[FRIAM] Datasets as Experience

[glen]

Sorry. I also thought it was funny. But I think my reaction is more to the meaning of the phrase "a set of files [...] that represent human ethics." That we can even make sense of that phrase is amazing. Really, it's a lot like Eric's "word salad". We can say such things and actually mean something. Or we can say such things and kindasorta mean something. Or we can say such things and mean nothing at all (just calculate what the most likely next word should be).

I've been in long-standing confusion about the meaning of "ethics". And almost without fail, if/when I say that to a group of people, particularly men, everyone jumps in and explains to me what they think it means. Of course, each of their explanations is different and often pairwise incommensurate. So, if they're sedate, by the end of the conversation, I can convince most people *they* don't know what "ethics" means, either. Add to that the implicit question of whether non-humans have ethics and the file metaphor (from paper to bits on disk to orchestrated bits on multiple disks to in-context learning modified bits on multiple disks), then that sentence is all over the map of possible meanings. That was supposed to be the point of my remark ... in the context of DaveW's question about the semantics of LLM workflows.



On 2/8/23 19:49, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> I don't know what Bing uses for storage, or how it relates to OpenAI's added codebase.   There are older references to use of TensorFlow at OpenAI, but things may have changed.   The "file" would likely be the serialization of the (distributed) tensors of the ChatGPT model.   One possible way storage works is with Azure Blobs but I see they also use more conventional POSIX-like filesystems like Lustre.   I'm not sure what the point of your remark is.   It seems obvious to me a well-placed data engineer at Microsoft could identify the exact scope of the secondary storage of Bing's neural networks.   My point is that passable cultural knowledge will probably fit in a rack of disk drives (or maybe even a few?).   I find that humorous, but I'm told unusual things amuse me.
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of glen
> Sent: Wednesday, February 8, 2023 12:54 PM
> To: friam at redfish.com
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Datasets as Experience
> 
> Ha! It's cool you used the phrase "a set of files". What does "file" mean? I mean, hell, we can't really even well-define "set". The other day, some internet person was complaining that they wanted to leave Twitter now that Elno's taken it to hell. But they needed a Delete. I took the liberty of explaining that you can only delete things if there's only 1 of that thing. Any distributed implementation, at best, makes deletion difficult or, at worst, impossible. My example was a journaling file system, a boon for irresponsible "rm -rf *" people and data forensics, but a bane for Elno-types. We're so lost in metaphor, we can't even see our hand in front of our face.
> 
> On 2/8/23 11:47, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>> I read that Bing won’t write a cover letter if asked.  I love the idea of a set of files sitting on a filesystem at Microsoft that represent human ethics.  It reminds me of people that complain about being characterized by their skill sets.  I think we are going to learn just how little we are.
> 

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