patientplatypus

I'd like to use this transformer model in rust (because it's on the backend, because I can use data munging and it will be faster, and for other reasons). It looks like a good model! But, it doesn't compile on Apple Silicon for wierd linking issues that aren't apparent - https://github.com/guillaume-be/rust-bert/issues/338. I've spent a large part of today and yesterday attempting to find out why. The only other library that I've found for doing this kind of thing programmatically (particularly sentiment analysis) is this (https://github.com/JohnSnowLabs/spark-nlp). Some of the models look a little older, which is OK, but it does mean that I'd have to do this in another language.

Does anyone know of any sentiment analysis software that can be tuned (other than VADER - I'm looking for more along the lines of a transformer model) - like BERT, but is pretrained and can be used in Rust or Python? Otherwise I'll probably using spark-nlp and having to spin another process.

Thanks.

Yeah, except...your Australian idea of putting massive power plants in the Outback and de-carbonizing the atmosphere by shipping fossil fuels into the atmosphere is incredibly inefficient. Just put in small scale nuclear power plants at all the limiting bandwidth areas of every nations' power grids. From there electricity would be essentially be free and you could power cars, trains, buses and everything else from electricity. You could have nuclear powered cargo container vessels. There wouldn't be any need for coal or oil. Why do half measures that would be worse for the environment, when you could just stop using goal and gas entirely? By the time all of the useful plutonium and uranium runs out for making power plants we'll have fusion power (within the next 100-200 years). You're not wrong, and the market may mandate doing this anyway, but if you were going to play benevolent dictator and find the most utilitarian way to maximize the world's happiness you would just make energy free.

Ah - thanks. So, to anyone else that is as easily confused by the obvious as I am, you need to join the waitlist, download the browser, and also access bing through https://www.bing.com/new. Or go to Bing and click on the Chat section. Huh.

The browser is worth a look on it's own merits. It's definitely different than Firefox, Google, Brave, Tor, and DuckDuckGo. I don't know if I would use all the tools, but it's worth taking a looksee.

I downloaded Bing (correction - Microsoft Edge) and it's (the AI chatGPT4) not in there. I can't find the AI chatbox. When I click the big bing button (on the upper right) there's just an empty box telling me to sign up. See screenshot here https://postimg.cc/YvFQhcwS.

Where is it? Can someone post a screenshot? I've looked through the menus and I can't find it.

I will mention it has tons of bells and whistles and the tools look cool, although I can't make some of them work. How does the quote thing work? And why would I use that rather than just citing the text?

Also it looks like Microsoft Edge is attempting to gamify training it's AI models, from user data. https://postimg.cc/KR8DJshG. I've always felt like Microsoft's products were good, but they "phoned home" too much (advertisements in the start bar anyone?). I wonder if this is a "game" to tell people how to use the interface, and how much this is Microsoft farming user data to train it's AI how to scrape the internet.

Thanks!

No - it just has to make the returns to inputting the training data the cost of electricity plus enough money for what a starving Bangledeshi brick maker would consider prosperity. So, web development essentially.

This is frustrating.

ChatGPT that everyone is so fond of is run with electricity. So are cryptocurrencies. So is <insert new toy>. Passively safe nuclear power plants!

From a note I sent to another person

I would like us to have free energy though. I think that perhaps the point of life is to make the necessities of life so cheap as to be free so we can all sit around thinking deep thoughts and staring at the clouds. If you have any pull with the NRC I might mention (https://www.nuscalepower.com/en), base grid load capacity (https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Baseload_power), this (https://archy.deberker.com/the-uk-is-wasting-a-lot-of-wind-p...), and Djikstra's algorithm.

In essence, each small scale passive power plant reactor, if optimally placed along the power grid, would produce much higher returns of energy to the grid than just their energy production rating.

You can also make nuclear power plants shippable around the world by putting small charges around the core that would fragment the radioactive material and release a mixture of boron and concrete if the containment unit is opened. Which means that third world countries could have energy independence. The geometries and physics involved is a minor engineering problem, as opposed to fusion reactors that require theoretical physics.

