ldhough

I second this, Kagi is amazing.

random factoids

The "random factoids" were verbatim training data though, one of their extractions was >1,000 tokens in length.

GPT4 never merely regurgitated

I interpreted the claim that it can't "regurgitate training data" to mean that it can't reproduce verbatim a non-trivial amount of its training data. Based on how I've heard the word "regurgitate" used, if I were to rattle off the first page of some book from memory on request I think it would be fair to say I regurgitated it. I'm not trying to diminish how GPT does what it does, and I find what it does to be quite impressive.

They don't regurgitate training data.

While I very much do not think this is all they do, I don't think this statement is correct. Some research indicates that it is not:

https://not-just-memorization.github.io/extracting-training-...

Anecdotally, there were also a few examples I tried earlier this year (on GPT3.5 and GPT4) of being able to directly prompt for training data. They were patched out pretty quick but did work for a while. For example, asking for "fast inverse square root" without specifying anything else would give you the famous Quake III code character for character, including comments.

March 14 for me :)

I've been having a great time w/ Kagi, absolutely worth the $10/mo.

So much better than the alternatives, really hope it starts catching on outside the Clojure ecosystem.

That is pretty interesting and also I didn't realize you could share chats like that.

That GPT is so bad at tic-tac-toe and relatively good at other games like chess is one of the main things that contributes to me having a lower opinion of its ability to generalize than I would have otherwise.

I think any human with GPT's abilities in chess (but somehow no prior knowledge of ttt) would have zero issue becoming an expert with a single explanation of the game. Even very young children can learn to play ttt well and at least consistently make valid moves if nothing else.

Oddly just like the text version it is still really bad at tic-tac-toe. Gave it a picture of a completed game and "Who won?" It told me "X won with a vertical line through the middle column" when in fact O won and there was only one X in the middle column.

Very impressive with almost everything else I gave it though.

Wildlife identification

Wouldn't say this is super reliable, I gave it a photo of a small squid in my hand and it said it was a baby fish (very obviously was not a fish).

Wish edn was more popular outside the Clojure world, it is so much better than the alternatives imo.

"picture" doesn't think of his fellow humans as fully real, thinking people

I can't say I agree, this feels like a very uncharitable reading of his/her posts. Unless it was edited in after the fact they even said "You're absolutely free to believe either way, and I don't want anyone to force you to do anything."

While it would be insulting to call any individual person's preferences a result of brainwashing, I don't think it is a stretch to say that at a societal level preferences are shaped by mass-media and advertising. Improving access to and making people aware of less resource-intensive forms of comfort doesn't have to come from an authoritarian place. One of my major motivations for seeking out a more walkable area was urbanist YouTubers extolling the benefits. I suppose one could argue that things like bike lanes are hurting drivers but if a city's transit priorities stem from local politics and preferences I don't think it can be reasonably argued that making any particular transit method a priority is more authoritarian than another.

In practice, comfort is mostly a function of stuff.

No question that it is a variable for most people but I'm not sure I buy that it is the most dominant one. All other variables being excluded, time to do what I want is at least as important for me as stuff (luckily I like my job so time/money aren't usually in conflict). And I think for many people "stuff" like cars and nice lawns aren't inherently drivers of comfort, but rather just possible reifications of goals like "pretty yard" or "fast/easy transit," both of which can be realized in less resource intensive ways. For the yard example, that might be a native garden or xeriscape (in some cases there are rules against these, which actually goes against freedom imo).

Comfort != "stuff". Yes in some cases stuff brings additional comfort, and what stuff does that varies by person but there isn't anything inherently contradictory in what they said imo.

I moved from an area where I needed a car to an area where I don't and doing so increased my comfort. If areas like this were more accessible I think a lot of people would willingly degrowth and become more comfortable at the same time. Of course people shouldn't be forced to lose their car or move to a denser area if they don't want. And I like my gadgets but it is pretty ridiculous that their lifespans are artificially shortened to prop up profits. I have a computer from 1984 that still works, I would bet a huge amount of money none of the devices I buy today will work in 2062.

I've noticed that one of the most common failure patterns I get from GPT4 for code generation is that it incorrectly asserts something and then corrects itself in the same response.

ex: "This code `(some-fn 1 2)` does x because y. That is incorrect because abc"

I wondered if this has to do with common StackOverflow post formats.

Definitely not the only one, an entire country decided that durability is important for the $1 denomination, I'll copy what I posted above:

I was recently in El Salvador, which uses the USD as an official currency (alongside BTC lol). Despite using dollars, the $1 coins are used instead of notes almost exclusively for that denomination (mostly presidential dollars and some silver Susan B Anthony dollars). I was curious and did a bit of research, apparently the reason is that because day-to-day transactions are done almost entirely in small amounts of cash the paper notes have a very short lifespan (apparently <1yr) there, while coins will last decades.

I was recently in El Salvador, which uses the USD as an official currency (alongside BTC lol). Despite using dollars, the $1 coins are used instead of notes almost exclusively for that denomination (mostly presidential dollars and some silver Susan B Anthony dollars). I was curious and did a bit of research, apparently the reason is that because day-to-day transactions are done almost entirely in small amounts of cash the paper notes have a very short lifespan (apparently <1yr) there, while coins will last decades.

