Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Martin - Oh... @martinoh.bsky.social · 10h

This looks a lot like the definition for planning. The process in AI to reach the outcome is not the same as in humans, but the word 'plan' is essentially phenomenological and doesn't speak to the underlying mechanics. Is caveating not the most appropriate approach in the face of possible ambiguity?

Martin - Oh... @martinoh.bsky.social · 10h

As the proverbial Idiot With Internet Access, I have no understanding of cognitive science, but I'm interested in how we choose terms. We know for example that current large-scale LLMs do not simply pick the next token of output, but can identify an end-point for text and work towards it.

1

Martin - Oh... @martinoh.bsky.social · 18h

Discomfort tends to be indicated by crying and waving of limbs, where pleasure shows up as proto-giggling and waving of limbs. Further differentiation has the appearance to me of being developmental; it suggests an early distinction between nice and not nice, but I'm not yet seeing more (mea culpa).

Martin - Oh... @martinoh.bsky.social · 18h

Entirely reasonable, and there's no doubt that an infant differentiates a physical pain stimulus from a pleasure one. On the other hand, it could be argued that a new-born infant acts in a functionally similar way to any negative stimulus - actual pain, mild hunger, tiredness, 'boredom', and so on.

1

Martin - Oh... @martinoh.bsky.social · 19h

Idiot with Internet access here, so dumb question: what does "*like that*" actually imply - is there a knowledge and understanding of what pain is that stage, or are there simpler underlying mechanisms that lead to reflex arcs, which can act as training inputs to further neural path development?

1 1

Martin - Oh... @martinoh.bsky.social · 2d

Oh, that's - well not easy, but addressable - you build physics simulators, essentially the same idea as in many video games, and create virtual environments for AI for robotic solutions to pre-train in. It's been done for a while and some of the results are quite interesting...

3

Martin - Oh... @martinoh.bsky.social · 2d

Yup. Rejoining means getting the public to agree to politically sensitive things like the loss of the pound and of Bank of England monetary control, accepting actual free movement, and less representation for a much larger contribution than we used to make. Now is not the time for those fights.

1 1 3

Martin - Oh... @martinoh.bsky.social · 2d

I don't. It has the feel of one of those bureaucratic changes where a junior with an Excel spreadsheet says "Well if we push this number to here, it changes this one by this much", and by the time it's risen through the system, it's assumed that it must have been thought through and it's signed off.

Martin - Oh... @martinoh.bsky.social · 2d

Probably my most significant issue with this government, is that they seem quite bad at assessing the relationship of the perceived direct cost of their changes and actual impact. I have witnessed the same thing often in businesses, usually where middle managers run on assumptions without validation

1 1

Martin - Oh... @martinoh.bsky.social · 4d

What he actually said was that if it was a legal requirement in this country and not in others, then it would kill off development here, which you may consider to be a start, but is some way from killing the whole AI industry.

Martin - Oh... @martinoh.bsky.social · 5d

Granny Weatherwax would almost certainly have defended a trans-woman's right to live as a woman. It is difficult to find something in the text though that indicates whether she would have considered a trans-woman and an assigned-at-birth woman to actually be the same, hence the attempt to co-opt her

Martin - Oh... @martinoh.bsky.social · 5d

Carrot's views are acknowledged and respected by those around him, but not actually shared. Most of the characters in Monstrous Regiment are described as adopting male dress not because they consider themselves male, but because a male presentation provided access to different opportunities.

1

Martin - Oh... @martinoh.bsky.social · 5d

Some people will argue that a character like Cheery/Cheri is clearly transgender, whereas others will note that the character is never shown considering themselves to be of a different type to that assigned at birth. The closest to that model is actually Carrot, who considers himself to be a dwarf.

1

Martin - Oh... @martinoh.bsky.social · 5d

It's safe to say that Sir Terry's protagonists reflected his own general principle that people are people and that they are entitled to present as they like. Beyond that, the text can be read through a variety of lenses though, leading to differing interpretations.

1 1

Martin - Oh... @martinoh.bsky.social · 10d

My last comment; I'm bored now. I haven't said anything about your character, merely noted that your approach to commenting follows a predictable pattern: you make categoric assertions and fail to provide informative answers to direct questions. And you never requested another perspective before now

1