jaqalopes

It's a big world, not everyone needs to be a farmer/doctor/psychologist so some people who have other skills do other things. Sometimes those other things help. A lot of time they don't. For better or worse we live in a society.

That struck me too, I'm doing it around once a week!

Tweet showing what the actual monotile looks like: https://twitter.com/cs_kaplan/status/1637996332475359232?s=2...

Everyone works in their own unique way! I think a big part of the promise of this sort of AI is that it can tailor itself to what you need :)

All week I've seen basically two dominant takes about how AI is going to impact creative work in the future (three if you count "generative AI is a fad with no value," which I do not): (1) It's going to take people's jobs (rip); or (2) It's going to help people do their jobs better.

I'm a writer and have been thinking a lot about use case (2)—since I'm not emotionally ready for my job to be taken by AI, I'm trying to figure out how to use AI to do it better. So far, I've been exclusively considering the use of AI in the sense of the "photographers using photoshop" analogy. That is, using GPT-4 to quickly draft or edit things based on prompts, while I, the human, am still "doing the work" creatively speaking. Obviously this is feasible today and going to become normalized soon, to some extent.

However, this article makes an interesting case for (2) in a way I hadn't considered before: GPT-4 opens up entirely new ways for humans to work, period. ChatGPT already improves on Google for high-level research—ask it for a summary of some well-established topic or field and chances are you'll get a coherent and set of pretty-accurate facts cobbled together from its training data (much of the Web, Wikipedia, scientific papers). But when tools become available that let ChatGPT provide this kind of summary from my own works, notes, and prior research? That is going to totally change the game.

In the last couple years I've already seen easily a 2-3x boost in my writing productivity thanks to Obsidian, a research tool that—at least the way I use it—is entirely "manual" (i.e. not automated or "smart"). If I could get the benefits of Obsidian for making connections between information and ideas, powered by an intelligent assistant that "knows" how I think and what I think about... it's cliché to say the possibilities are endless, but that's really what I'm looking at here.

Anyway, I want to inject some optimism into this hot topic. It may end up that in 10 years we're all unemployed. But I still need to do my job today. I see a lot of reasons to be excited, rather than defeatist, for the applications and value of GPT-4 in this regard.

This feels like a good point. I am curious how the "feeding" would occur here. If there's an API to do this sort of thing right now I'm not aware of it. But I definitely believe that it's coming!

Close. Similar milieu, different American coast.

  Having a high say-do ratio has always been important to me

I've never encountered this idea, but as soon I read it I suddenly see it everywhere. My roommate who tells me he'll clean the kitchen then doesn't; my cousin who says he'll come to dinner then cancels. My best friend who says she'll start going to the gym and never does. My world is awash in people who say the most wonderful things and then don't do any of them; it feels like a distinctly modern phenomenon. I find it hard not to resent people for this, but I try, because not everything is equally important, and not everyone can be as determined as we might like. As this article illustrates, we are ultimately only in control of our own actions.

The "writers" who can benefit from AI are not artists. They might be bloggers or journalists or researchers. But there is no way that a generative AI can produce, say, your memoir for you. How could it? You have to say what happened. Your life experience can't be generated. Ditto for any sort of novel above the level of the most basic imitative genre stuff. I'm certain AI could spit out a perfectly passable airport paperback romance, for instance—but how could it possibly write Infinite Jest?

I think it’s truly awesome that we have a Planetary Defense Coordination Office.

From the blog post: "A minority of the problems in the exams were seen by the model during training, but we believe the results to be representative—see our technical report for details." They have a chart where they broke out results for the model with versus without "vision" i.e. having trained on the exam questions before.

I think if you've never left the USA you would obviously think that there was some sort of conspiracy to install fake elevator door close buttons, since there is absolutely no feedback in the system that would help an uninformed layperson realize that the door IS closing but on a several second delay. When I lived in China, EVERY elevator door close button worked, and worked instantly. This led to exactly the behavior you would expect, of selfish people getting in elevators and immediately shutting them to hurry on towards their destination. This is not possible in America, where the ADA requires the 3-second minimum delay explained in this article so that e.g. people in wheelchairs have time to get into the lift. So it's not the case that our American elevator door close buttons are placebos, but they ARE doing a terrible job of informing users what they are doing and why.

It is for Walmarts only per the info page. There must be a way to scrape that from their online grocery shopping website even without an api.

And that film is an adaptation of the play by Shakespeare: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Caesar_(play)?wprov=sft...

It is definitely achievable but the course of action would be different for you depending who you are. An unreliable sex fiend needs to make different changes than an anxious shy person. Communication is important for everyone though, and a desire to fearlessly ask for (crucially, not force) the things you want. Knowing what you want requires self knowledge. Attaining that could take years. Remember that the easiest person to fool is yourself. Disclaimer this all comes from an American culture context in which people are hypothetically equal and individuals are usually expected to seek out a romantic match as opposed to, say,a family-approved one. Wish I could help more, best of luck

Western mass here, still can't understand the appeal of "classic" tenpin bowling. I feel like I'm a reasonably strong guy and throwing the giant ball for a night kills my arm every time, never mind that it's impossible to actually aim it. Candlepin is so much more accessible and fun, especially leaving the downed pins on the lane instead of clearing them each throw. I'm lucky to have a popular and high quality candlepin alley down the road. Wishing the best for the woman in this article to keep her place running.

I grew up around woods with a father who's super sensitive to PI. I thought he taught me how to identify it. Turns out I didn't learn very well—this quiz was very humbling.

