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adamsmith143

701 karma · joined February 10, 2022

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adamsmith143··on Discovery of spherules of likely extrasolar composition in the Pacific Ocean [pdf]
Are you also a professional Astronomer that can accurately vet his claims and research?
adamsmith143··on AI demand is already shrinking
My own observation while using the OpenAI API is that it is massively rate limited due to the enormous demand. So while the public hype may have lessened the actual demand for their core product is so large that its problematic for users.
adamsmith143··on Northvolt raises $1.2B convertible note from BlackRock
Generally have been satisfied with Anker, though that stuff is made in China the chargers and batteries have been good. Monoprice used to be good but I haven't used anything from them in a while
adamsmith143··on GPT-4 can't reason
You should probably think about why you think that making the model output reasoning steps which lead it to correctly answer questions it couldn't before is not somehow equivalent to reasoning.
adamsmith143··on GPT-4 can't reason
Yeah man they have teams on standby to adjust the model whenever a random unknown author posts something on obscure pre-print servers. Then they spend hundreds of thousands of compute $ to improve the model on that one metric the paper attacks.
adamsmith143··on GPT-4 can't reason
>You had time to respond though, what a silly (and elitist rebuttal).

What a dumb take. It probably takes seconds to write a simple comment and far longer to read a paper.

>You argue by authority that yes, it actually does reason, which is a far (far) bolder claim than the one OP is making.

He linked a paper you can read yourself. How is this arguing from authority?

adamsmith143··on GPT-4 can't reason
The probability that a Stochastic Parrot returns coherent reasoning seems vanishingly small.
adamsmith143··on GPT-4 can't reason
"Stochastic Parrot" is a really tired take and none of the major players, Ilya Sutskever, Andrej Karpathy, etc. believe that's all these models are doing.
adamsmith143··on How real is America’s chipmaking renaissance?
Quartz = SiO2 --> Silicon and Oxygen QED
adamsmith143··on Observation of zero resistance above 100 K in Pb₁₀₋ₓCuₓ(PO₄)₆O
With you there. A lot of Chinese labs are listed e.g. but my own experience trying to replicate materials science results from "credible" Chinese labs has led to a lot of disappointment.
adamsmith143··on Observation of zero resistance above 100 K in Pb₁₀₋ₓCuₓ(PO₄)₆O
The proposed mechanism for superconductivity in lk-99 is pretty different so that may be confounding your interpretation of those graphs.
adamsmith143··on Twitter’s Rebrand to X Could Be a Trademark Nightmare Thanks to Microsoft
Yeah so hard to make money during the Dotcom boom with all your dad's apartheid emerald mine money.

How does his boot taste?

adamsmith143··on Twitter’s Rebrand to X Could Be a Trademark Nightmare Thanks to Microsoft
What?? You mean Elon made another colossal mistake, bbbut hes such a business genius...
adamsmith143··on The economics of the Birkin bag (2016)
>Its interesting how many lower income people have iphones, Jordans, Teslas/Mustangs/Corvettes

Yeah all those food stampers buying Corvettes and Teslas is so annoying. Lolwut

adamsmith143··on AI researcher Geoffrey Hinton thinks AI has or will have emotions
This is of course false. We can't prove how any system is able to have emotions much less prove that a system can't
adamsmith143··on AI researcher Geoffrey Hinton thinks AI has or will have emotions
You jest but that is actually a subject of real research.
adamsmith143··on AI researcher Geoffrey Hinton thinks AI has or will have emotions
The same can be said about meat brains, they just execute natural programs. There's no reason in principle why a meat brain should be able to experience emotion and silicon brains cannot.
adamsmith143··on White House Secures Commitments from Leading AI Companies to Manage AI Risks
Ah yes all that research money will be used to buy mansions and ferarris. Do you have a clue how this stuff works in real life?

