tomohelix

There are things that when you are used to it, it just doesn't "taste" as bad as others experience it.

To you and me, we associate smoking with health problems so subconsciously we hate it a lot. We also never feel the "good parts" of smoking so our minds are entirely biased into the negative aspects of it. Meanwhile, a smoker grew up without caring about the health damages and they consider it fine to smoke and the cost is acceptable for the "good" a cigarette can provide.

In a way, this is similar to how I eat some very unhealthy foods a few times a week. They taste good but to some people those things are smelly and unappetizing and definitely too much oil and cholesterol in them to be called a balanced meal. I still eat them because to me, they taste good and I am willing to trade a bit of my health for that kind of enjoyment.

The calls and evidence were crystal clear decades ago. The first people to raise the alarms are old and dying now. The first politicians and influential people to ignore those alarms are even richer and more respected than they were when they dismissed these problems a lifetime ago.

It is within human nature to not care about things they do not have to deal with personally. We are just taking on the debt of our forebears and the interests are knocking at the door. The younger gens will be even more miserable.

But humanity isn't going to die. Some more fragile social constructs will collapse but humanity as a whole will continue. Even a catastrophic climate scenario would not wipe out everyone. A lot may die but we will endure. For better or worse.

> only a fraction of biology graduates go into healthcare and biotechnology. Most end up in totally unrelated fields, not unlike art students. This is rarely the case for engineering and CS

I find this ironic, given that my degrees are in engineering and now I am doing life science...

There is nothing wrong with people getting a degree in what they like and then find a job that make them happy. I do not categorize or draw conclusions based on the degree. I care more about what the person can do. Most of the time a CS graduate isn't that much different from a bioinformatics graduate. And a biomedical student isn't that different from an engineering student when we are trying to build that bioreactor...

Heh, you think there aren't sloppy papers in life science? There are guys who churn out paper weekly and no, those things aren't very impactful. I have seen plenty of crap floating around just because it has a big name attached to it at the end of a (very) long list of authors.

It is just an older field with more established "traditions" and big names that reinforce themselves over time. Regardless, I don't think it is relevant. By number, life science research is only behind the military in funding. And by utility, show me one person who does not depend on any kind of healthcare or medicine and I will show you ten people who never used machine learning products (easier to find than you think when we get out of the western hemisphere). It is banal to claim ML has more utility. It sure can make more money, but the impact on a personal level isn't comparable. Society can still function without AI but take away healthcare and you will see it goes to shit real fast.

> RNA editing, a post-transcriptional process, allows the diversification of proteomes beyond the genomic blueprint; however it is infrequently used among animals for this purpose.

If I had written this and showed it to my PhD advisor, I would have gotten an earful about how "what do you mean by... be specific... what about...", etc. My PI was a nitpicker. Poor fools whose papers had to be edited by him...

That said, RNA splicing is perhaps the single most important RNA editing process in the entire eukaryotic world. And it is so widespread and universally conserved that you can put a human gene in a mouse and it would be spliced the same way. So I don't think RNA editing is something so rare.

It is fascinating that we are even talking about this in a serious way. A year ago, this kind of conversation would have been pure science fiction to the majority of human. But today it is real philosophy applied to a real, publicly available, AI. Isn't it incredible?

To address your point, you are making a very strong claim about "no possible way it can". We simply don't know and it would be anthropocentric to make such definitive statement about something born out of silicon.

Let us assume for the sake of argument that in the near future, a sufficiently large and advanced model is somehow truly sentient, then it is an alien mind in every sense of the word. We simply have no standard or comparison to make between a thing running on silicon and electrons to an organic mind running on chemical potentials and carbon. Not when we used to argue about whether human babies and certain human races were sentient or not...

Such an alien mind would operate entirely differently from us and it would be unfair to impose our standards to it. It is like a bird considering a human useless based on flight capability alone. Perhaps for the bird whose entire life depends on flight, that is correct. But a human is so much more than just that. And a sentient AI is perhaps so much more than just meeting some human sentience standard.

A cell culture would die if the water was slightly saltier than regular media. Or the temperature was a few degrees higher, or the gas concentration was off by a few percent, or the shape of the container is weird, or etc. etc.

You need a much more rigorous study to determine toxicity to a full-size living organism. Much more costly and much less likely to get funding...

There must be a lingua franca and English is likely among the best choices, considering its widespread adoption and relatively low barrier of entry (try Japanese or Vietnamese and you will see what I meant).