I am so so so glad to see this article because I feel like I'm a crazy person for seeing this everywhere in my life and not hearing anyone else complain about it. I feel like I'm constantly cleaning up the mistakes of huge corporations that I have no way to fight back against. Perfect example, a few months ago Xfinity "accidentally" overcharged me by ~$10 on a monthly bill. Of course now the ball is in my court--either I let it slide and fork over the cost of a breakfast out to their shareholders for no extra value, or I give up some of my valuable time to call them and go through the hell of phone customer service, a 10-15 minute commitment minimum. In the end I got the charge reversed, cold comfort, I was out a quarter hour and my heart rate had gone up. Of course that brings my productivity down. But hey, at least it's good for shareholders, right?

I don't know what we can even do about this. Where's the government? They don't have my back. "Competition" is a non-solution. I have one other cable provider in my area and they have all the same anti-customer incentives as Xfinity. It's legimately criminal, though obviously not illegal, since we know who pays the folks who write the laws...

This is one where I KNOW I do it wrong. The dentist prescribed me a hardcore sensitivity toothpaste for an issue, but emphasized that it will only work if I don't rinse after brushing. But... I just can't not rinse after 30 years of muscle memory. I generally remember this right as I'm rinsing. The sensitivity toothpaste has not worked, of course.

Perhaps you kid, but this would be an astounding achievement and I struggle to see the actual downsides other than perhaps prohibitive cost.

Unionization is the correct response here. The incentives of company leaders simply don't account for workers' desire to not lose their jobs. The only way to change this is for workers to change said incentives--by organizing. Of course, easy for me to say as a freelancer. I'm definitely not trying to say unionizing tech would be easy. But it certainly is simple, at least conceptually.

A lot of dunking going on in here, and fairly so, if nothing else because there is no good business model for an app like this unless they build it into dating apps (who's going to manually enter data from Tinder into this thing?).

But the dunking seems to overlook the genuine problems with modern dating that didn't exist in the past. I find that it's very easy to mindlessly swipe a thousand people on an app and suddenly end up with more matches than I have the energy and attention span to process. If there was an easy way to turn this "inbox" (which is really just one step above my Gmail spam folder) into an actionable database, that could have real value in a world where dating happens stochastically through apps.

Separately, it isn't weird at all to keep some sort of track of your dating life. Past generations had the "little black book," basically a romantic rolodex. I've never used one but who's to say I couldn't benefit from a digital version that lives in my phone?

Most of all, a commenter here that is since deleted said something I think is apt: "I think the number one problem with online dating is not managing all the people. It's forcing yourself to keep the number of active pursuits low enough to manage. If you don't kind of commit to seeing if someone is going to pan out, then they won't." This is of course the actual solution to the problem I experience with modern dating. The only downside is that, unlike downloading an app, it requires that I change how I think and behave.

Random Ls throughout and Bs at the end of my messages in the last year or two have been driving me insane! Glad to know I'm not the only one.

The article doesn’t say new species of what, so I looked it up. It’s a kind of plant: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristolochiaceae

Meta: I find it weird how many HN posts have no connection to either hacking or news, and yet are so tonally perfect for the audience here, and for me personally. I’m thinking specifically of obscure/weird Wikipedia pages and pop history/science articles. This is the stuff that keeps me coming back. Great share.

For those viewing the comments before the article, be advised that it is not the case—as my not-yet-awake brain first thought on parsing this headline—that the software system belonging to the Guinness World Records is the oldest in continuous use.

Mine all died or got lost, can I have some of yours since you clearly don’t need them?

I appreciate this extra insight on the PhD situation and generally agree with your points. I don’t necessarily agree that we (Americans) should worry about those figures. If you believe talent is more or less equally distributed worldwide, and that grad school attendance is at least partly meritocratic, it should be the case that most grad students in all fields come from elsewhere, since most humans live outside the USA.

I do agree strongly that we need opportunities for home grown talent. On the other hand, just because an American is born in the capital of the world economy should not place upon them the burden of rising to become one of its leaders. Not everyone is cut out for that, and that’s okay. As for depending on immigration, almost no American today is descended from the “original” Americans (the white ones that is), and we seem to be doing okay. Obviously past performance doesn’t guaranteed future returns, but I find reason for hope in that fact.

It may surprise you to learn that I know the technical meaning of “begging the question” and have used it correctly. That is, the article argues (roughly) “ADHD is caused by internet,” which begs the question: why doesn’t everyone with internet have ADHD?

Begging the question, as the Wikipedia article you link explains, is a logical fallacy akin to circular reasoning: x is some way because it is x. My usage of the term was calling out this weakness in the article. I am not completely sure what the intent of your comment is and suspect you might be leaning on your awareness of this lesser-known fact as a sort of thought-terminating cliche.

This data is certainly stark, but I don’t see how it follows from test scores in Michigan that China is going to do something or other regarding STEM. I guess the core assumption here is that Asian students in America are a proxy for Chinese students in China? As someone who works exclusively with Chinese high schoolers as a college application coach, I find this hard to believe. The thing that Asians very definitely do differently than other groups is parenting. Chinese parents in particular take their kids’ phones away at night. They helicopter over their homework until it’s done. Dating, parties, and many enrichment activities that are part of a “normal” high school experience are usually (not always—nothing is absolute!) off the table. This isn’t genetic, it’s cultural. And it becomes especially obvious once you separate out recent Asian immigrants from longer-term Asian Americans.

To zoom out a bit, I don’t think this post even asks the right question. Why does quantity of STEM major matter, as opposed to quality? The USA is home to the vast majority of leading universities, and no amount of PISA score dominance by Chinese children can change that. If anything, China should be worried about the continuous brain drain of their best, brightest, and most of all wealthiest to Canada and the USA. Not to take anything away from the hard work and ambition of those Chinese people who wish to stay in China, but I just don’t agree that this difference in test scores taken by public high school students is any sort of leading indicator of shifting geopolitical trends.