And people think that a search box that talks to you like the person sitting next to you on the subway (who you'd like to interact with as little as possible) does is important.

Free energy is both possible and necessary and we're not building it.

I don't want to downplay the library, but how hard is Javascript/HTML for the majority of python programmers? You might not make the most beautiful websites, but you can make a functional website if what you're displaying is primarily data to users because you're doing big data/AI and so forth and not setting up a consumer facing marketing platform. What's the use case here?

Yeah...there's been so many papers that have been redacted for bad science that have been displayed here on HackerNews that it's disheartening. The largest startup bank goes bust because startups can't do the math, and people are claiming miraculous breakthroughs in medicine and hard sciences. And they're both on the same page - I know that the comments section is automated, but it's automated tone deafness. Maybe post this again when it's replicated?

wmf - I can't reply to you. So I'm writing here - you should take a look at this. https://am.jpmorgan.com/content/dam/jpm-am-aem/global/en/ins.... The fifth chart has that while SVB has 12% of Tier 1 Capital Ratio, their fire sale price is effectively 0. I haven't looked at the numbers in-depth, but you're right. It's not 150 billion, but on the other hand it's not known who would be willing to buy their assets. It sounds like the government is going to take back the Treasury bonds and then raise FDIC rates. But if that's the case then, given that the current treasury bonds are selling at above the rates of previously sold 10 year bonds, who would buy these bonds? I don't know precisely how much of their assets on hand are treasury bonds, but I doubt any of these would be saleable except at current market rates. So it would be closer to $150 billion * percentage treasuries * (current yield value - past yield value). I still think it would be high.

So there is SVB and Signature bank that have both collapsed in terms of $300 billion. If what you are saying is correct, does that mean that the banks are required to pay hire fees across the industry upwards of $300 amortized over a certain amount of years? If that's the case then the taxpayer will most definitely be on the hook. I don't know if spread across all taxpayers this fee would be negligible, and I also don't know how this would affect the CD rate that banks would offer to clients.

Presumably it would force them to lower it, which would be counter to the anti-inflationary moves of the Federal Reserve, but that might not matter given that this is a current issue. It's possible this might also affect banks willingness to raise rates in the future in response to Fed tightening if they thought there was a risk to the banking sector.

Given the size and how quickly the banks are failing I'd hazard a guess (this is not financial advice) that in order for the FDIC to maintain it's own portfolio it would have to raise rates enough to be noticeable to consumers, even given the number of FDIC accounts.

Can someone comment on if this is the case and how much this might affect forward guidance for banks and consumers?

I was reading this and came across "No losses associated with the resolution of Silicon Valley Bank will be borne by the taxpayer."

What does this "special assessment on banks" mean in practice? Do they just go to all the bulge bracket banks and demand that they buy the outdated Treasuries at a loss? How does this work?

Yeah, I don't agree. SVB was so poorly capitalized that any any due diligence whatsoever should have turned up malfeasance - take a look at the JPMorgan note posted here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35120416). If you have billions in assets then you can't demand the government protect you from not diversifying your portfolio by buying into a single asset class. Any halfway competent CEO could have opened a Vanguard Flagship account or JPMorgan Asset Management account or any other account at a large institutional supplier and created a diversified portfolio.

Just holding a 40/60 split of mixed maturity treasury and corporate bonds and Russel 1000 stocks with low transaction fees would be satisfactory for the majority of companies. And for those that are over that limit or feel they need a more diversified exposure they should have hired a competent asset manager.

And many did do those things. Asking to bail out the people who invested millions of dollars without paying financial professionals to make sure that they did it correctly and with competence is punishing those people that did the right thing. We should provide a safety net in this country for the little guy, but if you have 100s of millions of dollars and you're not willing to hire a few people to make sure you're handling your money correctly I don't have that much sympathy.

People were asking the CEO of SVB what his favorite thing to do to relax was in the last earnings call - the answer is bicycle riding.

Come on.