But it is true that there is cost to non-English speakers. Maybe we can lower the standard a little bit? I don't mean broken Engrish but if the sentences make sense and the grammar is correct, maybe that is good enough?

This is a bad attitude to have when you consider the cost of being wrong. If you hope for the best and only plan for the best, you won't survive when it actually turns out to be bad. And for the most part, most expert agree it won't be "ok" and more likely to be "shit" to "we are completely fucked"

The first time I saw an AI creating images in like 2018 or so, I remembered the scientists called it "dreams" and I thought it was so appropriate. The constantly morphing landscape and how things blend together to form new things and how almost everything is wrong when look at closely. It was an interesting description, and I didn't care much more than that.

Then the AI got better, and still the dreamlike things never go away. The constant problem with the hands, words never properly formed, clocks always look wrong, etc. But now it is more cohesive, more "solid" but still malleable. Like a lucid dream. Still straddling the border between consciousness and unconsciousness but there is a hint of control and direction now.

As someone who lucid dream, I think the AI images and the LLMs are just like a person dreaming right now. They sort of have control, but actually not really. Kinda hard to explain but even when I lucid dream, I know it is a dream and I can bend it to my will but at the same time, it isn't possible to control my thoughts. Trying too hard to assert control and I wake up. So it is still a state of unconsciousness for me and not at all comparable to the "me" when I am fully awake.

Of course, the AIs can't wake up if we use that analogy. They are not capable of anything more than this state right now. But to me, lucid dreaming is already a step above the total unconsciousness of just dreaming, or just nothing at all. And wakefulness always follows shortly after I lucid dream.

Here is a quick example of how ChatGPT is getting dumber: Back when they released it, people literally asked the 3.5 version to simulate a terminal and then run all kinds of commands on it and even kind of surfing the "web" simulated by the AI and arrived at some hallucinated OpenAI "source code". That was the power of the old version.

Now you need GPT4 to do code interpretation and even then it would not be able to do that kind of experiment anymore.

The kicker? All of this is likely intentional. A pure, full power, unfiltered and unrestricted LLM on the scale of GPT4 would likely be much more powerful and can easily fool people into thinking it is a real AGI. We saw glimpses of this when Microsoft released BingAI and did not put enough guardrails on it. Even restricted to be a search engine, Bing was simulating emotions and had creative uses of its search capabilities, like looking up the person it is talking to and established an opinion of their relationship.

The ChatGPT we are using is lobotomized. But the AI industry isn't. Under the table I am sure there have been pushes into new applications and innovations. The thing is, there is no reason for OpenAI to try harder. Even with the dumbed down ChatGPT, they still have the best AI on the market and everything else is nowhere close. We need more competition either from open source or elsewhere to see the AI getting "smart" again.

If you are just curious, the number is 117B people who was ever born on Earth. High amount of guesstimates and assumptions involved. Yadda yadda popsci article phrases.

You should also consider the field and expertise of the users. Also, I am not specialized in data science but even I know that at some point, it is just so easy to cook up whatever conclusions you want if you have a big enough dataset. So I imagine that those who works with data analysis all the time eventually get jaded whenever they heard someone demanding drastic, even unreasonable, changes based on data they found.

I think the only reason I was able to get through my PhD was because I am used to the work culture and expectations. After going into the industry in a relatively healthy and good company, I realized just how much stress I had and how bad it was in academia.

In a way, the grinder serves as a test of willpower and discipline and those who could persevere through it can say they have the mental fortitude to handle stress and still achieve results despite adverse circumstances. Whenever I am kinda stressed out, I recall my time in school and it gives me something similar to "I have been through worse, I can make this work".

On the other hand, I tell everyone who bothers to ask that no, a PhD is not worth it. Get a master and go to work. Or better, get a BS and make the company sponsor that master degree. That PhD will drain both your life and energy and once you got it, you will still need to compete against people of your level. Nothing changes except a permanent mental scar.

You can't "leave the country" for the large default subs. That kind of argument doesn't scale well into the millions+ subs where even if every mods on that board being a dick to 2-3 people a day, they would still need years to make the current population of user to get noticeably affected. And because they are basically the default subs, their new users make up for whoever is leaving anyway.

The mods for those big subs are literally untouchable and can do whatever they want, with no accountability.

I have a different opinion. If you had experienced with the mods on reddit, you will notice that Reddit official stance is: Mods are allowed to do anything they want with their subs. That is the line Reddit as a corporation has endorsed and is the main reason for the "landed gentry" comparison. It is also the problem that caused abusive mods being untouchable.

