Apple’s new Transformer-powered predictive text model • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple’s new Transformer-powered predictive text model

#211

Post by CharlesW » Sun, Sep 17, 2023, 4:31 PM UTC

fulladder wrote: post #204

crazygringo wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not LLM's writing for us, it's just autocomplete. If the suggestion doesn't match what you were already planning on saying, you just ignore it. The human desire to be original and authentic is always going to be stronger. (It's much less effort to ignore it and keep typing your original thought, than it is to think about it, compare with what you were going to say, decide its version is better, and then accept i…

> The human desire to be original and authentic is always going to be stronger. Authenticity didn't start to become a thing people cared about until about the early 1990s, and it didn't blow up and take over the mainstream culture until the 2000s and 2010s. Prior to the 1990s, there was a lot of interest in professionalism. People spoke and wrote in overly formal, jargony ways that they perceived as being a marker fo…

> Authenticity didn't start to become a thing people cared about until about the early 1990s…

In your lifetime, but…

Another common theme in the philosophy of both Dostoevsky and Descartes is the idea of authenticity. Dostoevsky believed that people must live authentically, in accordance with their true selves, and that this is essential for their happiness and well-being. Descartes, on the other hand, argued that the path to knowledge and certainty begins with the rejection of all previous beliefs and the adoption of a completely new and authentic perspective.¹

And of course, the U.S. counterculture movement of the 1960s was deeply preoccupied with authenticity:

You note three themes underlying the American hippie experience: authenticity, individualism and community. Why did these concepts stand out, and what did they mean in the context of the hippie/counterculture movement? / W.R.: Although hippies often disagreed about beliefs and practices, they shared a desire to be authentic. Members of the counterculture condemned mainstream society for being conformist, rule-driven and uptight. Authenticity meant “doing your own thing.” Because freaks distrusted both society and government, individual decisions were applauded as the most authentic.²

¹ https://vocal.media/geeks/freedom-authenticity-and-the-mind

² https://www.washington.edu/news/2015/08/17/uw-historian-will...

Re: Apple’s new Transformer-powered predictive text model

#212

Post by vore » Sun, Sep 17, 2023, 4:42 PM UTC

runjake wrote: post #208

QuadrupleA wrote: post #167

Everyone's asking tech details and "how", but I wonder about the "why". Do we want LLMs to always write for us, or whisper in our ear what to say? By design LLMs tend toward the most commonplace, mainstream ideas and ways of saying things. They're not much for originality or human idiosyncracy. Are we engineering a bland world full of pablum?

Because at work I’m typing the same bland things all the time in documents and communications. I appreciate stuff like the predictive word stuff in Google Docs. It’s helpful because business language is expected to be normalized and boring. On the other side of that token, the average language abilities of the average American office worker are pretty low so I’m assuming they view this as an enhanced AutoCorrect and…

  On the other side of that token, the average language abilities of the average American office worker are pretty low so I’m assuming they view this as an enhanced AutoCorrect and they appreciate it because it makes them look less dumb.

Awfully presumptuous, don’t you think?

Re: Apple’s new Transformer-powered predictive text model

#213

Post by dkga » Sun, Sep 17, 2023, 4:47 PM UTC

macNchz wrote: post #161

astrange wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? So you can use text speak? Bit silly.

I’ve had autocorrect disabled on my iPhone for years—for whatever reason it really bothers me when something I just typed magically changes into something I didn’t want to write. I like that what I type is exactly what appears, not the computer’s guess at my intent. It’s one of the first things I disable when setting up a new Mac as well. It took a few months to get used to it, but I developed typo-correction muscle…

I'm one of the "lucky few" that (a) really needs autocorrect because I can never seem to type correctly in mobile phone keyboards and (b) really hates autocorrect because often it either gets me wrong or worse, changes legitimate words into awkward and incorrect words - like the other day I typed something pretty mundane that got changed into a more... vulgar word.

I got a little reprieve with swiping text, but still, autocorrect should be much better.

Re: Apple’s new Transformer-powered predictive text model

#214

Post by vore » Sun, Sep 17, 2023, 4:47 PM UTC

QuadrupleA wrote: post #167

Everyone's asking tech details and "how", but I wonder about the "why". Do we want LLMs to always write for us, or whisper in our ear what to say? By design LLMs tend toward the most commonplace, mainstream ideas and ways of saying things. They're not much for originality or human idiosyncracy. Are we engineering a bland world full of pablum?

If I’m writing an email to my coworkers, what I really care about is the information I’m getting across and not really the presentation of it. If LLM autocomplete can speed up writing a totally functional email then how bland it is really isn’t at the top of my mind.

