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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

#51

Post by fpoling »

7734128 wrote: post #35
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.

Sometimes when re-publishing an older text references are added to clarify the meaning that people would miss otherwise from the lack of knowledge of cultural references.

But here there is need to even put a references. A good translation may reword "too expensive!" into "what? I can live the whole day on that!" to address things like that.

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

#52

Post by randysalami »

throwawayq3423 wrote: post #48
munificent wrote: post #27

> 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. This exactly why tech companies want to replace those jobs with LLMs. The companies control the models,…

I think you dramatically overestimate the effectiveness of trying to shape narratives and change people's minds. Yes, online content is incredibly influential, but it's not like you can just choose which content is effective. The effectiveness is tied to a zeitgeist that is not predictable, as far as I have seen.

Let's concede you can't shape narrative or change peoples minds through online content (though I would disagree on this). The very act of addicting people to digital platforms is enough for control. Drain their dopamine daily, fragment them into isolated groups, use influencers as proxies for control, and voila, you have an effect.

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

#54

Post by surebut »

munificent wrote: post #27

> 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. This exactly why tech companies want to replace those jobs with LLMs. The companies control the models,…

That’s their self selecting goal, sure. Fortunately for humanity the main drivers are old as hell, physics is ageist. Data centers are not a fundamental property of reality. They can be taken offline; sabotage or just loss of skills in time to maintain them leading to cascading failures. A new pandemic could wipe out billions and the loss of service workers cause it all to fail. Wifi satellites can go unreplaced.

They're a long long ways from "protomolecule" that just carries on infinitely on its own

CEOs don't really understand physics. Signal loss and such. Just data models that only mean something to their immediate business motives. They're more like priests; well versed in their profession, but oblivious to how anything outside that bubble works.

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

#55

Post by tombert »

I'm sorry, as someone who genuinely likes AI, I still have to say that I have to call bullshit on Microsoft's study on this. I use ChatGPT all the time, but it's not going to "replace web developers" because that's almost a statement that doesn't even make sense.

You see all these examples like "I got ChatGPT to make a JS space invaders game!" and that's cool and all, but that's sort of missing a pretty crucial part: the beginning of a new project is almost always the easiest and most fun part of the project. Showing me a robot that can make a project that pretty much any intern could do isn't so impressive to me.

Show me a bot that can maintain a project over the course of months and update it based on the whims of a bunch of incompetent MBAs who scope creep a million new features and who don't actually know what they want, and I might start worrying. I don't know anything about the other careers so I can't speak to that, but I'd be pretty surprised if "Mathematician" is at severe risk as well.

Honestly, is there any reason for Microsoft to even be honest with this shit? Of course they want to make it look like their AI is so advanced because that makes them look better and their stock price might go up. If they're wrong, it's not like it matters, corporations in America are never honest.

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

#56

Post by pessimizer »

throwawayq3423 wrote: post #48
munificent wrote: post #27

> 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. This exactly why tech companies want to replace those jobs with LLMs. The companies control the models,…

I think you dramatically overestimate the effectiveness of trying to shape narratives and change people's minds. Yes, online content is incredibly influential, but it's not like you can just choose which content is effective. The effectiveness is tied to a zeitgeist that is not predictable, as far as I have seen.

If you censor all opposing arguments, all you need to do to convince the vast majority of people of most things is too keep repeating yourself until people forget that there ever were opposing arguments.

In this world you can get people censored for slandering beef, or for supporting the outcome of a Supreme Court case. Then pay people to sing your message over and over again in as many different voices as can be recruited. Done.

edit: I left out "offer your most effective enemies no-show jobs, and if they turn them down, accuse them of being pedophiles."

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

#57

Post by glenstein »

munificent wrote: post #27

> 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. This exactly why tech companies want to replace those jobs with LLMs. The companies control the models,…

>History is therefore a constant act of reinterpretation and triangulation, which is something that LLMs, as linguistic averaging machines, simply cannot do.

I know you weren't necessarily endorsing the passage you quoted, but I want to jump off and react to just this part for a moment. I find it completely baffling that people say things in the form of "computers can do [simple operation], but [adjusting for contextual variance] is something they simply cannot do."

