I wrote about AI again.
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I wrote about AI again. On some level I don't now why I do this to myself
What is a token
AI is meant to seem like magic. But there's no such thing as magic. It's all illusion. So, allow me to spoil that illusion for you.
Jennifer++ (jenniferplusplus.com)
Actually, I wrote most of it months ago, for work. But, it was well received, so I put it on my blog. This is the more generic version.
The short version is that AI is not magic. It's a real phenomenon with real behavior and tradeoffs. I'm deeply tired of *****ALL***** the tradeoffs being handwaved away. And so much imagination fills in for the actual behavior. So I tried to describe how it's built, because that informs how it works, which informs what it actually does. And to be clear, it does things. It's not useless. But that's not the same as being useful, or worthwhile.
Anyway, I already put ~4k words on this in the article, so I'll shut up and let it speak for itself.
@jenniferplusplus
Sometimes, when the world has gone crazy, we have to look in the mirror hard, do some mental sanity checks and then say to ourselves: Yes, still sane. -
R relay@relay.an.exchange shared this topic
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I wrote about AI again. On some level I don't now why I do this to myself
What is a token
AI is meant to seem like magic. But there's no such thing as magic. It's all illusion. So, allow me to spoil that illusion for you.
Jennifer++ (jenniferplusplus.com)
Actually, I wrote most of it months ago, for work. But, it was well received, so I put it on my blog. This is the more generic version.
The short version is that AI is not magic. It's a real phenomenon with real behavior and tradeoffs. I'm deeply tired of *****ALL***** the tradeoffs being handwaved away. And so much imagination fills in for the actual behavior. So I tried to describe how it's built, because that informs how it works, which informs what it actually does. And to be clear, it does things. It's not useless. But that's not the same as being useful, or worthwhile.
Anyway, I already put ~4k words on this in the article, so I'll shut up and let it speak for itself.
@jenniferplusplus thanks for sharing this. i have added it to the reading list for software engineering students that i teach. there are many things i like in the article - 2 of the highlights (for me) were your observations about (i paraphrase and apologise if i misrepresent what you wrote) « making easy things easier and hard things harder», and « verification can be more difficult than doing the work yourself »… as a teacher, generative AI is a major challenge to the way i teach.
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@jenniferplusplus thanks for sharing this. i have added it to the reading list for software engineering students that i teach. there are many things i like in the article - 2 of the highlights (for me) were your observations about (i paraphrase and apologise if i misrepresent what you wrote) « making easy things easier and hard things harder», and « verification can be more difficult than doing the work yourself »… as a teacher, generative AI is a major challenge to the way i teach.
@jpaulgibson that's awesome! I hope they get something out of it
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@jpaulgibson that's awesome! I hope they get something out of it
@jenniferplusplus im sure they will…
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I wrote about AI again. On some level I don't now why I do this to myself
What is a token
AI is meant to seem like magic. But there's no such thing as magic. It's all illusion. So, allow me to spoil that illusion for you.
Jennifer++ (jenniferplusplus.com)
Actually, I wrote most of it months ago, for work. But, it was well received, so I put it on my blog. This is the more generic version.
The short version is that AI is not magic. It's a real phenomenon with real behavior and tradeoffs. I'm deeply tired of *****ALL***** the tradeoffs being handwaved away. And so much imagination fills in for the actual behavior. So I tried to describe how it's built, because that informs how it works, which informs what it actually does. And to be clear, it does things. It's not useless. But that's not the same as being useful, or worthwhile.
Anyway, I already put ~4k words on this in the article, so I'll shut up and let it speak for itself.
@jenniferplusplus Great stuff. Thank you.
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@jenniferplusplus im sure they will…
@jpaulgibson actually if you liked the passing comment on making hard things harder, then you'll probably like this one even more
https://jenniferplusplus.com/losing-the-imitation-game/ -
@jpaulgibson actually if you liked the passing comment on making hard things harder, then you'll probably like this one even more
https://jenniferplusplus.com/losing-the-imitation-game/@jenniferplusplus thanks - some nice reading for my coffee break between meetings this morning
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I wrote about AI again. On some level I don't now why I do this to myself
What is a token
AI is meant to seem like magic. But there's no such thing as magic. It's all illusion. So, allow me to spoil that illusion for you.
Jennifer++ (jenniferplusplus.com)
Actually, I wrote most of it months ago, for work. But, it was well received, so I put it on my blog. This is the more generic version.
The short version is that AI is not magic. It's a real phenomenon with real behavior and tradeoffs. I'm deeply tired of *****ALL***** the tradeoffs being handwaved away. And so much imagination fills in for the actual behavior. So I tried to describe how it's built, because that informs how it works, which informs what it actually does. And to be clear, it does things. It's not useless. But that's not the same as being useful, or worthwhile.
Anyway, I already put ~4k words on this in the article, so I'll shut up and let it speak for itself.
@jenniferplusplus
Sigh.
I wish there was a way to communicate these concepts to people that refuse to concentrate on thinking for longer than 30 seconds. -
I wrote about AI again. On some level I don't now why I do this to myself
What is a token
AI is meant to seem like magic. But there's no such thing as magic. It's all illusion. So, allow me to spoil that illusion for you.
