Can you read this cursive handwriting? The National Archives wants your help • Hacker News Board

Re: Can you read this cursive handwriting? The National Archives wants your help

#81

Post by tptacek » Sat, Jan 18, 2025, 4:44 AM UTC

defaultcompany wrote: post #79

tptacek wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, fair enough, but can you find one in this article that's hard for an LLM? The gnarliest one I saw, 4o handled instantly, and I went back and looked carefully at the image and the text and I'm sold. Like if this is a crowdsourcing project, why not do a first pass with an LLM and present users with both the image and the best-effort LLM pass? Later I signed up, went to the current missions, and they all seem to pos…

My parents have saved letters from their parents which are written in cursive but in two perpendicular layers. Meaning the writing goes horizontally in rows and then when they got to the end of the page it was turned 90 degrees and continued right on top of what was already there for the whole page. This was apparently to save paper and postage. It looks like an unintelligible jumble but my mother can actually deciph…

Are they having trouble? You can sign up right now and get tasks from the archive that seem trivial for 4o (by which I mean: feed a screenshot to 4o, get a transcription, and spot check it).

Re: Can you read this cursive handwriting? The National Archives wants your help

#82

Post by tptacek » Sat, Jan 18, 2025, 4:45 AM UTC

AdieuToLogic wrote: post #80

tptacek wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go ahead and find something hard, and relate back the steps you took to find it.

> Go ahead and find something hard, and relate back the steps you took to find it. This is a strawman[0] argument. You proclaimed: A lot of what they want transcribed is totally straightforward to OCR And I replied: If it's that easy, then do it and be the hero they want. So do it or do not. Nowhere does my finding "something hard" have any relevance to your proclamation. 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

I did in fact do it, and what I got was much, much easier than the samples in the article, which 4o did fine with. I'm sorry, but I declare the burden of proof here to be switched. Can you find a hard one?

(I don't think you need to Wikipedia-cite "straw man" on HN).

Re: Can you read this cursive handwriting? The National Archives wants your help

#83

Post by Dylan16807 » Sat, Jan 18, 2025, 4:46 AM UTC

AdieuToLogic wrote: post #42

jncfhnb wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are conceivable reasons why they may be telling a half truth here. Just engaging the public is a worthy goal here.

> There are conceivable reasons why they may be telling a half truth here. Just engaging the public is a worthy goal here. Asserting an ulterior motive without supporting proof is to engage in conspiracy theories. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.[0] 0 - https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/08/12/just-a-cigar/

It doesn't look like a cigar (very tricky documents) though. Hence the skepticism.

Re: Can you read this cursive handwriting? The National Archives wants your help

#84

Post by Dylan16807 » Sat, Jan 18, 2025, 4:58 AM UTC

AdieuToLogic wrote: post #80

tptacek wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go ahead and find something hard, and relate back the steps you took to find it.

> Go ahead and find something hard, and relate back the steps you took to find it. This is a strawman[0] argument. You proclaimed: A lot of what they want transcribed is totally straightforward to OCR And I replied: If it's that easy, then do it and be the hero they want. So do it or do not. Nowhere does my finding "something hard" have any relevance to your proclamation. 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

There are two claims. The main one is that all of these documents are easy to individually transcribe by machine. The other is that a whole lot can be OCR'd, which is pretty simple to check.

That's not a claim that processing the entire archive would be trivial. And even if it was, whether that would make someone the "hero they want" is part of what's being called into question.

So your silly demand going unmet proves nothing.

Also, "give me an example please" is not a strawman!

If you actually want to prove something, you need to show at least one document in the set that a human can do but not a machine, or to really make a good point you need to show that a non-neglibile fraction fit that description.

Re: Can you read this cursive handwriting? The National Archives wants your help

#85

Post by geuis » Sat, Jan 18, 2025, 5:10 AM UTC

It's a really interesting project. But boy do they make it hard to participate.

* Article doesn't provide a direct link to the topic mission

* Signup is pretty easy. Well organized and even gently requires you to have two forms of 2FA.

* Sign up complete. Go back to the primary page and try to find the mission. A little buried but not too deep.

* Notice I'm not signed in. Ok, let's do that. Now I'm back on the main page and navigate back. Find the first document and open it. Really interesting to scan through the doc and to read. People back then generally had really nice handwriting.

* Ok, what next, how do I transcribe? ... ? Oh it says I'm not logged in again. Fine, click the link and...

* I'm logged in and directed back to the main page, again.

Look, this is an interesting project and I'd love to spend my spare cycles to help out. But they really need to clean up this process.

Volunteers shouldn't have to jump through kinda poorly designed interfaces to help out.

Re: Can you read this cursive handwriting? The National Archives wants your help

#86

Post by AdieuToLogic » Sat, Jan 18, 2025, 5:10 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #82

AdieuToLogic wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Go ahead and find something hard, and relate back the steps you took to find it. This is a strawman[0] argument. You proclaimed: A lot of what they want transcribed is totally straightforward to OCR And I replied: If it's that easy, then do it and be the hero they want. So do it or do not. Nowhere does my finding "something hard" have any relevance to your proclamation. 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

I did in fact do it, and what I got was much, much easier than the samples in the article, which 4o did fine with. I'm sorry, but I declare the burden of proof here to be switched. Can you find a hard one? (I don't think you need to Wikipedia-cite "straw man" on HN).

