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TextSynth Server

bellard.org

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Re: TextSynth Server

#61

Post by networked »

remram wrote: post #55
networked wrote: post #42

> All is included in a single binary. Very few external dependencies (Python is not needed) so installation is easy on most Linux distributions. I have to disagree. The combination of being closed-source and dynamically linked makes a program a hassle to run on Linux. Even if it isn't at the moment of release, it soon becomes one. While ts_server is better than most, it already requires an old version of libjpeg-turb…

The ABI doesn't seem to be the problem, and Win32 does not include a libjpeg, so your Win32 approach would only work if it also bundles or statically links libjpeg.

> your Win32 approach would only work if it also bundles or statically links libjpeg.

Of course. The stable ABI is to allow your bundled DLLs to keep functioning. (Check out https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32471624 for an extensive discussion of the link.)

Re: TextSynth Server

#62

Post by datpiff »

vidarh wrote: post #41
JacobiX wrote: post #24

Very interesting as usual from Fabrice Bellard, but I'm a little bit disappointed this time, because libnc is a closed source DLL. Nevertheless it will be interesting to compare it to the amazing work of Georgi Gerganov: GGML Tensor Library. Both are heavily optimized, supports AVX intrinsics and are plain C/C++ implementation without dependencies.

ChatGPT is pretty good at disassembling x86, and is able to give reasonable descriptions of what the code is doing (e.g try "disassemble the following bytes in hex and explain what they appear to be doing: [bytes from a binary in hex]") I'm curious how soon someone uses these models to effectively ruin the ability to use releasing binaries as an obfuscation method.

Using ChatGPT as a disassembler seems like a dumb idea when free disassemblers already exist. What possible advantage does it give?

Re: TextSynth Server

#63

Post by pierrec »

"The CPU version is released as binary code under the MIT license"

This gives off the surreal sci-fi vibe that the binary is the source. And who knows... true wizards work in mysterious ways.

Re: TextSynth Server

#65

Post by carapace »

hardwaresofton wrote: post #51
tambourine_man wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. I don't know if I retire or dive in deep. There's no really other way to sound other than alarmist. This is the biggest revolution I've seen in my lifetime and it's going to make the PC, internet and smartphone a kids toy.

> Same here. I don't know if I retire or dive in deep. There's no really other way to sound other than alarmist. It might be a blind-leading-the-blind situation, but I wonder if retiring will protect you. Could you imagine having gone into retirement in the early internet? Wouldn't you be really confused at how to use things today? Or maybe you would just learn most useful things passively as a consumer. It feels lik…

To me it seems clear that most people are going to become a kind of peasant or serf, effectively "owned" by their techno-corporate silo. Programming as a human activity will resemble professional sports or writing: a handful of well-paid superstars and the rest of us mostly just watch/read (although of course we play sports and write, and basic computer literacy should be a thing, eh?)

This might not be so bad? As you've no doubt noticed, most people suffer from some combination of ignorance and stupidity. We can barely function. An earthquake happens and half the building fall down, despite (some) of us knowing how to build them so they don't do that. That's not a technical problem, it's a social problem, eh?

As far as technical problems go, we have pretty much solved "Life on Earth". In video game terms we beat the boss about a century ago (give or take a few decades) and now we're just sort of running around acting silly while the end credits scroll. Atomic power, materials science, etc. We licked it.

IF we employ these newfangled talking computers to tell us how to solve our problems, they will, and we can live happily ever after. (prompt: "What would Jesus do?") It doesn't matter that they're merely regurgitating the wisdoms of the ages, when the computer says it, maybe it will stick?

Re: TextSynth Server

#66

Post by vidarh »

datpiff wrote: post #62
vidarh wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ChatGPT is pretty good at disassembling x86, and is able to give reasonable descriptions of what the code is doing (e.g try "disassemble the following bytes in hex and explain what they appear to be doing: [bytes from a binary in hex]") I'm curious how soon someone uses these models to effectively ruin the ability to use releasing binaries as an obfuscation method.

Using ChatGPT as a disassembler seems like a dumb idea when free disassemblers already exist. What possible advantage does it give?

The ability to explain the code, and extract higher level understanding. Disassembling into raw instructions is the most trivial part of reverse engineering an application. Hence "and explain what they appear to be doing" bit.

For the pieces I've tested, it often recognises the source language, and could give ideas about what the code was for and what it did.

