I spent the day at a fun tech conference. However I seem to be the only person there who doubts the future of AI - and specifically of large language models. Sigh, I'm off to my pillar/cave in the desert.
I'm back from a fun few days at #emf2024 - great vibe, ran into old friends, made new ones, and learned some random stuff (like the previous retoot about timezones on the London underground) .
Most of (all?) the hacks were funny and had a physical manifestation - not purely software. Also quite a retro feel to a lot of it - Fax machines etc but also robots/droids everywhere!
Google's adoption of hallucinating LLMs isn't as surprising to them as it is to us.
Sure, Google started out trying to be accurate and factual, but pretty rapidly the ad side took over so internally they have been living with statistics (at best), half truths and lies for long enough to be comfortable with them.
Time passed and we drifted apart, I worked on other stuff, some of which I'm quite proud of, with other great teams, but I think that project is the best thing I did (so far at least).
Graham emailed me last week to pass on the sad news that Eli died.
Eli - you were a great mentor, manager and friend. At the time I didn’t know how lucky I was that you took a chance on me. I do now. Thanks and rest in peace.
I am rather surprised to find @AnnLeckie ‘s short fiction book “the lake of souls” contains a Wooster-ish story where the Jeeves role is played by a god in the form of a sparrow.
I'm proud to have played a small part in @sundogplanets 's campaign on the space junk pollution (both light and actual) that starlink and it's ilk produce .
I have Amazon prime free for a month. What should I watch on prime video ? A quick glance doesn’t turn up anything interesting in the last year. (Except possibly “the last of us” but that sounds too harrowing. ) suggestions welcome….