chatGPT

[ertyu]

I can see a 7th grader write the last 2 paragraphs

[Ego]

Tokens

Tokens are the building blocks of text in LLMs, ranging from one character to one word in length. For example, the phrase “ChatGPT is amazing!” consists of 6 tokens: [“Chat”, “G”, “PT”, “ is”, “ amazing”, “!”]. Here’s a more complex example: “AI is fun (and challenging)!” consists of 7 tokens: [“AI”, “ is”, “ fun”, “ (“, “and”, “ challenging”, “)!”].

and

Token counts play a significant role in shaping an LLM’s memory and conversation history. Think of it as having a conversation with a friend who can remember the last few minutes of your chat, using token counts to maintain context and ensure a smooth dialogue. However, this limited memory has implications on user interactions, such as the need to repeat crucial information to maintain context .

Exceeding the token limit can lead to incomplete or nonsensical responses, as the LLM loses vital context. Imagine asking about the Eiffel Tower and receiving a response about the Leaning Tower of Pisa because the context window shifted.

GPT4 has a 32000-token limit.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.11062

By leveraging the Recurrent Memory Transformer architecture, we have successfully increased the model's effective context length to an unprecedented two million tokens, while maintaining high memory retrieval accuracy.

I believe this is where all that data Google/MS has been keeping about us gets very useful. Other uses?

[7Wannabe5]

I can see a 7th grader write the last 2 paragraphs

Well, the novel which I was asking it to modernize was the second most popular with the general reading public in 1902, and I didn't prompt for more scholary consideration of the theme. I just found it interesting that it was able generalize* to the extent that it could "modernize" the theme as well as the text. Obviously, it really dropped the ball on recreating the humorous flow of the original. "Karaoke" is a good update for "fine handwriting" as trivial virtue to extol, but the sentence is more than a bit off the mark.

*Because what would be truly interesting would be if it could be prompted to offer a generalization beyond what has already been created by humans on a theme or topic.

@Ego:

I think the question is more like "What won't it be used for?"

[Stahlmann]

Is writing articles for SEO or advertisment is still viable with easy access chatgpt? Or do I compete with 1 USD/h workers from Third World? If going rate is like 5 USD/h after taxes, I would give it try and earn a bit on side. I worry more that job givers bought anti AI tex detection tools. I got vibe that much of content of the web is somehow generated looong before easy access to chatgpt .

During some random walk, I eavesdroped people in my age excited about possibilty of earning 600 PLN for low effort gig for Western Europeans using chatgpt... they were past the phase describing actual thing, but I suspect that's connected with writing articles. On other hand web is flooded with how to's on this... Maybe time to buy shovels instead on focusing on some gold rush self-minig...

[jennypenny]

Do any of you who have content in digital form worry about it being swallowed up and disseminated by AI (without credit or profit)? I ask because I've been talking with an editor friend who showed interest in publishing my book. Part of the deal, however, was that I start a blog/insta and publish in digital as well as printed format. I told them I didn't want to do either, but they are standing firm -- if I don't agree to digital content they won't publish it.

Am I being ridiculous wrt AI? I guess I'm at the point where I'd rather have a printed book that got passed around instead of just offering up my work as AI fodder. OTOH, my friend (rightly) pointed out that my target audience reads mostly ebooks and probably isn't interested in a 'niche book that outliers are passing around.' I don't really want the hassle of DIY which is why I pursued a publisher in the first place, but if I stick to my position I'll have to self-publish.

Just curious if my position makes me sound like a dinosaur.

[mountainFrugal]

@jp - If you want to make profits then I think that you have to have a following. I think that your content is likely niche that I would personally not worry about it unless you had 10's of thousands of followers. ~1% conversion rate if you were selling your audience only on instagram. Either way, if you want readers, it would be worth the time. You like to write, so you could also think about releasing parts on those platforms as a way to get people to sign up for a newsletter where you release more than you would publicly. An email is the best way to connect to people these days. I would sign-up for your newsletter. .

[Sclass]

I wanted a version of Star Wars where Anakin doesn’t turn to the dark side. Chat GPT put together a nice alternate story with all the characters. Minus the emperor. What was really cool is they left out order 66 and I mentioned that. Chat GPT apologized for the omission and rewrote the story with order 66. Pretty cool.

I showed it to some fellow serious Star Wars fans and they got really upset and said it sucked. It fooled me. Kind of like the intro in Marvel’s Secret Invasion series. The abstract art intro had me completely fooled. It blew right by and I thought it was fine.

The concept of Good Enough is often missed by marketing people. I think we are going to find out just how low you can go with a lot of media.

It happened with audio codecs. Now nobody cares mp3 sounds low quality.

[fingeek]

@jp Typically when AI like bing chews on data, it will spit it out with a reference to the source link.

it's likely therefore that you'd gain more followers than you'd lose potential followers/income/content/?

[jacob]

Do any of you who have content in digital form worry about it being swallowed up and disseminated by AI (without credit or profit)?

Not anymore than humans doing the same thing. Paper is but a small barrier to entry. If the paper book is disseminated widely enough, pirates eventually will scan it and upload the pdf on dozens of whack-a-mole sites. They may even be well-intended too. Google and various libraries are in on it too and even claim to do it legally.

Also, AI misunderstanding or taking stuff out of context is probably not worse than humans doing the same thing.

The question is whether there's a material shift from the paradigm whether part of the demographics prefer to ask questions on social media instead of reading the original author to ditto where part of the demographics prefer to ask questions to an AI. I think the answer is negative for books that are popular enough to easily find other who have actually read it---or gotten second-hand information from someone who has. For books with limited distribution (<500 copies), AI's read everything, so the answer may be positive and in this case, it may not be possible for the author to run a PR campaign to the effect of "that's not what I meant, damnit". This may be a feature or a bug.

