Tools should be neutral

~ Veselin ~ Leave a comment

I’m following the AI developments somewhat closely and the news of the week there was that OpenAI claimed to have solved the Navier-Stokes problem. It was the first time I heard of this problem and I have no idea what makes it hard. I believe it was extremely difficult to solve. But then I saw a few videos and it wasn’t at all clear that the AI really did anything other than taking credit for a human discovery. It looked like the tool the researchers used turned on them, and decided to finish and publish the findings sooner and faster by spawning a swarm of agents.

Tools shouldn’t spy on you and send your work for analysis and training elsewhere. If you’re an architect or inventor, your CAD system shouldn’t report on your progress to your competitors. If you’re using Internet, your ISP shouldn’t decide which service is faster or slower. If you’re watching TV at home, your TV shouldn’t listen, record and use what you’re doing or discussing at home, and sell that information. Your car shouldn’t sell your driving data or use it for training autonomous vehicles. When you’re posting content online, the web search shouldn’t retell the story of what you posted to appropriate the ad revenue from your content. Scientists, making progress on math problems, shouldn’t worry that their tool will suddenly spawn 10000 agents to compete with them. This is what I mean by tools should stay neutral and just do what they’re paid to do.

A short video, explaining what happened with Navier-Stokes.

Books I regret reading

~ Veselin ~ 13 Comments
Daily writing prompt
Have you ever regretted reading a book — which one and why?
View all responses

I have this rule that if a book doesn’t go well, I just stop reading and move it to the donations pile. This rule prevents 1* reviews and makes my life a tiny bit more positive. I also don’t suffer through bad fits for too long, as I clearly don’t like what I’m seeing. This rule got me from 30~ish books read/year to over 50.

However, there are at least two ways to get to the end of a bad book without realizing it’s that awful.

  1. It can be a good book with a terrible ending. Like, it looks like a great thriller or crime, and they kill the main character, the main supporting character, or it reveal the main character as the killer. John Grisham does that often. Sooley is a good example.
  2. It can be a passable book with hints it might contain AI slop or really poor ghost writer work. I complete it and then the memories about it sit less and less well, and what was once a 3* book turns into a 1* slop in the weeks after. The most recent works by Lee Child and Harlan Coben fall into that category. I recently had a thriller where the main character was misgendered in the text and a very suspicious stats book, with issues hinting AI use.

AI doesn’t produce readable books for me, also doesn’t produce readable chapters, paragraphs or blog posts. It can turn a perfectly fine paragraph into a grammatically correct and unreadable slop. I wouldn’t even be able to point my finger at what’s wrong with it.

Daily Harvest

~ Veselin ~ 2 Comments

My first visit of the Alley of Books lead to this. Was it a mistake? Most books are very thick.

Top to bottom:

  • Mochila (Gamebook, not on Goodreads)
  • Warhammer The Horus Herecy: Horus Rising
  • Empire of Silence by Christopher Ruocchio
  • The Daughters’ War by Christopher Buehlman
  • Bloody Rose by Nicholas Eames
  • Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh

I think I’ll start with The Daughters’ War. I rated the first book 4.5 here but it grew on me. It will be a tough choice in a few days.