This appears to be the case - the JPMorgan analyst is (paraphrasing) saying that if you did a fire sale on all of the assets of the banks in isolation the difference between their capital ratios (the amount that they have to have on hand to meet depositors) is minimal. Notice that of all of the banks in the fifth chart the blue line and the bronze line are nearly even - except for SIVB, which has no bronze line. That's not good. I can't speak to this person's methodology, but if what he is saying is true there's almost no risk of contagion in the broader banking sector. And if that's true then there's $152 billion dollars of VC capital that's going to evaporate Monday morning.

It should be noted that JPMorgan participated in the bailout in 2008, with the resulting headaches that that entailed, and Dimon has explicitly stated that he wouldn't participate in a current bailout. So JPMorgan may not be entirely objective. However, to my eyes, this appears rather clear.

From the Face The Nation transcript -

MARGARET BRENNAN: For those depositors, about 85% of SVBs accounts were uninsured. And, as you were saying, a lot of different tech firms relied on them. Do you believe that depositors should be paid back in full? Will they?

SECRETARY YELLEN: Look, I'm not going to comment on the details of the situation at this point. I simply want to say that we're very aware of the problems that depositors will have, many of them are small businesses that employ people across the country. And of course, this is a significant concern, and working with regulators to try to address these concerns.

So that means (if the other numbers above are correct) that there should be approximately $150 billion in assets that are currently uninsured. The risk of contagion may be less than during the 2008 financial crisis if there is less counterparty risk (banks owing other banks assets and no one understanding who owns the underlying). There would be a problem to the extent that VC firms may go bust and this trickles up to hedge funds and larger institutions. That risk is hard to assess and asset holders have every incentive to claim that risk to be high.

Does anyone have any hard numbers on the risk of potential contagion in the banking sector? This is a rather large institution to go bust, and there is some discussion that a large percentage of their portfolio is composed of members that are over the FDIC limit. I also don't know how the Treasury mismatch can be solved - do you just tell creditors to wait for the maturity of the 10 year bonds to withdraw their funds and eat inflation when moving the assets to the Santa Clara bank? Ideally, if there is no risk of contagion to the larger financial system all of these firms can take a hike, but I don't know if that's known a priori. Yellen is just saying "we're not going to do that," but it would be helpful if there were some hard numbers or other reassurance that they know that the larger economy won't be affected (outside of these firms going bust for poor asset management).

EDIT -

From the WSJ (https://archive.ph/HZ29y)

"

A plan that soothes nerves about access to uninsured deposits—most of the bank’s deposits are sizable enough that they don’t carry Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. protection—could tamp down the crisis and limit any impact on the economy as the Federal Reserve focuses on combating inflation by raising interest rates.

But failing to swiftly clarify how SVB’s customers can access funds, make payroll and conduct business risks broader economic consequences and threatens to complicate the Fed’s monetary policy decisions.

“We want to make sure that the troubles that exist at one bank don’t create contagion to others that are sound,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in an interview on Face the Nation on CBS Sunday. “We are concerned about depositors and are focused on trying to meet their needs.”

Ms. Yellen declined to provide details on what federal policymakers are considering.

"

In other words, it doesn't look like we know anything yet.

This is the statement from the Financial Times article -

“Let me be clear that during the financial crisis, there were investors and owners of systemic large banks that were bailed out . . . and the reforms that have been put in place means we are not going to do that again,” Yellen said. “But we are concerned about depositors, and we’re focused on trying to meet their needs.”

And from here - https://www.fastcompany.com/90864111/silicon-valley-bank-svb...

"

The FDIC ordered the closure of Silicon Valley Bank and immediately took position (sic - possession) of all deposits at the bank Friday. The bank had $209 billion in assets and $175.4 billion in deposits at the time of failure, the FDIC said in a statement. It was unclear how much of deposits was above the $250,000 insurance limit at the moment.

"

Unless SVB had over 700,000 customers, quite clearly there is a mismatch between insured and uninsured customers.

So by Yellen saying “But we are concerned about depositors, and we’re focused on trying to meet their needs.” and at the same time saying there won't be a bailout she's effectively saying nothing. In this case those things are synonymous.

