that of the English language, must get approached by idea havers all the time. Sometimes they even get sued by idea havers who think, or claim to think, that their idea was stolen.

    What idea havers don’t understand is that it’s in the making of all of the microdecisions that the actual work of creation takes place, and that without it the idea might as well not exist. Someone could approach Leonardo da Vinci and say “I have an idea for a picture of a woman sitting in a chair smiling enigmatically” but it would be worthless compared to the finished work, which is realized in the form of countless individual brushstrokes, each reflecting a microdecision on the part of the painter.

    Found via Tyler Cowen's interview with Stephenson.

    7 votes

  3. Comment on OpenAI, Google and Anthropic are struggling to build more advanced AI in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    I don't think the article implies any fundamental limit. It's a report that empirically, brute-force scaling seems to be getting harder for multiple companies, which is worth noticing.

    I don't think the article implies any fundamental limit. It's a report that empirically, brute-force scaling seems to be getting harder for multiple companies, which is worth noticing.

    2 votes

  4. Comment on OpenAI, Google and Anthropic are struggling to build more advanced AI in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    I think it's only partially boosters. It's also critics who talk about what they fear. Sometimes it seems like the critics are boosting the "AI will take our jobs" meme more than the boosters....

    I think it's only partially boosters. It's also critics who talk about what they fear. Sometimes it seems like the critics are boosting the "AI will take our jobs" meme more than the boosters.

    Hype is kind of like that - everyone makes a lot of noise, boosters, skeptics, and everyone else who wants to talk about it.

  5. Comment on Selfishness in AI in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    I still think that's too pessimistic. I use LLM's every day, in the form of autocomplete in my text editor. It's valuable. "Chat" is just a particular kind of UI, and maybe not the best one.

    I still think that's too pessimistic. I use LLM's every day, in the form of autocomplete in my text editor. It's valuable. "Chat" is just a particular kind of UI, and maybe not the best one.

  6. Comment on OpenAI, Google and Anthropic are struggling to build more advanced AI in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    I think they've reached limits for a particular approach where you throw more hardware at the problem, but it's still quite hard to tell what machine learning researchers will come up next, or how...

    I think they've reached limits for a particular approach where you throw more hardware at the problem, but it's still quite hard to tell what machine learning researchers will come up next, or how long it will take to hit on something better.

    Moore's law aside, technological innovation usually doesn't happen on a schedule.

    2 votes

  7. Comment on OpenAI, Google and Anthropic are struggling to build more advanced AI in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link
    From the article (archive): … … …

    From the article (archive):

    [OpenAI’s] model, known internally as Orion, did not hit the company’s desired performance, according to two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss company matters. As of late summer, for example, Orion fell short when trying to answer coding questions that it hadn’t been trained on, the people said. Overall, Orion is so far not considered to be as big a step up from OpenAI’s existing models as GPT-4 was from GPT-3.5, the system that originally powered the company’s flagship chatbot, the people said.

    …

    At Alphabet Inc.’s Google, an upcoming iteration of its Gemini software is not living up to internal expectations, according to three people with knowledge of the matter. Anthropic, meanwhile, has seen the timetable slip for the release of its long-awaited Claude model called 3.5 Opus.

    …

    Similar to its competitors, Anthropic has been facing challenges behind the scenes to develop 3.5 Opus, according to two people familiar with the matter. After training it, Anthropic found 3.5 Opus performed better on evaluations than the older version but not by as much as it should, given the size of the model and how costly it was to build and run, one of the people said.

    …

    Tech companies are also beginning to wrestle with whether to keep offering their older AI models, perhaps with some additional improvements, or to shoulder the costs of supporting hugely expensive new versions that may not perform much better.

    5 votes

  9. Comment on Selfishness in AI in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    I don’t think chat-based UI’s as currently implemented are a good experience either. But in the long run, I suspect we will see better UI eventually. Consider how much the web improved customer...

    I don’t think chat-based UI’s as currently implemented are a good experience either. But in the long run, I suspect we will see better UI eventually.

    Consider how much the web improved customer service with no AI at all, just forms. Sure, some online forms are better than others. But getting forms online, getting to the point where we can assume that there is a website for routine transactions, instead of always having to call or put forms in the mail, was a major advance.

    We’re at the point where this is mostly taken for granted, where there are laws saying you have to be able to cancel your subscription online because we know that’s the more convenient way to do it.

    But it takes surprisingly long for good UI to win out, and sometimes it takes new companies to show how to do it right. We’re still in the horseless carriage stage as far as AI-driven UI is concerned, where there are a lot of bad experiments by companies rushing to use AI somehow.

    Other examples: the first search engines were terrible. The first web-based maps were terrible.

    2 votes

  10. Comment on Google is testing the ‘impact’ of removing EU news from search results in ~tech

    skybrian
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    While it’s true that Google is often on the side of copyright infringement (YouTube was built on it), this isn’t true for news. Google hasn’t summarized news articles for many years. They post...

    While it’s true that Google is often on the side of copyright infringement (YouTube was built on it), this isn’t true for news. Google hasn’t summarized news articles for many years. They post headlines, links, and pictures.

    And isn’t linking to news articles what we do on Tildes? The web wouldn’t be what it is without links being free.

    News organizations, desperate for more money, want to be paid when Google links to them, because Google has money. It’s understandable, but it’s bad precedent and we shouldn’t be rooting for what are essentially link taxes with extra steps.

