VipulNaik

Karma: 1,578

VipulNaik 23 Dec 2023 3:04 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: VipulNaik’s comment on: AI #41: Bring in the Other Gemini
The first 10 minutes or so of https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-51-what-happened-at-the-arena-group-former/id1615989259?i=1000639450752 also provide related context.

VipulNaik 11 Dec 2023 0:49 UTC
12 points
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on: Send us example gnarly bugs
One particularly amusing bug I was involved with was with an early version of the content recommendation engine at the company I worked at (this is used by websites to recommend related content on the website, such as related videos, articles, etc.). One of the customers for the recommendation engine was a music video service, and we/they noticed that One Direction’s song called Infinity was showing up at the top of our recommendations a little too often. (I think this was triggered by the release of another One Direction song bringing the Infinity song into circulation, but I don’t remember what that other song was).

It turned out this was due to a bug where we were taking a dot product of feature values with feature weights, where the feature value was being cast from a string to a numeric, with a fallback to zero if it was non-numeric, and then multiplied by the feature weight. For the “song title” feature, the feature weight was zero, and the feature value was anyway non-numeric, but even if it were numeric, it shouldn’t matter, because anything times zero is … zero, right? But the programming language in question treated “Infinity” as a numeric value, and it defined Infinity * 0 to be NaN (not a number) [ETA: A colleague who was part of the discovery process highlights that this behavior is in fact part of the IEEE 754 standard, so it would hold even for other programming languages that were compliant with the standard]. And NaN + anything would still be NaN, so the dot product would be NaN. And the way the sorting worked, NaN would always rank on top, so whenever the song got considered for recommendation it would rank on top.

VipulNaik 9 Dec 2023 0:49 UTC
3 points
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on: AI #41: Bring in the Other Gemini
He points to recent events at Sports Illustrated. But to me the SI incident was the opposite. It indicated that we cannot do this yet. The AI content is not good. Not yet. Nor are we especially close. Instead people are using AI to produce garbage that fools us into clicking on it. How close are we to the AI content actually being as good as the human content? Good question.
I happen to work at the company (The Arena Group) that operates Sports Illustrated. I wasn’t involved with any of this stuff directly (and may not even have been at the company over some of the relevant time period), and obviously I speak only for myself (and will restrict myself to the public information available on this which is anyway most of what I know). With that said: most of the media coverage of this issue was pretty bad (as it is for most issues, but then, Gell-Mann Amnesia …). In particular, the Futurism article has a lot of issues. The best article I found on this was https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/27/23978389/sports-illustrated-ai-fake-authors-advon-commerce-gannett-usa-today that properly explains who the vendor in question was and the vendor’s track record on another site. Overall, the Verge article helps check out the Arena Group’s official statement that the articles were from AdVon, despite the seeming reluctance of Futurism (and other publications) to accept that.
The maybe-AI-maybe-not-AI content was written way way before the whole ChatGPT thing raised the profile of AI. Futurism links to https://web.archive.org/web/20221004090814/https://www.si.com/review/full-size-volleyball/ which is a snapshot of the article from October 2022, before the wide release of ChatGPT, and well before The Arena Group made public announcements about experimenting with AI. But in fact the article is even way older than October 2022; the oldest snapshot https://web.archive.org/web/20210916150227/https://www.si.com/review/full-size-volleyball/ of the article is from September 16, 2021, and the article publication date is September 2, 2021. Way before ChatGPT or any of the AI hype. And even that earliest version shows the same photo and a similar bio.
So to my mind this comes down to the use of a vendor (AdVon) with shady practices, and either the lack of due diligence in vendor selection or not caring about the details of their practices as long as they’re driving revenue to the site and not hurting the site’s brand. The reason to use a vendor like this is simply that they drive affiliate marketing revenue (people find the recommended content interesting, they click on it, maybe buy it, everybody gets a cut of the revenue, everybody is happy). This simply isn’t even part of the editorial content and basically has nothing to do with replacing real writers of sports content with AI writers—it’s simply an effort to leverage the brand of the site by running a side business from one corner of it. Also, to the extent it is or isn’t ethical, the issue probably has more to do with whether the reviews were genuine rather than whether the authors were human or AI—even if the authors were human, if the reviews were fraudulent, it would be a problem in equal measure. So overall I think the vendor selection was problematic, but this has little to do with AI.
Separately, many sports sites, including Sports Illustrated, have used automatically (/ “AI”)-generated content for routine content such as game summaries, e.g., using the services of Data Skrive: https://www.si.com/author/data-skrive—this is probably a little closer to the idea of replacing human writers, but the kind of content being created is pretty much the kind of content that humans wouldn’t want to spend time creating.
The Arena Group has done some AI experimentation with the goal of trying to use AI-like tools to write normal content (not things like game summaries), as Futurism critiqued at https://futurism.com/neoscope/magazine-mens-journal-errors-ai-health-article but this AdVon thing is completely separate in time, in space, and in purpose.
What links here?
- AI #42: The Wrong Answer by Zvi (14 Dec 2023 14:50 UTC; 67 points)

