Tier3r (u/Tier3r) - Readit News

Tier3r commented on Meta is killing off its AI-powered Instagram and Facebook profiles theguardian.com/technolog... · Posted by u/n1b0m

ProAm · 8 months ago

What happened to the Metaverse? Not snarky, but it also seems like it has been killed off in favor of AI investments?

Tier3r · 8 months ago

The feeling I'm getting is management took such a huge stance (the capex, the name change, etc) on it it'd be humiliating to turn 180 and ditch it now (they've spent 50 billion on Reality Labs so far). So they're quietly pushing it aside and one day when people aren't looking, they'll take it to the back of the house and shoot it in the head. Probably call it an "internal re-org" or something like that.

Tier3r commented on Meta is killing off its AI-powered Instagram and Facebook profiles theguardian.com/technolog... · Posted by u/n1b0m

1659447091 · 8 months ago

This reminds me of the experiments FB was doing to control user emotion. Vibes of the same sliminess.

But beyond that, has social media not isolated people enough--soon, a large portion of people using it won't even interact with other actual people...

I don't see how a platform meant to "connect" people to others--scratch that, a platform meant to connect people to ad's makes perfect sense.

Tier3r · 8 months ago

The only reason I can think that this atrocity got deployed was from an engineering perspective, creating AI profiles to engage theoretically gives FB a powerful lever to increase engagement, because you'd have this entire new field to collect data, experiment and test people's responses. In other words, it would turn engagement into a form tractable to optimisation algorithms.

Tier3r commented on A Return to Polymathy (2015) [pdf] paulrcohen.github.io/pape... · Posted by u/mirawelner

openrisk · 8 months ago

> Those colleges and universities that figure out how to organize research and teach new foundations and polymathy and prepare their students to understand a world in which every system, at every scale, acts causally on others, will see their stock rise. The rest will struggle to remain relevant.

It is safe to say that this prediction did not come to pass. The system (pun) keeps churning idiot-savants, well-trained cogs in the giant machine that society had been reduced to.

Tier3r · 8 months ago

I'd argue that it hasn't come to pass, but it is not wrong that its a better way to teach. Virtually all education has been set up in an industrial line style of pre-u education -> university -> companies -> profits -> some value to society. Every part has been attempted to be structured to optimise for the subsequent stage - companies optimisie for profits, universities optimise for employment rate and salary, high schools optimise for college entrance rates, etc. Yet because of Goodhart's and organizational incompetence, each part optimises badly, so education gets exponentially disconnected from each. His proposals are valuable to society, but the system is structurally against it.

The only way this works if it skips the assembly line right down to being of value to society, ie you set up a system which explicitly transforms that teaching into things like startups, research, nonprofits etc.

Tier3r commented on China Wiretaps Americans in 'Worst Hack in Our Nation's History' gizmodo.com/china-wiretap... · Posted by u/blackeyeblitzar

blackeyeblitzar · 9 months ago

I can’t believe that this has not been discussed openly by the Biden administration. This is a huge black mark on the surveillance programs of America, another exoneration of Snowden (yes I realize this may not be the same prism program), a call for real consequences for cybersecurity issues, and yet another massive breach of trust with China. When will American politicians step up and hammer China with aggressive asymmetric warfare and also direct force? I expect aggressive tariffs and outright bans of Chinese imports would risk the CCP’s stability given their economy is on the ropes now anyways, but we should also be a lot more interventionist in their other interests (Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet, Bhutan, etc). There is no reason to tolerate any of this.

Tier3r · 9 months ago

I don't think the Biden admin can criticize Xi for cyber warfare with a straight face.

Tier3r commented on OpenAI's new "Orion" model reportedly shows small gains over GPT-4 the-decoder.com/openais-n... · Posted by u/tiime

cma · 10 months ago

> to the decreasing, logarithmic performance

In what measure, loss? Loss can't go below 0 plus the inherent entropy in the text (other than that with overfitting it could reach nearer to 0, but not fully if it is next token and there are multiple same prefixes).

With respect to hallucinations 4 got incredibly better over 3

Tier3r · 10 months ago

In intelligence/performance. It's admittedly a fuzzy notion. Most benchmarks will probably show decreasing gains between generations. Similar to time/space complexity, trying to debate about what performance/intelligence is will get into a million definitions, caveats and technicalities. But a relative comparison between inputs and outputs is gives us useful information.

The inputs - data, compute and parameters - going into training these models have grown by many orders of magnitude between each gen. There's a lot of fuzziness about how much better each gen has gotten, but clearly 4 is not many orders of magnitude better than 3 by any reasonable definition. This mental model isn't useful to say how good each gen is, but it is quite useful to see the trend and make long term predictions.

Tier3r commented on OpenAI's new "Orion" model reportedly shows small gains over GPT-4 the-decoder.com/openais-n... · Posted by u/tiime

meiraleal · 10 months ago

If that's the case, why we aren't seeing yet specialized LLMs for say only JavaScript, or translating from english to portuguese, etc?

Tier3r · 10 months ago

We are likely going to get there. Similar to the steam/combustion engines (and other core technologies like computers, wireless transmission etc) there's first a massive rush to increase the power of it, at the cost of efficiency and effectiveness for more niche use cases. Then it is specialised to various use cases with large improvements in efficiency and effectiveness. My own prediction for where most gains will now come is

1) Creating new "harnesses" for models that connect to various systems, APIs, frameworks, etc. While this sounds "trivial", a lot of gains can come from this. Similar to how the voice version of ChatGPT was (apparently) amazing, all you really had to do was create an additional voice to text layer and another text to voice layer.

