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

Meta AI claims to have a child in a NYC public school

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 45 posts

Re: Meta AI claims to have a child in a NYC public school

#31

Post by tiptup300 »

nicklecompte wrote: post #12
schiffern wrote: post #7

"Meta AI claims" No it doesn't. It can't. Only people (or companies, which require people) can meaningfully "claim" things. LLMs are still not people, despite our persistent attempts to personify them. This is merely a sexier headline than "Hallucination machine hallucinates." And even that word personifies a bit too much!

I understand your point but I think it's misplaced here. This kind of criticism made sense with the Bing/Sydney stuff, since "Bing claims to be self-aware" is misleading compared to "Bing inconsistently recites some sci-fi cliches." People like Kevin Roose were actively spreading misconceptions about how LLMs work. It would have been nice if they had taken your comment seriously in 2023. But this is different. The su…

Any more information on this?

I heard so much about the Kevin Roose stuff, is there a breakdown somewhere of what actually happened.

From the way that podcast presented it, Microsoft had the bing bot untethered in a way that it kepted taking in more and more context and was just taking it correctly.

This is against my current much less virgin, but very much simple, understanding of how llms/gpt works.

What actually happened there?

Re: Meta AI claims to have a child in a NYC public school

#32

Post by tiptup300 »

noobermin wrote: post #30
nxobject wrote: post #3

At this point, the reputational risk that one malfunctioning generative AI has on _all_ generative AI is concerning.

The reason this occurs as a narrative is because hallucination is a widespread issue with LLMs, and thus can be fairly generalised across most deployments of them.

Talking to some disconnected sets of people who are much more layman and not computer users, when I speak of some cool new AI app, they look at me with eyes of perversion and somewhat disgust with fear.

The way the information has been coming out and sold of ai to pump up stock prices is to the detriment of public opinion. Curious to see how things go.

Re: Meta AI claims to have a child in a NYC public school

#34

Post by tpmoney »

davekeck wrote: post #10
schiffern wrote: post #7

"Meta AI claims" No it doesn't. It can't. Only people (or companies, which require people) can meaningfully "claim" things. LLMs are still not people, despite our persistent attempts to personify them. This is merely a sexier headline than "Hallucination machine hallucinates." And even that word personifies a bit too much!

What verbiage would you deem acceptable, if "claims" and "hallucinates" are both out?

“Weighted random text generator generates random text that doesn’t make logical sense” maybe. Seems to be both accurate and better describes what’s actually going on. The AI can’t claim or hallucinate anything because that requires it to have core beliefs and senses that can be fooled by incorrect inputs.

Re: Meta AI claims to have a child in a NYC public school

#35

Post by water-data-dude »

redeeman wrote: post #6

how about everyone stop calling it AI when it very clearly is little more "intelligent" than "intelligent device for starting your heater when it gets cold" (aka thermostat) (and yes, this has really been marketed)

I’ve given up on correcting people. “AI” has been erroneously used to describe LLMs enough that it’s in most peoples’ heads as the correct usage. Language changes over time, and even if we’re “right” about the term AI being incorrectly applied here, we don’t get to make choices about how language is used - it’s its own beast and it obeys its own laws.

The makers of Velcro (brand name) would love for people to use “hook and loop fasteners” when referring to velcro (generic), but once enough people are using a term you might as well try to fight the tide.

Re: Meta AI claims to have a child in a NYC public school

#36

Post by zenexer »

greenish_shores wrote: post #28
wccrawford wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For an abbreviation, it's the first letter's pronunciation. You could easily make a list of those 26. For an acronym, it's the word's pronunciation, and is (almost?) always the same as the standard rule: Vowels vs consonants.

"Almost" can make a big difference when writing stuff where formal style is expected. For instant messaging, yeah, probably one doesn't have to care. When writing, you put articles before a letter , but they're based on what phoneme they precede. Therefore, when purely classifying letters, there's much more combinations than 26. In hundreds or lower thousands, possibly. Or more. That's the difference, and for me it's…

Such a table can't exist. Pronunciation is varies, so your choice of articles adds character to your text in much the same way your accent does for spoken words.