VipulNaik 30 Nov 2023 17:16 UTC
4 points
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in reply to: Dacyn’s comment on: ChatGPT 4 solved all the gotcha problems I posed that tripped ChatGPT 3.5
Thanks for reviewing and catching these subtle issues!

Technically, it is not true that the prime numbers being multiplied need to be distinct. For example, 2*2=4 is the product of two prime numbers, but it is not the product of two distinct prime numbers.

Good point, I’ve marked this as an error. My prompt about gcd did specify distinctness but the prompt about product did not, so this is indeed an error.

This seems wrong: “neither can be definitively identified” makes it sound like they exist but just can’t be identified...

I passed on this one as being too minor to mark.

Safe primes area subset of Sophie Germain primes

Not true, e.g. 7 is safe but not Sophie Germain.

Good point; I missed reading this sentence originally. I’ve marked this one as well.

VipulNaik 30 Nov 2023 16:10 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Yair Halberstadt’s comment on: ChatGPT 4 solved all the gotcha problems I posed that tripped ChatGPT 3.5
Thanks, fixed now! Sorry I missed that.

VipulNaik 30 Nov 2023 16:05 UTC
4 points
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in reply to: Bojadła’s comment on: ChatGPT 4 solved all the gotcha problems I posed that tripped ChatGPT 3.5
Good question!

First, my original post didn’t provide the correct answers for most questions, only what was wrong with ChatGPT. Going from knowing what was wrong to actually giving correct answers seems like quite a leap. Further, ChatGPT changed its answers to better ones (including more rigorous explanations) even in cases where its original answers were correct.

Second, ChatGPT’s self-reported training data cutoff date at the time it was asked these questions was September 2021 or January 2022. To my knowledge, Issa didn’t ask it this question, but sources like https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/16m6yc7/gpt4_training_cutoff_date_is_now_january_2022/ suggest that it was September 2021 at the time of his sessions, then became January 2022. So, the blog post, published in December 2022, should not have been part of its training data.

With that said, the sessions themselves (not the blog post about them) might have been part of the feedback loop, but in most cases I did not tell ChatGPT what was wrong with its answers within the session itself.

VipulNaik 30 Nov 2023 6:27 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: stochastic_parrot’s comment on: ChatGPT 4 solved all the gotcha problems I posed that tripped ChatGPT 3.5
Thanks, and sorry I missed that error. I’ve updated the post by bolding the error, and also HT’ed your contribution.

VipulNaik 2 Oct 2023 19:39 UTC
6 points
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in reply to: VipulNaik’s comment on: riceissa’s Shortform
Regarding the topic of batteries getting better while also being harder to remove/replace, I found these interesting comments by FeRD (https://www.ifixit.com/Wiki/What_to_do_with_a_swollen_battery?permalink=comment-911590#comment-911590 + the next two comments) that I quote in full below:

(1/2) I doubt it’s entirely fair to blame Apple for this; they may not have even been the first manufacturer to use a non-removable battery pack. They were certainly the first biggest company to make that switch, but plenty of others did the same, and in some cases way too quickly for it to have been a case of them “copying” Apple. They simply came to the same conclusion: Removable batteries, like physical keyboards, hurt sales more than they helped. So, out they went.