2) Increasing specialisation of models. I predict over time that end user AI companies (e.g those that just use models and not develop them), will use more and more specialised models. The current, almost monolithic, system where every service from text summary to homework help is plugged into the same model will slowly change.

Tier3r commented on OpenAI's new "Orion" model reportedly shows small gains over GPT-4 the-decoder.com/openais-n... · Posted by u/tiime

Tier3r · 10 months ago

From the amount of data each successive generation used (which grew many orders of magnitude each time) to the decreasing, logarithmic performance, it's quite clear the steam is running out on shoving more data into it. If one plots the data to performance graph, its horribly logarithmic. In another perspective, the ability of LLMs to transfer learning actually decreases exponentially the larger they and the data sets get. This fits into the how humans have to specialise in topics because the mental models of one field is very difficult to transfer to another.

Tier3r commented on Algorithms We Develop Software By grantslatton.com/software... · Posted by u/ksec

declan_roberts · 10 months ago

> A piece of advice I've given junior engineers is to write everything twice. Solve the problem. Stash your code onto a branch. Then write all the code again. I discovered this method by accident after the laptop containing a few days of work died. Rewriting the solution only took 25% the time as the initial implementation, and the result was much better.

This is true, and I've discovered it myself by losing a branch.

However, who the hell has time to write everything twice? There's 1,000 things waiting to be written once.

Tier3r · 10 months ago

I fear not the man who has written 10,000 features once, but the man who has written 1 feature 10,000 times

Tier3r commented on BYD added a Tesla-worth of production capacity over the past 3 months cleantechnica.com/2024/11... · Posted by u/toomuchtodo

jillesvangurp · 10 months ago

I think you are right. BYD and other companies won't stay in China either. They'll be opening up factories in Turkey, Mexico, etc. This will start creating issues for incumbents in most markets. The US and EU might protect their domestic markets with tariffs for a while. But their exports are going to suffer. And short of imposing tariffs on lots of other countries and suspending related trade agreements, cars will still come into domestic markets via those new factories. And inevitably, some companies will start falling over and might fall in the hands of foreign investors or disappear completely.

It's a repeat of the emergence of Japanese car manufacturers in the eighties. The same dynamics are at play here: the Chinese products are simply better and cheaper. And contrary to the popular believe that's not just subsidies. Those foreign factories in Turkey, Mexico, and elsewhere will be producing low cost vehicles. The cost difference is the competitive advantage Chinese companies now have. They might have gotten there via subsidies but now that they have this cost advantage, it's there to stay. To compete, other companies will have to address their cost issues and their R&D deficit. There's no way around it. Producing more costly vehicles is just going to continue to price them out of the market.

Delay tactics don't work. Tariffs don't work. Delaying investments, doesn't work either. That about sums up the current attitude of a lot of the legacy companies. Dragging their feet, reducing investments, and lobbying for tariffs to protect their businesses. To survive, they would need to reverse their strategy and shift all effort towards producing low cost EVs. There's plenty of demand. But not for overpriced products.

Tier3r · 10 months ago

Something interesting I heard from a chip company that's huge in the space and work intimately with many automotive companies - why Chinese companies grow so fast is because their development cycle for a car is ~2-3 years, compared to traditional manufacturers who take 5-7 years. This is a massive edge in pushing out new features and exploiting the very rapid new tech - batteries, self driving, etc.

Tier3r commented on Nvidia and its partners built a system to bypass U.S. export restrictions twitter.com/kakashiii111/... · Posted by u/mgh2

eloisius · 10 months ago

What One China policy did the US sign? China has a One China Principal which some countries uphold, but the US is not one of them. Our _policy_ is to acknowledge China’s position but does not endorse or challenge it. Chinese diplomats are eternally trying to conflate the two, saying even the US admits there is but one China, and thus supports China’s position on the Taiwan question, but that is not true.

As for the silicon shield, yes it’s probably a major factor, but not close to the only factor. If PRC realizes its claims over Taiwan and the South China Sea, the entire region, including many US allies, will be under Chinese hegemony. It would spell the end of the current economic order. Japan, Philippines, basically all of East and Southeast Asia would then be trading within China’s new backyard.

Tier3r · 10 months ago

If one gets into the weeds of the whole messy thing, the Shanghai Communique acknowledges the position of both sides (Taiwan and China) that there is one China, the 1982 Joint Communique acknowledged the Chinese position and said the US had no intention of pursuing a "two Chinas" or "one China and Taiwan" policy. And of course there's a non stop stream of such political speak, which is a red herring for the whole issue. Beyond minor changes to wordings, the main things the US did that screwed over Taiwan:

1) Revoking the mutual defense treaty which legally bound the US to defend Taiwan, replacing it with a more vague law where military intervention was not clear. 2) Recognizing the PRC as the legitimate representative of China.

To align your claims slightly, Taiwan also claims the same section of the SCS (actually it claims a slightly larger part), so strictly speaking it is what happens if the "Chinese claims" are realised (Taiwan and China work jointly to support their claims, ironically enough). In real terms the economic effects of China with respect to the SCS are greatly exaggerated for a number of reasons. First being that shipping can be routed through Indonesia. It is not a chokepoint, it just happens to be the shortest route. Second, blockades have little to do with recognising swaths of ocean as territory. These are enforced by navies, and most blockades in history have not happened within the blockaders' own waters (for obvious reasons). It is no easier for China to blockade trade in the region if it claims the SCS. And third, of all the major economic powers, China has historically been the least likely to enact economic warfare like blockades or sanctions. There is also a fourth aspect where in the current political environment, the globalised, trade based economic order is the least popular in the US and assorted European states, not China (who in fact desperately needs trade).