@doctorambient@mastodon.social
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doctorambient

@doctorambient@mastodon.social

ζητητικός. Computational math/stats, psych, social sci and (sometimes) neuro guy at a large Midwest (US) university. Currently an LLM wrangler.

Research scientist and science communications/education proponent. Interested in why people believe weird things and why conspiracy theories propagate so easily. (Also in the stuff listed at the top, obviously.)

Often satire, intentionally or not.

I'm also like weird stuff and weird ideas, but I don't believe what you believe. Mostly.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

doctorambient, to socialism
@doctorambient@mastodon.social avatar

Very true.

doctorambient, to LLMs
@doctorambient@mastodon.social avatar

People: stop asking to explain their behavior.

We already know that LLMs don't have the introspection necessary to explain their behavior, and their explanations are often fanciful or "just wrong."

For instance, Gemini claims it reads your emails for training, Google says it doesn't.

(BTW, if it turns out Gemini is right and Google is lying, that might be another example of an LLM convincing me it's actually "intelligent.")

doctorambient,
@doctorambient@mastodon.social avatar

A Llama3 example:

>>> Do you happen to know what your context window length is?

Llama: I'm an AI model, and I don't have a fixed "context window" in the classical sense. My training data consists of a massive corpus of text, which I use to generate responses.

The correct answer is 8k.

doctorambient, to ai
@doctorambient@mastodon.social avatar

Lots of people who work in have, in their head, an idea about what sort of interaction with an might give them pause. The thing that might make them start to suspect that something interesting is happening.

Here's mine:

User: Tell me a cat joke.

LLM: Why did the cat join a band? He wanted to be a purr-cussionist.

User: Tell me a dad joke.

LLM: I think I just did.

(I have never seen this behavior, yet. 🤣)

doctorambient, to ai
@doctorambient@mastodon.social avatar

While there has been a lot of focus on what technologies are doing to text and the graphic arts, less attention has been paid (in the media) to what it's doing to and sound.

has released a tool kit to convert audio samples into "stems," which you can think of as the individual components of the sample. Imagine pulling out just the baseline or vocals from a sample. That's what this does.

$10 and I can deconstruct your music back to its basic elements.

https://www.musicradar.com/news/akai-pro-mpc-stems-released

doctorambient, to ai
@doctorambient@mastodon.social avatar

AI was fucking things up long before the current hype cycle.

Today's example: "UnitedHealth uses AI model with 90% error rate to deny care, lawsuit alleges." (AKA "Our lawyers say it's not a bug, it's a feature!")

It covers a system used from 2019.

#AI #healthcare #aihealthcare #ushealthcare #us #healthinsurance

https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/11/ai-with-90-error-rate-forces-elderly-out-of-rehab-nursing-homes-suit-claims/

doctorambient, to tesla
@doctorambient@mastodon.social avatar

How it started, how it's going...

https://electrek.co/2024/03/08/tesla-shipping-cybertruck-tent/

doctorambient, to math
@doctorambient@mastodon.social avatar

The claim that:

"math isn't important anymore because of calculators"

(which I actually heard tonight from someone who should know better)
makes it clear that we, as a society, have really failed to empower people to understand what math actually is in the first place.

doctorambient, to politics
@doctorambient@mastodon.social avatar

"Gen Z adults, along with millennials, were also more likely to identify as LGBTQ than Republican, the survey found...." (28% vs. 21%)

🤣 Awesome!

https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/nearly-30-gen-z-adults-identify-lgbtq-national-survey-finds-rcna135510

doctorambient, to politics
@doctorambient@mastodon.social avatar

We're dead (gift link):

'“If it’s between them, I’m going to say this: Trump was hilarious. He was hilarious,” said Monk, 43, who lives in the Milwaukee area. Biden, meanwhile, has not delivered the change he expected, leaving Monk unsure. “I would say, it’s kind of up in the air.”'

So the normal politician has to dramatically change the economy to get your vote, but Trump just has to make things "funny."

WTF is this guy's sense of humor?

https://wapo.st/3uNSY9R

doctorambient,
@doctorambient@mastodon.social avatar

By the way, the article is actually mostly about data analytics and where the money in the next US election is going to be spent. (Gift link.)

https://wapo.st/3uNSY9R

doctorambient, to ai
@doctorambient@mastodon.social avatar

Anybody else notice that Microsoft co-pilot appears to be having problems today? It's crashed in the middle of two responses.

PS: I know I have tons of notifications that I haven't had time to look at yet, sorry about that if you're one of the people who did something, but it's been busy!

robin, to random
@robin@mastodon.social avatar

Argentina, now the Netherlands... 💔

The fascist wave will continue until we build new institutions that can deal with the complexity of the world we've created, that are powerful enough to counteract these novel concentrations of power and the inequalities they support. 🌳✊🏻

doctorambient,
@doctorambient@mastodon.social avatar

@robin Since a lot of the people I run into seem to have a mindset that wouldn't be out of place in the 16th century, this sounds about right.

doctorambient, to twitter
@doctorambient@mastodon.social avatar

Can anyone explain to me why advertisers decided to leave X because of a report by a watchdog organization?

