The White House was forced to walk back on president Joe Biden’s claim to have seen “confirmed pictures” of “terrorists beheading children” in Israel....
U.S. and international media outlets are repeating unsubstantiated claims that Palestinian fighters “beheaded” babies. These unverified assertions aren’t just sloppy journalism — they are being used to justify a massacre....
Yeah no. That’s antisemitic bullshit you see literal Nazis spout off about.
This recent “story” was only posted in a shitty tabloid, picked up by a couple other shitty tabloids, and gullible people spread it all over social media.
High school students’ scores on the ACT college admissions test have dropped to their lowest in more than three decades, showing a lack of student preparedness for college-level coursework, according to the nonprofit organization that administers the test....
Dorothy Hoffner, a 104-year-old Chicago woman whose recent skydive could see her certified by Guinness World Records as the oldest person to ever jump from a plane, has died....
The European Union (EU) sent a letter to Elon Musk Tuesday warning that his social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, was spreading illegal content and disinformation after the Hamas attacks on Israel....
Ok I’m going to answer my own question because I’m too curious to wait lol
Goodhart’s Law states that “when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” In other words, when we use a measure to reward performance, we provide an incentive to manipulate the measure in order to receive the reward. This can sometimes result in actions that actually reduce the effectiveness of the measured system while paradoxically improving the measurement of system performance. … The manipulation of measures resulting from Goodhart’s Law is pervasive because direct measures of effectiveness (MOEs), which are more difficult to manipulate, are also more difficult to measure, and sometimes simply impossible to define and quantify. As a result, analysts must often settle for measures of performance (MOPs) that correlate to the desired effect of the MOE. … These negative effects can sometimes be avoided. When they cannot, they can be identified, mitigated, and even reversed.
Use MOEs instead of MOPs whenever practicable and possible
Use the scientific method to generate new measurement data, rather than harvesting existing and possibly compromised data
Help customers establish authoritative and difficult-to-manipulate definitions for measures
Identify and avoid the use of manipulated data and data prone to manipulation
Use measurement data not generated by the organization being measured
Collect data secretly or after a measurable activity has already occurred
Measure all relevant system characteristics rather than just a representative few
Randomize the measures used over time
Wargame or red team potential measures
This report recommends that the organizations that employ analysts should do the following:
Return to the roots of operational research to focus more on direct measurements in the field
Answer the questions that should be answered, rather than the questions that can be answered simply because the required data are already available
Train analysts on MOEs, MOPs, and Goodhart’s Law and how they are interrelated
Make recognition of Goodhart’s Law part of the internal peer review process and part of all delivered analytical products
A big part of it seems to be manipulation of the results? So, like, devs writing tests for more parts of the code base, but ones that are written to always pass.
John Riccitiello, CEO of Unity, the company whose 3D game engine had recently seen backlash from developers over proposed fee structures, will retire as CEO, president, and board chairman at the company, according to a press release issued late on a Monday afternoon, one many observe as a holiday.
I have seen many people in this community either talking about switching to Brave, or people who are actively using Brave. I would like to remind people that Brave browser (and by extension their search engine) is not privacy-centric whatsoever....
A special prosecutor will not charge the six Georgia State Patrol troopers who shot and killed an environmental protestor at the proposed site for the controversial Atlanta Public Safety Training Center....
Do you believe this LLM tech has the ability to make judgement calls, say? Or understand meaning?
What has been your experience with the accuracy / correctness of the answers it has provided? Does it match claims that mistakes or “hallucinations” occur often?
Indeed, intelligence is …a difficult thing to define. It’s also a fascinating area to ponder. The reason I asked was to get an idea of where your head is at with the claims you made.
Now, I admit I haven’t done a lot with gpt-4 but your comments make me think it is worth the time to do so.
So you indicate gpt-4 can reason. My understanding is gpt-4 is an LLM, basically a large scale Markov chain, trained to respond with appropriate output based on input (questions).
On the one hand, my initial reaction is: no, it doesn’t reason it just mimics or simulates human reasoning that came before it in text form.