There was a version of this in the debate over "robot umps" in baseball that exposed the limitation of this argument in an obvious way. People would insist that automated calls of balls and strikes loses the human element, because human umpires could situationally squeeze or expand the strike zone in big moments. E.g. if it's the World Series, the bases are loaded, the count is 0-2, and the next pitch is close, call it a ball, because it extends the game, you linger in the drama a bit more.

This was supposedly an example of something a computer could not do, and frequently when this point was made it induced lots of solemn head nodding in affirmation of this deep and cherished baseball wisdom. But... why TF not? You actually could define high leverage and close game situations, and define exactly how to expand the zone, and machines could call those too, and do so more accurately than humans. So they could better respect contextual sensitivity that critics insist is so important.

Even now, in fits and starts, LLMs are engaging in a kind of multi-layered triangulating, just to even understand language. It can pick up on multilayered things like subtext or balance of emphasis, or unstated implications, or connotations, all filtered through rules of grammar. It doesn't mean they are perfect, but calibrating for context or emphasis that is most important for historical understanding seems absolutely within machine capabilities, and I don't know what other than punch drunk romanticism for "the human element" moves people to think that's an enlightened intellectual position.

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

#58

Post by tech_ken »

NitpickLawyer wrote: post #40
Paratoner wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I dunno I can see an argument that something like IMO word problems are categorically a different language space than a corpus of historiography. For one, even when expressed in English language math is still highly, highly structured. Definitions of terms are totally unambiguous, logical tautologies can be expressed using only a few tokens, etc. etc. It's incredibly impressive that these rich structures can be learned by such a flexible model class, but it definitely seems closer (to me) to excelling at chess or other structured game, versus something as ambiguous as synthesis of historical narratives.

> 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".

Framing it as the kind of problem where accuracy is a well-defined concept is the error this article is talking about. Literally the historian's "vibes" and "feelings" are the product you're trying to mimic with the LLM output, not an error to be smoothed out. I have no doubt that LLMs can have real impact in this field, especially as turbopowered search engines and text-management tools. But the point of human narrative history is fundamentally that we tell it to ourselves, and make sense of it by talking about it. Removing the human from the loop is IMO like trying to replace the therapy client with a chat agent.

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

#59

Post by ping00 »

This is a very tangential comment, but I read the short story (https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/8eh2woz05ndfxinbf9vdh/Goldfis...) and loved it (took me around 15 minutes to read).

Went down a bit of a rabbit hole on the original author, Kir Bulychev, and saw that he wrote many short stories set in Veliky Guslar (which explained the name Greater Bard). The overall tone is very very similar to R.K. Narayan's Malgudi Days (albeit without the fantastical elements of talking goldfish), which is a favorite of mine. If anyone wants to get into reading some easily approachable Indian English literature, I always point them to Narayan and Adiga (who wrote The White Tiger).

On that note, does anyone else have any recommendations on authors who make use of this device (small/mid-sized city which serves as a backdrop for an anthology of short stories from a variety of characters' perspectives)?

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

#60

Post by delusional »

glenstein wrote: post #57
munificent wrote: post #27

> 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. This exactly why tech companies want to replace those jobs with LLMs. The companies control the models,…

>History is therefore a constant act of reinterpretation and triangulation, which is something that LLMs, as linguistic averaging machines, simply cannot do. I know you weren't necessarily endorsing the passage you quoted, but I want to jump off and react to just this part for a moment. I find it completely baffling that people say things in the form of "computers can do [simple operation], but [adjusting for context…

> "[...] dynamically changing the zone is something they simply cannot do." But... why TF not?

Because the computer is fundamentally knowable. Somebody defined what a "close game" ahead of time. Somebody defined what a "reasonable stretch" is ahead of time.

The minute it's solidified in an algorithm, the second there's an objective rule for it, it's no longer dynamic.

The beauty of the "human element" is that the person has to make that decision in a stressful situation. They will not have to contextualize it within all of their other decisions, they don't have to formulate an algebra. They just have to make a decision they believe people can live with. And then they will have to live with the consequences.

It creates conflict. You can't have a conflict with the machine. It's just there, following rules. It would be like having a conflict with the beurocrats at the DMV, there's no point. They didn't make a decision, they just execute on the rules as written.

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