skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You’re right that OpenAI does not deserve your trust. Nor does Google. But with both products you’re either paying with a subscription or paying with your data being leaked to advertisers (probably both).

What makes the OpenAI product so much better is an ability to maintain focus. Yes, it lies (or confabulates, hallucinates), but we’ve been seeing the same from Google Search results too for years now by it pushing sites that deliver more ads than content.
I propose a new term for this thing: AK - Artificial Knowledge.

The purpose of this tool is to compress, match and combine text based, _informal_ information.
Whenever I read one of these communist stories, I immediately think of the 1985 film “Brazil.” Who decides who gets what and how much? Whatever person or institution has the ability to allocate resources holds the power over the recipients. At least in a capitalist system, the power is supposed to be held by the people who invest their capital into marketplace winners. A bureaucratic system of allocation doesn’t incentivize efficiency.
Those are a tougher nut to crack because the entire road transportation infrastructure is designed for human drivers. Lots of so-called "wicked problems" that don't exist in the art world.
Tell HN: GPT-4 is not like Linux
I’m always positive about progress. What I love the most about programming/computers/software is that you can use for free the best software out there and as soon as it’s out. No questions asked. No credit card required.

I have learned Linux, C++, awk, TCP/IP, and countless of top-notch software in the past: all I needed was a computer and perhaps internet connection. I’m still learning this way. There’s so much high-quality stuff out there for free. I’m very grateful for that.

Now, when it comes to top-notch LLMs like GPT-4/Copilot, it seems like I need to ask for permission to use it. I need to register myself in their website, give away my email and phone number, and pay in order to use their API. This feels terrible awful. I cannot play around with GPT-4 on my own computer for free. Perhaps in a few years we’ll get powerful enough models to be able to run just fine in normal laptops (but by that time I imagine commercial models will be orders of magnitude more powerful as well… so what’s the point).

I just cannot share the enthusiasm many folks here have about GPT-4 and similars.
Imagine today is 1991 and some amazing unix-like operating system has appeared: in order to use it and learn it, you just have to pay $0.0000001 per command line executed. No free alternative exists (at least not one that is that good). Imagine growing in that alternate universe and being a programmer. Imagine you have to pay for every line of code you write in your free time.

Do we really want to promote OpenAI? I don’t want to live in a reality in which I have to pay for every program I write on my free time (I’m assuming here that in a few years, OpenAI will be as ubiquitous as Linux is right now).
> So, why create more people, if more people will be not that necessary in the future?

On the surface, it sounds sort of idealistic and environmentally friendly to just think about putting messaging out there to have less people for a better future for the world. But I think you have to consider the second order effects and political reality we live in.

Are all humans alike? Who is the type of person that would buy into this propaganda?

Maybe it's the smart and socially conscious people who should be raising large families for the betterment of society who buy into this message?

Maybe it's the borderline illiterate people who are quite irresponsible about raising families (bang repeatedly without condoms and have XX kids, depend on the state for support, are not good parents who raise their children to be good citizens) who would be completely immune to this propaganda?

If that's the case, then your idealistic idea just trades a future of many smart people and many dumb people for fewer people, but an even worse ratio of smart to dumb people, which might be far more destructive to the future of the world.
In many places in the world it is a solution solving a previous problem. That is a fact, not an opinion (e.g. Argentina).

It is important to highlight that now stable coins have replaced part of the original Bitcoin vision and that for many people it does not matter if the solution is decentralized or not, just if it is accessible.
Ooh I’m curious to hear more. Do you have inside knowledge, or see widespread evidence of bots? I’ve only seen perhaps a few here and there, almost always downvoted to oblivion.
I moved from Kubuntu to OpenSuse Tumbleweed after Firefox snappification. I’m quite happy so far. KDE Plasma experience seems to be better than Kubuntu. On the other hand it is a less popular distro so less hand holding is available - most tutorials and blogs assume Ubuntu so I can’t follow them blindly anymore…
Great, now GPT-5 has your human experiences for the benefit of crossing the uncanny divide :)

GPT, now featuring 'talk like a human' mode
It's the last point that rubs me.

FOSS should be whatever the developers decide it should be. It's not up to the users to decide what requirements a piece of software should fulfill.
wow, I'm just too young to have experienced all this :(
Nurses will be the human interface for data retrieval and prescribed treatments by an AI. It will be low skilled manual labor.
The machines’ machines?
I mean, why not?
He's not saying people will stop doing things. People love to do things. People even love to work - on things that matter to them, where they can have responsibility and autonomy. Right now "work" is what other people want you do to, and it's attached to your livelihood. That's what we have the capability of escaping.