[7Wannabe5]

I agree on paper being too small a barrier to entry. It would be almost like releasing your album on vinyl, but not on cassette. You would be better off taking ownership of digital from the get-go.

Another thing you might attempt would be to converse with various AIs about your book, informing them that you are the author, and clearing up any misunderstandings they might replicate. In a way, an AI misrepresenting your book is not very different from a librarian mis-cataloguing your book.

[Western Red Cedar]

It happened with audio codecs. Now nobody cares mp3 sounds low quality.

As the son of an audiophile, I can confirm there is a small but passionate community out there that still cares about sound quality. In fact, he cares so much all of his children are equipped with good-quality, vintage systems and he's started setting up the grandkids as well

[jacob]

As the son of an audiophile, I can confirm there is a small but passionate community out there that still cares about sound quality. In fact, he cares so much all of his children are equipped with good-quality, vintage systems and he's started setting up the grandkids as well

The tragedy of good equipment is the ability to hear the difference of quality in different recordings.

A similar issue exists for movie audio. One of the reasons why watching streaming movies requires continual adjustments with the volume control to compensate for explosions that are too loud and voices that are barely audible is that streaming services run all the sound through the same algorithm.

[jennypenny]

I agree on paper being too small a barrier to entry. It would be almost like releasing your album on vinyl, but not on cassette.

Ha, given that analogy I'm definitely in the vinyl camp. But to stretch it, the potential audience doesn't have the equipment (as jacob suggested) and needs it delivered via insta.

@jp - If you want to make profits then I think that you have to have a following.

I'm starting to wonder if I do ... I wrote most of it for friends and family as a legacy, not for profit. It just morphed into something bigger.

An email is the best way to connect to people these days. I would sign-up for your newsletter. .

Email, vinyl ... so old school. The great simplification has already happened around here lol.

I appreciate the show of support mF, but what I've written is a practical guide for people who don't want to upend their lives yet want more resiliency. People here are predominantly in the all-in camp, especially you.

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I have to think about it some more. I *hate* the idea of spending more time online, not less. Being niche isn't so bad (I remember how excited I was when I got my hands on a bootleg copy of Klarman's book back in the day). I'm at the point in my life that I'd rather be Dan Price than Dan Pink.

[Sclass]

As the son of an audiophile, I can confirm there is a small but passionate community out there that still cares about sound quality.

Eventually I’ll be listening to FLAC through a hearing aid.

[jacob]

I'm starting to wonder if I do ...

What about a limited run on Kickstarter? This would also give you money upfront for an old school "vanity press" run(*). It seems to me it would keep the book somewhat underground mainly on the thesis that the pirates, search engines, and AI's aren't in the habit of funding kickstarters just to get their thieving hands on the manuscript.

(*) The minimum number starts very low. I had to pay a publisher for archival quality bindings of my phd dissertation. IIRC, a total of 4 were printed. This made for a pretty expensive unit copy but still doable. Conversely, if it doesn't have to be fancy, the ghetto way would be a laser printer + spiral binding.

[7Wannabe5]

Back in the aughts before e-books really took off, I very much wanted to buy an Instabook machine or similar. I thought it would be so cool to have a brick and mortar store with the ability to do small run paper-based publishing on site.

[CS]

@jennypenny
You could set up a subscription service on a place like ream. Only your subscribers would get your content. I think some authors plan on hiding out there.

[jennypenny]

@CS - Thx, I'm looking at options for non-fic.

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I'm leaning towards doing a print run of 1K, giving one each to friends and family with Most Favored Nation status, then sending the rest out into the wild. I'd lose out on the publishing deal but I'd avoid AI and the interwebs (which is more appealing than $$ at this point). I might try to DIY it in paper-bound form like the old version of that Kearny book on nuclear war.

Shit, I do sound like a dinosaur ... a troglodytesaurus.

[shaz]

I second what Jacob said re: if you publish it in any form, it is out there and can be pirated.

One way to DIY it in print is to go through a print on demand company (customer orders and pays, company prints and ships). Cafepress is probably the most well-known print on demand company but search results turn up a number of others. It is a way to avoid dealing with inventory.

[Sclass]

I started down the rabbit hole after reading about Instabook from @7w’s post.

Can’t this be done with standard equipment in the garage? A lot of these items can be bought on Amazon now. (Thermal binders, large paper cutters, printers with collating).

I made some custom note pads in middle school. That is almost a book of sorts. The equipment wasn’t terribly special. The biggest tool was the shear which was able to shear a ream of paper at a time.

Given all the cheap thermal binders on Amazon I’m wondering why the local copy center cannot make paperbacks for you? I think if they can do spiral binding it isn’t a big step to get a thermal binder from Amazon and start printing pulp fiction. Color offsetting used to be a big deal but now anyone can do it.

Am I missing something here? I had some paperback instruction manuals printed up a decade ago. It wasn’t magic. Just color laser jet. Plastic coated paper covers. 80 sheets or so of B&W laser printed glossy paper. Thermal bonded spines. I didn’t think of it as book printing but for all intents and purposes that’s what it was.

Back on Chat GPT. I was trying to figure out the derivative of (X - X^1/2)/X^2 last night and I decided to check my work using Chat GPT. It got it completely wrong. I typed in where the error was and it apologized and corrected the error which was misquoting the quotient rule of differentiation and then it made an algebraic mistake. I corrected it three times and it gave three different answers and they all were wrong. I really have no idea how this machine works but I was originally under the impression it could solve simple math problems. Maybe it’s not good in this way.