naraburns
nihil supernum
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User ID: 100
naraburns
nihil supernum
13d ago
Simplicity, for starters. I've been using generative AI very lightly and I am not a coder; I still have absolutely no sense for approximating how many tokens any given task would or should actually consume.
A monthly subscription also comes with access to their "cutting edge" models; I assume you can also get that by buying tokens instead but I don't know for sure.
naraburns
nihil supernum
13d ago
My best understanding (which may be out of date) is that you'd be best served by subscribing to the $100-per-month Claude, opening it up, and asking it pretty much exactly what you just asked us. Any time you get to a step you don't understand how to perform, say, "I don't understand what this means, can you break it down more simply for me?"
In other words, I think the resource you're looking for is Claude. That's it. That's the whole list. Though probably you could do it with ChatGPT, too--I just haven't had much luck getting it to seriously drop both the sycophancy and the verbosity to focus on results. Claude seems better geared toward actual production of results.
I have tried similar things with lesser models, with worse (often, unusable) results. It will be interesting to see whether we are converging toward a single "roughly the best LLM we can create" that will eventually be baked into a chip and put in everyone's devices, and how that might impact the AI market landscape. I have a hard time shelling out even $20 per month for LLMs because I so rarely have any use for them, but in those instances where I have had a use, the most expensive models have been actually useful in ways that no other models seem to be.
naraburns
nihil supernum
27d ago
This all sounds basically correct, I think (I haven't really studied "business associations" since I was a law student, though). Provided you're up for taking some individually-directed heat (and I have no reason to think you're not up for this) then by all means: be our beloved tyrant! It just seemed like an option worth mentioning.
Nice to see you outside the Morlock tunnels!
I think one reason we get so much interest in being expanded to a "reddit alternative" is specifically because people want to have a discussion website that isn't hopelessly overrun by ads, AI, and low-effort engagement. The closest thing I'm aware of is StackExchange, but the focus there seems to be clear answers on particular topics rather than discussion (and also for some reason the whole design of that space just seems cluttered to me). Also they are apparently mostly existing to reap profits from AI now? I'm not a coder, y'all probably know more about this than I do.
Anyway my point is that one thing to seriously consider from the outset is organizational structure. Where the data is hosted and who controls it is something that will always matter. Right now the site is functionally a sole proprietorship run on an open codebase (to the best of my understanding) and I think everyone is basically fine with that--as the saying goes, Julius Caesar was a much beloved tyrant. But expanding the community might open you up to publicity that could be easier to navigate if the Motte was e.g. a full-fledged 501(c)(3) with a board of trustees and an explicit mission.
Another thing to seriously consider, on my view, is images. Maybe don't host/display them? Ever, or beyond avatars or something? Many of us can remember the rise and... slump?... of Imgur, which basically came into existence because reddit did such a terrible job handling that sort of thing, but then realized it had a business interest in not sending the bulk of its low-effort engagement off to a different website. If the goal of the Motte is not specifically profit, then someone finding a way to profit from hosting images for the Motte does not represent a threat (the way it did to reddit), but rather an opportunity.
I also think that the CW thread was a great innovation as a pressure valve for the old SSC sub and it would be good to have genuinely non-political subs that could say "hey, here's a link to the irradiated zone if you want to peddle that shit." Defining the CW and clearly cordoning CW communities (but for real, not in the "we just ban rightoid/leftoid causes" way) would be a vast improvement.
But broadly speaking, I am in favor of the site developing in this direction.
I don't like the "writing science fiction" characterization because it reads as inappropriately dismissive. We're not talking about holodecks or matter assemblers; we're talking about a technology that already exists. The only speculation involved is how much better it can actually get. You could in principle train and RLHF and RAG and whatever a personally-aligned model today, you probably just don't have the resources.
Gwern is 100% correct (and far from the first person to notice) that the current business model for AI is the same as every other tech business model in the information age: to take de facto and de jure control of as much of commerce and governance as possible and then rent it back to people in perpetuity. The open source software movement was a reaction to this decades ago. The main difference at present is that AI development is a lot more difficult to do at home (though of course not impossible!), especially while the current players have a hard lock on the anticipated production runs of all the necessary hardware. Memory and storage prices have quadrupled or more; for the first time in my life, desktop computers more than 3 years old have actually appreciated in value.
I agree with the "Guardian Angel" mission as stated. It's the only real effort I've seen from anyone to align AIs properly: with individual humans, rather than with corporate or government values. But I am not optimistic about their chances.
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