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naraburns  nihil supernum  3yr ago (text post)   33742 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 7, 2022

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And now, out of seemingly nowhere, the ideal computer interface has become "tell the computer in a somewhat specialized version of English what you want it to do, and it does its best to produce an output that matches that request based on its understanding of the terms in the prompt."

Well, not out of seemingly nowhere, is it? Siri and other similar applications came out like a decade ago, and it's clear that both the industry and academia have been working on improving that sort of technology ever since.

There was indeed a seeming golden era starting around 2017 where voice assistants became actually effective at assisting.

But anything more complex than "Add [x] to my grocery list" or "give me directions to [address]" tended to elude them. Multi-step instructions were right out.

GPT-2 was the first indication that we might be able to overcome that limit, and GPT-3, to my understanding, was the necessary precondition to everything we're seeing now.

Although perhaps I should say its less that the capabilities weren't foreseen/foreseeable based on the tech of the time, and more like they improved much faster than expected in quick bursts.

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