https://thebullshitmachines.com

I'm only finished with the first chapter --and with going through all of the supplementary material for chapter one that's hyperlinked in the instructor guide, which I think should be mandatory rather than supplementary-- but I'm already convinced that this class (and its supplementary materials) should be a requirement for CS majors at least, if not for engineers and "STEM"-type majors in general.

The Stochastic Parrots paper, in particular, is excellent. Two of that paper's listed authors (Emily Bender @emilymbender, Angelina McMillan-Major) hail from the University of Washington. Not surprising then, I suppose, that the folks behind this class/course/curriculum/website also hail from there: Carl Bergstrom (@ct_bergstrom) and Jevin West (@jevinwest@x.com). Those two are also members of a broader effort from that same university called the Center for an Informed Public (@uwcip).

We are so fucked.
#ai #stochasticparrot

AI assistant can't provide a tutorial video, provides a rickroll instead.

https://futurism.com/the-byte/ai-startup-rickrolling

My fun read for the day: The Toilet Theory of the Internet.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/05/google-generative-ai-search-toilet-theory/678411/
#AmReading #GenerativeAI #AI #ToiletTheory #StochasticParrot

The trailer for “Megalopolis” by filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola was pulled because of fake quotes – presumably written by a chatbot.

Pretty sure all the meetings on how to address such a mistake, having to delete the old trailer and putting together the new one takes a lot more time than the initial 90 minutes of research they tried to “save”. #StochasticParrot

https://www.laineygossip.com/is-ai-behind-lionsgates-embarrassing-fabricated-quotes-led-to-megalopolis-trailer-being-pulled/78770

A lesson in how 'aware' AI actually is:

I was searching Facebook for a video of a Pub Choir event I attended, where the performed song was 'Murder on the Dance Floor' by Sophie Ellis-Bextor, and to do so I used some bare-bones keywords.

This was Meta AI's confident response:
#stochasticparrot

So apparently people use AI to generate impossibly pretty crochet pictures to sell AI generated, flawed crochet patterns.

#StochasticParrot

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8W3rfego8Ow

How would anyone trust the products these people put worth? They aren’t working on making LLMs more accurate (spoiler alert: they can’t, by design), they’re working to make them more appealing to companies targeting unsuspecting consumers. By any means necessary.

#LLM #AI #StochasticParrot
RE: mastodon.social/users/nixCraft…

Bombenpanik im Zug nach Oberkotzau (Landkreis Hof) durch KI-verstärkte fremdsprachliche Inkompetenz (und Rassismus mag auch eine Rolle gespielt haben).

https://www.golem.de/news/lost-in-translation-bombendrohung-in-zug-durch-uebersetzungs-app-2405-185122.html

Golem erwähnt nicht, dass der KI-User Iraker war.

https://www.t-online.de/nachrichten/panorama/vermischtes/id_100406216/bayern-oberkotzau-uebersetzungsfehler-loest-grosseinsatz-der-polizei-aus-.html

Real Parrot: tells you it loves you because you've conditioned it to do that via some reward system.

Slave: tells you they love you because their well-being depends on you hearing that phrase.

#StochasticParrot (i.e., #LLM): tells you it loves you because of statistical correlations between your prompt & that output phrase.

This is why it's important not to anthropomorphize the stochastic parrot.

https://mastodon.social/@FeralRobots/112309473821436280

"According to the recordings, Ahmad Al-Dahle, Meta’s vice president of generative AI, told executives that the company had used almost every book, poem and essay written in English available on the internet to train models, so was looking for new sources of training material."

If you're an #AI that's consumed every piece of written text available on the Internet but still need more training, you just might be a #StochasticParrot.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/apr/09/meta-discussed-buying-publisher-simon-schuster-to-train-ai

Heute erst eine beeindruckende Zusammenfassung eines Whitepapers durch ChatGPT gesehen. Bis es sagte, das PDF sei auf Deutsch und umfasse 20 Seiten.

Reader, it was written in English. 12 pages long.