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Fable 5.1 Solves the Cyphral Distich, a 370-year-old cipher

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Re: Fable 5.1 Solves the Cyphral Distich, a 370-year-old cipher

#591

Post by chr15m »

jackb4040 wrote: post #575
chr15m wrote: post #120

In some ways this is similar to those game demos people get the LLMs to build. When you say "build me a cool cyberpunk FPS" you get the FPS it can build, not the FPS the author wanted, or the FPS that is desired by players. It looks impressive but that doesn't make it a good game, or the game anybody actually asked for. It's demo porn. In the same way if you tell an LLM to go and find an unsolved cipher it can solve,…

It can build a C compiler or browser if you don't know or care that it's a buggy collage of the dozen or so existing open-source C compilers or browsers, with no bearing on its ability to solve novel problems for your business. In the months since those original stunts were pulled, the same playbook has been applied to the math and infosec spaces with some degree of success, and to the medical, legal, etc. etc. with…

That's true, what happened to the vibecoded browser?

The fact that Rust-Bun is in production does somewhat show it is possible, but I guess that has a lot of human effort in it too.

Re: Fable 5.1 Solves the Cyphral Distich, a 370-year-old cipher

#592

Post by sire-vc »

durdn wrote: post #542
hgoel wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny we're already at the "actually this isn't very impressive" stage when it was a little over a year ago when we were making fun of LLMs for not being able to add numbers. IC production takes a vast amount of resources and wealth, and it's a known quantity (after all, we've been doing it for decades), but it's still impressive what modern fabs can achieve.

I found this post hilarious exactly about this the other day: First, it’s AI can’t multiply 4-digit numbers. Then it’s AI can only, by brute force, get silver in the IMO with specialized systems. Then it’s OK, well, now a general-purpose model can get gold, but it’s still just the IMO, it’s for high schoolers. Then it’s OK, it can solve a few trivial Erdős problems, but only because nobody seriously tried them before…

If AI does solve the Riemann it will be the watershed moment when the world realises what has happened.

Re: Fable 5.1 Solves the Cyphral Distich, a 370-year-old cipher

#593

Post by latentsea »

scotty79 wrote: post #588
latentsea wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> , but everyone feels like their life/existence lost meaning Did you miss this part? Because to me... that's fucking bleak. You snap out of it.

It's called growing up. And ultimately it's liberaing. Many people don't achieve that level of understanding before their death.

That's cos your spouting BS.

Re: Fable 5.1 Solves the Cyphral Distich, a 370-year-old cipher

#595

Post by unclebucknasty »

nerevarthelame wrote: post #553
unclebucknasty wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's potentially more impressive... Serious question: why? Is it not just pointing it at its massive training corpus for a list of unsolved problems, and possibly even by degree of perceived difficulty? I'm trying to understand why finding the problem isn't a simple "search engine" style challenge, at which LLMs excel?

"Potentially more impressive than solving an unremarkable cipher" means just that. I'm not suggesting that it's groundbreaking new capability never before seen in LLMs.

So, it's no more remarkable than what LLMs do every day, but more remarkable than the solve claimed in the article?

So, none of this is noteworthy, but we're...noting it?

Not quibbling with you, personally. Quibbling more with the state of the hype.

Re: Fable 5.1 Solves the Cyphral Distich, a 370-year-old cipher

#596

Post by eru »

throw1235435 wrote: post #467
eru wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar power is currently the cheapest power anyone can add to the grid in most places.

But not dense w.r.t energy generated. Where will you put it? Panels on a data centre aren't nearly enough to power that data centre. And data centres are not tolerant of variable power. Even with batteries that just means you need even more power for times when renewable output is low. Cheap power is one thing. Quality reliable power at mass scale is quite another. These things chew through a LOT of power and most pe…

We are not running out of land (or sea area) for putting solar anytime soon.

Electricity transports really well.

Data centres don't need reliable power. Of course, all else being equal, they would like their power to be reliable, but if your choices are between delaying your data centres by a few months (or not building it at all) or running a risk of having a few hours or even days here or there without power, the first choice wins: pretty much the only downside is the few hours of usage you lose when there's no power. It's not like powering down causes damage, like when your aluminum smelter cools down too much.

> Even a few of these things compete massively for trades people, commodities, power and other infrastructure pricing locals out.

Power is pretty much an industrial produced service, a bit like shoes or cars. In the medium to long run, that stuff has pretty much a horizontal supply curve.