    4 votes

  11. Comment on Selfishness in AI in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    Do you know anyone who has worked in a call center? Many people don’t last long at jobs like that. Maybe it would be for the best if there were fewer jobs like those.

    Do you know anyone who has worked in a call center? Many people don’t last long at jobs like that. Maybe it would be for the best if there were fewer jobs like those.

    5 votes

  12. Comment on A new rallying cry for the irony-poisoned right. It took less than twenty-four hours after Trump’s re-election for young men to take up a slogan that could define the coming era of gendered regression in ~society

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    Thanks for the link! I appreciate reading a more sober political analysis than we usually see around here.

    Thanks for the link! I appreciate reading a more sober political analysis than we usually see around here.

    4 votes

  13. Comment on Tracking who US President Donald Trump has named to serve in his cabinet and administration in ~society

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    There are people stating their opinions bluntly all the time, in forums great and small, claiming all sorts of things to be facts. I find it tedious, unpersuasive, and don’t see it as something to...

    There are people stating their opinions bluntly all the time, in forums great and small, claiming all sorts of things to be facts. I find it tedious, unpersuasive, and don’t see it as something to encourage. More “dumb legalese” from careful journalists, please - or better yet, more reporting on what evidence there is.

    11 votes

  14. Comment on New York Governor Kathy Hochul to relaunch congestion pricing with $9 base toll, sources say in ~transport

    skybrian
    Link
    From the article: …

    From the article:

    Gov. Kathy Hochul plans to relaunch the MTA’s congestion pricing program with a $9 base toll for passenger cars — marking a 40% reduction from the price previously approved by the MTA — according to four sources briefed on the governor’s plan.

    The sources, who were not authorized to speak on the matter on Wednesday, said Hochul plans to eventually increase the base toll. Hochul's office confirmed she will make an announcement regarding mass transit funding on Thursday.

    …

    In pausing the program, Hochul claimed the tolls would be too costly for drivers who were already wrestling with inflation. Two sources said the governor was asked by congressional Democratic leaders to hold off on launching the tolls until after the election in hopes of winning competitive House races in the city’s suburbs.

    President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to kill congestion pricing once he takes office, but transit advocates say Trump will have a harder time dismantling the tolls if they launch by the time he takes office. Local Republicans have vowed to challenge the program.

    4 votes

  16. Comment on Who's watching crypto at the moment? in ~finance

    skybrian
    Link
    I think it's like meme stocks; you can assume it will go up and down based on people's whims. Is that a fun game for you? I dislike playing games that will complicate my taxes.

    I think it's like meme stocks; you can assume it will go up and down based on people's whims. Is that a fun game for you?

    I dislike playing games that will complicate my taxes.

    38 votes

  17. Comment on John Thune elected as US Senate Republican leader to succeed Mitch McConnell in ~society

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    I agree! I would create that topic, except that I wouldn't want to read it much.

    I agree! I would create that topic, except that I wouldn't want to read it much.

    1 vote

  18. Comment on Re-evaluating the impact of unconditional cash transfers in ~finance

    skybrian
    Link
    From the blog post: ... ... ...

    From the blog post:

    [....[ we now estimate that GiveDirectly’s flagship cash program is 3 to 4 times more cost-effective than we’d previously estimated.

    It is important to note two things: (1) this won’t alter our Top Charities list or our grantmaking—we believe that the programs we currently direct funding to are at least twice as cost-effective as this new estimate, so we don’t expect to support GiveDirectly’s flagship program in the near term; and (2) this update is the result of re-evaluating the evidence underpinning GiveDirectly’s program, which we hadn’t formally done since 2019—the structure of GiveDirectly’s program has not changed (though they are now carrying it out in more locations since our last evaluation).

    ...

    Our best guess is that there are positive consumption spillovers from the GiveDirectly program—as nearby non-recipients benefit from the uptick in local economic activity—and that these positive consumption spillovers are about 60% to 70% as large as the direct consumption benefits to recipients.

    This update is partly informed by Egger et al. 2022, a new paper that was published since we last evaluated the GiveDirectly program. The study on which the paper is based distributed cash to 10,500 households in Western Kenya between 2014 and 2017. Egger et al. found that every $1 injected into these communities generated $2.50 in economic activity, and that around 70% of this economic activity stemmed from positive consumption spillovers to non-recipients. It also found minimal (0.1%) price inflation.

    ...

    The study was conducted in an unusually dense and well-connected setting, and we’d expect offsetting effects like inflation to be more likely in more remote contexts. There’s suggestive evidence of this from two evaluations of non-GiveDirectly cash transfer programs in Mexico and the Philippines, which found more concentrated inflation in more remote markets.

    ...

    Egger et al. are continuing their research, and we anticipate a follow-up in the next few years about the persistence of the transfer effects in years five to nine; they are also studying the effect of transfers in Malawi, where they will explore whether the non-inflationary effects generalize to another setting. GiveWell will be keeping a close eye on these developments, and (as always) will update our estimates in light of new information.

    5 votes

  20. Comment on Lost in the future in ~society

    skybrian
    Link
    This article makes some rather scattershot criticisms of the media and it all seems pretty arguable. For example, Musk gets lots of criticism. It seems weird to complain that he doesn't.

    This article makes some rather scattershot criticisms of the media and it all seems pretty arguable. For example, Musk gets lots of criticism. It seems weird to complain that he doesn't.