On the other hand, if a program could perfectly simulate whatever processes are involved in reasoning by a human to the point that they’re indistinguishable, is it not, in effect, reasoning? (I suppose this amounts to a sort of Turing Test but for reasoning exercises).
I don’t know how gpt4 LLMs work yet. I imagine, being a Markov Model (specifically a Markov Chain), if the model is trained on human language then the underlying semantics are sort of implicitly captured in the statistical model. Like, simplistically, if many sentences reflect human knowledge that cars are vehicles and not animals then it’s statistically unlikely for anyone to write about attributes and actions of animals when talking about cars. I assume the LLM is of such a scale that it permits this apparently emergent behavior.
I am skeptical about judgement calls. I would think some sensory input would be required. I guess we have to outline various types of judgement calls to really dig into this.
I am willing to accept that gpt-4 simulates the portions of the brain that deal with semantics and syntax both the receiving and transmitting abilities. And, maybe to some degree, knowledge and understanding.
I think “very similar to a complete brain” is an overstatement as the brain also does some amazing things with vision, hearing, proprioception, touch, among other things. Human brains can analyze situations and take initiative, analyze things and understand how they work and apply that to their repair, improvement, duplication, etc. We can understand and solve problems, and so on. In other words I don’t think you’re giving the brain anywhere near enough credit. We aren’t just Q&A machines.
We also have to be careful of the human tendency to anthropomorphize.
I’m curious to look into vector databases and their applications here. Addition of what amounts to memory, or like extended context, sounds extremely interesting.
Interesting to ponder what the world would be like with AGI taking over the jobs of most knowledge workers, artists, and so on. (I wonder if someone could create a CEO replacement…)
What does it mean for a capitalist society with masses of people permanently unemployed? How does the economy work when nobody can afford to buy anything because they’re unemployed? Does this create widespread poverty and collapse or a post-scarcity economy in some sectors?
Until robots mechanically evolve to Asimov’s vision, at least, manual labor is safe. Truly being able to replace a human body with a robot is still a ways off due to lack of progress on several fronts.
I don’t disagree with most of what you said. I think so far the following jobs are safe from direct AI replacement, because it is much harder to replace manual laborers.
Oil rig worker
Plumber
Construction worker
Landscaper/gardener
Telephone repair tech
Mechanic
Firefighter
Surveyor
Wildlife management officer
Police
What companies won’t realize until too late is that paying customers need jobs to pay for things. If AI causes unemployment to rise to some ungodly high, paying customers will become rare and companies will collapse in droves.
Damn… nice work on the research! I will read through these as I get time. I genuinely didn’t think there would be much for manual labor stuff. I’m particularly interested in the plumber analysis.
I think augmentation makes a lot of sense for jobs where a human body is needed and it will be interesting to see how/if trade skill requirements change.
I’ll edit this as I read…
Plumbing. The article makes the point that it isn’t all or nothing. That as automation increases productivity, fewer workers are needed. Ok, sure, good point.
Robot plumber? A humanoid robot? Not very likely until enormous breakthroughs are made in machine vision (I can go into more detail…), battery power density, sensor density, etc. The places and situations vary far too greatly.
Rather than an Asimov-style robot, a more feasible yet productivity enhancing solution is automated pipe cutting and other tasks. For example, you go take your phone and measure the pipe as described in the link. Now press a button, walk out to your truck by which time the pipe cutter has already cut off the size you need saving you several minutes. That savings probably means you can do more jobs per day. Cool.
Edit 2
Oil rig worker. Interesting and expected use of AI to improve various aspects of the drilling process. What I had in mind was more like the people that actually do the manual labor.
Autonomous drones, for example, can be used to perform inspections without exposing workers to dangerous situations. In doing so, they can be equipped with sensors that send images and data to operators in real time to enable quick decisions and effective actions for maintenance and repair.
Now that’s pretty cool and will probably reduce demand for those performing inspections (some of whom will have to be at the other end receiving and analyzing data from the robot until such time as AI can do that too.