In any case, price electricity right, and let people decide how much they want to use. (Give poor people money, if necessary.)

> They are talking about using evaporative cooling as well putting pressure on water supply.

Yet another reason to put a proper market price on water. Agriculture and industry usually goes through even more water.

Feel free to give residents money to buy water at market prices. But residential use of water is so low in comparison that even if the price goes 10x, it doesn't make a dent in people's budgets. Especially not the minuscule amounts you need for drinking and cooking, and even personal hygiene like flushing your toilet doesn't use all that much.

Re: Fable 5.1 Solves the Cyphral Distich, a 370-year-old cipher

#597

Post by eru »

monk_grilla wrote: post #589
eru wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hydro power is a bit limited: we mostly already use all the good hydro power sites, and there's not that much room for expansion. I don't know why you are blaming greed so much? Profit seeking companies sell and operate wind turbines and solar cells just fine.

> I don't know why you are blaming greed so much? Really? I thought it was pretty obvious for anyone to see that the lobbying and bribing behemoth of the oil and gas industry is driven in no small part by greed. As others have mentioned, the short-sighted pursuit of profit drove those oil tycoons to not enter the renewables industry and actively oppose it.

Other industries optimise for profit just as much, ie they are just as greedy, but we don't see the same effects in all of them.

So I don't think (differences in) greed explains what we are seeing.

Re: Fable 5.1 Solves the Cyphral Distich, a 370-year-old cipher

#598

Post by eru »

criley2 wrote: post #479
SoftTalker wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar efficiency and cost has really only become economical in the last decade or so, and battery and inverter technology to make it practical for home use or grid interconnect about the same. Wind and hydro are location-dependent, and solar is somewhat also. Nuclear was vehemently opposed by environmentalists throughout the 1970s and 80s, they successfully stopped almost all new projects.

Solar only became "economical" (read: profitable) because a socialist economy dumped a huge amount of money into scaling it up without requiring it to be "economical". It could have been half a century or more ago if we actually cared. Nuclear was not stopped by the environmentalists, it was stopped by the fact that it cost 4X more than coal at the time. You claim that solar wasn't profitable in the west, thus it did…

> Nuclear was not stopped by the environmentalists, it was stopped by the fact that it cost 4X more than coal at the time.

A big part of that is the insane culture of safety around nuclear. In a sane field like highway engineering or healthcare, you come up with the statistical value for a human life (or a statistical value for a quality adjusted life year), and then use that to make decisions about eg how much money to invest to make your highway a tiny bit safer.

Nuclear is forced to act as if the statistical value of a human life is pretty much infinity. While coal is allowed a finite and rather low effective value for a human life.

> It could have been half a century or more ago if we actually cared.

Interesting. What makes you think so?

Btw, just because China made solar cheap with huge amounts of effort doesn't mean that was necessarily the best use of those resources ex ante.

Just like going to the moon with Apollo wasn't necessarily a good idea. Nor do the wonders of computers justify world war 2.

Re: Fable 5.1 Solves the Cyphral Distich, a 370-year-old cipher

#599

Post by fragmede »

Barrin92 wrote: post #436
computerex wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What an incredibly useless comment. You state a conclusion as fact without any supportive reasoning/evidence. Prove that human intellect is different and that we solve problems using fundamentally different processes. I’m waiting.

>You state a conclusion as fact without any supportive reasoning/evidence. No, it's the other way around, it's a reductive view on intelligence that mistakes its own methodology for ontology. It's obvious to see that there's no intellect in an LLM as defined above because of how they work. LLMs put one token in front of the other, they don't work towards formal ends, there's no intentionality in them. They don't synt…

What's an example of a problem that an LLM can't solve but a 10 year old can?

Re: Fable 5.1 Solves the Cyphral Distich, a 370-year-old cipher

#600

Post by jstanley »

azinman2 wrote: post #544
jstanley wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. The existence of jet planes doesn't invalidate Olympics. Why would the existence of machine solutions invalidate human puzzle solving?

Because this was a mystery. The other replies seem to be missing that point. It’s similar to the issue that mathematicians are having in their field right now.

If the thing that makes it interesting is that the solution is unknown to everyone, then would you also oppose humans publishing solutions? Once the solution is published the mystery is gone.

Also, just because someone else knows something shouldn't make you any less curious about it yourself. If you don't know it then you don't know it, regardless of whether somebody else does. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/L22jhyY9ocXQNLqyE/science-as...

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