Until there are hard numbers on possible contagion and the steps that the Federal government is going to take to prevent that we won't know anything for sure.

FYI - Here's the transcript of the interview with Janet Yellen on Face the Nation - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/janet-yellen-face-the-nation-tr...

I would refer to my other comment. Investing in a bank always carries the risk of a bank collapse, a threat that people that are under the FDIC limit implicitly are insured against. Large stakeholders that didn't pay an asset management firm to diversify their holdings or expect their holdings to be diversified at SVB were not acting with the competence necessary for that level of investment. A bank doubling their assets over a two year time period is a clear indication that something was wrong.

I will add another note here, with respect to this -

You're effectively paying for the lower rate of return that a treasury bill has because it's insured against risk, without being able to take advantage of that insurance. This is true in a roundabout way - given that the Federal government has to bail out banks during a financial crisis their return to the investor reflects that risk (not only in absolute terms but in the way the yield tracks the overall economy). Most banks should stick to treasuries because they don't service institutional clients and so can take advantage of that insurance. That wasn't the case here.

I should mention that here the risk was that the Treasury yields were increasing faster than the Treasury notes on hand because the Federal Reserve had so aggressively tightened the Federal Funds Rate. This would cause investors to take their money out of the bank and invest the money in another bank that had a higher rate of return. However, in most banks this doesn't precipitate a bank run because if most investors are under the FDIC $250,000 limit then the customers know the bank is insured against default.

Other banks that have large numbers of institutional investors that are over the FDIC $250,000 limit may also be in trouble, because they may also be liable to have bank runs, if they're primarily invested in older US Treasuries.

In essence, what the Federal Reserve has done, wittingly or not, is to destabilize those banks that have large numbers of institutional investors but are operating primarily as traditional small-scale banks holding mostly US Treasuries. This may be a good thing in the long run as it would clear out those institutions that are effectively operating as asset management companies without diversifying their portfolios as they should.

There are probably more than a couple more banks internationally that are holding ex-crypto funds that are not properly diversified. If other countries likewise quickly tighten their rates I wonder if there will be other banks that fail for similar reasons.

Take a look at my other comment in this thread. These weren't mom and pop investors, these were institutional investors that should have known better than to invest in a bank with such a portfolio mismatch. If they didn't they should have hired financial advisors and lawyers to investigate the bank. I have zero sympathy with someone with $100 million dollars who loses it because they weren't willing to hire a financial advisor to look into what they're putting their money into. That's saving a penny losing $100 million.

Yes and no.

I'm going to backpedal (a little bit).

It will take the FDIC looking through all of their books to determine everything that happened - with bank implosions like this there were probably people on the take who knew what was happening. I suspect that more than one person will go to prison for financial fraud.

Take a look at this -

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/SIVB/svb-financial...

So total assets of the bank doubled over a two year time period. That's bad. In the financial world having too much money is (typically) a big no-no, because it means that you have to invest that money in worse and worse performing assets (in this case assets with a worse risk profile). That's why a large number of successful small cap VC and hedge fund operations don't scale.

It also means that in this case the firm had most of it's cash from institutional investors (so they weren't FDIC insured) - which makes them more liable to bank runs.

I will agree with you that it looks like the firm primarily had a mismatch of ten year security treasury bills versus their responsibilities to clients. However, this is a symptom of the same problem - the bank, most especially since it was servicing mostly institutional clients - should not have been so overly sensitive to a single financial instrument. There should have been dollar cost averaging of buying securities over smaller time frames, as well as buying a mix of US treasuries with shorter maturities.

There also should have been, and this seems obvious in retrospect, a mixed basket of international treasuries and other assets to counter the risk profile of institutional investors that are primarily in the technology space. If technology stocks mirror the broader US economy but with higher volatility, then there should have been other assets held that would be counter cyclical to technology firms, such as a mixed basket of industrial stocks and commodities.

So I will say that you're right in that they weren't making riskier loans so much as they weren't diversifying their portfolio given the size of their asset base. Given that these were large sized institutional investors as opposed to FDIC insured clients, not investing in a mixed basket of asset classes is not good.