Would you stop working for other people if you didn't have to?
I'm pretty sure space-time expands according to scientific literature, doesn't it ? (this is why I picked this weird concept of a shrinking space-time)
It hasn't become more complicated, quite the reverse; since Gnome 3, the UI has become ever more simple and polished and accessible. And more opinionated, yes. You can still tinker with and change the desktop - it just takes more effort.

I consider that a plus. It's the difference between having a finished product versus being given some planks and tools and be expected to finish the product yourself.

I don't need a desktop I first configure and tweak for two days until I'm happy and can become productive. I want a desktop that allows me to be productive right from the start. And that requires some opinionated decisions by the developers.

I'm amazed at how polished and well thought-out Gnome 44 is.

https://release.gnome.org/44/

More and more of these little annoying edges have been smoothed away in the last few years since Gnome 3 entered. And I'm happy about all of it.
Since an LLM has no capability of introspection, the only reason it might say something accurate about itself is that OpenAI trained it with accurate examples of what to say. Apparently they haven’t updated their fine-tuning for the default character yet.
I view it like Google. Google (web Search) had a ton of impact on humanity on the availability and accessibility of knowledge. Even imagining we continue to improve AI accuracy but assuming we struggle with consciousness i think we'll at the very least be due for a similar impact to that of Web Search.

Which is to say knowledge will be even easier to transfer. Linking complex ideas will be easier to transfer. Having LLMs construct arguments for you. These might have sources cited, might not, who knows. The little details like if they obscure information or cite resources will have quite the interesting impact too.

Then of course there will be the entertainment impact. Potentially being able to guide AI on all sorts of things like creating media for games, story lines, etc - even with lots of human guidance for the creative parts, has a lot of potential for human impact. Not claiming good or bad, but .. something, heh.
Sam Altman states that "prompt engineering", in his mind, is a result of a temporary limitations of the LLMs.

That he doesn't expect people to be doing what we call "prompt engineering" in 5 years. You'll simply ask for what you want and if there is ambiguity it can be sorted out interactively or it will just do the 'right' or obvious thing that we would expect.
As per Nilay Patel's comments about SEO spam hustlers, the web is going to become a vast(er) ocean of shit.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/2/19063562/ai-text-generatio...

https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/19/23562966/cnet-ai-written-...
Completely agree.

Whenever use of AMD GPUs for ML comes up on HN I echo your points with the added personal experiences (PAIN) I've had trying to actually use an AMD GPU for anything other than driving a display.

In terms of the tech leadership at Nvidia, all you need to do is peek at the mind-blowing number of repos they have on Github - literally hundreds of component software pieces across every layer that at this point can do anything from drastic performance increases to completely unique (CUDA only of course) functionality.

On HN especially the whole "proprietary driver on Linux desktop situation" has hurt Nvidia significantly in terms of hearts and minds. As I said, then you look at almost any other software provided by Nvidia and realize they're actually a huge champion and supporter of open source for just about every aspect of the ecosystem other than the driver itself - and they're working on open sourcing the driver as well.

AMD occupies a weird space in GPU compute - there are massive HPC deployments of AMD GPUs. Presumably they only work because AMD is throwing a ton of essentially one-off support at them for deployment. On the other end you have their "support" for low to mid-range GPU compute. I say "support" with quotes because you realize very quickly it's absolutely pathetic to the point of useless and run back screaming to Nvidia/CUDA.

I'm not an Nvidia fanboy but my opinion at this point is the hardware markups for Nvidia GPU essentially subsidize all of the incredible (largely open source) software and ecosystem support they provide. Yes, they engage in anti-competitive practices but please show me a large corporation that doesn't. Fact is Nvidia has invested a massive amount of resources for well over a decade to earn their dominance of GPU compute.

Spending twice as much (somewhat factual but overblown popular opinion on HN) on Nvidia hardware becomes an obvious choice when you realize you're going to burn A TON of time (and still fail) trying to get AMD GPU hardware to actually do anything in ML.
Probiotics are often unnecessary. A healthy microbiome can be fostered by eating plenty of fresh fruits, vegetables, and fermented foods (yogurt, kefir, etc). There's lots of beneficial bacteria in the environment on the outside of fruit and vegetable for example. High fiber diets also make the environment in your gut better for these microbes so they're more likely to stick around.

I think that probiotics are great but are no replacement for a balanced diet with plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables.
Keeping people scared keeps them watching. Most media would lead you to believe crime is way up (it blipped up slightly, but has declined considerably in the last 30 years).

