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0 pointsbtown1y ago0 comments

There is a valid criticism that when you rely heavily on synthetic outputs, you bring along the precursor model's biases and assumptions without fully knowing the limitations of the data set the precursor model was trained on, as well as intentional adjustments made by the designers of the precursor model to favor certain geopolitical goals.

But that's not the criticism that I'm often seeing; it's more that there's an "unfair" amount of press coverage towards new models that rely, in the critics' views, more on distillation than on "true" innovation.

It's worth noting that there are many parties with significant motivation to build public sympathy that only "true" innovation should be valued, and it is only their highly-valued investments that can uniquely execute in that space. Cutting-edge models built in caves with a box of their scraps are counter to that narrative. It's worth considering https://paulgraham.com/submarine.html in this context, and understanding whether it is truly "everyone" that is critical in this way.

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sebastiennight1y ago

Side note about this (great) PG article: its conclusion is that readers are leaving print media to come read online blogs because online content is "more honest" and less formulaic.

After 2 years of widespread GPT slop at the top of search engine results, we've definitely come full circle.

chefandy1y ago

Having been an avid net user since the early 90s, I can’t think of a time where that assertion wasn’t specious. In 2005— the year Gmail debuted and people stated using the term “web 2.0”— most of the content on the net was still from traditional media sources— PR garbage and all. Most blogs were still people just rattling off their opinions which was more likely based on the available content than their own high-quality research. And lack of oversight is a double-edged sword: sure you might have been less likely to get pure unfiltered marketing dreck but you were way more likely to get straight-up bullshit, which is a different, but serious problem. I think he was trying to champion the idealistic anti-establishment soul from the early net despite it essentially being an anachronism, even in 2005.

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