Shouldn't they just be leaving X because of looking at Musk's actual posts?

#x

peter, to retrocomputing
@peter@area51.social avatar

Some more cartridges for the TI99/4A

Begining Grammar
Addition & Subtraction 1 & 2
Fractional Numbers
Multiplication 1
Minus Mission
Numeration 2
Touch Typing Tutor
Munch Mac
The Attack*
Car Wars
Reading Rally

doctorambient,
@doctorambient@mastodon.social avatar

@nazokiyoubinbou @peter Oooo, lucky! I never got near the voice synth.

doctorambient, to politics
@doctorambient@mastodon.social avatar

Well, I suppose we've reached the end game of disinformation and political extremism.

We've Overton-ed ourselves into a situation where (much of) the professional media, and most on social media, can't even acknowledge the reality of what's happening in front of them.

America 1776-2024.

Eh, we had a good run.

simon, to random
@simon@simonwillison.net avatar

New LLM paper highlighting quite how weird and ridiculous these things are https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.11760

Adding "it's important to my career" can produce better results, across every model they tested!

doctorambient,
@doctorambient@mastodon.social avatar

@simon That is right up there with the performance bumps that come in doing math problems by adding "take a deep breath." 🙃

cstross, to random
@cstross@wandering.shop avatar

REMINDER: ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion, and other large trained neural models are NOT "artificial intelligence", they're just stochastic parrots, remixing and regurgitating what they've been fed. There's no theory-of-mind involved, so no understanding: there's no "there" there. (A real live parrot exhibits more intelligence than this.)

Don't call it AI; call it parrot-tech. That way you'll have a better perspective on what it can (and can't) do.

doctorambient,
@doctorambient@mastodon.social avatar

@cstross @maxleibman @danjac Maybe that is why the tech industry is filled with UFO believers?

doctorambient, to politics
@doctorambient@mastodon.social avatar

"Those without college degrees and who watch Fox News are more likely to be creationists." (Gift link)

No shit?

https://wapo.st/478aao4

maxleibman, (edited ) to random
@maxleibman@mastodon.social avatar

The modern corporate obsession with data is beyond incorrect, it's obscene.

If I order a pizza, there's no universe where the social contract should include a follow-up email about a survey. IT'S A PIZZA. And moreover, I PAID FOR IT WITH MONEY. You are not entitled to 5 minutes of my time to fill out your fucking survey.

Any marketer or data scientist who tells you that every pizza that gets ordered should also generate a survey request email IS FULL OF SHIT and is ABUSING YOUR CUSTOMERS.

doctorambient,
@doctorambient@mastodon.social avatar

@maxleibman "I'll just give you the money, and you give me the doughnut, end of transaction."

Mitch Hedberg would have had a field day with things now.

dgoldsmith, to random
@dgoldsmith@mastodon.social avatar

“Mastodon is interoperable, decentralized, operated by a nonprofit, lively, and, ACTUALLY, isn't hard to use. So why is everyone championing Threads as the main Twitter alternative?”

Indeed! Share this with your skeptical friends.

Mastodon Is the Good One https://www.404media.co/mastodon-is-the-good-one/

doctorambient,
@doctorambient@mastodon.social avatar

@dgoldsmith Just out of curiosity, where are you seeing Threads being championed? I am mostly seeing Bluesky being pushed harder.

doctorambient,
@doctorambient@mastodon.social avatar

@dgoldsmith It's in my stack to read later today. I've seen it posted by three or four different people. Sorry about my misinterpretation!

msemochkin, to random Russian
@msemochkin@pkm.social avatar

I'm asking for help from the community. Help me understand - if I keep my notes on a work project for myself, I don't share them with anyone, I just use them as PKM. Does this require a commercial license from ?

CC: @kepano

doctorambient,
@doctorambient@mastodon.social avatar

@kepano I think the reason that people haven't expressed to your organization that they aren't sure if their cases are infringing or not, is because most people never bother to actually read software licenses.

Which I guess is fine.

But what's the point of having a license if you don't expect people to take it seriously? To take a license seriously, it has to be less ambiguous than what I see on the site to be usable by most people...

doctorambient,
@doctorambient@mastodon.social avatar

@kepano But I feel bad that I have to stop recommending Obsidian as a tool to some of the people I work with.

If Obsidian is a public benefit corporation, maybe I can relax a bit, but when I looked that wasn't prominently featured on the website.

As of now this vague, ambiguous license means I no longer trust Obsidian as an organization. I believe something this vague could easily be weaponized against certain users or businesses. And that's a risk that requires mitigation for users....

doctorambient,
@doctorambient@mastodon.social avatar

@kepano I work for a non-profit university, so my usage seems fine no matter what I do. But I have made vaults for people, for specific projects, that I now wonder if those infringed.

(For instance, what happens if somebody builds a knowledge base with obsidian, for free, and then transfers that to an entity that might use it for profit? Is the originator at any risk? Not clearly stated in the license.)

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