Also, there's very little in the way of mainstream media that isn't owned by wealthy people. The media is one major arm through which capital acts.
"Where we're going, we won't need Poe's Law"
23rd March 2023...already outdated
No, not at all. They aren't focusing on the core issue. Freedom and equality for all. Fighting for a certain group is at best a band-aid.

They cover but stay clear of the worker rights that disproportionately help those groups. It is a disservice.
Some people have made a career out of being good at reading, debugging, and fixing complex incoherent code that was written by other people. I imagine those will thrive in the near future.
Access denied for me in Brazil:

I got an error when visiting linuxiac.com/opensuse-grows-in-popularity/.

Error code: 1020
Ray ID: 7ae0279569b602e9
Country: BR
Data center: gru08
Timestamp: 2023-03-26 14:41:27 UTC
Hacked Together a Python Wrapper for Dalai (LLaMa and Alpaca)
Just hacked together a library to use LLaMa and Alpaca through Dalai (https://github.com/cocktailpeanut/dalai)
Even if we agree that your strategy is optimal, it would require the manager acting in a significantly pragmatic manner.

I would wager that the majority of managers will rather reactively jump at the chance to cut an entire salary from their cost structure.
But the plan under a capitalist system would be that you're going to have the things you like to do automated, the work, one way or another because it's an opportunity for someone to make money?

Under a socialist society, there is less incentives to drive everything so hard because people can relax a little. Yes, people will be free to choose and push things further, but not so desperate for doing so.

The drive to hard and spooky "AGIs" would probably slow down too, right now it's happening at such break next pace because of economic incentives are so strong for doing so.

I was freaking out quite a bit about the future, until someone on here mentioned socialism a few days ago, and I chilled out because ultimately, I think that's where we'll end up, at least some form of it, and it actually made me feel better.

I've lived in countries which people would consider "socialist", and it was awesome, so I'm not worried about it.

Also don't forget that societies have existed with many "happy citizens" not doing really much of anything, Rome, and many indigenous cultures, yes they had to do some work for food, but mostly had a pretty good carefree lives without "jobs".
That's what people who like their job like to believe :) I'd say that for many people, the only thing they like about their job is the money. you might be right though that it probably depends more on the couple (person, job) than on the job itself.
Yes, NixOS also ships ZFS in their ISO. It's been super easy coming from ZFS on Arch to NixOS, no hassles with adding custom repos, using DKMS, etc.
Europe might help here with getting around the privacy issues.

Organize your social media company so that all of the posts are made through, stored, retrieved, and controlled by a European company and all the processing/storage occurs in Europe.

GDPR would then apply to the European company. Yes, it would still apply even when the data is about someone who is not European. GPDR's extraterritorial rules are that it applies (1) to companies not in Europe that are offering products or services to people "in the Union" or tracking the actions of people in the Union that take place in the Union, and (2) to companies in the Union regardless of where they operate or where the data subjects are.

The CLOUD Act in the US would not apply, because the data would be controlled by a European company. The CLOUD Act applies to the case where a US company is storing data in a non-US location but still under its control, and allows the US to order that US company to retrieve the data.

It should be fine if the European company is partly or even completely owned by a US company, just as long as it is set up so that the European company controls the data. GDPR would still apply because of the European company, and the CLOUD Act would still not apply because the US company would not control the data.
Well it was a lot easier to use than the OpenAI website, so more people got to experience it.
> true of a fair number of humans, too

And your conclusion would be? If they show to have what it takes we will call them intelligent, otherwise unintelligent.

Some seem to want to cling to a weak definition of intelligence, covering all sentient beings in compassion - but we are engineering /tools/, things that have to be effective, "have what it takes"... This puts the "intelligence" of the narcoleptic carp in a special corner with little relevance to the context.
I’m not trying to advocate either way, just pointing out it’s not as clear cut as some people in these comments act like it is.
Me too! Luckily the open web now gets competition from LLMs. Hope this will clean up things. Seeing all these sloppy pages full of popups, ads and shit typography makes me so sad
There is nothing stopping companies from offering AI oriented apis. If they no longer have to develop a frontend but just have a "here is our logo" etc endpoint, then... goodbye react! Goodbye FE developers! And at that point AI will probably be developing the very endpoints that it consumes.

Honestly it doesn't sound crazy to me.
Just use BankID/GovID/whatever verified OAuth service and request a single age/date of birth data point once. No need to authenticate or store anything.
I do share the positive sentiment for opensuse and its increase in popularity, but these sentences are just ridiculous:

> known for its stability, versatility, and ease of use

> powerful package management system, an intuitive installer, and robust security features.

