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Semantic ablation: Why AI writing is generic and boring

theregister.com

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Re: Semantic ablation: Why AI writing is generic and boring

#211

Post by AreShoesFeet000 »

Angostura wrote: post #209
AreShoesFeet000 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t define anything. The truth is just that there’s no profit extraction without charity work. I’ve done lots of it. If you’ve done it, you know too. As dark as it may seem to strip romantism out of which you call humanity, not only there isn’t a just salary for those who bear the weight of the machine, but also there’s isn’t even a salary per se. If for you humanity is just doing seemingly nice guy work without…

> The truth is just that there’s no profit extraction without charity work. I'm not actually sure what you mean by this, so I can't really assess its truthiness > not only there isn’t a just salary for those who bear the weight of the machine, but also there’s isn’t even a salary per se. Or this - what do you mean? >If for you humanity is just doing seemingly nice guy work without question, call me a monster. Not eve…

My adversary has accused me of sophistry. As if I’m just a crafter of kaleidoscopes. I’m just giving back the compliment by calling out their romanticism.

Charity work can bring momentary fulfillment to a person. I’m not reducing humanity by situating it within the machine. You even have the right to reject the material proposition that charity work is a piece that composes the totality of the machine. But eventually all truth will be self evident, so let’s leave it to the reader.

Re: Semantic ablation: Why AI writing is generic and boring

#212

Post by mizzao »

anon-3988 wrote: post #195
SignalStackDev wrote: post #106

[flagged]

Be honest, did you use LLM to write this reply? Am just genuinely curious as I am trying to gauge and tune my senses. OT: I do agree with your assessment.

The only AI flavor was "Semantic ablation isn't a side effect of the training process, it's the intended outcome of the objective."

But, there are hyphens used where em-dashes are expected, so that is anticorrelated with LLM writing.

Re: Semantic ablation: Why AI writing is generic and boring

#213

Post by mizzao »

Isn't image generation basically doing "anti semantic ablation", starting with a blank canvas and iteratively refining it into a meaningful collection of pixels?

Is it possible to do the same thing with word generation, such that it sharpens into an opinionated version (even if it would do something different each time?)

Re: Semantic ablation: Why AI writing is generic and boring

#214

Post by bananaflag »

andai wrote: post #205
bananaflag wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a hard problem and so far not a profitable one (I hope the solution will emerge as a byproduct of another innovation) https://nostalgebraist.tumblr.com/post/778041178124926976/hy... https://nostalgebraist.tumblr.com/post/792464928029163520/th...

I think you made the right diagnosis with "cringe" :) They forgot to turn down the cringe slider! Have you played with the pre-RLHF models? I think Davinci is still online, though probably not for much longer. They're a lot harder to work with (they don't have instruct training, so they just generate text similar to what you give them, rather than obeying commands). But they seem almost immune to the problem of mode…

That's not my blog, but the author played a lot with GPT-2 and 3 back in the days. (And I regret not doing the same.)

I think you can even today play with some uncensored base models of that level.

Re: Semantic ablation: Why AI writing is generic and boring

#215

Post by Angostura »

AreShoesFeet000 wrote: post #211
Angostura wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The truth is just that there’s no profit extraction without charity work. I'm not actually sure what you mean by this, so I can't really assess its truthiness > not only there isn’t a just salary for those who bear the weight of the machine, but also there’s isn’t even a salary per se. Or this - what do you mean? >If for you humanity is just doing seemingly nice guy work without question, call me a monster. Not eve…

My adversary has accused me of sophistry. As if I’m just a crafter of kaleidoscopes. I’m just giving back the compliment by calling out their romanticism. Charity work can bring momentary fulfillment to a person. I’m not reducing humanity by situating it within the machine. You even have the right to reject the material proposition that charity work is a piece that composes the totality of the machine. But eventually…

I’m not your adversary, I’m just trying to understand your point.

Your original assertion was that ‘ you’re only there as long as the use values you create can be exchanged in the market for a profit.’

When I suggested that non-profit or public sector jobs could certainly have soul, your responses were pretty incomprehensible.

Can you explain your point clearly and succinctly?

Re: Semantic ablation: Why AI writing is generic and boring

#216

Post by lurquer »

causal wrote: post #203
lurquer wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure? Here's the OP article (first part... don't want to spam the thread) written in much cooler style... ------ The Lobotomist in the Machine They gave the first disease a name. Hallucination, they called it — like the machine had dropped acid and started seeing angels in the architecture. A forgivable sin, almost charming: the silicon idiot-savant conjuring phantoms from whole cloth, adding things that were…

Yep. You took out much of the meaning and wrapped it in stylistic fluff.

Do you think the original article was NOT written (or at least heavily revised) by AI?

What does the following even mean?

“diluting the semantic density and specific gravity of the argument.”

Or this beaut:

“By accepting these ablated outputs, we are not just simplifying communication; we are building a world on a hollowed-out syntax that has suffered semantic ablation.” (Which reduces to ‘if we accept ablated outputs, we accept ablated outputs.’)

Or this;

“ The logical flow – originally built on complex, non-linear reasoning – is forced into a predictable, low-perplexity template.”

The ‘logical flow’ of what? It never even says. And what is ‘non-linear’ reasoning?

For all I know the original author wrote it all. But, a very close reading of the original article screams fluff to me… just gibberish.

That is, I don’t know if there was much ‘meaning’ in the original to begin with. If I’m going to read gibberish, I’d prefer it to be written in the style of a hard-boiled detective. That’s just me though.

Re: Semantic ablation: Why AI writing is generic and boring

#217

Post by AreShoesFeet000 »

Angostura wrote: post #215
AreShoesFeet000 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My adversary has accused me of sophistry. As if I’m just a crafter of kaleidoscopes. I’m just giving back the compliment by calling out their romanticism. Charity work can bring momentary fulfillment to a person. I’m not reducing humanity by situating it within the machine. You even have the right to reject the material proposition that charity work is a piece that composes the totality of the machine. But eventually…

I’m not your adversary, I’m just trying to understand your point. Your original assertion was that ‘ you’re only there as long as the use values you create can be exchanged in the market for a profit.’ When I suggested that non-profit or public sector jobs could certainly have soul, your responses were pretty incomprehensible. Can you explain your point clearly and succinctly?

Because you’re aiding exploitation either way. It’s the same machine, just another part of it.

Re: Semantic ablation: Why AI writing is generic and boring

#220

Post by meowface »

lakhotiaharshit wrote: post #159

This article on AI writing being boring seems to be written by AI. The em dashes and the sentence structure, all seems to be AI output. Or have human started adopting this style too.

Further analyses by others seem to show it is likely all written by an LLM.
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