You're effectively paying for the lower rate of return that a treasury bill has because it's insured against risk, without being able to take advantage of that insurance. This is true in a roundabout way - given that the Federal government has to bail out banks during a financial crisis their return to the investor reflects that risk (not only in absolute terms but in the way the yield tracks the overall economy). Most banks should stick to treasuries because they don't service institutional clients and so can take advantage of that insurance. That wasn't the case here.

It doesn't look like diversifying their portfolio would even be possible given how fast their assets increased. I suspect that they started absorbing a large amount of crypto money because people didn't know where to put it and there should be some investigation into whether other banks are diversified enough.

It looks like possibly corrupt banking leadership and probably ignorant clientele. The intelligence of people is often inversely proportional to how fast they can make money for nothing.

In short, massive increases in assets is a huge red flag.

Here's a Barron's article on the subject which has some more numbers -

https://archive.ph/r2vEk

Silicon Valley Bank had 80 billion dollars in assets, which includes funds from Venture Capital (VC) firms. If you have a billion dollars in assets (or a few 100 million) then you would hire lawyers, tax attorneys, and financial analysts to make sure that where you put your money is safe. Given that the FDIC will only insure up to $250,000, then those account holders that have much more than that are considered people who "should know" the risk profile of the bank they're investing in (as compared to a mom and pop savings account). These FDIC limits were put in during the 1930s and never raised with inflation (which isn't ideal).

In any case, if you have a large amount of money you're investing in a bank as opposed to the stock market then you should be primarily concerned that the bank will have a stable return that's slightly higher than inflation with a low risk profile (ie remain solvent). That means that you need to make sure that the loan book (that is, the loans that the bank is giving out) are non-risky, the treasuries that the bank has on hand won't devalue the banks asset base if the Federal Reserve decides to raise rates (another problem that SVB had), in addition to the risk profile of any other assets on hand and how much each individual asset class affects the solvency of the bank. In short, the more money that you are investing in a bank (or any other financial vehicle) the more investigation you should be making into that bank.

In simplistic terms, if you're spending a couple dollars on a candy bar you don't examine the purchase with as much attention as compared to if you were buying a car or a house. And if you suddenly have come into large amounts of money and need to make complex financial decisions I would talk to a licensed financial professional. These guys are the financial professionals and they didn't do their homework.

What people don't seem to realize is that banks themselves are a form of speculative vehicle. You pay deposits to the bank, and they then invest these deposits in commercial loans. Banks are incredibly risk adverse as a rule, however, in this case the amount of deposits that SVB took in between 2020 and 2022 doubled from 40 to 80 billion dollars. The only way that this can happen is if the amount of available loans that the bank can make at the same risk profile increases through greater demand, or if the bank acquired several other regional banks.

Well. That wasn't happening. So the bank started making riskier and riskier loans rather than reduce the number of incoming deposits.

Arguably, given inflation, the value of FDIC should be increased beyond the $250,000 limit. But it's difficult to have much sympathy for companies that invested large sums of money into SVB without doing their due-diligence. If these companies need to be taken over by the federal government to prevent stock market contagion it would be nice to see some political consequences as well.

It's absurd that a Lehman Bro.s CFO chairman was an executive at this bank. There will be lawsuits that come from this, but I'd expect that the federal government should also be an aggrieved party (as in, "the People Against...") given the risk of this collapse to the finances of the larger public.

I went to a community appointed therapist and took drugs until I no longer was required to as per the law. 2 years probation.

When I made that deal I made it clear both to my parents and to the court that this was not to be "therapy and mind altering medication for the rest of my life". And it won't be and I'm willing to die for my freedom. My mind is important to me, it's who I am.

I haven't been arrested since, barring someone having me arrested and thrown in jail in Ocean Beach for 72 hours because they thought it would be funny to dress up like me and wave a gun in someone's face. I didn't have $10,000 for bail.

I had to share a cell with someone who thought they could communicate with Facebook via telepathy and the king of England was telling them to kill child molesters. I switched cells to room with an "officer" in the KKK because it was an improvement.

