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Facts will not save you – AI, history and Soviet sci-fi

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Re: Facts will not save you – AI, history and Soviet sci-fi

#31

Post by fpoling »

There are nice example how even after human input the translation misses things.

For example, the price of the fish was stated as 2.40 rubles. This is meaningless outside the context and does not explain why it was very expensive for the old man who checked the fish first. But if one knows that this was Soviet SF that was about a life in a small Soviet town of that time, then one also knows that a monthly pension was like 70-80 rubles so the fish cost was a daily income.

Then one needs to remember that the only payment method was cash and people did not go out with amount more than they would expect to spend to minimize the loss in case of thievery etc. and banking was non-existing in practice so people hold the savings in cash at home. That explains why Lozhkin went to home for the money.

Re: Facts will not save you – AI, history and Soviet sci-fi

#32

Post by spwa4 »

dale_glass wrote: post #29

> The deeper risk is not that AI will replace historians or translators, but that it will convince us we never needed them in the first place. I think the bigger danger would be that they'd lose the unimportant grunt work that helped the field exist. Fields need a large amount of consistent routine work to keep existing. Like when analog photography got replaced by digital. A photo lab can't just pay the bills with t…

"Convince us"? There's no need for that at all. We've done all that ourselves.

Just check the latest budgets for university history departments.

Re: Facts will not save you – AI, history and Soviet sci-fi

#33

Post by golergka »

fpoling wrote: post #31

There are nice example how even after human input the translation misses things. For example, the price of the fish was stated as 2.40 rubles. This is meaningless outside the context and does not explain why it was very expensive for the old man who checked the fish first. But if one knows that this was Soviet SF that was about a life in a small Soviet town of that time, then one also knows that a monthly pension was…

This is also something that an LLM would be able to easily explain. I'm pretty confident that all 4o-level models know these facts without web search.

Re: Facts will not save you – AI, history and Soviet sci-fi

#34

Post by mapontosevenths »

saubeidl wrote: post #25
krunck wrote: post #16

AI represents a move to the massive centralization of information into a few sources. History (or it's "interpreters") should never be in the hands of these few powerful entities aligned with even more powerful governments.

AI is the perfect propaganda technology. I don't believe the current race to build AI is actually about any productivity gains (which are questionable at best). I believe the true purpose of the outsized AI investments is to make sure the universal answer machine will give answers that conform to the ideology of the ruling class. You can read hints of that in statements like the Trump AI Action Plan [0], but also thi…

"This is due to the types of training data available on the internet."

I'd love to see them prove this, but they can't.

Re: Facts will not save you – AI, history and Soviet sci-fi

#35

Post by 7734128 »

fpoling wrote: post #31

There are nice example how even after human input the translation misses things. For example, the price of the fish was stated as 2.40 rubles. This is meaningless outside the context and does not explain why it was very expensive for the old man who checked the fish first. But if one knows that this was Soviet SF that was about a life in a small Soviet town of that time, then one also knows that a monthly pension was…

Would you want a translator to somehow jam that context into the story? Otherwise, I fail to see how it's an issue of translation.

If I had learned Russian and read the story in the original language, I would be in the same position regardless.

Re: Facts will not save you – AI, history and Soviet sci-fi

#36

Post by shaky »

WastedCucumber wrote: post #12
masfuerte wrote: post #6

> Still, without AI a story like this would have taken me several weeks to translate and polish, instead of one afternoon. I don't understand this. It's only six thousand words and it's the polishing that takes the time. How would it have taken weeks to do the initial draft?

Maybe he's... not great at Russian? I'm at a loss, same as you. And I don't have any skill in Russian, but I would say that his translation is not good, or at least was not thoughtfully made, based solely on the fact that he did not write the author's name in it.

I don't understand: the translation is not good because he omitted the author's name? He stated it plainly in his article:

> As it happens, I recently translated a short story by Kir Bulychev — a Soviet science-fiction icon virtually unknown in the West.

