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by pjc50 47 days ago
>> The first is when novices in a field are able to produce work that resembles what their seniors produce [...]. > The second is when people generate artifacts in disciplines they were never trained in.

This phrasing made me think of Baudrillard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation , in particular "Simulacra are copies that depict things that either had no original, or that no longer have an original".

The AI produces something that is statistically similar to what it was asked for. A copy, through the weights, of some text selected from all the text it was trained on. A simulacra of good work.
1 comments
rng-concern 47 days ago
I bought this book a year ago but have not read it. It's one of those books that requires effort from the reader, which these days seems in low supply for me. :) I'll have to give it another try.

Recently I commented that: Artificial intelligence produces artificial results.

I liked the double-artificial but I wasn't happy with the meaning. Perhaps Simulacra is more accurate? I will see :)

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QuercusMax 47 days ago
Results are results, though. By "artificial results" do you mean those that merely appear to be results, or do you mean results achieved via nonhuman means?

If I write the exact same code as the AI, our results will be indistinguishable.

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rng-concern 37 days ago
Late reply so not sure if you'll see this.

But I mean: they appear to be results. They look real, but are not. There are subtle errors hidden that the casual observer will not, or even cannot detect.

Obviously there are exceptions to this. Many exceptions. AI right now can probably write most if not all algorithms on par or better than I could. It can put together working prototypes for many ideas I've had and not had time to implement.

But the danger is in assuming that because it can do A, it can do B, because a human that does A can do B.

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Obscurity4340 47 days ago
You might enjoy Speech Central, it decently renders any text or pdfs,epub into an audiobook that you can still read along with or speed read or whatever.

Kinda takes the effort out so you just gotta veg while reading/listening and following along

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