I had spent several weeks prior starving in Ocean Beach before jail. I was eating uncooked rice out of my backpack because no one would hire me. I went door to door to every restaurant on the strip and handed out my email and phone number on little pieces of paper just to wash dishes or work for food.

I am stable and happy when I am not being continually drugged with marijuana against my will. Whatever my debt to society is for setting a toilet paper roll on fire in a Jewish Yeshivah because I needed a safer place to live than a dangerous inner-city homeless shelter where I thought my life was in danger has been more than paid back.

This is only one of many many stories of being treated as less than a human being worthy of dignity and respect. A person who is willing and capable of working for a living.

That someone who is as averagely competent as I am (I'm no genius, but I'm not an idiot either) can't find a job in this country is an indictment of the whole. I view the SVB collapse as a massive comeuppance. You know those guys doubled their book value on deposits in two years? And an exec at SVB worked as CFO at Lehman? I set two toilet paper rolls on fire and this shitstick collapsed the world economy (AGAIN).

Who wants to hire this guy? Shit let me know and I'll start a collection to short his firm and donate the proceeds to the poor.

Meanwhile every person who's been making the next version of pets.com (BUT THIS TIME WITH STABLE DIFFUSION/CHATGPT) is going to find that the VC money is now interested in stable companies that can, you know, MAKE MONEY. All the layoffs in big tech firms were sort of an aside, but at least this banking collapse coming when it has will mean that the "chatGPT for shoes" and "chatGPT for nails" trainwreck will stop before it becomes even more of a massive clusterfuck.

I don't want to join a religion. I'm not religious and I can't fake believing in what I don't.

First I'm paranoid, then I'm lazy and should just "get away". Now I should just ride the bus? With what money? And once I arrive in a town do I just magic my way into food, clothing and shelter?

You're not treating me as a rational person worthy of dignity and respect or arguing in good faith. I can't take what you're saying seriously.

I'm willing to work, I don't do drugs, I have a clean record, I don't have any debt, and I don't have any dependents.

I write terrible shit on the internet because I'm being gassed with drugs.

If I can't make it in this country no one can.

How? I have a laptop and the clothes on my back. Where do I go and what do I do when I get there? I don't have family or friends. My skills are web development, and office type work. I can read and write. I'm 37 years old and not strong or sturdy enough for construction. I'm single with no dependents. I'm a straight white male that isn't dying of AIDs so I don't qualify for any preferential vouchers.

What do I possibly do?

Incorrect. I am being gassed with marijuana every night. If I was not being gassed with drugs continually I would be happy and healthy.

How would you like to sleep here? https://libranet.de/display/0b6b25a8-1563-e080-bd24-09330776...

That's the thing about cameras. You no longer get to call the poor insane when they can document the ways they are being screwed with. Ain't technology grand?

It's the one that the General Assistance office put me in. I'm scared that if I go to another one they'll either cut my benefits or do something that will put me on the street. What they do at the shelters is that they do "intakes" from 4 to 10, which means that if you line up and they have a bed they'll let you in. What this means in practice is that if you line up and they happen to like you then they'll let you in. Given that there aren't enough beds to go around, and the staff aren't being paid, this means that some of the shelters have incredibly weird ways of dealing with "clients".

Back in December there were these torrential rains so a bunch of us stayed in St. Mary's when they opened up beds in the basement. As far as Sanctuary on 8th street is concerned, when St. Mary's was full some of us went there. It was being run by a group of latinos, some of whom didn't speak English (or pretended not to). They appeared to be saving beds for latinos. Given that there are shortages of places to stay and they may have been ex-homeless themselves, I don't know that I blame them. But it means that the entire system is being run on an old-school graft basis.

At MSC South they feed people 3,000+ calorie meals (ENORMOUS amounts of food) and had us eat at schoolchildren's desks.

I wish I was joking. It was insane and disgusting. I felt incredibly uncomfortable.

There isn't a word for it other than to say that I was worried that the staff might be conducting some sort of psychological experiment on the poor.

