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A new Google model is nearly perfect on automated handwriting recognition

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

#101

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…

> This I’m a lot more skeptical of. The linked twitter post just looks like something it would replicate via HTML/CSS/JS. Whats the kernel look like?

Thanks for this, I was almost convinced and about to re-think my entire perspective and experience with LLMs.

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

#102
post #96
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is quite a narrow view of how the generation works. AI can extrapolate from the training set and explore new directions. It's not just cutting pieces and gluing together.

In practice, I find the ability for this new wave of AI to extrapolate very limited.

Do you have any concrete examples you'd care to share? While this new wave of AI doesn't have unlimited powers of extrapolation, the post we're commenting on is asserting that this latest AI from Google was able to extrapolate solutions to two of AI's oldest problems, which would seem to contradict an assertion of "very limited".

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

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Predicting the next word requires understanding If we were talking about humans trying to predict next word, that would be true. There is no reason to suppose than an LLM is doing anything other than deep pattern prediction pursuant to, and no better than needed for, next word prediction.

There is plenty reason. This article is just one example of many. People bring it up because LLMs routinely do things we call reasoning when we see them manifest in other humans. Brushing it off as 'deep pattern prediction' is genuinely meaningless. Nobody who uses that phrase in that way can actually explain what they are talking about in a way that can be falsified. It's just vibes. It's an unfalsifiable conversati…

Anything can be euphemized. Human intelligence is atoms moving around the brain. General relativity is writing on a piece of paper.

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

#104
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally novel either refers to something that is new, or a certain type of literature. If the AI is generating something functionally equivalent to a program in its training set (in this case, dozens or even hundreds of such programs) then it by definition cannot be novel.

This is quite a narrow view of how the generation works. AI can extrapolate from the training set and explore new directions. It's not just cutting pieces and gluing together.

uhhh can it? I've certainly not seen any evidence of an AI generating something not based on its training set. It's certainly smart enough to shuffle code around and make superficial changes, and that's pretty impressive in its own way but not particularly useful unless your only goal is to just launder somebody else's code to get around a licensing problem (and even then it's questionable if that's a derived work or not).

Honest question: if AI is actually capable of exploring new directions why does it have to train on what is effectively the sum total of all human knowledge? Shouldn't it be able to take in some basic concepts (language parsing, logic, etc) and bootstrap its way into new discoveries (not necessarily completely new but independently derived) from there? Nobody learns the way an LLM does.

ChatGPT, to the extent that it is comparable to human cognition, is undoubtedly the most well-read person in all of history. When I want to learn something I look it up online or in the public library but I don't have to read the entire library to understand a concept.

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

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 believe they can create a novel instance of a system from a sufficient number of relevant references - i.e. implement a set of already-known features without (much) code duplication. LLMs are certainly capable of this level of generalization due to their huge non-relevant reference set. Whether they can expand beyond that into something truly novel from a feature/functionality standpoint is a whole other, and less…

Almost all of the work in making a new operating system or a gameboy emulator or something is in characterizing the problem space and defining the solution. How do you know what such and such instruction does? What is the ideal way to handle this memory structure here? You know, knowledge you gain from spending time tracking down a specific bug or optimizing a subroutine.

When I create something, it's an exploratory process. I don't just guess what I am going to do based on my previous step and hope it comes out good on the first try. Let's say I decide to make a car with 5 wheels. I would go through several chassis designs, different engine configurations until I eventually had something that works well. Maybe some are too weak, some too expensive, some are too complicated. Maybe some prototypes get to the physical testing stage while others don't. Finally, I publish this design for other people to work on.

If you ask the LLM to work on a novel concept it hasn't been trained on, it will usually spit out some nonsense that either doesn't work or works poorly, or it will refuse to provide a specific enough solution. If it has been trained on previous work, it will spit out something that looks similar to the solved problem in its training set.

These AI systems don't undergo the process of trial and error that suggests it is creating something novel. Its process of creation is not reactive with the environment. It is just cribbing off of extant solutions it's been trained on.

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

#106
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a thought experiment: if modern machine learning systems existed in the early 20th century, would they have been able to produce an equivalent to the theory of relativity? How about advance our understanding of the universe? Teach us about flight dynamics and take us into space? Invent the Turing machine, Von Neumann architecture, transistors? If yes, why aren't we seeing glimpses of such genius today? If we'v…

>Here's a thought experiment: if modern machine learning systems existed in the early 20th century, would they have been able to produce an equivalent to the theory of relativity? How about advance our understanding of the universe? Teach us about flight dynamics and take us into space? Invent the Turing machine, Von Neumann architecture, transistors? Only a small percentage of humanity are/were capable of doing any…

Were they the best of the best? or were they just at the right place and time to be exposed to a novel idea?

I am skeptical of this claim that you need a 140IQ to make scientific breakthroughs, because you don't need a 140IQ to understand special relativity. It is a matter of motivation and exposure to new information. The vast majority of the population doesn't benefit from working in some niche field of physics in the first place.

Perhaps LLMs will never be at the right place and the right time because they are only trained on ideas that already exist.

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

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe they can create a novel instance of a system from a sufficient number of relevant references - i.e. implement a set of already-known features without (much) code duplication. LLMs are certainly capable of this level of generalization due to their huge non-relevant reference set. Whether they can expand beyond that into something truly novel from a feature/functionality standpoint is a whole other, and less…

Almost all of the work in making a new operating system or a gameboy emulator or something is in characterizing the problem space and defining the solution. How do you know what such and such instruction does? What is the ideal way to handle this memory structure here? You know, knowledge you gain from spending time tracking down a specific bug or optimizing a subroutine. When I create something, it's an exploratory…

I'm literally watching Claude Code "undergo the process of trial and error" in another window right now.

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

#108
> So that is essentially the ceiling in terms of accuracy.

I think this is mistaken. I remember... ten years ago? When speech-to-text models came out that dealt with background noise that made the audio sound very much like straight pink noise to my ear, but the model was able to transcribe the speech hidden within at a reasonable accuracy rate.

So with handwritten text, the only prediction that makes sense to me is that we will (potentially) reach a state where the machine is at least probably more accurate than humans, although we wouldn't be able to confirm it ourselves.

But if multiple independent models, say, Gemini 5 and Claude 7, both agree on the result, and a human can only shrug and say, "might be," then we're at a point where the machines are probably superior at the task.

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

#109

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.

I would just suggest that if you want your comment to be more helpful than the article that you're critiquing, you might want to actually quote the part which you believe is "The actual point".

Otherwise you are likely to have people agreeing with you, while they actually had a very different point that they took away.

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

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use the Portal de Archivos Españoles [1] for Spanish colonial documents. Each country has their own archive but the Spanish one has the most content (35 million digitized pages) The hard part is knowing where to look since most of the images haven’t gone through HRT/OCR or indexing so you have to understand Spanish colonial administration and go through the collections to find stuff. [1] https://pares.cultura.gob.e…

Want to collab on a database and some clustering and analysis? I’m a data scientist at FAIR with an interest in antiquarian docs and books

Sadly I'm just an amateur armchair historian (at best) so I doubt I'd be of much help. I'm mostly only doing the translation for my own edification
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