31–40 of 73 posts
> some people are going to be in for a very uncomfortable time in short order > it made me feel old and alarmed by the number of new tools at our disposal > I believe that laptops and PCs will give way to a more novel device rather soon. > So, er, like, good luck if you’re not paying attention to this stuff. All I see is some serious effort to hoist some FOMO on me. "Something big is coming soon" is repeated ad nause…
You “must weep”? All you’ve demonstrated were large amounts of laughter in the video and unfettered enthusiasm and encouragement in the text. Where exactly is the weeping?
"*BS 5824:2013* is a British Standard titled "Wall and floor tiling – Design and installation of ceramic, natural stone, and mosaic tiling in normal conditions – Code of practice". It provides guidelines for the *design, materials, installation, and testing* of tiling systems in interior and exterior applications..."
What? OK let's check the standard on the website of the actual body that publishes them: BSIgroup.com
"BS 5824:1980 Specification for low voltage switchgear and controlgear for industrial use. Mounting rails. C-profile and accessories for the mounting of equipment... Cost £149"
Oh shit the manufacturer's website is completely wrong and so is AI. They literally have no clue what they are talking about. 1. Let's not specify their fire curtains in my building. 2. Don't trust the AI.
My conclusion: If the info you need to do your job is behind a paywall or only in expensive textbooks, then AI hasn't seen it and it will make something up that's probably wrong, and probably don't get it to write your website or you will look like an idiot...
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I don't know, I could imagine that this changes when AI becomes more sensible than the average internet advice. Also I would like to see some evidence how dangerous the experiment with the AI inspired Fusor actually was. I recently read here "hiking in jeans" is dangerous.
I'd be interested in how an LLM could become more sensible than the average internet, they are by definition the average of the internet. I'm waiting for the next major innovation, and given AI's history I might be waiting a long time. Fusors are somewhat dangerous, they use extremely high voltage, in the thousands to hundred thousand volt range. x-rays become an issue above around 30,000 volts, but they are frequent…
That's been done no more than a few dozen times I think? Maybe less than that. I think it's a rare enough activity that the accident rate simply hasn't been probed enough.
Wood burning with microwave transformers is notorious for getting people killed, but how many people does it kill relative to how many people have tried it? Maybe a handful few out of a hundred? On the other hand, kids building fusors are probably smarter than the average public, to whom wood burning with transformers is frighteningly accessible. I don't think teenagers building fusors is quite that dangerous, but I don't think we have enough data to call it a statistically safe activity.
Why use AI to make good content, when you can take unremarkable content and add the string "AI" to pretend it's interesting. You could have just done an old-school web search for this! https://www.instructables.com/How-to-Build-a-Fusion-Reactor-... https://makezine.com/projects/nuclear-fusor/ https://fusor.net/board/viewtopic.php?t=3247 The "artificially intelligent" aspect is trivial.
That's like saying "we don't need teachers because we've got books". A how-to guide has to assume a certain level of knowledge, so will inevitably be insultingly basic for some readers or completely impenetrable for others. A static document can't elaborate on something you don't understand or fill in gaps in your knowledge. It can't help you debug a problem or look at your setup and point out where you might have go…
I respectfully disagree. I don't think it's wrong or useless to get an LLM to help, I recently did a similar project myself (even though I manually fact-checked all the high-voltage stuff).
If you find a guide that explains too much then you can skip the parts you know. If it doesn't explain something you don't know yet then you recursively look that stuff up. It doesn't matter if it's a book or a teacher or a search engine or an LLM.
It's just not good journalism here, because evidently this project has been done lots of times in similar circumstances without LLMs.
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The trick is to still use the same underlying information, but forwarded to you by a large language model, that way you can take most of the credit yourself. How unsensational of an article would it be, if you said you followed a step by step guide and built the thing the guide built before. But slap an LLM between yourself and the tutorial and now you can suddenly say you built something with the help of AI. Weird t…
I've seen a lot of that happening recently. People claiming they did this and that, when they actually followed the steps from a LLM. I actually don't mind this, except for the part where they omit the use of a LLM to get all the credits to themselves. Reminds me of all these YouTubers making video essays parotting something they have just learned, without actually mastering the subject.
We don’t really do this because there’s no concept of ownership of food to that degree. Maybe 200 years ago, where a farmer may chew you out since he toiled the soil to get you that carrot.
So, for us to not be possessive of knowledge, we’d need to evolve. It’s not likely in our lifetime, but perhaps 500-1000 years down the line the social fabric will evolve to handle this, similar to food possession.
Or I could be wrong, and we just have a bunch of naturally thieving crooks all over the place.
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The trick is to still use the same underlying information, but forwarded to you by a large language model, that way you can take most of the credit yourself. How unsensational of an article would it be, if you said you followed a step by step guide and built the thing the guide built before. But slap an LLM between yourself and the tutorial and now you can suddenly say you built something with the help of AI. Weird t…
I've seen a lot of that happening recently. People claiming they did this and that, when they actually followed the steps from a LLM. I actually don't mind this, except for the part where they omit the use of a LLM to get all the credits to themselves. Reminds me of all these YouTubers making video essays parotting something they have just learned, without actually mastering the subject.
Being generous to them, some of them do a good job of picking topics I wouldn't have thought to look up myself. They probably do spend a lot of time reading through diverse subjects looking for the interesting ones.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd be interested in how an LLM could become more sensible than the average internet, they are by definition the average of the internet. I'm waiting for the next major innovation, and given AI's history I might be waiting a long time. Fusors are somewhat dangerous, they use extremely high voltage, in the thousands to hundred thousand volt range. x-rays become an issue above around 30,000 volts, but they are frequent…
> they are by definition the average of the internet. Are you referring to base models? Nowadays they also train on stolen books and are further "aligned" based on feedback. I imagine they are already learning to teach based on feedback from users.
But yes referring to base models. I'm also not convinced that the average book is any more trustworthy than the average webpage, whether that be a purely technical book, where you really need to webpage of errata to be able to use the examples. Or the more pop-sci books that cherry pick data and jump to completely unfounded conclusions (I'm thinking of the ancient engineers - aliens built the pyramids books).
The feedback is great and might work in some areas, technical knowledge. But once you step outside of the physical sciences and engineering, you don't so much end up with better quality information, just a curated experience that aligns with the model owners (think DeepSeek and Tiananmen square)
I'm really not sure what to make of that.