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firejake308

362 karma · joined August 4, 2023

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firejake308··on Tim Cook is 'not 100 percent' sure Apple can stop AI hallucinations
I prefer "confabulation," which describes the analogous human behavior where you have no idea what the objective truth actually is, so you just make up something that sounds right
firejake308··on R or Python for Bioinformatics?
Be like me: learn Python, then ask ChatGPT to translate tour Python into R every time you have to use R for a project
firejake308··on Raspberry Pi AI Kit
For that, you'll probably want the model specifically designed for Generative AI, since it can handle 40 TOPS instead of just 13
firejake308··on Using Vectorize to build an unreasonably good search engine in 160 lines of code
Embeddings are generated by neural networks, so yes, I would consider them as AI
firejake308··on What We Learned from a Year of Building with LLMs
That's exactly what happened to me when I tried to get the open-source models to extract a CSV from textual data with a lot of yes/no fields; i.e., the model forgot the column order and started confusing the cell values. I found I had to use more powerful models like Mistral Large or ChatGPT. So I think that is a valid thing to worry about with smaller models, but maybe less of a concern with larger ones.
firejake308··on Introducing Copilot+ PCs
Their Recall feature reminds me of a startup called Rem that posted on here a few weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38787892
firejake308··on Multi AI agent systems using OpenAI's assistants API
True, this is how RAG works, but this is why I prefer to use open-source LLMs for RAG: because the token costs are less opaque and I can control how many chunks I pull fromthe database to manage my costs
firejake308··on Nearsightedness is at epidemic levels – and the problem begins in childhood
It's based on understanding the (theorized) disease process and trying to prevent it. If the problem is that you're looking at nearby stuff too much (e.g. phone screens held less than a foot away from the eyes), then that means your eye muscles are contracting too much. Atropine paralyzed the eye muscles and forces them to look further away because nearby stuff would be blurry.
firejake308··on Ex-Amazon exec claims she was asked to ignore copyright law in race to AI
Technically, copyright promotes creativity and patents promote technological progress. I think patents block progress more than they help it, especially with patent trolls and all, but copyright is probably a net positive for society.
firejake308··on How to stop losing 17,500 kidneys
> Until recently, the algorithm that was protecting all organ donor patient information in the country, so STI status, mental health, every physical history, was from 1996.

I take issue with the way this point is presented. I'm willing to believe that healthcare data wasn't encrypted with the SOTA methods and one that was regarded as "good enough" instead, but the age of the algorithm has nothing to do with it's security. After all, RSA encryption is from 1977.

firejake308··on Direct Nash Optimization: Teaching language models to self-improve
Still only 33% though. Which is impressive for a 7B model, but the student has not yet surpassed the teacher
firejake308··on YC's Winter 2024 Demo Day confirms that we are indeed in an AI bubble
This is getting down voted, but I hope people realize that what he's saying is that the Venn diagram of crypto grifters and AI grifters is, in fact, a circle
firejake308··on 'Lavender': The AI machine directing Israel's bombing in Gaza
Practical AI did a podcast episode about the dangers of using AI models as a shield to hide behind in justifying your decisions. The episode was titled "Suspicion Machines" and based on the libked article [1], and I think it's worth a read/listen.

[1]: https://www.wired.com/story/welfare-state-algorithms/

firejake308··on Land use policies make urban childcare expensive and rare
The problem is that it could work that way, or it might not. It depends on what tax rate the government sets, which could change depending on the time, the economy, and the current administration. If the government guesses the magic rate that discourages speculation without discouraging other relatively low-value businesses that society still needs to function, then yes, that's a great system. However, I'd the government overshoots or undershoots, then the land value tax doesn actually fix anything.
firejake308··on First-in-human implantation of bionic device to halt Crohn's disease (2023)
That makes more sense for IBS (irritable bowel syndrome) than it does for IBD (inflammatory bowel disease). IBS is caused by the gut-brain nervous system acting up due to stress, and vagal maneuvers forcibly turn off the fight-or-flight response from the nervous system. On the other hand, IBD is caused by your immune system attacking itself in the gut, and the T cells aren't really connected to the nervous system in any physiologically relevant way. So your friends were probably talking about IBS, not IBD.
firejake308··on First-in-human implantation of bionic device to halt Crohn's disease (2023)
Accidents & Emergency is what the Brits call the Emergency Room
firejake308··on Gumroad no longer allows most NSFW art, leaving its adult creators panicked
I don't see why not though? One of the benefits of a decentralized currency is that it is not subject to censorship by any central authority who disagrees with the content you are purchasing. That is exactly the problem these guys are having. Granted, they'll have to pay a lot of transaction fees/gas, and the volatility still makes it hard to fix prices, but for one-off transactions, you can ignore day-to-day volatility as long as the minute-to-minite volatility is bearable.
firejake308··on The Case Against Homework
As a medical student learning thousands of facts about the human body, I think I have a relevant perspective on how to learn effectively.

