Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Making Wolfram tech available as a foundation tool for LLM systems

writings.stephenwolfram.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 188 posts

Re: Making Wolfram tech available as a foundation tool for LLM systems

#171

Post by llbbdd »

nerevarthelame wrote: post #38
llbbdd wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other day I formatted a sentence out loud in the "it's not just x it's y" structure and immediately felt gross, despite having done it probably a million times in my lifetime. That was an out-of-body feeling.

In George Orwell's essay "Politics and the English Language," [0] one of his primary recommendations for writing well is to "Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print." "It's not just X, it's Y" definitely seems to qualify today. It's a stale way to express an idea. I hadn't revisited that essay since LLMs became a thing, but boy was it prescient: > By using stale m…

Thank you for sending this, I've read it through twice and it's already affected how I approached some writing I did today. Even just forcing myself to think "what is another way to say this?" feels like it activates a different part of my brain that goes "well, what were you really trying to say in the first place?", and it's humbling when my mind comes up blank to that.

It reminded me of this comment I saw earlier[0] referring to a situation where Werner Herzog essentially cache-busted a Reverend, who was brought to tears when he could no longer reply with the templates that kept him stoic before. Maybe we stand to lose more than our voices to the machine if we're not thoughtful.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47119373

Re: Making Wolfram tech available as a foundation tool for LLM systems

#172

Post by scotty79 »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #170
wyan wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or accelerated, since development would have ceased to be restricted to Wolfram's employees

If that was really going to be the case then we wouldn't be having this discussion, there would already be an open source streaking ahead.

Have you seen a little piece of software called Python that basically single-handedly ushered the age of AI? What did Wolfram do except playing toys in his high walled sandbox?

Figuratively half of the comments under this post are "I guess it's cute but I can't see anything in there that I couldn't do with Python".

Re: Making Wolfram tech available as a foundation tool for LLM systems

#173

Post by oefrha »

auggierose wrote: post #120
oefrha wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s hard to distribute equipment, food and shelter at zero marginal cost. It’s easy to distribute software at zero marginal cost. So let’s start there.

No one is stopping you. Build it, then distribute it. You will find that as long as people need to pay for their living, there is no post-scarcity world in any domain, especially not the digital one.

I have built and distributed “it” more than at least 95% of developers out there, thanks for asking. And that’s without institutional grants.

Re: Making Wolfram tech available as a foundation tool for LLM systems

#174

Post by fragmede »

squeefers wrote: post #136
fragmede wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're missing is everything not on the public Internet. Everything hidden away from you and me. Everything done in secret. If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there, does it make a sound?

but in general... what?

What Micoloth is missing or what I'm saying, is that people are using Wolfram Alpha but don't feel the need to post to Instagram or wherever about it, so Micoloth isn't hearing about it. Micoloth is assuming that because they aren't hearing about it, it isn't happening. I'm pointing out that things can happen that you don't hear about.

Re: Making Wolfram tech available as a foundation tool for LLM systems

#175

Post by adius »

phkahler wrote: post #127
adius wrote: post #70

I agree, but to be truly foundational, it needs to be open source and accessible for everyone! That’s why I’m working on an open source implementation of Mathematica (i.e. an Wolfram Language interpreter): https://github.com/ad-si/Woxi

Does that include symbolic math equivalent to that of Maxima?

Yes, definitely! This is one of Mathematica’s hallmark features and it would not be complete without it.

Re: Making Wolfram tech available as a foundation tool for LLM systems

#176

Post by vjk800 »

Micoloth wrote: post #84
vjk800 wrote: post #81

Every major technological invention nowadays quickly breeds open source clones that evolve to be on par with the commercial ones on some time scale. Why hasn't this happened to Wolfram Alpha/Mathematica? I know there's Sympy, but it's so far behind Mathematica that it's not even comparable. Is the heavily mathematical nature of the tool somehow an insurmountable obstacle to the open source community?

It’s a great question. As soneone who has been fascinated by Wolfram Aplha for a loong time (and might or might not have thought about cloning it), i think that growing up i ended up realizing that Mathematica in the real world just doesn’t… Do much? Maybe i’m just missing something. But it looks like nobody is really using it except for some very specific math research which has grown from within that ecosystem from…

I used to be a university researcher in theoretical physics and, in that field, everyone uses it, but I suppose that would count as "very specific math research" Any kind of complex integrals, systems of equations, etc. and Mathematica is invaluable, and, as I said, so much ahead of Sympy.

You could do stuff other than theoretical physics research with Mathematica, though. I has a lot of functionality and I always felt that I used only a tiny fraction of it.

Re: Making Wolfram tech available as a foundation tool for LLM systems

#177

Post by vjk800 »

anonzzzies wrote: post #82
vjk800 wrote: post #81

Every major technological invention nowadays quickly breeds open source clones that evolve to be on par with the commercial ones on some time scale. Why hasn't this happened to Wolfram Alpha/Mathematica? I know there's Sympy, but it's so far behind Mathematica that it's not even comparable. Is the heavily mathematical nature of the tool somehow an insurmountable obstacle to the open source community?

SageMath? I never used it but I hear it passing by as alternative. (And this one popped in Google as second when I just searched; https://github.com/Mathics3/mathics-core )

Sympy is part of SageMath. SageMath is just a kind of user interface to Sympy and a bunch of other Python libraries. Mathics I haven't tried.

Re: Making Wolfram tech available as a foundation tool for LLM systems

#178

Post by auggierose »

oefrha wrote: post #173
auggierose wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is stopping you. Build it, then distribute it. You will find that as long as people need to pay for their living, there is no post-scarcity world in any domain, especially not the digital one.

I have built and distributed “it” more than at least 95% of developers out there, thanks for asking. And that’s without institutional grants.

And without a salary?

Re: Making Wolfram tech available as a foundation tool for LLM systems

#179

Post by oefrha »

auggierose wrote: post #178
oefrha wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have built and distributed “it” more than at least 95% of developers out there, thanks for asking. And that’s without institutional grants.

And without a salary?

Academic institutions already pay salaries whether they fund open source development or Wolfram Research, so not sure what you’re trying to argue. People haven’t been starving while doing research in the open.

Re: Making Wolfram tech available as a foundation tool for LLM systems

#180

Post by auggierose »

oefrha wrote: post #179
auggierose wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And without a salary?

Academic institutions already pay salaries whether they fund open source development or Wolfram Research, so not sure what you’re trying to argue. People haven’t been starving while doing research in the open.

But academic institutions didn’t produce Mathematica. The point is simple: a lot of useful software like Mathematica has not been open-source for a reason. It is not about distribution being free; it is about production being expensive.
Post reply on HN