Because, the frustration of it is that device manufacturers genuinely have really “good” reasons why batteries are no longer removable. Actually, at least two good reasons: Water-resistance and miniaturization.

Today’s phones are surprisingly watertight, to the point where many can survive a brief dunk with no immediate ill effects. (Though I personally suspect that water infiltration is a trigger for subsequent battery swelling.) My Galaxy Note8 once survived a complete submersion lasting 2-3 seconds. Don’t try that with your Nokia 3310!

FeRD—Sep 21, 2023

(2/2) All battery-powered devices are also continually getting smaller and smaller. (Or, failing that, they’re packing more and more stuff into roughly the same amount of space.) And the fact is, removable batteries require MUCH more space than non-removable.

If a battery is removable, it has to have an outer, protective case of its own due to the dangerous chemicals inside. The phone would then also have to have mechanisms to align and secure the battery, a latch and release mechanism, and electrical contacts between what are now (effectively) two completely separate devices. That all takes up space.

A removable battery makes a device significantly larger (in particular, thicker), or else it has half the capacity of the non-removable design. Either way, 999 out of 1000 consumers will choose the smaller, thinner, lighter fixed-battery device with twice the runtime between charges, over a bigger, thicker, doesn’t-last-as-long alternative with a removable battery.

FeRD—Sep 21, 2023

Actually, now that I think about it there’s a third reason that’s even more damning:

Removable batteries were never about extending device lifetime.

Manufacturers will tell you, and they can provide reams of consumer data to back it up: The percentage of consumers who keep a device long enough to wear out the first battery is TINY. Laughably tiny. The overwhelming majority of mobile-device owners want to replace their device with a newer, faster one every 2 years or less — long before the battery is even starting to degrade. (After all, until very recently the technology was advancing so quickly, a 2-year-old phone was nigh-unusable, given its limitations compared to newer models.)

Removable batteries were always intended for power-users who needed more runtime than they could get from a single battery. They’d own two+, and swap them out as needed (charging externally). In the end, rapid charging, larger capacities, and improved power-management software provided a better solution to that problem.

FeRD—Sep 21, 2023

VipulNaik 13 Aug 2023 18:59 UTC
7 points
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in reply to: riceissa’s comment on: riceissa’s Shortform
A few thoughts:
- In at least one area, namely cars, durability relative to actual usage has improved a lot over the past 50 years or so. See for instance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_longevity “According to the New York Times, in the 1960s and 1970s, the typical car reached its end of life around 100,000 miles (160,000 km), but due to manufacturing improvements in the 2000s, such as tighter tolerances and better anti-corrosion coatings, the typical car lasts closer to 200,000 miles (320,000 km).”
- The area where I’m most aware of claims of reduced durability is home appliances e.g. https://ryanfinlay.medium.com/they-used-to-last-50-years-c3383ff28a8e but I think there are a bunch of factors here that make it a little tricky given (a) low cost: there’s a much wider selection of home appliances, and the low end that are quite cheap still last several years, which is obviously less than the high end and the older great devices, but probably good enough and a great comparison to costs. Low-end refrigerators for instance cost only a bit more than phones, which is remarkable considering the size differences! (b) energy use as a major component of cost over the long term: for appliances like refrigerators, the electricity use becomes a major cost component if the appliance lasts too long, so that having a long-lasting refrigerator that doesn’t benefit from energy efficiency improvements may ultimately cost more.
- In the realm of electronics, quality improvements in hardware even over the last 5-10 years have been very impressive; for instance, batteries have gotten better, design/form factors have gotten better. However, repairability in particular has gotten worse but this seems tied to the trend toward miniaturization and portability. If people anyway plan to replace their devices every few years, then portability probably wins over repairability.

VipulNaik 10 Jul 2023 21:34 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Shaun’s comment on: Why have exposure notification apps been (mostly) discontinued?
Hmm, aren’t exposure notifications an opt-in program? I was never forced to get them—I chose to download and install the app and keep it on. The same way I choose to allow Google Maps to keep a record of my physical location.