I for one enjoyed reading it! As for the article, it's on point. There will be fewer historians and translators, but I suspect those that stick around will be greatly amplified.

Re: Facts will not save you – AI, history and Soviet sci-fi

#37

Post by sofixa »

mapontosevenths wrote: post #34
saubeidl wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI is the perfect propaganda technology. I don't believe the current race to build AI is actually about any productivity gains (which are questionable at best). I believe the true purpose of the outsized AI investments is to make sure the universal answer machine will give answers that conform to the ideology of the ruling class. You can read hints of that in statements like the Trump AI Action Plan [0], but also thi…

"This is due to the types of training data available on the internet." I'd love to see them prove this, but they can't.

Why not? The fact that even the overtly Nazi Musk led xAI's Grok can't shake a "left" bias (left for the US political spectrum, which is to the right of the centre in most other developed countries) proves this wrong. The data, and reality, tend to lean "left" (again, on the American spectrum). It isn't leftists in the US talking about controlling the weather, Haitians eating pets, proposing to nuke hurricanes, dismissing the Holocaust, denying climate change exists, and other such objectively wrong things.

This saying exists for a reason: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/?redirect=no&title=Reality_has_a_...

Re: Facts will not save you – AI, history and Soviet sci-fi

#38

Post by saubeidl »

sofixa wrote: post #37
mapontosevenths wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"This is due to the types of training data available on the internet." I'd love to see them prove this, but they can't.

Why not? The fact that even the overtly Nazi Musk led xAI's Grok can't shake a "left" bias (left for the US political spectrum, which is to the right of the centre in most other developed countries) proves this wrong. The data, and reality , tend to lean "left" (again, on the American spectrum). It isn't leftists in the US talking about controlling the weather, Haitians eating pets, proposing to nuke hurricanes, dism…

Maybe it's not a left bias in the AI, but a right bias in the ruling class instead?

Re: Facts will not save you – AI, history and Soviet sci-fi

#39

Post by dimitri-vs »

golergka wrote: post #33
fpoling wrote: post #31

There are nice example how even after human input the translation misses things. For example, the price of the fish was stated as 2.40 rubles. This is meaningless outside the context and does not explain why it was very expensive for the old man who checked the fish first. But if one knows that this was Soviet SF that was about a life in a small Soviet town of that time, then one also knows that a monthly pension was…

This is also something that an LLM would be able to easily explain. I'm pretty confident that all 4o-level models know these facts without web search.

Not in my experience. Unless you explicitly prompt and bias that model for that kind of deep answer (which you won't unless you are already experienced in the field) you're going to get some sycophantic superficial dribble that's only slightly better than the wikipedia page.

Re: Facts will not save you – AI, history and Soviet sci-fi

#40

Post by NitpickLawyer »

Paratoner wrote: post #24
NitpickLawyer wrote: post #17

> There can be no objective story since the very act of assembling facts requires implicit beliefs about what should be emphasized and what should be left out. History is therefore a constant act of reinterpretation and triangulation, which is something that LLMs, as linguistic averaging machines, simply cannot do. Yeah, no. I find it funny how everyone from other specialties take offence when their piece of "advance…

Oh, data gods! Oh, technocratic overlords! Milords, shant though giveth but a crumb of cryptocurrency to thy humble guzzler?

I mean, I get the sarcasm, but don't get the cryptobabble. And this isn't about data or technoanything in particular. In order to get gold at IMO the system had to

a) "solve" NLP enough to understand the problem b) reason through various "themes", ideas, partial demonstrations and so on c) verify some d) gather the good ideas from all the tried paths and come up with the correct demonstrations in the end

Now tell me a system like this can't take source material and all the expert writings so far, and come up with various interpretations based on those combinations. And tell me it'll be less accurate than some historian's "vibes". Or a translator's "feelings". I don't buy it.

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