Re: Apple’s new Transformer-powered predictive text model

#215

Post by andrei_says_ » Sun, Sep 17, 2023, 4:56 PM UTC

QuadrupleA wrote: post #167

Everyone's asking tech details and "how", but I wonder about the "why". Do we want LLMs to always write for us, or whisper in our ear what to say? By design LLMs tend toward the most commonplace, mainstream ideas and ways of saying things. They're not much for originality or human idiosyncracy. Are we engineering a bland world full of pablum?

Quite likely yes in the context of repetitive daily routine communication.

Re: Apple’s new Transformer-powered predictive text model

#216

Post by r0m4n0 » Sun, Sep 17, 2023, 4:58 PM UTC

iPhone’s auto complete and form fills drive me absolutely mad. It’s honestly just basic stuff that should have just worked a decade ago. I’m not even begging them for LLMs or some fancy ML, just learn basic words I type out all the time. For example my full email address? how about my last name? This seems like basic stuff

Re: Apple’s new Transformer-powered predictive text model

#217

Post by dwringer » Sun, Sep 17, 2023, 5:03 PM UTC

QuadrupleA wrote: post #167

Everyone's asking tech details and "how", but I wonder about the "why". Do we want LLMs to always write for us, or whisper in our ear what to say? By design LLMs tend toward the most commonplace, mainstream ideas and ways of saying things. They're not much for originality or human idiosyncracy. Are we engineering a bland world full of pablum?

One approach that I've been using with a local LLM, mostly brainstorming for my friends and my dungeons and dragons sessions, is to set up a prompt to be completed with some certain detail of storyline, character background, etc., Then running that prompt maybe 50 or 100 times and keeping informal statistics on the different results that come out. In such an application, it can be used as much for inspiration of how not to sound bland, commonplace, or derivative. You can pick the one in 100 oddity that strikes you as interesting, or simply make sure not to use any of the outcomes that the LLM came up with.

Re: Apple’s new Transformer-powered predictive text model

#218

Post by shawnz » Sun, Sep 17, 2023, 5:04 PM UTC

QuadrupleA wrote: post #167

Everyone's asking tech details and "how", but I wonder about the "why". Do we want LLMs to always write for us, or whisper in our ear what to say? By design LLMs tend toward the most commonplace, mainstream ideas and ways of saying things. They're not much for originality or human idiosyncracy. Are we engineering a bland world full of pablum?

> Are we engineering a bland world full of pablum?

Like any other technological advancement, we're freeing ourselves from the burden of wasting mental energy manually doing those commonplace unoriginal tasks which can be easily automated, so there's more bandwidth left for human beings to focus specifically on the things which can't be

Re: Apple’s new Transformer-powered predictive text model

#219

Post by DiogenesKynikos » Sun, Sep 17, 2023, 5:14 PM UTC

fulladder wrote: post #204

crazygringo wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not LLM's writing for us, it's just autocomplete. If the suggestion doesn't match what you were already planning on saying, you just ignore it. The human desire to be original and authentic is always going to be stronger. (It's much less effort to ignore it and keep typing your original thought, than it is to think about it, compare with what you were going to say, decide its version is better, and then accept i…

> The human desire to be original and authentic is always going to be stronger. Authenticity didn't start to become a thing people cared about until about the early 1990s, and it didn't blow up and take over the mainstream culture until the 2000s and 2010s. Prior to the 1990s, there was a lot of interest in professionalism. People spoke and wrote in overly formal, jargony ways that they perceived as being a marker fo…

One of the most famous American essays of the 19th Century is about authenticity.

Self-Reliance, by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1841): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Reliance

Re: Apple’s new Transformer-powered predictive text model

#220

Post by _a_a_a_ » Sun, Sep 17, 2023, 5:22 PM UTC

runjake wrote: post #208

QuadrupleA wrote: post #167

Everyone's asking tech details and "how", but I wonder about the "why". Do we want LLMs to always write for us, or whisper in our ear what to say? By design LLMs tend toward the most commonplace, mainstream ideas and ways of saying things. They're not much for originality or human idiosyncracy. Are we engineering a bland world full of pablum?

Because at work I’m typing the same bland things all the time in documents and communications. I appreciate stuff like the predictive word stuff in Google Docs. It’s helpful because business language is expected to be normalized and boring. On the other side of that token, the average language abilities of the average American office worker are pretty low so I’m assuming they view this as an enhanced AutoCorrect and…

> because business language is expected to be normalized and boring

why?