> I did in fact do it, and what I got was much, much easier than the samples in the article, which 4o did fine with.

Awesome.

Can you guarantee its results are completely accurate every time, with every document, and need no human review?

> I'm sorry, but I declare the burden of proof here to be switched.

If you are referencing my stating:

  If it's that easy, then do it and be the hero they want.

Then I don't really know how to respond. Otherwise, if you are referencing my statement:

> Perhaps "random humans" can perform tasks which could reshape your belief:

>> OCR is VERY good

To which I again ask, can you guarantee the correctness of OCR results will exceed what "random humans" can generally provide? What about "non-random motivated humans"?

My point is that automated approaches to tasks such as what the National Archives have outlined here almost always require human review/approval, as accuracy is paramount.

> (I don't think you need to Wikipedia-cite "straw man" on HN).

I do so for two purposes. First, if I misuse a cited term someone here will quickly correct me. Second, there is always a probability of someone new here which is unaware of the cited term(s).

Re: Can you read this cursive handwriting? The National Archives wants your help

#87

Post by Dylan16807 » Sat, Jan 18, 2025, 5:12 AM UTC

AdieuToLogic wrote: post #86

tptacek wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did in fact do it, and what I got was much, much easier than the samples in the article, which 4o did fine with. I'm sorry, but I declare the burden of proof here to be switched. Can you find a hard one? (I don't think you need to Wikipedia-cite "straw man" on HN).

> I did in fact do it, and what I got was much, much easier than the samples in the article, which 4o did fine with. Awesome. Can you guarantee its results are completely accurate every time, with every document, and need no human review? > I'm sorry, but I declare the burden of proof here to be switched. If you are referencing my stating: If it's that easy, then do it and be the hero they want. Then I don't really k…

> If you are referencing my stating:

> > If it's that easy, then do it and be the hero they want.

> Then I don't really know how to respond.

If someone says a thing is easy, and you respond by demanding they do it a million times to prove that it's easy, you are the one that has screwed up the burden of proof.

Re: Can you read this cursive handwriting? The National Archives wants your help

#88

Post by bigstrat2003 » Sat, Jan 18, 2025, 5:22 AM UTC

CamperBob2 wrote: post #70

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, ok then.

I mean, all you have to do is feed the image to ChatGPT, and it will read it basically as well as you can. Denying/downvoting reality is always an option, of course.

Not being rude was also an option, one you chose not to take for some reason. Seriously, all it would've taken was for you to say something like "there have been a lot of advancements so it's probably different than you remember". This conversation would've gone much smoother for you if you had.

And BugsJustFindMe can't downvote you, because it was a reply to him. So don't bite his head off over it. You got downvoted because you were a jerk, plain and simple.

Re: Can you read this cursive handwriting? The National Archives wants your help

#89

Post by tptacek » Sat, Jan 18, 2025, 5:22 AM UTC

AdieuToLogic wrote: post #86

tptacek wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did in fact do it, and what I got was much, much easier than the samples in the article, which 4o did fine with. I'm sorry, but I declare the burden of proof here to be switched. Can you find a hard one? (I don't think you need to Wikipedia-cite "straw man" on HN).

> I did in fact do it, and what I got was much, much easier than the samples in the article, which 4o did fine with. Awesome. Can you guarantee its results are completely accurate every time, with every document, and need no human review? > I'm sorry, but I declare the burden of proof here to be switched. If you are referencing my stating: If it's that easy, then do it and be the hero they want. Then I don't really k…

Can I ask, did you sign up and look at what they're actually looking for? Show of good faith: can you give 3 of the headers for the top-level "missions" they have for transcriptions?

Re: Can you read this cursive handwriting? The National Archives wants your help

#90

Post by AdieuToLogic » Sat, Jan 18, 2025, 5:26 AM UTC

Dylan16807 wrote: post #84

AdieuToLogic wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Go ahead and find something hard, and relate back the steps you took to find it. This is a strawman[0] argument. You proclaimed: A lot of what they want transcribed is totally straightforward to OCR And I replied: If it's that easy, then do it and be the hero they want. So do it or do not. Nowhere does my finding "something hard" have any relevance to your proclamation. 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

There are two claims. The main one is that all of these documents are easy to individually transcribe by machine. The other is that a whole lot can be OCR'd, which is pretty simple to check. That's not a claim that processing the entire archive would be trivial. And even if it was, whether that would make someone the "hero they want" is part of what's being called into question. So your silly demand going unmet prove…

> So your silly demand going unmet proves nothing.

I made demands of no one.

> Also, "give me an example please" is not a strawman!

My identification of the strawman was that it referenced "find something hard" when I had said "be the hero they want" and that what is needed in this specific problem domain may be more difficult than what a generalization addresses.

> If you actually want to prove something, you need to show at least one document in the set that a human can do but not a machine, or to really make a good point you need to show that a non-neglibile fraction fit that description.

Maybe this is the proof you demand.

LLM's are statistical prediction algorithms. As such, they are nondeterministic and, therefore, provide no guarantees as to the correctness of their output.

The National Archives have specific artifacts requiring precise textual data extraction.

Use of nondeterministic tools known to produce provably incorrect results eliminate their applicability in this workflow due to all of their output requiring human review. This is an unnecessary step and can be eliminated by the human reading the original text themself.

Does that satisfy your demand?