(please don't top post: it confuses the hell out of everyone) > On Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 7:02 PM Dan Ritter <[email protected]> wrote:
[...] > > Yes, I too have always found that rolling random numbers and > > hoping that they don't lie to me is an effective way of running > > complex systems. On Mon, Mar 16, 2026 at 04:50:50PM -0700, tom arnall wrote: > Rolling random numbers. To what are you referring with this term? Generative models (and that's what those chatbots and image generators currently being marketed are) basically run a random number generator to pic between nearly identically probable choices. Very roughly put, they feed a statistical pattern recognizer with white noise, and the most probable recognized patterns become its output. Then, of course, there is a lot of manual work going into avoiding problematic behaviour (giving wrong medical advice, illegaly giving legal advice, yadda, yadda: whatever we, in the "first world" consider yucky). This work is mostly done in low income places (Nairobi, f. ex.). Cheers -- t
signature.asc
Description: PGP signature
