psytrancefan (u/psytrancefan)

psytrancefan commented on Grok3 Launch [video] x.com/xai/status/18916997... · Posted by u/travelhead

lionkor · 6 months ago

LLMs don't make me question what we know about humans and thinking. They are really good at convincing us that they're good, but really, that's other humans building stuff to convince us that it's good. There is no intelligence here, other than the perceived intelligence of predicting words intelligent people have written previously.

psytrancefan · 6 months ago

It does make me question humans and thinking but in the opposite direction.

It is like sitting down at a piano, sight reading a piece from sheet music and then someone who has no idea what they are talking about claiming you composed the music on the fly. Then when you point out the sheet music they just double down on some bullshit as to why they are still right and that is still composing even though obviously it is not.

psytrancefan commented on Perplexity Deep Research perplexity.ai/hub/blog/in... · Posted by u/vinni2

daveguy · 6 months ago

This seems like magic, but I can't find a research paper that explains how it works. And "expert-level analysis across a range of complex subject matters." is quite the promise. Does anyone have a link to a research paper that describes how they achieve such a feat? Any experts compared deep research to known domains? I would appreciate accounts from existing experts on how they perform.

In the meantime, I hope the bean counters are keeping track of revenue vs LLM use.

psytrancefan · 6 months ago

I think it is pretty cool for the first time trying something like this.

It seems like chain of thought combined with search. Seems like it looks for 30 some references and then comes back with an overview of what it found. Then you can dig deeper from there to ask it something more specific and get 30 more references.

I have learned a shitload already on a subject from last night and found a bunch of papers I didn't see before.

Of course, depressed, delusional, baby Einsteins in their own mind won't be impressed with much of anything.

Edit: I just found the output PDF.

psytrancefan commented on Blocklist for AI Music on YouTube surasshu.com/blocklist-fo... · Posted by u/jsheard

MyOutfitIsVague · 6 months ago

It's more like a blocklist for the demo programs from samplers.

psytrancefan · 6 months ago

You also didn't have "sampler music". People did creative things with samplers but people didn't seek out music based on the sampler.

As mentioned, current AI music is listening to recordings of Muzak like what they use to play in elevators and at Dennys.

I would say the progress in AI music is basically non-existent. Ironically, MusicLM can make some very unique and interesting sample material. The more popular models though are just slop.

psytrancefan commented on Perplexity Deep Research perplexity.ai/hub/blog/in... · Posted by u/vinni2

exclipy · 6 months ago

Not true at all. The original ChatGPT was useless other than as a curious entertainment app.

Perplexity, OTOH, has almost completely replaced Google for me now. I'm asking it dozens of questions per day, all for free because that's how cheap it is for them to run.

The emergence of reliable tool use last year is what has sky-rocketed the utility of LLMs. That has made search and multi-step agents feasible, and by extension applications like Deep Research.

psytrancefan · 6 months ago

This is my first time using anything from Perplexity and I am liking this quite a bit.

There seems to be such variance in the utility people find with these models. I think it is the way Feynman wouldn't find much value in what the language model says on quantum electrodynamics but neither would my mom.

I suspect there is a sweet spot of ignorance and curiosity.

Deep Research seems to be reading a bunch of arXiv papers for me, combining the results and then giving me the references. Pretty incredible.

psytrancefan commented on AI is stifling new tech adoption? vale.rocks/posts/ai-is-st... · Posted by u/kiyanwang

physicsguy · 7 months ago

If AI stifles the relentless churn in frontend frameworks then perhaps it's a good thing.

psytrancefan · 6 months ago

EXACTLY.

I suspect there has been a decade long Three-card monte on the front end in that change is good because change keeps front end salary up.

Personally, the sooner LLMs make all front end developers unemployed the better.

psytrancefan commented on Firing programmers for AI is a mistake defragzone.substack.com/p... · Posted by u/frag

high_na_euv · 7 months ago

The thing is: how much

0.2x, 2x, 5x, 50x?

psytrancefan · 7 months ago

It all comes down to a religious faith in AGI or not.

There can't be things that a human can program that AGI can not program or it is not "AGI".

While I am never a true believer in AGI, it seems to go I get a little faith when a new model comes out then I become increasingly agnostic the weeks and months after that. Repeat.

psytrancefan commented on Firing programmers for AI is a mistake defragzone.substack.com/p... · Posted by u/frag

rcpt · 7 months ago

I don't know what to say.

I've been able to get code working in libraries that I'm wholly unfamiliar with pretty rapidly by asking the LLM what to do.

