ABrockwell @aebrockwell@social.cleverlibre.org
Expert in probability, statistics, and data science, with some programming skills as well.
Former academic and current quant trader.
Joined Nov 2022
ABrockwell
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A Categorical Archive of ChatGPT Failures #chatgpt https://arxiv.org/pdf/2302.03494.pdf
A thought on Google's #Bard incident:
Google created an online ad in which Bard made a provably false statement about the James Webb space telescope. As a result, Google appears to be losing credibility and their share price is taking a hit.
Setting aside the fact that #ChatGPT also makes numerous false statements, I think there is an important lesson to be learned from the Bard incident.
The people involved in producing the Google ad are likely intelligent professionals. They would have reviewed the ad in the course of its production. And yet they did not scrutinize Bard's statements carefully. Why not? Perhaps because the false statement was embedded with other true statements in an otherwise nice-sounding and coherent response, they just assumed it was correct. It's a natural human impulse to assign credibility this way.
But this shows the true insidiousness of these systems. They "charm" you into believing false statements. And they are very good at doing so, as the ad demonstrates.
ABrockwell
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🏳️🌈🖖🏽
ABrockwell
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🇳🇱
Just a reminder, being a horrible person shoukdnt be tolerated simply because they claim their religion says so.... **YOU** choose one of any number of interpritations of your religion that caused you to be a horrible person. Thats not your religions fault, thats just you finding an excuse to be a shit human. No one needs to tolerate you being a shit human just because your a religious shit human.
That is all...
ABrockwell
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All of these hot takes about how Mastodon is too hard to use for mass adoption are missing the point entirely. We are not some tech startup trying to "disrupt" the social media ecosystem. We don't have VCs breathing down our necks pushing for continuous growth at all costs. We're just regular people out here building communities.
If people don't like Mastodon and decide to go back to Twitter, that's fine. They are not commodities to be exploited. If people like Mastodon and decide to stay, that's great! They are going to be more invested in the community because they are actually deriving real value from it.
If there's one thing the global capitalist system cannot fathom is that value can exist that is not fungible with monetary value. There are plenty of ways to create value for people that do not involve buying and selling. In fact the whole notion that value = monetary value is a relatively recent innovation in human history.
I'm not saying that capitalism doesn't have its benefits, but our minds have become so warped by its zero-sum game vision of the world that it's easy to believe that generating profits is the only thing that matters. We may have to play that game to justify our existence on this planet, but there's a whole world of value to be found outside of it. Just because we're forced to play the game doesn't mean the game is all there is.
ABrockwell
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We call ChatGTP an artificial intelligence, but essentially it's a search engine that doesn't acknowledge the sources it plagiarizes.
@brantjames The quote in the article suggests his track record based on code was 3 losing bets followed by 1 (or 2?) big winning bets. He came out ahead with a large win at the end that dominated the earlier losses.
However, if this is indeed what happened, it is (1) an abysmal track record (because it is both poor and short), and (2) a classic example of a technique that guarantees long-term failure. Specifically, increasing your bet-size until you win, then repeating the process. (See lots of mathematical literature on gamblers ruin and related problems.)
Throw #ChatGPT into the mix and I'd be willing to bet you get an even worse gambling system. Just my opinion though ...
ABrockwell
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society: damn misinfo at scale is getting a bit out of hand lately. seems like a problem.
tech guys: i have invented a machine that generates misinformation. is that helpful?
ABrockwell
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I'm making a public commitment right now to stop calling things like #ChatGPT and #MidJourney AI (artificial intelligence). It's ML (machine learning) and it's dangerous (and dumb) to call it AI IMHO.
ABrockwell
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AN OPEN POST TO MASTO ADMINS (boost for reach pls):
Yesterday a sizable instance (dice.camp, a TTRPG community, where I have - or HAD - many mutuals) defederated with mastodon.social (cut ties). That server then reversed that decision but the damage was done: follows had been deleted. I lost my friends there.
ADMINS: PLEASE... we (USERS) are all working hard to establish mastodon as a viable social network. This type of action fundamentally damages that effort. Even reversed, it's damaging.
ABrockwell
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"As a target of anti-Semitism in Germany and abroad between the World Wars, the Jewish scientist was well aware of the harm that discrimination inflicts, and sought to use his platform to speak out against the mistreatment of others."
@ZingerLearns @edutooters Totally agree. Although I can see a role for positive fluffy feedback when someone needs their confidence built up, even in that case I think it still needs to shift to more critical feedback over time.
ABrockwell
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@edutooters #edutooter
This may not be a popular opinion, and I ground it in critical love, but I don't see the benefit of providing that soft, uncritical fluffy feedback, especially for people we care about.
I have been in a few groups and engaged in some writing and revising lately where people effectively lied and withheld because they didn't want to be critical, and it was absolutely to the detriment of the person receiving the feedback.
We have to care enough to share valid and important critiques to help and move work forward.
ABrockwell
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People worry a lot about losing knowledge — about "burned-down libraries".
Comparatively few people seem to worry about what happens if you take a billion books full of auto-generated, often-untrue junk text and *add* them all to the library.
In theory, nothing is lost. In reality, everything is lost, because nothing useful can now be found.
ABrockwell
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I can't get over this New York Times headline saying Ron DeSantis is "building his brand" by wrecking public education in Florida. It reminds me of NYT’s first mention of Hitler in 1922, which claimed his anti-Semitism wasn’t “genuine” or “violent” but was just “bait” to attract followers. From 1922 to 2023, NYT is still covering fascists from a marketing perspective rather than a moral perspective.
ABrockwell
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"Can you explain this gap in your resume?"
"Yes, I used LaTeX and couldn't fix that bit"
ABrockwell
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The idea that bad people having a voice on social media causes other people to become bad people (often the argument as to why we must defederate from bad servers) is equivalent to:
Thinking violent video games cause people to become violent.
Thinking explicit song lyrics cause people to become criminals
Allowing people to be openly homosexual will cause others to become homosexual
Banning books
ABrockwell
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We dove deep into the situation in Florida in today’s “Is This Democracy” episode and dissected the authoritarian takeover of education, the escalating reactionary campaign to stifle, censor, and ban any dissent from the white nationalist woldview. This is a proper emergency. It needs to be treated as such. /end https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/13-the-murder-of-tyre-nichols-the/id1652741954?i=1000597862704
ABrockwell
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Happy Black Friday!
I try to spend some time every Friday boosting posts of music videos by Black artists. I'm not Black myself, so I'm taking a chance today by posting my own. I hope it's okay to participate in the hashtag!
Summertime, by Lena Horne
https://youtu.be/EIHPHMUZoq0
Lena Horne was an amazing woman. Not just a singer, she was a very popular actress who wouldn't take roles she thought typecast her. She was a civil rights activist, and participated in protests and marches. She also sued clubs that wouldn't let her perform, and ended up blacklisted during the McCarthyism of the 1940s because of her leftist progressive views.
This song makes me wistful for relief from the ice currently blanketing my city. This video is from:
Black History Music Playlist
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMGH4dosQ9fyz1ZUuPEW9qsRNgdlHMH0T
The playlist starts with 85 great videos in alphabetical order by first name, adds 9 more videos in no particular order, and ends on a 15-minute tech product review for reasons unclear to me.
More on Lena Horne: https://www.biography.com/musicians/lena-horne
#BlackFriday #BlackHistoryMonth #BlackLivesMatter #MusicVideos #blog
Expert in probability, statistics, and data science, with some programming skills as well.
Former academic and current quant trader.
Joined Nov 2022