Jennifer++ (jenniferplusplus.com)
Actually, I wrote most of it months ago, for work. But, it was well received, so I put it on my blog. This is the more generic version.
The short version is that AI is not magic. It's a real phenomenon with real behavior and tradeoffs. I'm deeply tired of *****ALL***** the tradeoffs being handwaved away. And so much imagination fills in for the actual behavior. So I tried to describe how it's built, because that informs how it works, which informs what it actually does. And to be clear, it does things. It's not useless. But that's not the same as being useful, or worthwhile.
Anyway, I already put ~4k words on this in the article, so I'll shut up and let it speak for itself.
@jenniferplusplus @eniko This is a really great overview. I’ll definitely show people this if they want to understand the nuts and bolts of what a transformer-based system is.
What is still a little “magical” to me having programmed for 40 years and worked in ML for 25 is how even small working programs can be generated from repeated token prediction, precisely for the reasons you gave (ie, correctness isn’t explicitly modelled and they model non-coding language too).
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I wrote about AI again. On some level I don't now why I do this to myself
What is a token
AI is meant to seem like magic. But there's no such thing as magic. It's all illusion. So, allow me to spoil that illusion for you.
Jennifer++ (jenniferplusplus.com)
Actually, I wrote most of it months ago, for work. But, it was well received, so I put it on my blog. This is the more generic version.
The short version is that AI is not magic. It's a real phenomenon with real behavior and tradeoffs. I'm deeply tired of *****ALL***** the tradeoffs being handwaved away. And so much imagination fills in for the actual behavior. So I tried to describe how it's built, because that informs how it works, which informs what it actually does. And to be clear, it does things. It's not useless. But that's not the same as being useful, or worthwhile.
Anyway, I already put ~4k words on this in the article, so I'll shut up and let it speak for itself.
@jenniferplusplus@hachyderm.io This is one of the most comprehensible write ups about this I've seen so far. Thank you for making the effort and sharing it. -
I wrote about AI again. On some level I don't now why I do this to myself
What is a token
AI is meant to seem like magic. But there's no such thing as magic. It's all illusion. So, allow me to spoil that illusion for you.
Jennifer++ (jenniferplusplus.com)
Actually, I wrote most of it months ago, for work. But, it was well received, so I put it on my blog. This is the more generic version.
The short version is that AI is not magic. It's a real phenomenon with real behavior and tradeoffs. I'm deeply tired of *****ALL***** the tradeoffs being handwaved away. And so much imagination fills in for the actual behavior. So I tried to describe how it's built, because that informs how it works, which informs what it actually does. And to be clear, it does things. It's not useless. But that's not the same as being useful, or worthwhile.
Anyway, I already put ~4k words on this in the article, so I'll shut up and let it speak for itself.
@jenniferplusplus great article. Easy read. I think that I will recommend this as the next level explanation for people who are partially persuaded by my argument that LLMs are, effectively, glorified phone keyboard autocompletes that make the same sorts of errors, but amplified.
Your article goes a long way to explain why, to people who are starting to want to understand what they are exposing themselves to.
I loved the comment "It's not useless. But that's not the same as being useful, or worthwhile."
And, yeah, the tooling in IDEs can be incredibly useful, but that is very different from de novo generation of entire classes and systems.
Bravo!
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I wrote about AI again. On some level I don't now why I do this to myself
What is a token
AI is meant to seem like magic. But there's no such thing as magic. It's all illusion. So, allow me to spoil that illusion for you.
Jennifer++ (jenniferplusplus.com)
Actually, I wrote most of it months ago, for work. But, it was well received, so I put it on my blog. This is the more generic version.
The short version is that AI is not magic. It's a real phenomenon with real behavior and tradeoffs. I'm deeply tired of *****ALL***** the tradeoffs being handwaved away. And so much imagination fills in for the actual behavior. So I tried to describe how it's built, because that informs how it works, which informs what it actually does. And to be clear, it does things. It's not useless. But that's not the same as being useful, or worthwhile.
Anyway, I already put ~4k words on this in the article, so I'll shut up and let it speak for itself.
@jenniferplusplus this is great: i come from a different area of engineering but we were always drilled with check your data -> run the model -> check the model -> interpret your output and a big part of that is to know what the hell the model is doing with your input data. I'm convinced most AI boosters don't understand what their model does, beyond "magic" or "thinking like a human brain". In this case it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, but it sure aint a duck.
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I wrote about AI again. On some level I don't now why I do this to myself
What is a token
AI is meant to seem like magic. But there's no such thing as magic. It's all illusion. So, allow me to spoil that illusion for you.
Jennifer++ (jenniferplusplus.com)
Actually, I wrote most of it months ago, for work. But, it was well received, so I put it on my blog. This is the more generic version.
The short version is that AI is not magic. It's a real phenomenon with real behavior and tradeoffs. I'm deeply tired of *****ALL***** the tradeoffs being handwaved away. And so much imagination fills in for the actual behavior. So I tried to describe how it's built, because that informs how it works, which informs what it actually does. And to be clear, it does things. It's not useless. But that's not the same as being useful, or worthwhile.
Anyway, I already put ~4k words on this in the article, so I'll shut up and let it speak for itself.
@jenniferplusplus fantastic read. Thank you for putting it together.
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R relay@relay.mycrowd.ca shared this topic