The meta in medical school is currently to focus on active learning via flashcards and practice questions, and to minimize the amount of time spent watching lectures passively. I think this is, generally speaking, a good idea. The things I learn from practice questions stick in my head a lot better than the things I heard once in a lecture. However, where practice questions and flashcards come short is in making cohesive mental frameworks that organize several related topics in your head. I still think that good old-fashioned lectures are the best way to present those frameworks to students, because they don't lend themselves well to the rapid-fire questions I use for active learning. However, for learning more discrete details, I think sitting through a lecture is a waste of time. So it's about knowing the tools in your toolbox and when to use which one, if you ask me.

TL;DR active learning generally good, but need some passive lectures to show the big picture

firejake308··on An ALS drug fails, again
Is it wrong for desperate patients to spend all their savings on ayahuasca-carrot juice? I don't think it's very ethical of the juice seller to exploit patients by selling them hope, but it doesn't feel like it should be illegal, since the patient does get some value out of the purchase, even if it's just (false) hope
firejake308··on Oracle Health chair says Cerner isn't competing with Epic
Why does it make me happy to see that as soon as Oracle bought Cerner, all of their users ditched them? So much so that they're pivoting to "cloud services" instead?
firejake308··on Covert Racism in LLMs
I think it's absurd to ask OpenAI to just "recall" their trillion-dollar cash cow, but there should absolutely be legislation limiting the use of LLM's (or really any black box AI) in the criminal justice system
firejake308··on Social Media First Amendment Cases
The problem is that it's an awful lot of work for everyone to decide for themselves, and I don't think the average user is going to care enough to build their own moderation algorithm. They'll just complain and move on
firejake308··on BYD launches $15,000 EV
The biggest factor is import tariffs
firejake308··on Everyone hates the electronic medical record
Cool, does your product fall into the category that they call "patient passports"?

Also, I looked into your website, and it looks like you have the https://www.fastenhealth.com, but you forgot to register the subdomain without the www. I remember having to configure that the last time I deployed on Netlify. Also, I was gonna try the Careers link on the website but it looks like it's a dummy link, which is fine if it's intentional.

firejake308··on Bard is now Gemini, and we’re rolling out a mobile app and Gemini Advanced
> The risks involving hallucinations are too damn high still, and may always be.

Yes, but I think in the limited realm of people who otherwise wouldn't get any advice at all, I think LLMs could play a useful role. American healthcare is so prohibitively expensive that many people with potential medical issues will avoid seeing a doctor until it is too late to do anything. Checking in with an LLM could help people at least identify red flags that really can't be ignored, and it would be more helpful than WebMD telling you that everything is cancer.

firejake308··on Bard is now Gemini, and we’re rolling out a mobile app and Gemini Advanced
For medical topics, I recommend Anthropic Claude. Don't want to jinx it, but so far, I've been able to get actually helpful medical information from Claude where ChatGPT just says "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that"
firejake308··on Everyone hates the electronic medical record
The problem is that in the US, many EMR's don't automatically connect to each other.

If you're going from a hospital owned by one chain (say, Hospital Corporation of America) to another hospital owned by the same corporation, then yes, it works like you said and doctors have access to your historical data. But God forbid that you should ever end up at a hospital owned by a different corporation, because then you have to call the Medical Records department to release the data, which often takes a couple business days to go through. The system doesn't work if it isn't open, and unfortunately, our patient privacy law (HIPAA) is often used by corporations as an excuse to silo their data away and prevent others from accessing it.

firejake308··on Vape-o-nomics: Why Everything is Addictive Now [video]
Which is ironic since they're railing against SaaS and the subscription model
firejake308··on Brave Leo now uses Mixtral 8x7B as default
I personally like Anyscale Endpoints
firejake308··on An ideological divide is emerging between young men and women around the world
https://nitter.rawbit.ninja/jburnmurdoch/status/175084918983...

Thread is visible via Nitter, although the graph is missing from the first post

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