Autonomous robots, on the other hand, can perform maintenance tasks while making targeted repairs to machinery and equipment.
Again, technologies required to make this happen aren’t there yet. Machine vision (MV) alone is way too far from being general purpose. You can decide a MV system that can, say, detect a coke can and maybe a few other objects under controlled conditions.
But that’s the gotcha.Change the intensity of lighting, change the color temperature or hue of the lighting and the MV probably won’t work. It might also mistake diet coke can or a similar sized cylinder for a Pepsi can. If you want it to recognize any aluminum beverage can that might be tough. Meanwhile any child can easily identify a can in any number of conditions.
Now imagine a diesel engine generator, let’s say. Just getting a robot to change the oil would be nice. But it has to either be limited to a specific model of engine or be able to recognize where the oil drain plug and fill spot is for various engines it might encounter.
What if the engine is a different color? Or dirty instead of clean? Or it’s night, or noon (harsh shadows), overcast (soft shadows), or sunset (everything is yellow orange tinted)? I suppose it could be trained for a specific rig and a specific time of day but that means set up time costs a lot. It might be smarter to build some automated devices on the engine like a valve on the oil pan. And a device to pump new oil in from a vat or standard container or whatever. That would be much easier. Maybe they already do this, idk.
Anyway… progress is being made in MV and we will make far more. That still leaves the question of an autonomous robot of some kind able to remove and reinstall a drain plug. It’s easy for us but you’d be surprised at how hard that would be for a robot.
All great points. I guess I need to think of this topic more from the “what is possible” mindset rather than the “this is too hard” mindset to get a fair assessment of what is coming. All while still framing it in the sense of improving worker efficiency and automating human tasks piecemeal over time.
Agree that other parts of the EM spectrum could enhance the ability of MV to recognize things. Appreciate the insights – maybe I will be able to use this when I get back to tinkering with MV as a hobbyist.
Of course identifying one object is one level. For a general purpose replacement for humans ability, since that’s what the thread is focused (ahem) on, it has to identify tens of thousands of objects.
I need to rethink my opinion a bit. Not only how far general object recognition is but also how one can “cheat” to enable robotic automation.
Tasks that are more limited in scope and variability would be a lot less demanding. For a silly example, let’s say we want to automate replacing fuses in cars. We limit it to cars with fuse boxes in the engine bay and we can mark the fuse box with a visual tag the robot can detect. The layout of the fuses per vehicle model could be stored. The code on the fuse box identifies the model. The robot then used actuators to remove the cover and orients itself to the box using more markers and the rest is basically pick and place technology. That’s a smaller and easier problem to solve than “fix anything possibly wrong with a car”. A similar deal could be done for oil changes.
For general purpose MV object detection, I would have to go check but my guess is that what is possible with state of the art MV is identifying a dozen or maybe even hundreds of objects so I suppose one could do quite a bit with that to automate some jobs. MV is not to my knowledge at a level of general purpose replacement for humans. Yet. Maybe it won’t take that much longer.
In ~15 years in the hobbyist space we’ve gone from recognizing anything of a specified color under some lighting conditions to identifying several specific objects. And without a ton of processing power either. It’s pretty damn impressive progress, really. We have security cameras that can identify animals, people, and delivery boxes. I am probably selling short what MV will be able to do in 15 more years.
[A]n INI configuration file in the Windows Canary channel, discovered by German website Deskmodder, includes references to a “Subscription Edition,” “Subscription Type,” and a “subscription status.”
George Tyndall, the former University of Southern California campus gynecologist accused of sexually abusing hundreds of women, was found dead Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles, his attorney told ABC News. He was 76....
Vladimir Putin has suggested the plane crash that reportedly killed his former ally Yevgeny Prigozhin was caused by hand grenades - and not by a missile attack.
Huh, so it was a missile attack after all. Interesting.
