An Era of ‘Artificial Fake Truth’? On the Effects of Large AI Models
Yes, I'm still talking about large AI models. But today I want to highlight an aspect that has many people worried: what could be the effects of these models going forward? Luckily there is already a debate going on that focuses on these issues.
“Pause Giant AI Experiments”: An Open Letter Full of Straw men
In a recent Open Letter, AI scientists and entrepreneurs are demanding a moratorium on the training of large AI models. In this article I argue that the letter is full of straw man arguments and does not significantly bear on the dangers emanating from AI.
Core.js: Open Source is not Broken
A recent incident surrounding the JavaScript library Core.js has seen many arguing that Open Source is broken. However, looking at the longer history of incidents within Open Source, here I argue that we need to stop saying Open Source was broken, and instead focus on the real problem: A lack of institutional funding.
Selecting Documents for Active Learning (My Supervisor was Right)
Today's article is about a (relatively) new technique called Active Learning, that aims to annotate large corpora with as little effort as possible. Since it utilizes machine learning, decisions regarding metrics are of utmost importance. In this article I dive into deciding on a metric for resampling documents. It turns out that, depending on what situation you face, there are multiple valid options.
How to Use ChatGPT Productively
It’s been several weeks now since OpenAI debuted it’s new toy, ChatGPT, and users have experimented with it to find good use-cases. Today I want to focus on those use-cases, and why LSTMs may be a better choice for some of these tasks.
I get your excitement about ChatGPT, but …
… it's time for some realistic reflection (again). ChatGPT is neither a breakthrough, nor anything extraordinary. It is but a mere highly capable machine with which you can chat — for the lulz, not for real. So don't fall into OpenAI's trap and give them free advertisement. ChatGPT has the same problems as all other AI systems before, and here I list them adapted to the situation around ChatGPT.
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Mastodon, Twitter, and Elon Musk
It's been about three weeks since the Twitter-deal went over the counter. While everything is still in flux, what could be happening to Twitter? And, is the go-to alternative Mastodon the alternative academics need? While I do not have any answers, I have a few thoughts on this.
Electron, chokidar, and native Node.js modules: A horror story from integration hell
Today I want to tell you a story that starts in February of 2018 and haunted me until this very day. It is a story about the failure of both myself and the largest software company on earth, Microsoft, to solve a very obscure problem for four years.
Centering a Distribution: A Visual Guide
I recently needed to center a few distributions. While a very simple operation, I tend to double-check my intuitions without blindly implementing something. However, a Google search did not turn up anything useful, so I fiddled around myself, confirmed my intuition, and tell you all about how to center a distribution in this short article.
Why your Spellchecker is Probably Smarter than GPT-3
With more and more advances in the development of large language models (LLMs), more and more people feel confident stating that those models have an actual understanding of language and know what you meant. While this is obviously not true, it begs the question: Do language tools in general never know what we mean, or are there cases where they do? In this article, I think about what "meaning" means and whether or not your spellchecker knows what you meant.