@simon@simonwillison.net
@simon@simonwillison.net avatar

simon

@simon@simonwillison.net

Open source developer building tools to help journalists, archivists, librarians and others analyze, explore and publish their data. https://datasette.io and many other #projects.

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

simon, to random
@simon@simonwillison.net avatar

Woohoo! @kellan has a new Link Blog https://laughingmeme.org/links/

Way more people should have one of these, they're great

> Like many people I’ve been dealing with the collapses of the various systems I relied on for information over the previous decades. [...] And particular with the collapse of the social spaces many of us grew up with, I feel called back to earlier forms of the Internet, like blogs, and in particular, starting a link blog.
https://fiasco.social/@kellan/112583726435885054

simon, to random
@simon@simonwillison.net avatar

This is fun: it turns out ChatGPT Code Interpreter can use gcc to compile and run C programs that link in the SQLite library and use it to execute SQL queries! https://chatgpt.com/share/197de2aa-935e-488e-84ca-145d3f7349ac

simon,
@simon@simonwillison.net avatar

This isn't a big surprise - I've had it write me SQLite extensions in C for use with Python in the past - but being able to write standalone C programs that don't use any Python at all feels like it could be a lot of fun https://simonwillison.net/2024/Mar/23/building-c-extensions-for-sqlite-with-chatgpt-code-interpreter/

simon, to random
@simon@simonwillison.net avatar

What are some of the best Python tutorial videos you've seen? Ideally relatively short (5-20 minutes) but I'm interested in anything which you think illustrates a really great teaching style that makes the most of the video format

simon, to random
@simon@simonwillison.net avatar

Latest edition of my newsletter is out https://simonw.substack.com/p/accidental-prompt-injection-against

simon, to random
@simon@simonwillison.net avatar

I wrote about a delightful example of accidental prompt injection against RAG applications, where a RAG application against my LLM project's documentation suddenly decided that it was a gerbil
https://simonwillison.net/2024/Jun/6/accidental-prompt-injection/

cspray, to javascript
@cspray@phpc.social avatar

One time I found some in an app that was constructing a full blown SELECT statement in SQL, sending it to the server, and then blindly executed on that server.

It is still the most glorious, beautiful code I've ever seen.

simon,
@simon@simonwillison.net avatar

@cspray I did that once for a project as a joke (against a read-only SQL API) and found it was actually a really neat way to rapidly iterate on my project!

You can view source on https://sf-trees.com to see a demo of the pattern I built

kate, to random
@kate@aus.social avatar

The assumption here is that other people will go to meetings while CEOs spend more time with their families. Sitting in on meetings without using your own time is surveillance more likely to be used by lower level micromanagers. It’s parked on the existing belief that human time is intended to be differently valued. None of this is a vision worth having.

@simon is good in responding to this nonsense.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/06/zoom-ceo-envisions-ai-deepfakes-attending-meetings-in-your-place/

simon,
@simon@simonwillison.net avatar

@SuperMoosie @kate which bits sounded like BS to you?

(No LLMs were used by me in responding to those questions)

simon,
@simon@simonwillison.net avatar

@SuperMoosie @kate gotcha!

simon, to random
@simon@simonwillison.net avatar

I got a good quote in this story about that dumb Zoom Idea to have "digital twins" attend meetings in your place https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/06/zoom-ceo-envisions-ai-deepfakes-attending-meetings-in-your-place/

simon,
@simon@simonwillison.net avatar

@Sassinake what a fantastic slide!

