Contramuffin @ Contramuffin @lemmy.world

Posts

7

Comments

911

Joined

3 yr. ago

"explore and recombine" isn't really the words I would use to describe generative AI. Remember that it is a deterministic algorithm, so it can't really "explore." I think it would be more accurate to say that it interpolates patterns from its training data.

As for comparison to humans, you bring up an interesting point, but one that I think is somewhat oversimplified. It is true that human brains are physical systems, but just because it is physical does not mean that it is deterministic. No computer is able to come even close to modeling a mouse brain, let alone a human brain.

And sure, you could make the argument that you could strip out all extraneous neurons from a human brain to make it deterministic. Remove all the unpredictable elements: memory neurons, mirror neurons, emotional neurons. In that case, sure - you'd probably get something similar to AI. But I think the vast majority of people would then agree that this clump of neurons is no longer a human.

A human uses their entire lived experience to weigh a response. A human pulls from their childhood experience of being scared of monsters in order to make horror. An AI does not do this. It creates horror by interpolating between existing horror art to estimate what horror could be. You are not seeing an AI's fear - you are seeing other people's fears, reflected and filtered through the algorithm.

More importantly, a human brain is plastic, meaning that it can learn and change. If a human is told that they are wrong, they will correct themselves next time. This is not what happens with an AI. The only way that an AI can "learn" is by adding on to its training data and then retraining the algorithm. It's not really "learning," it's more accurate to say that you're deleting the old model and creating a new one that holds more training data. If this were applied to humans, it would be as if you grew an entirely new brain every single time you learned something new. Sounds inefficient? That's because it is. Why do you think AI is using up so much electricity and resources? Prompting and generating an AI doesn't use up much resources; it's actually the training and retraining that uses so much resources.

To summarize: AI is a tool. It's a pretty smart tool, but it's a tool. It has some properties that are analogous to human brains, but lacks some properties that make it truly similar. It is in techbros' best interests to hype up the similarities and hide the dissimilarities, because hype drives up the stock prices. That's not to say that AI is completely useless. Just as you have said in your comment, I think it can be used to help make art, in a similar way that cameras have been used to help make art.

But in the end, when you cede the decision-making to the AI (that is, when you rely on AI for too much of your workflow), my belief is that the product is no longer yours. How can you claim that a generated artpiece is yours if you didn't choose to paint a little easter egg in the background? If you didn't decide to use the color purple for this object? If you didn't accidentally paint the lips slightly skewed? Even supposing that an AI is completely human-like, the art is still not yours, because at that point, you're basically just commissioning an artist, and you definitely don't own art that you've commissioned.

To be clear, this is my stance on other tools as well, not just AI

I think there's a bit of a misconception about what exactly AI is. Despite what techbros try to make it seem, AI is not thinking in any way. It doesn't make decisions because it does not exist. It is not an entity. It is an algorithm.

Specifically, it is a statistical algorithm. It is designed to associate an input to an output. When you do it to billions of input-output pairs, you can then use the power of statistics to interpolate and extrapolate, so that you can guess what the output might be, given a new input that you haven't seen before. In other words, you can perfectly replicate any AI with a big enough sheet of paper and enough time and patience.

That is why AI outputs can't be considered novel. Inherently, it is just a tool that processes data. As an analogy, you haven't generated any new data by taking the average of 5 numbers in excel - you have merely processed the existing data

Even if a human learns from AI-generated art, their art is still art, because a human is not a deterministic algorithm.

The problem arises when someone uses generative AI for a significant and notable portion of their workflow. At this point, this is essentially equivalent to applying a filter to someone else's artwork and calling it new. The debate lies in that there is no clear point for when AI takes up an appropriate vs. inappropriately large portion of a person's workflow...

Libreoffice is frankly really cumbersome to use. I've found that OnlyOffice is significantly more user-friendly, and that's been my go-to recommendation for office replacements

My experience has been that you need to pay attention to what I call the "satiety-to-calorie ratio." Some foods have really good ratios, meaning you feel full without a lot of calories. Some foods have really poor ratios, meaning you get a lot of calories but still feel hungry afterwards. Start keeping track of how full you feel after eating a meal or a snack, and also keep track of how many calories it has.

You will be surprised by some of the results. Some of what would be considered healthy foods can have pretty poor ratios and some of what would be considered unhealthy can have pretty good ratios. Obviously, the issue here is that we're only factoring in calories, not nutrients, so this isn't the end-all-be-all system that you need to follow. But if weight loss is your primary objective, this is a good starting metric.

You'll want to cut out or minimize foods that have a low ratio, and keep foods that have a good ratio. Keep a couple of good-ratio snacks for when you crave snacks. That way, you can satisfy cravings without getting too many extra calories.

I find that it helps me to set a daily calorie limit and aim to keep under it. Going over the limit is fine, but the extra calories get rolled over and need to be paid off over the next days. If you don't know the calories of foods that you ate, give your best estimate. You'll get better at estimating over time as you pay attention to the calories of the foods that you do know.

Also, when you cook, make sure to add in the calories from oil. And if you just need a way to drop your calories rapidly, I find that Soylent or Huel have remarkably good ratios and taste like milkshake, though they are somewhat expensive.

Frankly, I think that's it. When I got shots, my parents would constantly remind me of how much it would hurt and laugh at me over my fear. I'm still scared of needles nowadays, even if by all objective measures they really don't hurt at all

A wealth tax floated in California has liberal media trying to convince billionaires to leave

Even more accurate

Thanks a ton!