Also note that until maybe the last year not only was there not a great financial incentive to be a "doomer" but it would actively hurt your career if you were. Most of the main people in the scene have been sounding this alarm for years sometimes decades. It's also difficult to explain people like Geoff Hinton or Yoshua Bengio joining and leaving behind high profile and highly lucrative positions. Yann LeCun, a staunch anti-doomer is perhaps the perfect example who has actually DOES have enormous financial incentive to play down AI dangers.

adamsmith143··on White House Secures Commitments from Leading AI Companies to Manage AI Risks
So the fact that thousands of researchers with billions of dollars behind them to build this omnipotent being means nothing to you? Because they all certainly think it's achievable.
adamsmith143··on White House Secures Commitments from Leading AI Companies to Manage AI Risks
If you look at actual quotes from people like Sam Altman, Ilya Sutskever, Demis Hassabis, etc. the AI, that is to say really the AGI, that they want to build is a godlike super intelligent being. To many researchers in the field this is their end goal.
adamsmith143··on White House Secures Commitments from Leading AI Companies to Manage AI Risks
>I have been asked by many people to explain how AI could kill us all. How about some clarity for common people.

There are countless resources to find this stuff out. To be clear there may not be a level at which common people understand why e.g. Fission Chain Reactions are dangerous but they can grok why a giant bomb that spreads radiation is bad.

For Starters: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/uMQ3cqWDPHhjtiesc/agi-ruin-a...

>The public have all heard “AI is going to destroy humanity” but those statements have been short on specifics.

You can no more explain how Stockfish is going to beat you at chess then you can predict how an AGI would defeat humanity. Nevertheless the outcome is nearly certain.

adamsmith143··on FedNow Is Live
This feels like a boat that sailed long ago. I don't know anyone using cash for anything more than small incidental purchases, I'd say it's generally impossible to structure you life around using Cash at a large scale.
adamsmith143··on FedNow Is Live
> I’ve seen a lot of crazy conspiracy theories reveal themselves to be true in the past five years.

Such as what?

>Apply some critical thinking on this. Governments and corporate elites worldwide are salivating over the level of surveillance and control that a CBDC will enable.

How is this any different from the current system? Your cash is 99% digital anyway with basically every transaction completely monitor-able to the Feds under the right circumstances. Don't see how this situation would change much.

adamsmith143··on Stanford president resigns over manipulated research, will retract 3 papers
Just another result of the terrible Publish or Perish incentives in Academia.
adamsmith143··on Why project-based learning fails (2018)
I think one difference with Piano at least is feedback, practicing on your own is going to have limited value if you don't know what a Song "should" sound like, if you don't know what proper technique looks like, if you don't have taste for what a good player sounds like. You need a teacher for that.

At least in Software you can easily get feedback on your own, i.e. if your program fails to run you have received instant feedback that you can improve on.

adamsmith143··on fMRI-to-image with contrastive learning and diffusion priors
As I mentioned do any of those outweigh the possibility that some 3 letter agency might start mass scanning US Citizens for what amounts to thought crime? The very fundamental idea of privacy would cease to exist.
adamsmith143··on WHO aspartame brouhaha
Felt like the Cola flavor was the worst of them all, maybe I have a too strong bias that a Cola should mostly taste like Coke or something. Anyway, I've settled on sparkling waters like Bubly/Lacroix which hit the fizzy fruity drink thing well enough for me.
adamsmith143··on Why project-based learning fails (2018)
Doesn't this fly in the face of most advice on hacker type forums which is if you want to learn something go build something that uses it?

Also for reference my Co. paid for a training course from this guy on Hoare Logic and I found it to be a complete waste of time as a professional developer and not a grad student in theoretical CS.

adamsmith143··on fMRI-to-image with contrastive learning and diffusion priors
> I think you've hit upon some interesting examples. Maybe the way to look at this is cost vs "benefit" (in the broadest sense of the word).

This is obviously a better framework to be in.

"If I don't do it someone else will" is really fraught and that's why people reject it.

So one would really need to ask is there a net benefit to having a "mind reading" system out in the world. In fact I find it hard to think of positive use cases that aren't just dwarfed by the possibility of Orwellian/panopticon type hellscapes.

adamsmith143··on WHO aspartame brouhaha
Gotta disagree there, tried Zevia after hearing this kind of praise but I find it just as bad as typical sugar-free sodas. Ymmv.
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