Is AI actually helpful?

[XerXesXu]

Here's a useful recent paper, including a literature review, on 'hallucinations', how they're caused, and how they can be prevented.

Why Language Models Hallucinate

Further to which, apparently requiring COT models to show their working and rewarding them for the correct procedure, even if they give an incorrect result reduces hallucinations as well as providing other benefits.

For the full 90 pages:

Stress Testing Deliberative Alignment

 

[NaughteeDragon]

While AI did not boost my productivity it did help me overcome writer's block.
I have a story I've been working off-and-on for almost a year. I've hit this point in the story when I need to write escalating tension between two female characters. One is strictly het, one is falling in love with the other. The two have been friends more than half their lives and are both knowingly and encouragingly seeing the same man. It started as a polygamist relationship and is drifting toward a polyamorous triangle. I know where it ends (het girl finally confronts the issue that is driving her fear) but was having issues with how to build the tension.

Enter AI: ChatGPT, I need a 5k word story about two female best friends in a polygamist relationship. One is strictly heterosexual, the second is sexually attracted to the first. Make it a dramatic story in alternative 1st person view.

Do this a couple of times with minor tweaks (het girl had a traumatic lesbian relationship earlier in life, het girl's motivations are not religiously motivated, the man is actively encouraging them, the man is subtly encouraging them, the man is staying out of their relationship until they solve the problem, there is no man they are just best friends).

Great jumping off points for what I needed. I'm over half done with clearing the log jam just using those stories as inspiration for where I wanted to go.

 

[AlexBailey]

AI is a tool.

Feel free to pound nails with your forehead if that makes you feel superior.

I used it many times today to find the most up to date information about a wildfire and road closures where I was traveling out of state.

ChatGPT searched all available bulletins and announcements in real time. I was able to find out what roads were still open and what areas were being evacuated as well as the most recent progress on containing the fire.

It scoured sources, returning source links and travel possibilities in seconds while I was driving in evacuation traffic when I had no other idea where to look for the information.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Any answer you ever want can be found in a slice of 𝝅

It’s pedantic Emily time (like every day, right?).

The property you refer to is - broadly speaking (there is actually a tighter requirement, but it’s not relevant beyond experts) being a Normal Number (the word ‘normal’ is used for all sorts of different shit in math). A statistical interpretation of a Normal Number is one whose expansion (strictly in any base, not just decimal) is essentially random and uniform (I’m speaking informally here).

Rational Numbers (like 0.33333333… or 0.142857142857…) can’t be Normal, only non-Rational Real Numbers (Irrational Numbers).

It has been rigorously proven that most (again speaking loosely) Irrational Numbers are Normal Numbers [Borel’s Theorem]. But proving a given Irrational Number is Normal is tricky (aka fucking impossible often). In particular, though most mathematicians might be quite surprised if someone shows that π is not Normal, no one - to my knowledge - has yet proven that it is.

As an aside, the decimal expansion of π is no more remarkable than the vast majority of other Irrational Numbers. So √2 is also probably Normal, but this is equally unproven.

Any Normal Number, not just π, would have the property of having the entire works of Shakespeare encoded in it (and a version of Hamlet where he is a centaur).

 

[EmilyMiller]

It’s pedantic Emily time (like every day, right?).

The property you refer to is - broadly speaking (there is actually a tighter requirement, but it’s not relevant beyond experts) is being a Normal Number (the word ‘normal’ is used for all sorts of different shit in math). A statistical interpretation of a Normal Number is one whose expansion (strictly in any base, not just decimal) is essentially random and uniform (I’m speaking informally here).

Rational Numbers (like 0.33333333… or 0.142857142857…) can’t be Normal, only non-Rational Real Numbers (Irrational Numbers).

It has been rigorously proven that most (again speaking loosely) Irrational Numbers are Normal Numbers [Borel’s Theorem]. But proving a given Irrational Number is Normal is tricky (aka fucking impossible often). In particular, though most mathematicians might be quite surprised if someone shows that π is not Normal, no one - to my knowledge - has yet proven that it is.

As an aside, the decimal expansion of π is no more remarkable than the vast majority of other Irrational Numbers. So √2 is also probably Normal, but this is equally unproven.

Any Normal Number, not just π, would have the property of having the entire works of Shakespeare encoded in it (and a version of Hamlet where he is a centaur).

Have you all cum yet?

 

[onehitwanda]

Have you all cum yet?

asymptotes are a bitch

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

asymptotes are a bitch

I almost got that one.