If it's available, may I have Venba?

Basically everything is more powerful than the steam deck. The steam deck wasn't really designed to be powerful, moreso it's meant to be the "reference model" for handhelds: cheapest, weakest, yet also most mainstream. My understanding is that the Z2 should be substantially more powerful than the steam deck, and though it should also use more battery than the steam deck, it also has a larger battery capacity to make up for that increased power draw. Price, on the other hand... Well, nothing can even get close to the sort of price that a steam deck offers

Only under hotter, dryer conditions. Under wetter and cooler conditions, the inefficiency of C3 is offset by the extra steps required for C4, which makes C3 favored in those conditions

Oh, I've got such a good one. In high school, I was in Science Olympiad (basically a science club). I was always kind of a wishy-washy member, never really a serious or particularly reliable member. But one day, the club needed designs for a new shirt, and they decided to ask the members for some designs that the members would then vote on. I decided to submit a satire shirt.

I obviously can't share the full design for privacy reasons, but I went ahead and made it jingoistic/military themed. Fighter jets flying overhead, tanks rolling through. To make sure that people knew I was being totally serious about this clearly relevant shirt, I put a stick figure holding a science-looking flask in the corner of the shirt. And then to make sure that everyone knew that we were smart, I put the equation: "3+3=6." All text in comic sans, of course.

Anyways, no one got the joke. My design got 1 pity vote. I don't think anyone even believed me when I said that it was a joke, which out of everything was kind of the saddest part for me.

Do you have anything that you're passionate about? It seems unusual that you would think there's nothing to talk about. If not, I would consider finding a nice passion. I wouldn't consider video games to be a passion, unless that's something that you actively choose to do over other options

Either people have bought out the non-34B's, so that only the 34B remains; or non-34B people have gone elsewhere, which caused the store to think that every customer is 34B.

Which is it???

Frankly, it seems somewhat self-evident based on the fact that Valve chose a Hawk Point 2 CPU (last gen laptop CPU with 2 big and 4 little cores) with a last gen laptop RX7600M GPU on a desktop, and also the fact that Valve calls them "semi-custom."

But here's the analysis: https://youtu.be/sJI3qTb2ze8

Depends on how you loosely you feel about "why". Was battery life a consideration? Sure. But it wasn't really the primary consideration. Valve's current track record is that they are masters at making a product that's surprisingly workable out of scrapyard parts that they got for cheap.

Valve didn't design the Steam Deck's chip - AMD designed it for Microsoft initially before the deal fell through. Then AMD offered the chips to Valve for cheap to recoup the costs.

Likewise, Valve didn't intentionally choose the parts in the upcoming Steam Machine. Valve just bought AMD's excess stock. That's why the Steam Machine uses such an unusual and unbalanced CPU/GPU combo.

I honestly think SD2 is going to use x86, not for any particular reason, but because AMD is most likely going to have excess stock that's x86 at the time that Valve designs it

It depends on which part of your eye is nonfunctional. It turns out there's multiple redundancies for sensing light, so you could be blind but still be submitting signals to your circadian clock. If your eyes are completely nonfunctional, then yeah you'd have a pretty screwed up clock.

Young-ish introvert guy here. It's definitely getting harder and harder over time. IMO the big problem is that nowadays, people don't need to learn to communicate. And so many people never learn. There's too many interesting things to do while you lock yourself away in your house. In the past, even introverts had to learn to communicate. What else were they going to do? Sit and stare at the wall?

What's the solution? Well, you have to be more deliberate with your time and effort. You need to learn to communicate, so learn to communicate. My rule of thumb is that, on average, you need to spend at least half of your waking day outside. Whether for work, or hobby, or shopping, etc. - being outside for any reason is infinitely more useful for socializing than staying indoors.

Also, don't stagnate. It's very easy to get comfortable with what you've been doing and to keep doing what you've been doing. Again, be deliberate about how you choose to spend your time. Pick up new skills. Learn new hobbies. Try out new restaurants. Explore a bit. The more you learn, the better you get at learning. Become well-rounded, knowledgeable, cultured.

Nine sols. A metroidvania with parry-based combat and insanely good plot.

Perhaps euthanasia is cruel, but the alternative must also be considered.

My cat died from some sort of cancer. We noticed blue welts growing from her face years ago, but the vet said that they were harmless, some sort of allergic reaction. They got bigger over time, and more started to appear. Tests were done, but the vets still said that it was nothing to worry about.

Over time, her personality changed. She was never really extraverted, but she still liked attention. Over time, she started hiding from people. She only came out to eat, then went back to hide again. We never saw her walking around like she did in the past.

The night when she died, she pulled herself to visit the bedroom, then crawled back out into the living room and curled up onto the sofa and waited to die there. We knew something was wrong when we woke up the next day because she left a trail of blood that led us to her. At that point, it was already too late.

In hindsight, it was clear - she was in constant pain for years. It was why she was hiding from people, why she seemed to start avoiding attention, why she stopped doing anything that she enjoyed. That night, she knew she was going to die, and she paid everyone a final visit before resigning herself to die on the sofa. It was an undignified, likely painful and slow death, that was preceded by years of debilitating pain. If she were given the choice, would she have chosen euthanasia? I'm not sure, but it feels clear to me that she knew she was going to die and was suffering for years.