Re: TextSynth Server

#67

Post by sroecker »

versteegen wrote: post #19
summarity wrote: post #2

> The GPU version is commercial software. Please contact... Shame.

The GPU version of libNC is available as a free binary, and you can find MIT-licensed source code implementing (training and inference of) transformers using libNC at https://bellard.org/nncp . (nncp was meant to be a submission to the Hutter Prize, which would have required open-sourcing libNC too, but it didn't qualify due to using AVX2 and too much RAM. At least the CPU version binary is MIT licensed since ts_serv…

That version of libnc_cuda.so doesn't seem to be compatible with ts_server though.

Re: TextSynth Server

#68

Post by carapace »

jefc1111 wrote: post #44

In comments on this post, and elsewhere on other posts about AI, I see a lot of people referring to worries around the potential for lots of types of jobs to be heavily impacted by this technology. I feel like people are often referring to 'coding' when they express these worries. You know, actually writing code, having been given a spec to do so, and perhaps also participating in code review, writing tests, all the…

> what kinds of roles or areas do we think might be somewhat immune to this effect?

On what time-frame?

Permanently immune? You have to postulate that there's something a human can do that a computer system just can't. To me, given the progress we have already seen, I see no strong reason to imagine that there is such a thing. More precisely, it becomes a metaphysical question about what it means to be human, "What are people for?".

- - - -

In the medium term (and this may only be a few years) the role that will come to the fore is that of the human-computer psychologist, so to speak. We already talk about "prompt engineering". There are two questions: goal and context. What do you want the computer to do, and how do you know when it's doing it successfully? -and- What are the side-effects, the "ecology", of the selected solutions? Especially, otherwise unforeseen side-effects.

Re: TextSynth Server

#69

Post by deckard1 »

Accacin wrote: post #45
jefc1111 wrote: post #44

In comments on this post, and elsewhere on other posts about AI, I see a lot of people referring to worries around the potential for lots of types of jobs to be heavily impacted by this technology. I feel like people are often referring to 'coding' when they express these worries. You know, actually writing code, having been given a spec to do so, and perhaps also participating in code review, writing tests, all the…

In my day job I work with TypeScript and React, and if I'm honest, I'm not worried at all. Why should I be? Automation is all around us, and has been for years. The way I personally see it, is that AI such as ChatGPT is another tool in our arsenal that we as developers will have to figure out how it fits into our workflow. I think long term it will help us write better code, and in general be more productive. For exa…

I'm not at all worried, either. Because I know we already went through this. Companies tried to outsource their work to India, the Philippines, and elsewhere, and it ended in tears and expensive reversals of strategy. They discovered that someone has to check all the work.

No one wants to pay for code reviews. They don't show up on the agile board and we all collectively pretend they are "freebies" the devs give out to the company. Just like unit tests and all the other shit that we just expect devs to do in their spare time between 3 hour meetings and feature work.

I can see ChatGPT being an augmentation. But that only works because you have a human dev that does the merging and can take the blame if their code goes wrong. Remove that human and you're staring into the abyss.

Re: TextSynth Server

#70

Post by datpiff »

hardwaresofton wrote: post #17

I've been feeling FOMO (for lack of a better term) about recent AI & ML/GPT progression. It feels like ML/AI it might be the beginning of the end for a large class of things (if I wanted to be alarmist I'd say "everything") -- and the fact that Fabrice Bellard has jumped in and done the absolutely obvious rising-tide thing (building an API that abstracts the technologies) speaks volumes. Releasing something like this…

> There are too many world-changing things moving forward at the same time, and I'm only looking at such a small cut of the tech sphere. I don't know what to do with myself, I feel so thoroughly unprepared.

I think the general trend is that actual useful applications are emerging from enormous models trained and owned by billion dollar companies only. Even projects that aim to run models on private consumer hardware are dependent on commercial orgs to produce them. It doesn't seem like that is likely to change.

I don't think there are many positions/jobs/roles for people doing integral, foundational work that requires a deep understanding of ML. Becoming a world expert in ML will probably only open up opportunities at a dozen companies.

A very shallow surface-level understanding of ML already puts you leagues ahead of the general population. In terms of job security, figuring out how to use an ML API will get you hired faster than knowing how to advance the field.

We don't actually need that many Fabrice Bellards.

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