• 2 Posts
  • 96 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: December 18th, 2023

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  • “They” is the copyright industry. The same people, who are suing AI companies for money, want the Internet Archive gone for more money.

    I share the fear that the copyrightists reach a happy compromise with the bigger AI companies and monopolize knowledge. But for now, AI companies are fighting for Fair Use. The Internet Archive is already benefitting from those precedents.







  • It’s a bit of a split among libertarians. Some very notable figures like Ayn Rand were strong believers in IP. In fact, Ayn Rand’s dogmas very much align with what is falsely represented as left-wing thought in the context of AI.

    It’s really irritating for me how much conservative capitalist ideals are passed off as left-wing. Like, attitudes on corporations channel Adam Smith. I think of myself as pragmatic and find that Smith or even Hayek had some good points (not Rand, though). But it’s absolutely grating how uneducated that all is. Worst of all, it makes me realize that for all the anti-capitalist rhetoric, the favored policies are all about making everything worse.




  • For fastest inference, you want to fit the entire model in VRAM. Plus, you need a few GB extra for context.

    Context means the text (+images, etc) it works on. That’s the chat log, in the case of a chatbot, plus any texts you might want summarized/translated/ask questions about.

    Models can be quantized, which is a kind of lossy compression. They get smaller but also dumber. As with JPGs, the quality loss is insignificant at first and absolutely worth it.

    Inference can be split between GPU and CPU, substituting VRAM with normal RAM. Makes it slower, but you’ll probably will still feel that it’s smooth.

    Basically, it’s all trade-offs between quality, context size, and speed.



  • It’s also funny how Lemmy is buying up this narrative.

    The entire US economy is currently being propped up by growth in the AI/tech sector.

    What’s happening is that Dementia Don is curb-stomping the US economy. AI investments, mainly in data centers, are the only thing that still seems promising. When you are on a trek and someone leads you through Death Valley, while pouring out all the water, you shouldn’t blame the last horse that still keeps going.

    Putting the blame in the right place would certainly help, with a view toward the mid-terms.

    Financially: Diversify. Make sure that you are not completely dependent on what happens in the US. But mind that Europe comes with its own imponderable risks (ie Putin). Same with China. Maybe some old leader dies and the new crew runs everything into the ground; they go to war with Taiwan, that sort of thing.


  • I agree with everything. The thing is, I’ve been thinking about the psychology behind this lately.

    When Fedi-Fans complain about Bluesky, it is usually based on the misunderstanding that it also is instance based. It really doesn’t seem to occur to many that things might be done differently. But I think it may go a little deeper.

    A common complaint is that it’s too expensive to run a full relay. People want to self-host it all. They want to feel that they are in control and don’t need anyone. It’s not particularly rational but people do lots of silly things chasing that feeling. The rational start would be to move somewhere remote and grow your own food. Instead, people buy a pick-up truck or degoogle their phone.

    That architecture also appeals to a more tribal mindset. An instance is “our” place. We just pull up the drawbridge when bad people come and we are safe here in “our” castle.

    I think to some people that is more appealing than the more open design of atproto.

    On Bluesky, there is all this waffle about some people trying to get someone banned. They might find such tribal architecture more appealing.