Why wordfreq will not be updated • Hacker News Board

Re: Why wordfreq will not be updated

#361

Post by MengerSponge » Wed, Sep 18, 2024, 8:47 PM UTC

frognumber wrote: post #142

weinzierl wrote: post #64

"I don't think anyone has reliable information about post-2021 language usage by humans." We've been past the tipping point when it comes to text for some time, but for video I feel we are living through the watershed moment right now. Especially smaller children don't have a good intuition on what is real and what is not. When I get asked if the person in a video is real, I still feel pretty confident to answer but…

There are a series of challenges like: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/09/09/technology/ai... https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/01/19/technology/ar... These are a little bit unfair, in that we're comparing handpicked examples, but I don't think many experts will pass a test like this. Technology only moves forward (and seemingly, at an accelerating pace). What's a little shocking to me is the speed of…

Democracy is 200? You're off by a full order of magnitude.

Progress isn't inevitable. It's possible for knowledge to be lost and for civilization to regress.

Re: Why wordfreq will not be updated

#362

Post by 0xbadcafebee » Wed, Sep 18, 2024, 8:50 PM UTC

odo1242 wrote: post #316

w10-1 wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I can in any way purchase something without the web, I'mma do that To get to the milk you'll have to walk by 3 rows of chips and soda.

Yeah, this is why I still use the web to order things in a nutshell lol

Where do you order things online that you aren't inundated by ads?

Re: Why wordfreq will not be updated

#363

Post by whimsicalism » Wed, Sep 18, 2024, 9:00 PM UTC

coldpie wrote: post #134

aucisson_masque wrote: post #18

Did we (the humans) somehow managed to pollute the internet so much with AI that's it's now barely usable ? In my opinion the internet can be considered as the equivalent of a natural environment like the earth. it's a space where people share, meet, talk, etc. I find it astonishing that after polluting our natural environment we know polluted the internet.

There are smaller, gated communities that are still very valuable. You're posting in one. But yes, the open Internet is basically useless now, thanks ultimately to advertising as a business model.

this is not a gated community at all

Re: Why wordfreq will not be updated

#364

Post by whimsicalism » Wed, Sep 18, 2024, 9:04 PM UTC

baq wrote: post #103

PeterStuer wrote: post #100

Intuitively I feel like word frequency would be one of the things least impacted by LLM output, no?

‘delve’ is given as an example right there in TFA.

there is almost certainly organic growth as well as more people in Nigeria and other SSA countries are getting very good internet penetration in recent years

Re: Why wordfreq will not be updated

#365

Post by whimsicalism » Wed, Sep 18, 2024, 9:06 PM UTC

NLP and especially 'computational linguistics' in academia has been captured by certain political interests, this is reflective of that.

Re: Why wordfreq will not be updated

#366

Post by jchook » Wed, Sep 18, 2024, 9:06 PM UTC

If it is (apparently) easy for humans to tell when content is AI-generated slop, then it should be possible to develop an AI to distinguish human-created content.

As mentioned, we have heuristics like frequency of the word "delve", and simple techniques such as measuring perplexity. I'd like to see a GAN style approach to this problem. It could potentially help improve the "humanness" of AI-generated content.

Re: Why wordfreq will not be updated

#367

Post by knodi123 » Wed, Sep 18, 2024, 9:07 PM UTC

fph wrote: post #355

knodi123 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+100w chargers are one of the products I prefer to spend a little more on, so I get something from a company that knows it can be sued if they make a product that burns down your house or fries your phone. Flashlights? Sure, bring on aliexpress. USB cables with pop-off magnetically attached heads, no problem. But power supplies? Welp, to each their own!

And then you plug your cheap pop-off USB cable into the expensive 100w charger?

Yeah, sure, what could possibly go wrong? :-P

But seriously, it's harder to accidentally make a USB cable that fries your equipment. The more common failure mode is it fails to work, or wears out too fast. Chargers on the other hand, handle a lot of voltage, generate a lot of heat, and output to sensitive equipment. More room to mess up, and more room for mistakes to cause damage.

Re: Why wordfreq will not be updated

#368

Post by whimsicalism » Wed, Sep 18, 2024, 9:07 PM UTC

ilaksh wrote: post #116

Reading through this entire thread, I suspect that somehow generative AI actually became a political issue. Polarized politics is like a vortex sucking all kinds of unrelated things in. In case that doesn't get my comment completely buried, I will go ahead and say honestly that even though "AI slop" and paywalled content is a problem, I don't think that generative AI in itself is a negative at all. And I also think t…

Yes, it's become extremely politicized and its very tiresome. Tech in general, to be frank. Pray that your field of interest never gets covered in the NYT.

Re: Why wordfreq will not be updated

#369

Post by honksillet » Wed, Sep 18, 2024, 9:08 PM UTC

Twitter was a botnet long before LLMs and Musk got involved.

Re: Why wordfreq will not be updated

#370

Post by whimsicalism » Wed, Sep 18, 2024, 9:09 PM UTC

ecshafer wrote: post #123

ilaksh wrote: post #116

Reading through this entire thread, I suspect that somehow generative AI actually became a political issue. Polarized politics is like a vortex sucking all kinds of unrelated things in. In case that doesn't get my comment completely buried, I will go ahead and say honestly that even though "AI slop" and paywalled content is a problem, I don't think that generative AI in itself is a negative at all. And I also think t…

Generative AI is inherently a political issue, its not surprising at all. There is the case of what is "truth". As soon as you start to ensure some quality of truth to what is generated, that is political. As soon as generative AI has the capability to take someone's job, that is political. The instant AI can make someone money, it is political. When AI is trained on something that someone has created, and now they c…

> As soon as generative AI has the capability to take someone's job, that is political.

What is political is people enshrining themselves in chokepoints and demanding a toll for passing through or getting anything done. That is what you do when you make a certain job politically 'untakable'.

People who espouse that the 'personal is political' risk making the definition of politics so broad that it is useless.