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A new Google model is nearly perfect on automated handwriting recognition

generativehistory.substack.com

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Re: A new Google model is nearly perfect on automated handwriting recognition

#31

Post by throwup238 »

nestorD wrote: post #5
throwup238 wrote: post #2

I really hope they have because I’ve also been experimenting with LLMs to automate searching through old archival handwritten documents. I’m interested in the Conquistadors and their extensive accounts of their expeditions, but holy cow reading 16th century handwritten Spanish and translating it at the same time is a nightmare, requiring a ton of expertise and inside field knowledge. It doesn’t help that they were of…

Oh! That's a nice use-case and not too far from stuff I have been playing with! (happily I do not have to deal with handwriting, just bad scans of older newspapers and texts) I can vouch for the fact that LLMs are great at searching in the original language, summarizing key points to let you know whether a document might be of interest, then providing you with a translation where you need one. The fun part has been b…

> The fun part has been build tools to turn Claude code and Codex CLI into capable research assistant for that type of projects.

What does that look like? How well does it work?

I ended up writing a research TUI with my own higher level orchestration (basically have the thing keep working in a loop until a budget has been reached) and document extraction.

Re: A new Google model is nearly perfect on automated handwriting recognition

#33

Post by kittikitti »

I much prefer this tone about improvements in AI over the doomerism I constantly read. I was waiting for a twist where the author changed their minds and suddenly went "this is the devil's technology" or "THEY T00K OUR JOBS" but it never happened. Thank you for sharing, it felt like breathing for the first time in a long time.

Re: A new Google model is nearly perfect on automated handwriting recognition

#36

Post by joshdifabio »

Legend2440 wrote: post #21

What an unnecessarily wordy article. It could have been a fifth of the length. The actual point is buried under pages and pages of fluff and hyperbole.

Yes. I left in frustration and came to the comments for a summary.

Re: A new Google model is nearly perfect on automated handwriting recognition

#37

Post by omega3 »

pksebben wrote: post #16
bgwalter wrote: post #9

No, just another academic with the ominous handle @generativehistory that is beguiled by "AI". It is strange that others can never reproduce such amazing feats.

I don't know if I'd call it an 'amazing feat', but claude had me pause for a moment recently. Some time ago, I'd been working on a framework that involved a series of servers (not the only one I've talked to claude about) that had to pass messages around in a particular fashion. Mostly technical implementation details and occasional questions about architecture. Fast forward a ways, and on a lark I decided to ask in…

Perhaps you have the memory feature enabled: https://support.claude.com/en/articles/11817273-using-claude...

Re: A new Google model is nearly perfect on automated handwriting recognition

#40

Post by jstummbillig »

snickerbockers wrote: post #4
throwup238 wrote: post #2

I really hope they have because I’ve also been experimenting with LLMs to automate searching through old archival handwritten documents. I’m interested in the Conquistadors and their extensive accounts of their expeditions, but holy cow reading 16th century handwritten Spanish and translating it at the same time is a nightmare, requiring a ton of expertise and inside field knowledge. It doesn’t help that they were of…

I'm skeptical that they're actually capable of making something novel. There are thousands of hobby operating systems and video game emulators on github for it to train off of so it's not particularly surprising that it can copy somebody else's homework.

I remain confused but still somewhat interested as to a definition of "novel", given how often this idea is wielded in the AI context. How is everyone so good at identifying "novel"?

For example, I can't wrap my head around how a) a human could come up with a piece of writing that inarguably reads "novel" writing, while b) an AI could be guaranteed to not be able to do the same, under the same standard.

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