They also don't allow people to stay inside the building the entire day (they kick you out at 7am and then you have to line back up at 4pm and hope you get in), which means I have to find shelter in a public building - the only one being the library and a couple of "community spaces" at the bottoms of office towers. While I spend the day worrying if I'll have a place to stay that night.

Not usually a big deal, unless it rains, or I'm being followed by aggressive homeless in the public parks...

I could line up at General Assistance and see if they'll put me in another shelter (with a permanent bed), but my case is on the fifth of April and I don't know if they'll move me. They tried to deny my benefits with three days notice because I didn't have paperwork that showed that I have under a certain amount of money - even though they only told me that was for a $100 stipend. Which, I mean, come on. $100 isn't going to change my situation. So given that, it looks like someone at the office was either incompetent, or, more likely, they attempt to give people incredibly short notice on denying benefits in order to push people back out onto the street so they don't have to pay for shelter.

I'll go and ask again and look into this tomorrow, but I don't know if I move if my situation will become worse. If moving is even possible.

This sounds like a puff piece and it's hard to be all that excited about the products that are being touted in the piece -

He decided instead to quit and pursue his idea to start Feasier, a platform that aggregates home furnishing listings from different stores into one place.

So...what's the moat? Why can't anyone build a clone sight and come in with slightly cheaper shipping and undercut his business?

Or this -

Zhu says she is working every day on Maida AI, which automates health care administration tasks like patient intake and note-taking.

From what I know of the current health care tech situation, everything uses EPIC which is terrible technology, but it's entrenched because it follows regulation and probably pays off some senators/regulators/insurance companies - much like every DOD government project. So unless her product can follow every regulation as well as EPIC (it can't) she can't win in an entrenched market that has a moat she can't cross.

I don't doubt there are a bunch of unemployed web developers out there (I'm one), and a lot of VC money that doesn't know what to do after crypto imploded, but these are uninspiring. Of the thousands of web dev companies maybe one will become popular, but it would be from random chance. This just sounds like a bunch of unemployed and desperate people buying lottery tickets, but with computers.

The people who are going to make money are the people who are able to corner the energy market or the server and computation market. The innovations will be from a few brilliant academics who make the next transformer model or the next quantum computing model and so forth, which makes up a few thousand people. The "democratization" of the internet just now means everyone is equally broke. Shit, you can make websites now by drawing them and then having an AI make the code (as edge-case clunky as that is). So anyone with a Bamboo pad and a "million dollar" idea can draw one up and buy a web address.

So what?

I read a NY Times article by Ted Chiang today in which he made a kind of "stochastic parrot" argument for chatGPT - https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/chatgpt-.... I believe, on the other hand that chatGPT may eventually be able to generate AGI, but that this will occur emergently and spontaneously. In other words, it will be difficult to predict.

One of the conditions for this, is for chatGPT models to start being able to write their own code in order to produce models of themselves that are more accurate and more efficient. Given this ability, and some fitness criteria, genetic algorithms may be used to create new LLMs. This sounds like science fiction, but once the compute requirements come down for these models (by a couple orders of magnitude), I believe this may be possible.

To what extent does your model allow for semantic models to create semantic models that are themselves more efficient in relation to some fitness criteria? Can I tell a model "You (model) I want you to reproduce using interaction with these other models (some collection of other models) and have the child model offspring be more efficient according to this criteria [for example the resultant models will create short stories that are more likely to receive high ratings on a subreddit devoted to short stories]".

You would need to get around the "model pollution" problem in which LLM models pollute the space for which the models generate data because other models are producing web artifacts (Ted Chiang's Xerox of a Xerox problem). I call this the problem of alpha (direct experience). One of the ways I've thought of to fix this is to have models trained on direct user input (such as cell phone video and pictures from a single user) - I have to admit that I got this idea from Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash (see Gargoyle). If your platform can integrate with visual processing this may have a high information density - object detection in daily videos demonstrating how objects are related to each other in the real world of the user and correlating these into a semantic network.

I'd also suggest that Obsidian integration might be useful.

This is exciting, thanks for making the Fixie SDK public.