I'm trying to find more context for that now - https://constelisvoss.com/pages/a-computer-can-never-be-held-accountable and https://twitter.com/mit_csail/status/1604884273789603842 showed up but neither describe the source in more detail

simon, to random
@simon@simonwillison.net avatar

/r/FilmIndustryLA is a fascinating and depressing place - pretty much everyone on there thinks the US film production industry is in a permanent state of decline

Example comment: "Film schools aren’t going to level with kids so hopefully they read up about the state of the industry. I think as long as you go into it realizing you’ll be living in the gig economy for the rest of your life, and probably will never have much stability, you’ll at least know what to expect."

https://www.reddit.com/r/FilmIndustryLA/comments/1d7q2ao/why_do_people_think_things_will_be_better_in_2025/

ben, to fediverse
@ben@werd.social avatar

There's no good way to prevent AI models from being trained on art published on the fediverse. But there's work we can do to prevent it and protect the artists who post there. https://werd.io/2024/protecting-artists-on-the-fediverse

simon,
@simon@simonwillison.net avatar

@timbray @ben "Now that we have reasonable opt-in Fediverse search" - I've missed out on that, what does that opt-in search look Iike and how can I use it?

simon,
@simon@simonwillison.net avatar

@robinwhittleton @timbray @ben thank you! Looks like it's at /settings/privacy - shame it one applies to future posts, I wish I could turn it on for all my previous posts as well

simon,
@simon@simonwillison.net avatar

@robinwhittleton @timbray @ben blogged it https://simonwillison.net/2024/Jun/4/how-do-i-opt-into-full-text-search-on-mastodon/

simon, (edited ) to random
@simon@simonwillison.net avatar

Impressively high usage numbers for ChatGPT in the USA according to this Reuters Institute survey: 7% of the 2,012 survey participants in the USA reported using it daily, another 11% said weekly - so 18%, nearly 1/5 are using it at least once a week! https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/what-does-public-six-countries-think-generative-ai-news#header--3

(I've seen several headlines about this survey that suggest it as proof that ChatGPT usage isn't living up to the hype, which isn't my interpretation of these numbers at all)

simon,
@simon@simonwillison.net avatar

Example headline from the BBC: "AI products like ChatGPT much hyped but not much used, study says" https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c511x4g7x7jo

To be fair, the numbers for the UK are significantly lower compared to the USA - 2% reporting daily and 7% weekly for that country, so not quite 1/10 using it on a weekly basis there

simon,
@simon@simonwillison.net avatar

@kellogh @zellyn the biggest source of bias I can think of is that it was an online survey, so biased towards internet users

simon, to random
@simon@simonwillison.net avatar

I wrote about a common misconception I see people have about LLM tools like ChatGPT

Training is not the same as chatting: ChatGPT and other LLMs don’t remember everything you say

https://simonwillison.net/2024/May/29/training-not-chatting/

simon,
@simon@simonwillison.net avatar

This is yet another of those unintuitive things that stem from wrapping a chat interface around an autocompletion language model

simon,
@simon@simonwillison.net avatar

@troed I mention that in my article - there are plenty of reasonable reasons that people end up believing this!

simon,
@simon@simonwillison.net avatar

@mcc that's part of my frustration here: I can't say for sure how this stuff works because OpenAI don't document it!

I frequently use prompt leaking tricks (or chat exports) to confirm that I understand how their low-level prompting for ChatGPT works myself, but that's a pretty unreliable form of documentation

simon,
@simon@simonwillison.net avatar

@glyph @mcc headlines are always hard, especially wince thee days it's clear that a lot of people genuinely won't read more than the headline

simon,
@simon@simonwillison.net avatar

@mcc @glyph the thing I care about most here is that lots of people really do believe that anything they say to a model is instantly memorized and becomes part of its global "brain" (available to all users) - and that's what the term "training" means to them

simon,
@simon@simonwillison.net avatar

@me1000 I made that exact comparison back in December! https://simonwillison.net/2023/Dec/14/ai-trust-crisis/#facebook-dont-spy-microphone

KevinGimbel, to random
@KevinGimbel@fosstodon.org avatar

They be putting AI into everything, and they destroy years of trust.

https://kevingimbel.de/blog/2024/05/re-trust/

simon,
@simon@simonwillison.net avatar

@KevinGimbel was that Golden Gate Bridge suicide one confirmed as real? I got the impression it might have been one of the faked screenshots that were floating around (pretty condemning that it's so easy for us to believe in those fakes if that's true though)

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