VIXILMar 3
Jeff Atwood
One of Rusty's all time best, well worth your time: https://www.todayintabs.com/p/a-i-isn-t-people
A.I. Isn't People

How many Reddit posts does it take to learn to read?

Today in Tabs
Feb 28 at 10:03pmWeb
Show threadSteve WilliamsFeb 28

@codinghorror @temptoetiam
“Saying that any of this is teaching a chatbot philosophy is like calling yourself a psychiatrist because you thought about Oedipus while jacking off. “

🧑‍🍳💋

Show threadSylvhemFeb 28
@codinghorror “Imagine you have two machines. One you can open up and examine all of its workings, and if you give it every picture of a cat on the whole internet, it can reliably distinguish cats from non-cats. The other is a black box and it can also reliably distinguish cats from non-cats if you give it half a dozen pictures of cats, some apple sauce, and a hug. These machines sort of do the same thing, but even without knowing how the second one works I am extremely confident in saying it doesn’t work the same way as the first one.”
Show threadJargogglesFeb 28
@Sylvhem @codinghorror
"I’ve watched all three of my children learn what a cat is, and in each case the number of pictures of a cat they needed to see was not “all of them.”"
Show threadEvan GenestMar 1

@codinghorror

Thank you - still reading. But, this:

" Andrej Karpathy recently implemented a fully functional large language model in 200 lines of Python code. He also wrote a detailed explanation of exactly what it does, how it works, and the ways it differs from big company frontier models, which are all just differences of scale and efficiency."

Show threadAvi Rappoport (avirr)Mar 1
@codinghorror If it was just cats it would be one thing, but having non-deterministic systems identify tumors or drones is terrifying
Show threadpunIssuerMar 1

@codinghorror "Does 200 lines of Python code understand anything? My siblings in Christ I hope it’s clear how utterly bizarre this question is."

But, it's Python. https://xkcd.com/413/

New Pet

xkcd
Show threadMaartenMar 1
@codinghorror I think there are a bunch of terrible arguments in that essay. Focusing on the 200 lines of Python is like saying “meat that thinks?!” Everyone thinks human intelligence is so special and I think we’re going to come out of this in 5 or 10 or 20 years and conclude that it isn’t as special as we thought, just like Life wasn’t due to a special life force and souls don’t exist. 1/
Show threadMaartenMar 1

@codinghorror The question is not what the 200 lines of code do, they are merely like the handful of neurotransmitters in out biology. The question is what’s going on in the billions of model parameters that seem to encode not only word patterns but also some algorithms for behavior.

The issue of needing to see more training examples than humans need has been addressed by pointing to the work evolution has done in shaping humans that we need to do brute force for LLMs. 2/

Show threadMaartenMar 1

@codinghorror And yes, there *are* issues with lack of grounding in the physical world.

I don’t think LLMs are synthetic humans or have emotions, but once we run these things with persistent state and long continuous loops, I expect the results to start to resemble humans a lot more.

Show threadgunstickMar 1
@codinghorror best point is right away at the start. Intelligence does not need "all the data" to learn.
Show threadgaryMar 1

@codinghorror ai is people the question is what are they going to do?

#techcrunch.com

https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/20/the-openai-mafia-15-of-the-most-notable-startups-founded-by-alumni/

The OpenAI mafia: 18 startups founded by alumni | TechCrunch

Many employees have come and gone since OpenAI first launched a decade ago, and some have launched startups of their own. Among these, some have become top rivals (like Anthropic), while others, just on investor interest alone, have managed to raise billions without even launching a product.

TechCrunch