As an example, this weekend I got a new mechanical keyboard. I like to use caps+hjkl as arrows and don't want to remap in software because I'll connect to multiple computers. Turns out there's a whole open source system for this called QMK that requires one to write C to configure the keyboard.

It's been over a decade since I touched a Makefile and I never really knew C anyway but I was able get the keyboard configured and also have some custom RGB lighting on it pretty easily by going back and forth with the LLM.

psytrancefan · 7 months ago

It is just very random. LLMs help me write a synthesizer using an odd synth technique in an obscure musical programming language with no problem, help me fix my broken linux system no problem but then can't do anything right with the python library pyro. I think it is why people have such different experiences. It all depends randomly on how what you want to solve lines up with what the models are good at.

psytrancefan commented on CDC Study Finds Silent Bird Flu Infections in Dairy Veterinarians nytimes.com/2025/02/13/sc... · Posted by u/bookofjoe

midtake · 7 months ago

> silent bird flu infections

This is getting ridiculous. We have all manner of silent infections all the time. This does not seem like news.

psytrancefan · 7 months ago

I think you are not understanding how difficult it is for people with types of phobias about germs and illness.

Imagine being obsessive compulsive about cleanliness and germs, then the pandemic comes along. You would never recover from that experience psychologically.

It would be worse than if someone with ophidiophobia woke up one day and snakes were randomly falling from the sky.

The worst of all though is an infection with no symptoms. Like an invisible prison the germ freak can never escape from.

What is bizarre is we pretend there aren't at least hundreds of thousands of people in the country with these type of phobias.

psytrancefan commented on OpenDAW – a new holistic exploration of music creation inside the browser opendaw.studio/... · Posted by u/raggi

catapart · 7 months ago

I will never understand "music software" people. I just do NOT get where their heads are at, in any way, shape, or form. If you asked me to come up with the worst way to deal with audio in software, it would look very much like what most DAWs currently look like.

I say this as someone who makes music and records it on a PC (MacOs/Windows/Linux), AND as someone who makes software for those same OSes. Admittedly, I do not really mess with loops or synthesizers, so I acknowledge those use-cases as some that might actually seem reasonable with current DAWs, but I definitely do not "get" it. I get bored screwing with synthesizers/filters (funny noise machines), and I use loops mostly with simple sequencers. So most of my time is spent producing and managing waveforms. To that end, every DAW looks - to me - like a god damned file manager, rather than a space for making content.

I'd LOVE for one piece of software to treat me like a user, rather than an audio engineer. I need a timeline, sure, but FIRST I need to pick an instrument; either by plugging it in (and the software auto-recognizing it), or by selecting a synth. I also need to pick a controller, if it's a synth. THEN I need to be put into an area where I can immediately get feedback for that thing. I don't need it to ONLY play when I hit record, or when I'm logging to the timeline. I need to have an empty space where I can start doing "takes". Simple snippets that I can refer back to. Auto-split during "silence", so I don't have to scan through a massive timeline to find the bit I liked. Obviously the mixers and things need to be summonable, here, for tuning. But they don't necessarily need to already be present. I don't need 18 knobs for tuning while I'm scritching out a riff, or finding the melodic line with my voice. I need to be able to try a thing, edit the settings, try again, edit again, back and forth until I feel like I'm "here in the space".

Again, this is like...every recording studio I've ever been to. You take some time to get your gear set up and, while that's happening, you play the things and find your sound in this space. Yet every piece of audio software just pretends like all of their audio processing isn't a change to the "space". It treats audio input a kind of "pure" input which it will alter, but doesn't immediately let musicians get a feeling for that alteration. Instead, we get infinite complexity right up front because "that's how computers work" or "that's how the files are handled" or "it's based on older stuff that had such limited processing this was the only way it could be done; now people are used to it, so we can't change it".

All nonsense. I'm not asking for every DAW to be geared towards musicians, I'm asking for ONE. Let ProTools still be ProTools. Or Audacity still be Audacity. But I'd really love if someone could make software for a 6 year old to plug a guitar into and start playing.

*yes, I am in a position to make that kind of DAW, and yes I do have the requisite insight to build the thing I'm asking for. And, boy, if I ever get the time, it's on. But I won't be holding my breath for my other projects to clear out enough to make this happen.

psytrancefan · 7 months ago

I think the use cases are just too wide and varied. If someone made me the perfect DAW for my needs, it would be so narrow they would quickly go out of business.

The DAW has to cover so many different use cases and styles that I don't see how you can get around the complexity upfront.

A 6 year old could plug in a guitar and record the audio with any editing software. Once you want multiple tracks though and real time effects on those tracks and midi then you are already at the flavor of most DAWs.