From: gaussianblue@asymptote.invalid   
      
   In <87a5iyi4n3.fsf@enoch.nodomain.nowhere> Mike Spencer  writes:   
      
      
   >gaussianblue  writes:   
      
   >> harley@yazzy.com writes:   
   >>   
   >>> As for this AI stuff, what the hell is it?  I can find on the Web   
   >>> how to do Python, C++ and other languages. Where is the page   
   >>> showing what in the hell this AI stuff is?  I'm rather inclined to   
   >>> believe the whole AI thing is a hoax.   
      
   >To get a clear picture of how the underlying computations work, have a   
   >look at the "Parallel Distributed  Processing" books (Rumelhart,   
   >McClelland et al, MIT Press, 1986).   
      
   >For even further background, look at the "expanded edition" of   
   >"Perceptrons", (Minsky & Papert, MIT Press, 1988) wherein the authors   
   >confess to having gotten the future wrong in the 1969 1st edition.   
      
   >Doing this stuff in 1986 was hard because the inherent notions far   
   >exceeded couputing power of the era.  We/They have come a long way.   
   >Now they're building the vast computation into dedicated hardware, so   
   >vast that they're finding energy and heat nore critical than RAM   
   >capacity and CPU speed.   
      
   >That said, I understand the basic stuff from the 80s & 90s but I don't   
   >inderstand at the same level how the current generation of   
   >"generative" AI works, on top of that underlying tech/theory to   
   >produce what spuriously appears to be creative, thoughtfull text,   
   >audio & video and well-constructed natural language.  I don't know of   
   >a similarly accessible book that explains this most recent advance.   
      
   >But the lesson to take away is that the current, putaive AI is no more   
   >"intelligent", in any meaningful sense, than the models found in   
   >Rumelhart & McClelland 40 years ago.  It's the same pattern   
   >recognition (a great success) overlain with a humongusly deceptive   
   >trick to produce convincing, natural-sounding language.   
      
      
   >>> I'll be 90 in a few months, and from what I observe of this   
   >>> country, and the world in general, the entire human race has gone   
   >>> insanely demented. "Progress" sucks.   
      
   >I'm only 82 but I read the 1986 books, as well as a lot of other   
   >background stuff (Minsky & Papert, Warren McCulloch) in the late 80s   
   >when my brain worked better & faster than it does now.  I'd have a go   
   >any readable book purported to fill in the gap between basic neural   
   >nets and "generative AI" anyway if I could find one.   
      
   >> You'll be 90? Wow! That's amazing! You've whitnessed things first hand   
   >> and I haven't because I'm just a kid. For example you've whitnessed the joy   
   >> at the end of WWII, but also the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.   
      
   >Yeah, I was born right after Pearl Harbor and I only knew WW II from   
   >some left-over rationing tokens and similar.  And the inexplicable (to   
   >a little kid) appearance of Atomic This and Atomic That in marketing   
   >and pop culture.   
      
   Not much atomic this and atomic that around today as far as I can see.   
   But just today I've heard the song Radioactive from Imagine Dragons   
   on the radio. I was listening to 1live. So however quieter   
   "atomic" is still a thing.   
      
   https://genius.com/Imagine-dragons-radioactive-lyrics   
   https://www1.wdr.de/radio/1live/index.html   
      
   Leaving "atomic" things aside for a moment. On that same radio   
   station the topic was the 2006 soccer world cup in Germany   
   because of the current European soccer championship in Germany   
   and Garmanys quarter final game today 6p.m. GMT+2. One of the host   
   was asking a girl on the street how she remembered the 2006   
   world cup and she answered roughly that she knows it was a huge thing   
   not because she remembers how it was because she was 2 at the time, but   
   because of how many stuff with good emotions come up when you search for   
   the 2006 soccer world cup on social media. What she said   
   reminded me that there are people who don't know a world without   
   social media. I'm from the generation that doesn't know a world   
   without electricity. If I look at the memories of my parents and   
   grandparents, I look at Soviet Union things. Or a part of the world   
   that has been rolled over by Soviet tanks in WWII to be more precise.   
   Believe it or not when I'm saying it, people in the Soviet Union had   
   electricity. Similarly most of us people don't know the world   
   before the atomic bomb.   
   But some people around us do. These people   
   remember times when for example you could start a war without   
   getting into a spiral of events that would lead to the anihilation   
   of our planet the human race and all the living things together.   
   I'm not saying the world was better then, because you could start a war.   
   Wars are bad. But the world was certainly different back then.   
      
   (snip)   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)