White House walks back Biden comments that he had seen pictures of beheaded Israeli children (news.yahoo.com)
The White House was forced to walk back on president Joe Biden’s claim to have seen “confirmed pictures” of “terrorists beheading children” in Israel....
Goldman is back with a 16-years-later look at the housing market crash of 2008—and finds affordability is even worse right now (fortune.com)
There is no proof Palestinian fighters ‘beheaded’ babies. The only source is a radical settler. (mondoweiss.net)
U.S. and international media outlets are repeating unsubstantiated claims that Palestinian fighters “beheaded” babies. These unverified assertions aren’t just sloppy journalism — they are being used to justify a massacre....
“Beheaded Babies” Report Spread Wide and Fast — but Israel Military Won’t Confirm It (theintercept.com)
ACT test scores for US students drop to new 30-year low (apnews.com)
High school students’ scores on the ACT college admissions test have dropped to their lowest in more than three decades, showing a lack of student preparedness for college-level coursework, according to the nonprofit organization that administers the test....
104-year-old Chicago woman dies days after making a skydive that could put her in the record books (apnews.com)
Dorothy Hoffner, a 104-year-old Chicago woman whose recent skydive could see her certified by Guinness World Records as the oldest person to ever jump from a plane, has died....
EU warns Musk that X spreading ‘illegal content’ after Hamas attacks on Israel (thehill.com)
The European Union (EU) sent a letter to Elon Musk Tuesday warning that his social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, was spreading illegal content and disinformation after the Hamas attacks on Israel....
Seriously... WHY?! (lemmy.world)
Date formatting (lemmy.world)
YSK that there is no such thing as an "alpha wolf" (cdn.zmescience.com)
Some of the many articles about it:...
We're going in the wrong direction, guys. (startrek.website)
Tooltip bug fixed after 22 years (bikeshed.vibber.net)
Progress?
TIL The Goodhart's Law: Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes.
Here is the Wikipedia link.
Walgreens pharmacy staff walk out, citing unsafe working conditions (www.washingtonpost.com)
Unity CEO John Riccitiello is retiring, effective immediately (arstechnica.com)
John Riccitiello, CEO of Unity, the company whose 3D game engine had recently seen backlash from developers over proposed fee structures, will retire as CEO, president, and board chairman at the company, according to a press release issued late on a Monday afternoon, one many observe as a holiday.
Please, do not use Brave.
I have seen many people in this community either talking about switching to Brave, or people who are actively using Brave. I would like to remind people that Brave browser (and by extension their search engine) is not privacy-centric whatsoever....
USB inventor explains why the connector was not designed to be reversible (www.pcgamer.com)
US High School Student Loses Scholarship Over Social Media Twerking Video (www.ndtv.com)
No charges for Georgia State troopers who killed activist at Atlanta Public Safety Training Center site (www.fox5atlanta.com)
A special prosecutor will not charge the six Georgia State Patrol troopers who shot and killed an environmental protestor at the proposed site for the controversial Atlanta Public Safety Training Center....
Musk refused to testify in Twitter stock probe, claimed SEC is harassing him (arstechnica.com)
After being sued by SEC, Musk says he wants US regulators to be punished....
Thousands of Android TV devices come with unkillable backdoor preinstalled (arstechnica.com)
Business owner 'hires' ChatGPT for customer service, then fires the humans (nationalpost.com)
i hate that it's very often like this (sh.itjust.works)
Windows 12 May Require a Subscription (www.pcmag.com)
[A]n INI configuration file in the Windows Canary channel, discovered by German website Deskmodder, includes references to a “Subscription Edition,” “Subscription Type,” and a “subscription status.”
George Tyndall, former USC gynecologist accused of abusing hundreds of women, found dead (abc13.com)
George Tyndall, the former University of Southern California campus gynecologist accused of sexually abusing hundreds of women, was found dead Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles, his attorney told ABC News. He was 76....
Hand grenade fragments found in bodies of victims after Yevgeny Prigozhin plane crash - Vladimir Putin says (news.sky.com)
"Same Path" by Sarah's Scribbles (64.media.tumblr.com)
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