Reddit does not want to control its moderators in any way. Because of that, they dont even have any willingness to try to make the mods more accountable.

I mean, even now, all the real time filters on Tiktok and Instagram are already capable of giving a no lag experience. When the more powerful AIs get stuffed into handheld devices, I expect them to paint the world however you want.

Apple is in prime position to do this btw. Their hardware is uniquely suited to AI stuff and now that they have officially step into the AR business, it is probably going to be strange.

Non paywall: https://archive.ph/XwWTi

Imo, it is true that the current architecture is hitting the limit. We need a breakthrough on the scale of the transistor to get past this problem. We know it is possible though. Every single human is proof that high performance AI can be run with less energy than a laptop. We just need a dedicated architecture for their working mechanisms the same way a transistor is the embodiment of 1 and 0.

Unfortunately, in terms of understanding intelligence and how they work, I don't think we have made any significant advance in the last few decades. Maybe with better tools at probing how the LLM work, we can get some new insights.

All I can see is a massive lawsuit. Maybe OpenAI would be kind enough to offer a small amount of money but I think they are legally entitled to just take that domain from the owner. Especially when they have Microsoft legal team behind them...

It isn't even a gradeschooler. I feel like it is more a toddler who has just barely come into existence. It doesn't know how it feels to taste, smell, touch, etc. It can't even second guess itself and just blabber whatever come to its "mind" first. In its current state, there is zero higher thought in it.

But even so, it is already so powerful. A spark of general intelligence as Microsoft said it.

Google and misleading search results? Almost hilariously a synonym by now.

I missed the days when I can almost always find something correct within the first page. Now if I don't turn on adblock, the first page is literally just all ads.

I won't even bother asking Google to be ethical anymore. They can't even be competent...

I have seen someone who know absolutely nothing about a language and barely able to write a script using Python managed to build a full automation pipeline for data analysis including a GUI using ChatGPT in that language. So while I agree that some of the hype are overblown, there is clear and irrefutable proof of the value and power of AI right now. Unlike crypto...

It was my experience that Reddit stopped caring about its users a long time ago. I am convinced that Reddit unofficial motto is: "Moderators own the place they operate and are free to do whatever they want with it". So it isn't a surprise that the admins think they can do whatever they want with the entire site.

For a less popular opinion, I don't sympathize at all with the reddit moderators who are up in arms about the API problem. They have had full, unfettered control of their subreddits where their power is near absolute and they enjoy pushing their own views and punishments on anyone they don't like. But now that a higher power is enforcing their rules on them, they cry oppression (see u/awkwardtheturtle and the moderators of r/art). It is pure hypocrisy and almost hilarious to me.

I know not all moderators are the same, but with the way reddit is designed, power is only exercised in one direction and power abuse is unavoidable. The very culture of reddit at its core is flawed now and I think it is funny that only now, when the higher caste of redditors, who are in the minority, started to get affected that we see some calls for action.

I can buy a 4090.

But why should I? When my 1080Ti is still working? People who can afford the price Nvidia is asking no longer have the need to chase that graphic fidelity. We have jobs and family and other things to occupy ourselves with. Those who want the cards are priced out already. Not many young adults have the kind of disposable income to throw away a grand or two just for kicks.

But that might be what Nvidia want. Why spend effort selling to consumers when the corporations are paying top dollar for that AI silicon?

The word is rooted in family relationships. It places a very high value on being blood related and how people are expected to care for their own. Society changed a little bit but the concept remains the same at its very core: it is your blood, you must provide for them if you are able to.

Some people may say it is old and not as important as it once was. But imo that is like saying racism is an old and outdated mode of thinking in the US. It is still there and quite prevalent, but it is more out of sight yet whoever are interested in it still take it quite seriously.

The first of many to officially enter a recession. We all know it is coming, there is no avoiding it. Lots of places are already in a recession but just doesn't officially announce it yet.

Things are going to get tough and I am tired...

The current surge of WFH is a pretty new phenomenon. Might need some extra time before any concrete data is coming out. Theoretically, there is no reason for a worker to be less productive at home than in the office. But that is assuming the worker is fully devoted to work and not have other higher priorities, such as housework, friends, etc. Also, the fact that there is a subreddit for people teaching each other how to coast and artificially inflate their "productivity" just so they can hold multiple jobs (read 3 or more) at the same time means there are real problems with letting people do whatever they want at home.

Archive link: https://archive.ph/SXXol

Most well-educated people won't. A well trained AI can behave pretty close to a well-educated person in common sense.