@TedUnderwood@sigmoid.social
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TedUnderwood

@TedUnderwood@sigmoid.social

I use machine learning to study cultural history at the School of Information Sciences, UIUC. Also #generativeAI, #digitalhumanities, #sciencefiction, #computational #socialscience. Author of Distant Horizons (Chicago, 2019). #tfr #fedi22

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TedUnderwood, to random
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If Threads is willing to commit to follower portability—which Mosseri did suggest today—I think I see the bridge as a positive development.

SethRudy, to random
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I used to have a doctor who was trying to open a gelato shop as a side business and it was clear he really just wanted to do the gelato thing and not be a doctor anymore so I always felt like his medical care was somehow trying to channel me into supporting his gelato business.

I feel like everyone still on Twitter is basically like that.

TedUnderwood,
@TedUnderwood@sigmoid.social avatar

@SethRudy I feel like everyone I know is basically like that.

But the ones on Twitter are also driving around with one of those car-top advertising boards "Cheap Delicious Gelato 555-1234." They feel terrible about it, but gelato is more important than pride.

TedUnderwood, to history
@TedUnderwood@sigmoid.social avatar

Doing a bibliometric study of political science, history, economics and looking for journals that have been relatively central to English-language scholarship over a long print run. Need to have a few that were central early on (1930-1950). Recommendations?

TedUnderwood,
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@aristofontes Thanks!

TedUnderwood,
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@amandafrench @stefan_hessbrueggen it might be; I'm swinging a wide net right now

TedUnderwood,
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@scott_bot I should pick your brain, because this is going to get into more bibliometrics than I've done yet. Probably there's going to be a textual model that extends from say 1920 to 2020, and then a reception model that only tries to cover some internal subset of that (like 1930-2010). But yeah, incomparability of citation statistics across time is something that was nagging at me. I can certainly normalize for year, but that might not address everything ...

TedUnderwood,
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@asociologist Thanks! Very valuable.

TedUnderwood, to random
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I've read enough of The Ends of Knowledge (ed @SethRudy & Rachael Scarborough King) to recommend it to people in , literary studies, and . Not just "interdisciplinary," it aims to produce a Diderot/d'Alembert scale overview! I found Mark A-H's chapter on DH esp. illuminating. https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/ends-of-knowledge-9781350242302/

litteracarolina, to random
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I went into the humanities with a deep sense of joy that I'd never have to do maths again. But now digital AI is here, and everything can be a number. 😭

TedUnderwood,
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@litteracarolina Just imagine how 😭the programmers feel. They went into programming to escape the ambiguities of human language. But now they have to use human language to tell computers what to do.

Riedl, to random
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I'm probably going to regret this, but I have published a blog post on why I think AGI is not a foregone conclusion in the immediate future https://mark-riedl.medium.com/toward-agi-what-is-missing-c2f0d878471a

I'm posting this here first before I go wider. If you see anything I should update, please let me know.

TedUnderwood,
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@Riedl in 6, there’s a missing “of” in “inevitable, it overlooks the bottlenecks that make the assembly plausible systems from these generic tools slow.”

TedUnderwood, to random
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How to save writing assignments.

TLDR: 1) if we're teaching students how to do what has already been done, do it offline.
2) We also need advanced projects so students learn how to do what hasn't yet been done. It's okay if they use AI for those; it's not cheating.
3) If sorting things into piles 1 and 2 is painful, it may be that we haven't been honest with ourselves about how much is 1.

https://tedunderwood.com/2023/07/31/we-can-save-what-matters-about-writing-at-a-price/

sparklebliss, to random

Really liked the new Indiana Jones -- not a perfect movie, but a fun one. The last 10 or so minutes I found quite moving.

TedUnderwood,
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@sparklebliss Did it bother you that they, um, changed the outcome of the battle at the end? Like I can't quite figure out whether the Indiana Jones movies are still supposed to be in our timeline.

TedUnderwood, to random
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This seems perceptive to me. The stated explanation is obvious BS. This one is much more likely.

TedUnderwood,
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@ohmrun Yes! But wait, how does that work if you generate drama while blocking the eyeballs at the same time?

TedUnderwood, to random
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Well, looks like I'm back on Mastodon.

TedUnderwood,
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@Dreamwieber and as you point out, Bluesky is struggling with the increased load

TedUnderwood,
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@Dreamwieber I find Mastodon works smoothly — at least on my server. The main problem for me here is that the tech industry is not here. So there's a limit to what I can learn here.

TedUnderwood,
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@Dreamwieber Yeah, I think that's a combination of fewer people here / less diversity and no algorithmic feed. That's why I'm betting on Bluesky or Threads over the long term. You've got to have the algorithmic feed.

TedUnderwood,
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@Transportist @Dreamwieber Ah, that's promising. Of course, when I say "tech" what I really mean is ML. On that topic, I definitely miss out if I'm not listening to Twitter.

TedUnderwood,
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@christof @Transportist @Dreamwieber I don’t really know, except that my impression is, academics are more willing to move than industry people. And industry is really important in that field right now.

TedUnderwood, to llm
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“A grad student who fell asleep in 1982 and woke up in 2022 might see large language models as a triumph for cultural theory.” My contribution to the debate this week in the CI blog. https://critinq.wordpress.com/2023/06/29/the-empirical-triumph-of-theory/

TedUnderwood,
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@UlrichJunker In that piece I think I’m talking about instruction tuning rather than RLHF as such? It was an earlier advance, although the purposes are similar. But I agree with you that this whole topic is under-discussed. One way to put it is that the models responded to / addressed the Stochastic Parrots critique that they weren’t grounded in a communicative situation. But it served no one’s polemical purpose to take note of that.

WeavingWithAI, to midjourney
@WeavingWithAI@sigmoid.social avatar

test

[prompt in the alt]

TedUnderwood,
@TedUnderwood@sigmoid.social avatar

@WeavingWithAI seriously: the prompt was just “test “??

elotroalex, to random

My response to Lisa Siraganian "On Accidental and Parasitic Language" on the Critical Inquiry forum is up. Her position statement is clear and inviting. I disagree with her. I do regret the bit of overconfidence and snark in my answer. It comes from a mix of respect + joy. Promise.

I'll see myself to the door if y'all think I'm being disrespectful.

https://critinq.wordpress.com/2023/06/26/on-accidental-and-parasitic-language/

TedUnderwood,
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@jose_eduardo @elotroalex Okay, okay — I’ll engage the CI thing on Mastodon! Probably better venue for this anyway. I’m only lured back to Twitter because the tech industry didn’t leave.

mkirschenbaum, to LLMs

Happening all this week online at CRITICAL INQUIRY, “Again Theory: A Forum on Language, Meaning, and Intent in the Time of Stochastic Parrots.”

Contributors include Lisa Siraganian, Hannes Bajohr, Rita Raley and Russell Samolsky, Alex Gil, Seth Perlow, Tyler Shoemaker, Annette Vee, Ted Underwood, Kari Kraus, Caroline Bassett, Walter Benn Michaels, Steven Knapp, and Katherine Hayles.

Read along here. https://critinq.wordpress.com/2023/06/26/again-theory-a-forum-on-language-meaning-and-intent-in-the-time-of-stochastic-parrots/

TedUnderwood,
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@nabsiddiqui @mkirschenbaum That's quite interesting.

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