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Spreadsheets are all you need
41–50 of 178 posts
Re: Spreadsheets are all you need
#42Why can't a spreadsheet implement GPT-3 or GPT-4?
I find this visualization is useful for showcasing the difference between the different model generations: https://bbycroft.net/llm . The difference in scale is massive.
It was discussed here some time ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38505211
Re: Spreadsheets are all you need
#43> Aside from the minuscule context length, it also lacks the instruction tuning and reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) that turn a large language model into a chatbot. Is RLHF even strictly necessary?
By default it's just going to be a text completion model, you want an additional round of training to make it behave like a chatbot. I guess you could probably get away with just fine-tuning on chatbot discussions, but everybody uses RLHF so I guess it must be much more efficient for that.
Re: Spreadsheets are all you need
#44Creator here. Thanks for posting this! Happy to answer questions or take suggestions and hope it helps folks better understand LLMs. Next video will be on embeddings and hopefully done soon-ish.
Thank you so much for doing these videos, I learned a lot today. You have a talent for teaching! If you don't mind me asking, what is your background?
Happy to help and thanks! Do let me know how the material could be better. Always looking to improve it.
To answer your question:
EECS Major in college; 20 years of engineering and product management experience. I have given a few technical talks at conferences and I do enjoy the process of explaining things though it takes a surprising amount of work.
When I went to school ironically neural nets were the one thing they didn't cover in the intro to AI courses. I've basically learned modern AI from just filling my own curiosity over the years through online resources on nights and weekends. Learned a lot from Jeremy Howard's Fast.ai and Andrej Karpathy's stuff just like everyone else. I really wanted to know how every step of GPT worked, kind of like how you learn Computer Architecture in college: you learn how CPUs work in principle starting with circuits. Then I got a crazy idea the whole model could fit in a spreadsheet because well I just really like spreadsheets. Went down a 2-3 month rabbit hole in my non-existent sparetime to make it work.
Re: Spreadsheets are all you need
#45Re: Spreadsheets are all you need
#46Brilliant idea/URL. It’s often true though. So many things I think “I could make an app for that” I wind up just using a spreadsheet for. At least it helps me explore the use cases more deeply for when I’d want to actually take it to the next level. I hung out with a friend while they solved Advent of Code challenges in Excel, that was a trip to watch.
XKCD 2180, https://xkcd.com/2180/
LOL that’s totally me. Thanks for posting.
Re: Spreadsheets are all you need
#47Brilliant idea/URL. It’s often true though. So many things I think “I could make an app for that” I wind up just using a spreadsheet for. At least it helps me explore the use cases more deeply for when I’d want to actually take it to the next level. I hung out with a friend while they solved Advent of Code challenges in Excel, that was a trip to watch.
One of my biggest weakness as a developer is that I can barely use excel. It's really embarrassing, especially since I've moved to a financial firm. Do you have any recommendations for becoming semi competent with it?
Try to do something slightly complicated and have GPT4 explain how to do it efficiently in Excel!
That's how I do it and it works great. I've gained a new appreciation for Excel.
Re: Spreadsheets are all you need
#48Brilliant idea/URL. It’s often true though. So many things I think “I could make an app for that” I wind up just using a spreadsheet for. At least it helps me explore the use cases more deeply for when I’d want to actually take it to the next level. I hung out with a friend while they solved Advent of Code challenges in Excel, that was a trip to watch.
I wonder at what point we stop calling them "spreadsheets" though.
You mention Excel, and a bunch of us do it Google Sheets, but at this point it's not about sheets of data anymore and more about the interface and runtime, and we have full applications running in it.
I remember a colleague running API tests inside his Excel sheet to more easily check for the different parameter combinations, but telling everyone he was still using Postman just to avoid discussing it.
Re: Spreadsheets are all you need
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thank you so much for doing these videos, I learned a lot today. You have a talent for teaching! If you don't mind me asking, what is your background?
Happy to help and thanks! Do let me know how the material could be better. Always looking to improve it. To answer your question: EECS Major in college; 20 years of engineering and product management experience. I have given a few technical talks at conferences and I do enjoy the process of explaining things though it takes a surprising amount of work. When I went to school ironically neural nets were the one thing t…
The passion and curiosity you have for the topic are palpable in the videos. Thank you again for also sharing with us your exploration into this learning endeavor.
Re: Spreadsheets are all you need
#50Brilliant idea/URL. It’s often true though. So many things I think “I could make an app for that” I wind up just using a spreadsheet for. At least it helps me explore the use cases more deeply for when I’d want to actually take it to the next level. I hung out with a friend while they solved Advent of Code challenges in Excel, that was a trip to watch.
One of my biggest weakness as a developer is that I can barely use excel. It's really embarrassing, especially since I've moved to a financial firm. Do you have any recommendations for becoming semi competent with it?
Try stepping into a management role for a while, ideally one in which you have lots of dealings with less technical parts of a business. Even if it's not for you, at least you'll have gained some insights into that side of things, and more importantly - lots of real world exposure to spreadsheets!