VipulNaik 27 Jan 2023 18:13 UTC
2 points
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on: To err is neural: select logs with ChatGPT
I added logs of two further ChatGPT sessions, one of which repeated many of the prompts I used here, tested against the 2023-01-09 version of ChatGPT: https://github.com/vipulnaik/working-drafts/commit/427f5997d48d78c69e3e16eeca99f0b22dc3ffd3

I had originally been thinking of formatting these into a blog post or posts, and I might still do so, but probably not for the next two months, so just sharing the raw logs for now so that people reading the comments on this post see my update.

VipulNaik 15 Nov 2022 6:50 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: clone of saturn’s comment on: Preventing, reversing, and addressing data leakage: some thoughts
Good point—I removed the tag!

VipulNaik 10 Sep 2022 20:09 UTC
4 points
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in reply to: riceissa’s comment on: riceissa’s Shortform
Somewhat related, though different in various ways, is this post by Bryan Caplan: https://www.econlib.org/the-cause-of-what-i-feel-is-what-i-do-how-i-eliminate-pain/

VipulNaik 9 Jun 2022 4:05 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: romeostevensit’s comment on: Entitlement as a major amplifier of unhappiness
I’m curious to hear examples of other worthwhile things in the direction that you have in mind!

VipulNaik 9 Feb 2022 0:30 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: zebrask’s comment on: The case for “mental strength”
Thanks—good points and well-presented with precision and flair!

VipulNaik 9 Feb 2022 0:29 UTC
4 points
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in reply to: FTPickle’s comment on: The case for “mental strength”
Good point! It could be that both kinds of mental exercise (excess stimulation and lack of stimulation) are important for building mental strength; modern society provides the former in abundance (and particularly so for LessWrong readers!), so the form of exercise we’re constrained on is the lack-of-stimulation kind (and that’s where meditation helps). How far-fetched does that sound?

VipulNaik 1 Feb 2022 22:46 UTC
3 points
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on: Risk and Safety in the age of COVID
An anonymous friend to whom I sent this post writes:

He has a good point that most people just want to do the universal “safety” precautions. I think a big reason that he doesn’t mention is that reasonable precautions are how all businesses defend themselves from lawsuits (e.g. sexual harassment and DEI training); as long as they take the reasonable precautions, then they are immune from lawsuits. But I don’t buy “safety” as an explanation for what policies are possible. It sounds like a just-so story for why we are in the mess that we are in. Vaccines are available and thus a reasonable precaution because the government subsidized them. Respirators and HVAC filters could have been a reasonable precaution if governments had subsidized and encouraged them. I think better leadership could have made a difference.

I wish the federal government made it patriotic to make PPE and safety retrofits. They should have announced programs to set up melt blown respirator manufacturing in America. They should have made a tax credit (like the solar tax credit) for retrofits that improve ventilation in retail or offices.

VipulNaik 25 Dec 2021 2:02 UTC
5 points
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on: Quick Poll: Booster Reactions
I just got my booster dose today (December 24) and intend to monitor closely. I’ll be regularly updating https://github.com/vipulnaik/diet-exercise-health/blob/master/notes/2021-12-24-pfizer-covid-vaccine-booster-dose.md with temperature readings and subjective details of my experience.

I did similar logging after the second dose, that you can see here: https://github.com/vipulnaik/diet-exercise-health/blob/master/notes/2021-06-25-pfizer-covid-vaccine-dose-2.md

VipulNaik 30 Nov 2021 2:45 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: philh’s comment on: Chris Voss negotiation MasterClass: review
By “this way” do you mean the way I wrote it or the way Alexei would have preferred?

VipulNaik 25 Nov 2021 16:40 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Adam Zerner’s comment on: Chris Voss negotiation MasterClass: review
Good point; I added a section clarifying this focus: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CRAzG386t3suSqDgd/chris-voss-negotiation-masterclass-review#Low_level_execution_focus_rather_than_domain_specific_tactical_or_business_school_style_strategy_focus