Take "herb," for example. In some dialects, the "h" is vocalized, while in others, it's silent. Both "an herb" and "a herb" are valid. Your choice in your writing conveys identity. An author who opts for "a herb" helps paint a vague picture of the individual behind the words, perhaps someone from England.

You could make your own personal table, but it would be for you and only you.

Also, although there is a concrete rule, it's not something we're thinking about as we talk--using the wrong article just feels wrong. Most of us aren't consciously "running an algorithm," as you put it; the correct article just comes out.

Most people will find that they develop the same skill with writing over time. The subset of people who have trouble developing that skill and learn best by memorizing a table of words is going to be quite small. I would never write "a LLM" in the same way that I would never say "an history" out loud.

Re: Meta AI claims to have a child in a NYC public school

#37

Post by greenish_shores »

zenexer wrote: post #36
greenish_shores wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Almost" can make a big difference when writing stuff where formal style is expected. For instant messaging, yeah, probably one doesn't have to care. When writing, you put articles before a letter , but they're based on what phoneme they precede. Therefore, when purely classifying letters, there's much more combinations than 26. In hundreds or lower thousands, possibly. Or more. That's the difference, and for me it's…

Such a table can't exist. Pronunciation is varies, so your choice of articles adds character to your text in much the same way your accent does for spoken words. Take "herb," for example. In some dialects, the "h" is vocalized, while in others, it's silent. Both "an herb" and "a herb" are valid. Your choice in your writing conveys identity. An author who opts for "a herb" helps paint a vague picture of the individual…

That's a really good comment! Thanks. By the way, pronunciation of articles also varies. With some variants "a" would get much more universal (but also making it harder to notice when it's used wrong), while with others it would be almost impossible to use "a" where "an" should be used without exposing yourself to a major tongue-twister.

And yeah, I'm aware that the subset of people mentioned is quite small. On this subject, it's that memorization requires close to no effort for me, and is close to instantaneous and long-lasting (as long as I run through it several times and the things learned aren't ending up being completely unused), while developing the intuitive feel of the right article, as you rightly put it, takes time (however, can also be close to effortless to some)... and lots of writing.

Re: Meta AI claims to have a child in a NYC public school

#38

Post by schiffern »

nicklecompte wrote: post #12
schiffern wrote: post #7

"Meta AI claims" No it doesn't. It can't. Only people (or companies, which require people) can meaningfully "claim" things. LLMs are still not people, despite our persistent attempts to personify them. This is merely a sexier headline than "Hallucination machine hallucinates." And even that word personifies a bit too much!

I understand your point but I think it's misplaced here. This kind of criticism made sense with the Bing/Sydney stuff, since "Bing claims to be self-aware" is misleading compared to "Bing inconsistently recites some sci-fi cliches." People like Kevin Roose were actively spreading misconceptions about how LLMs work. It would have been nice if they had taken your comment seriously in 2023. But this is different. The su…

> Policing the language here seems more about pedantry than correcting actual misconceptions.

Feel free to blame me, if it helps. I've got broad shoulders.

However the fact that we're (collectively) losing the mass "mindshare battle" doesn't imply bad faith. Some of us are still fighting the good fight, and I don't see a problem with that.

Personally I think this only means we should fight harder against these dangerous beliefs, not throw in the towel (or worse, friendly fire against fellow educators).

And yes, it's human-side beliefs that are dangerous, not the tech itself. If an LLM "suggests" to kill and we know what an LLM really is, then it's harmless. However if a large fraction believe an LLM is some infallible AI oracle or genie (a surprisingly common belief), then this "suggestion" could cause catastrophic harm.

Re: Meta AI claims to have a child in a NYC public school

#40

Post by schiffern »

davekeck wrote: post #10
schiffern wrote: post #7

"Meta AI claims" No it doesn't. It can't. Only people (or companies, which require people) can meaningfully "claim" things. LLMs are still not people, despite our persistent attempts to personify them. This is merely a sexier headline than "Hallucination machine hallucinates." And even that word personifies a bit too much!

What verbiage would you deem acceptable, if "claims" and "hallucinates" are both out?

It's right in the most famous system's name: "Generative Pre-trained Transformer". LLMs generate text (and other media) which imitates their pre-training corpus. That's all.

At the end of the day, it's turning a mathematical crank. LLMs have no more intentionality than a jack-in-the-box.

Post reply on HN