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Showing posts from November, 2023

Hey AI, Predict the Future Please

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This isn't hype. This is happening, and it's happening faster than our brains can imagine.  Technology doesn't remove jobs, it reduces cost. And this time, with powerful AI, the reduction in cost is every field that isn't  directly  involved with the physical world. Animals, as far as we know, can't think in time. The zebra enjoys itself when eating, and knows it must run when being eaten. But poor man, man thinks in time. He fears an unlikely tomorrow like it is currently taking place. He is able to construct a world inside his head, one that will never occur in reality. ( Cue Alan Watts, the Ocean ). The animal can foresee a single step into the future - if I run, I'm not eaten. If I eat, I'm not hungry now. The human brain can see a few more steps into the future - if I buy groceries today, and if I go to the party on Saturday, I won't have to go buy them on Saturday, so it makes sense for me to go today. If my airplane gets delayed and if it's pa

You're an LLM and so am I

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The more I use LLMs, the more I think they're just like us. We try to differentiate them from us, but I find far more similarities than differences.  "AI is merely fancy autocomplete" Oh yeah? As a human, are you any different? When you start a sentence, before you can complete the sentence, can you tell me what the last word would be? Nope! Do try though, it's a fun experiment. "AI is terrible at Math" Yeah. And so are most humans. Just in the same way I can't ask you what 56 x 97 is and expect an answer once you've learnt how to speak a language. As a human, what do you do to learn Math? You first learn the fundamentals. You learn through repetition the same concepts over and over because they're hard. You don't talk  math, you try to feed into your brain  how math works. For mental arithmetic, you practice over and over. You memorize the tables by heart. You have a separate training to get that autocomplete right. "AI is confidently w