I live in DC, it is ridiculously expensive but rent increases are capped, google says the formula is CPI + 2% but no more than 10%/yr. If she stayed in the same unit she might want to make sure her landlord isn't raising her rent illegally.

high manufacturing cost and the necessity for long hospital follow-up

The lead researcher behind the treatment claims the treatment cost under $20k to administer though, and I've never heard of mass production/adoption causing the cost of a product to go up in price (edit: excepting certain luxury goods that go up because they're a status symbol or something), certainly not >20x more... I know nothing about the medical field so I'm open to having my mind changed but that completely defies intuition. After seeing $450 bags of saline on a medical bill I had last year I'm much more inclined to believe they're just price gouging.

Novartis is also not the only manufacturer providing CAR-T drugs at a high price.

I guess more than one company can do something despicable?

offer alternative payment programmes

The "alternative payment programme" mentioned is "requiring payment only if the CAR T therapy induces a complete remission by a certain time point after treatment." I'd much rather pay $20k whether it succeeds or fails than $475k if it succeeds and $0 if it fails, if it fails I'm probably dead and don't care very much...

Well this is despicable...

People might debate how much of the killing was intentional but I wouldn't have thought it controversial to say that American natives, by and large, did not reap the benefits of colonization and actually incurred major losses.

How is this being downvoted enough to be greyed out?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_the_Indi...

I think I see your point but 10% (or heck even 1%) of books being engaging and worthwhile is still more books than anyone could realistically read in a lifetime. Good books are a fair bit more accessible than good urbanism or rural activities are to a suburban kid (speaking from experience sadly), and I don't think people extolling the values of reading are suggesting doing it completely in lieu of other productive activities like fixing a brake cable (fwiw probably an activity better assisted by YT or maybe even TikTok than books).

I have noticed that there is a decent amount of regional (esp Salvadoran) slang that native Spanish speakers I know use that it doesn't recognize. This isn't a huge problem and it is still incredibly useful though, as learning a few random slang words isn't exactly a challenge.

I agree, it seems like all the arguments that the use of data by AI should have no more restrictions than the use of data by humans hinge on the implicit (or sometimes explicit) assumption that human learning and machine learning are identical. While there are parallels, there also seem to be significant differences not only in how the learning is done, but also in outcomes for the person whose data is being used. And since a major purpose of IP, copyright, etc. is at least ostensibly to protect the creators of information from negative outcomes, I don't think the outcomes can be ignored when comparing human learning to ML.

I live in DC, the haze from the smoke was crazy a few days ago.

Phrased slightly differently, my result with GPT4 on launch day was:

What weighs more, two pounds of feathers or a pound of bricks?

A pound of bricks weighs more than two pounds of feathers. However, it seems like you might have made an error in your question, as the comparison is usually made between a pound of feathers and a pound of bricks. In that case, both would weigh the same—one pound—though the volume and density of the two materials would be very different.

It did note that the phrasing was odd, which I forgot, but the answer is actually somehow more wrong than just saying they weigh the same.

Another launch day test, appending "think about it":

What weighs more, two pounds of feathers or a pound of bricks? Think about it.

A pound of bricks weighs more than two pounds of feathers. This statement is incorrect. In reality, two pounds of feathers weigh more than a pound of bricks. The key difference between the two is their density; bricks are denser than feathers, so they take up less space for the same weight. However, when comparing the weight of two pounds of feathers to one pound of bricks, the feathers will indeed weigh more because there is a greater quantity of them (two pounds) than there is of bricks (one pound).

Today it consistently gets the question 100% correct with no help, so I do think they did something besides updating the base model.

An example:

GPT4 at release still had issues with "What is heavier, a pound of feathers or two pounds of bricks." It would very consistently claim that they were equal in weight because usually the question is posed with the weights being equal.

A bunch of people were mentioning it online and now it doesn't work anymore.

Yeah its definitely better than piecing together parts from different tutorials to be sure.

Googling "audio visualizer SwiftUI" gives me these as the first, fourth, and seventh results:

https://medium.com/swlh/swiftui-create-a-sound-visualizer-ca... https://audiokitpro.com/audiovisualizertutorial/ https://developer.apple.com/documentation/accelerate/visuali...

I do tend to reach for GPT4 before Google for things like this now, but I feel like it should definitely be possible to get this up in only slightly longer with just Google, even if you want some mods.

Some games go smoothly, some don't (occasionally it plays impossible moves or plays after I've already won, although not often). Even when games go smoothly, it seems to play very poorly even when told to win and even when I told it to explain the optimal tic-tac-toe strategy in advance.

While it is pretty impressive that it can play at all, it does make me think its intelligence is a bit less generalized and/or "human" than some people think. I think any human that can play chess to the level GPT4 can (apparently pretty high) would easily be able to figure out tic-tac-toe, even without our equivalent of "training data."

China is outcompeting the US in ... population control models.

I feel 100% OK with being "outcompeted" in this space.