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Yeah. Ironically, if he used an LLM to proofread his work, it would have told him that GAN's are generative not "generalized". That LLMs are primarily built on Transformers rather than GANs. And that they're more famous for image generation rather than image recognition.
Transformers are an architecture and GANs are a training method for the architecture. There are GAN Transformers.
Crazy how forward thinking this guy was in 2005 vs today.
While Stross is currently a neo-Luddite who doesn't believe in the Singularity, his book Accelerando is probably the best work of Singularitarian fiction ever written. It was written in the 2000s, starts in the 2010s, and covers the various decades of this century. I highly recommend it for anyone who wants to know how weird this century will be. It's also available for free online. [1] It's one of my favorite books…
1) Having met Stross, and briefly spoken to him way back when, he never actually believed in the singularity as a possible future. 2) Turns out it was the sci-fi author who was wrong all along! Fascinating to see someone confidently citing a meme, while actively evidencing the fallacy it exposes.
I think my favorite moment in the book is when one of the characters (at the time, a digitized consciousness traveling at near light speed in a space ship the size of a coke can to explore an anomalous signal sent by alien life) argues that the singularity is a ridiculous concept and will never happen. I always thought that was a really clever observation on the part of Stross that our perspectives are so narrow and provincial, we often can’t see what’s happening in front of our own faces. Your comment does kind of recontextualize that for me and I sort of wonder if that was the author speaking directly to the audience?
Dude's an artist. He should do what his artistic intuition tells him to. I'm a software developer. I'll follow my own experience. It'll all work out.
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For some value of "work out" anywhere between " human utopia that spreads across the stars " to " we destroy everything in a ball of nuclear fire and only microbes survive ", yes, it will. The universe will keep on going either way.
"Whatever it is, it's progress, and we're doing it!"
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It can definitely plan such things. Because agentic systems don't have to output a book all at once. The mainstream still lives 1-2 years in the past. Agents can plan out a narrative draft, write it out section by section, maybe out of order, then tweak it, plant clues if it wants to, then trigger it in another chapter file etc. Then read the whole thing, reconsider, etc. It can iterate. I'm not saying it will be gre…
What are you talking about… You can use the word soul without believing in a religious concept of soul. It’s done all the time in secular societies. It’s even a very common term used to describe the problem with LLM generated content, that it lacks soul or human spirit, it lacks the human meaning, intent
Just be upfront. 1) It threatens your livelihood that people can get the thing done faster and cheaper than what they used to pay you, 2) our relationship to an AI shaped entity is spiritually risky and a esthetically off putting, and we have to talk about golems and the tower of babel and stuff. If you think I'm being incoherent, you're in for a ride. Society will have to come to terms with major major issues, not just job replacement and bad slop art.
Dude's an artist. He should do what his artistic intuition tells him to. I'm a software developer. I'll follow my own experience. It'll all work out.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What are you talking about… You can use the word soul without believing in a religious concept of soul. It’s done all the time in secular societies. It’s even a very common term used to describe the problem with LLM generated content, that it lacks soul or human spirit, it lacks the human meaning, intent
It's rare. It's mostly, "but it will never be able to do X" (when it can already do X), or it uses too much water (while having no idea or reference point to what amount is much), or other climate things, or non-progressive bias, or copyright (when training is fair use) etc. Just be upfront. 1) It threatens your livelihood that people can get the thing done faster and cheaper than what they used to pay you, 2) our re…