“when a large language model produces false information, it’s referred to as a “hallucination.” He prefers “confabulation.” Hallucination implies not only the presence of an inner mind, but the capacity of that mind to have sensory experiences. Confabulation, on the other hand, happens when a person unknowingly falsifies information to gloss over a gap in their memory. It’s still a metaphor, but a far better one for how current AI works” —says Ted Chiang https://time.com/collection/time100-ai/6308990/ted-chiang/

#LLM #TedChiang #AI

#inktober2023 DAY 8: TOAD

#BigTech is the big fat toad that lets its tongue fly out as soon as someone other dares to fly itself.

> "#Google has a lot of anxiety because they know in their hearts that it’s all a performance — that what they’ve got is access to the capital markets, not geniuses."

— Cory Doctorow @pluralistic

https://jacobin.com/2023/05/cory-doctorow-big-tech-internet-monopoly-capitalism-artificial-intelligence-crypto/

#inktober

Anyone looking for a good RSS feed reader for android? After Feedly started injecting ads and AI nonsense, I tried a few different options and hated most of them.

But I finally have found Feeder, available from f-droid. And it's finally the replacement I needed.

There's a few things I miss (swiping for the next story is the biggest one) but importing my OPML config and being able to just start reading my existing feeds was great. I like that I can still see unread counts on all my feeds on the side if I want, and the view configurations were slightly better than what I had before.

(And while you've got f-droid installed, you can get dns66 too. Because ad blocking is an essential part of security now. Think of it like your virus scanner in the 90s!)

#rss #OpenSource

Knitters, have any of you used the Addi Novel lace needles? thoughts?

#knitting #KnittingNeedles #AddiNovel

JumpRunRunRunRun, walk walk walk, step, step...sit. <glare>

My cat, upon hearing me walk to the kitchen, then realizing that I'm getting myself a glass of juice, and not randomly feeding her at 10 a.m.

#ConversationsWithCat

It's hard for people to visualize removing tons or billions of tons of carbon dioxide (CO₂). I propose we talk about CO₂ removal (#CDR) like a time machine (e.g., this machine will take us back 5 minutes). For example:

Q: How far back in time does planting 100 million trees take us?

A: If one mature tree takes up an average of 25 kg of CO₂ per year, then 100 million trees will take up 2.5 MtCO₂. That's a time machine that takes us back 33 minutes and 6 seconds in a year. It's not a lot.