> strong focus on user experience and flexibility

> it will not let you down

> the user can rely on predictability.

> a high-end enterprise Linux distribution that you can rely on

> offer their users uncompromising release quality and top-notch support throughout their lifecycle

> with-user-in-mind approach, reliability, and community-driven development model

Maybe tone down the koolaid a notch.
You could write a FDW that reads/writes to a vector database using postgres id tagged vectors. You can write to it from postgres, reference it in queries, join on it, etc. That cuts out a lot of the pain from having separate databases, the only remaining issues are additional maintenance overhead and hidden performance cliffs.
I fail to see how the first is useful.

For all intents and purposes your brain might as well be a Boltzmann brain / in a jar getting electrical stimuli. Your notion of reality is a mere interpretation of electrical signals / information.

This implies that all such information can be encoded via language or whatever else.

You also don’t take initiative. Every action that you take is dependent upon all previous actions as your brain is not devoid of operations until you “decide” to do something.

You merely call the outcome of your brain’s competing circuits as “taking initiative”.

GPT “took initiative” to pause and ask me for more details instead of just giving me stuff out.

As for the latter, I don’t think that holds. Language is just information. None of our brains are even grounded in reality either. We are grounded in what we perceive as reality.

A blind person has no notion of colour yet we don’t claim they are not sentient or generally intelligent. A paraplegic person who lacks proprioception and motor movements is not “as grounded” in reality as we are.

You see where this is going.

With all due to respect, you are in denial.
I definitely have that question too. I view us as big LLMs.

But, even if we drop that interesting edge case i suspect we can make something very useful with the primitive that LLMs offer.. in the calculator example. ChainLang and co seem a really interesting tool for LLMs.
So a technical solution to a human problem?
>But what happens when it tries to emulate itself? Well, if it produced any output, it would immediately produce a different output. The way out of paradox is that it returns nothing at all.

Why immediately. It only has to differ by one bit somewhere along the infinite chain right? Why waste that perfectly good output when it can just as well output some of the emulation before interrupting it?
Work generally isn't good for the human soul but meaningful (whatever that means for each individual) work is. Most of the jobs aren't very meaningful and they're done solely to survive. Let's not kid ourselves, most of the people here including myself have jobs they like or even love but outside of this bubble a big percentage of jobs are rather miserable.
IceCube also likes to name their events after Sesame Street characters, so you’d get things like Bert and Ernie events. Not sure if they still do since you eventually run out of characters.
Train the AI exclusively on well lauded texts. Then you can get a generative AI that moves people.

The problem with "reverse engineering people" is that you don't need to, the things they like in any era follows predictable and generic patterns. These patterns can be encoded into AI provided we find enough curated training data.

> The hard part is to make the artists do exactly what you want, down to the subtle but meaningful details.

This is because the artist can't read your mind. It has nothing to do with your skill or the artists skill level. That feedback loop you are alluding to is more a reflection of the unclarity of your instructions or your imagination.

You thought what you imagined looked good but the artist in following your directions created something that showed you how flawed your imagination was.
Is humanity not just scaled up sea squirts? At some point between the tunicate and Homo sapiens, something emerged.

Popularized by Pink Floyd ( https://youtu.be/wbOTkDn49qI )

> For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen. Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible. Mankind's greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn't have to be like this. Our greatest hopes could become reality in the future. With the technology at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.

(Original: https://youtu.be/du_iG7Veupc )

We can see with our own minds and that of animals that there is something greater that emerges with the additional size and complexity of the mind that wasn't there in simpler approaches.

Is not not unreasonable to consider that between Eliza and GPT-4 that something greater has emerged that is able to maintain a consistent world model rather than the just playing with words.

Weizenbaum took a "short cut" for the world model by going down the path of a Rogerian psychotherapy which allowed him to intentionally avoid the need for a world model in order to work with the words that are fed in.

GPT-3 and even more so, GPT-4 has a world model that it is able to work with and interact with.

If we are going to call GPT "just an advanced chat bot" then I would contend it is equally appropriate to call a human "just an advanced sea squirt."
I think the whole concept of "consciousness" might get old in nearby future. ANNs and brains will get better understood and people start questioning not what consciousness and reasoning are, but rather why they feel their "now" as they do, whether they are full of energy and in sharp mental state or they drunk to half death and can't really reason and form sentences normally yet still perceiving their "now" in the same way and feeling like they are still them. I don't know if there is a better word for this concept, but it definitely feels like the word "consciousness" shifts away from this meaning each day.