MS Chief Techonology officer Kevin Scott Behind The Tech blog
March 25, 2023 12:00 AM Subscribe
Bill Gates and Kevin Scott give us an hour on AI and the rapidly evolving future of computing. Explain it to me like I'm five years old? OK, not five years old maybe, not totally tech blind but I know little of AI. This podcast seemed aimed at people with my level of understanding; it was a good use of my time to spend an hour with these
It raised good questions for me but a post isn't for that: "Just the facts." "Reportage, not color commentary." So I'll put my questions/ideas later on. Here's some facts: these people have been iin tech since the dawn of MS-DOS, since the dawn of Apple. They give color to their careers, to what they have done and what they are doing.
Like Gates or not, he reads 80 books a year, some light but most of them books I'd have to read six books to get to page one. He's not building a rocket and flying around like a dope, his focus is here and now. Here's some color I'll give you: He's had "Infinite Jest" on his "To Read" list and he hasn't wasted his time doing so.
It raised good questions for me but a post isn't for that: "Just the facts." "Reportage, not color commentary." So I'll put my questions/ideas later on. Here's some facts: these people have been iin tech since the dawn of MS-DOS, since the dawn of Apple. They give color to their careers, to what they have done and what they are doing.
Like Gates or not, he reads 80 books a year, some light but most of them books I'd have to read six books to get to page one. He's not building a rocket and flying around like a dope, his focus is here and now. Here's some color I'll give you: He's had "Infinite Jest" on his "To Read" list and he hasn't wasted his time doing so.
My idiot MAGA BIL up in Montana thinks billg belongs with Fauci and Soros in prison but I kinda like the guy
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 10:43 AM on March 25, 2023
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 10:43 AM on March 25, 2023
when making the first comment I wanted to check the spelling of Simonyi, so:
who was the Hungarian guy who worked at Parc?
The Hungarian guy who worked at Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) you are probably referring to is János (John) Gábor Tardos. He is a computer scientist and mathematician who has made significant contributions to the fields of theoretical computer science and combinatorial optimization. Tardos was born in Hungary and later moved to the United States, where he worked at Xerox PARC, a famous research center in Palo Alto, California.
no the guy who went to microsoft
My apologies for the confusion. The Hungarian person you are referring to is probably László (Les) Bélády. He is a computer scientist who worked at Xerox PARC and later joined Microsoft. Bélády is best known for his work on cache algorithms, particularly the development of the Bélády's Min algorithm, which is an optimal page replacement strategy.
last name starts with s
I apologize for my previous mistakes. The Hungarian computer scientist you are referring to is likely Charles Simonyi. Charles Simonyi is known for his work at Xerox PARC and later at Microsoft. At Microsoft, he oversaw the development of Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel. Simonyi played a key role in the development of the Hungarian Notation, a naming convention for programming languages that is still in use today.
... i.e. the typical interactions with GPT to actually get a straight answer from it.
What OpenAI is moving to with this technology is better layering of it within the larger context of fact-bases, calculation engines, so it become a generalist interoperating layer between specialized software applications like media creation applications (Powerpoint, Photoshop, Blender, Unity . . . etc etc).
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 11:08 AM on March 25, 2023
who was the Hungarian guy who worked at Parc?
The Hungarian guy who worked at Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) you are probably referring to is János (John) Gábor Tardos. He is a computer scientist and mathematician who has made significant contributions to the fields of theoretical computer science and combinatorial optimization. Tardos was born in Hungary and later moved to the United States, where he worked at Xerox PARC, a famous research center in Palo Alto, California.
no the guy who went to microsoft
My apologies for the confusion. The Hungarian person you are referring to is probably László (Les) Bélády. He is a computer scientist who worked at Xerox PARC and later joined Microsoft. Bélády is best known for his work on cache algorithms, particularly the development of the Bélády's Min algorithm, which is an optimal page replacement strategy.
last name starts with s
I apologize for my previous mistakes. The Hungarian computer scientist you are referring to is likely Charles Simonyi. Charles Simonyi is known for his work at Xerox PARC and later at Microsoft. At Microsoft, he oversaw the development of Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel. Simonyi played a key role in the development of the Hungarian Notation, a naming convention for programming languages that is still in use today.
... i.e. the typical interactions with GPT to actually get a straight answer from it.
What OpenAI is moving to with this technology is better layering of it within the larger context of fact-bases, calculation engines, so it become a generalist interoperating layer between specialized software applications like media creation applications (Powerpoint, Photoshop, Blender, Unity . . . etc etc).
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 11:08 AM on March 25, 2023
It's not a question of liking or disliking these individuals. It's important to remember that these are two people who are heavily invested (and not merely in a general sense, they are invested in one corporation which recently licensed ChatGPT and has long-term AI goals). And in particular Scott is a current employee answerable to a board of directors.
Understanding what AI means and predicting the future are always fraught endeavors, but it's especially wise to be wary of people who have a stake and are deeply vested in guiding the public discourse.
posted by splitpeasoup at 11:43 AM on March 25, 2023 [9 favorites]
Understanding what AI means and predicting the future are always fraught endeavors, but it's especially wise to be wary of people who have a stake and are deeply vested in guiding the public discourse.
posted by splitpeasoup at 11:43 AM on March 25, 2023 [9 favorites]
My idiot MAGA BIL up in Montana thinks billg belongs with Fauci and Soros in prison but I kinda like the guy
Uh… which guy?
posted by dragstroke at 1:44 PM on March 25, 2023 [3 favorites]
Uh… which guy?
posted by dragstroke at 1:44 PM on March 25, 2023 [3 favorites]
Related SLYT : Lex Fridman in conversation with Sam Altman
fascinating discussion
posted by burr1545 at 3:26 PM on March 25, 2023 [2 favorites]
fascinating discussion
posted by burr1545 at 3:26 PM on March 25, 2023 [2 favorites]
Infinite Jest is a waste of time? Alright
posted by bxvr at 8:33 PM on March 25, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by bxvr at 8:33 PM on March 25, 2023 [1 favorite]
I was going to watch this, but after the dire warning up thread I think I'd better err on the side of caution lest I become propagandized. I'm not sure I have the mental fortitude the endure this kind of deviousness.
posted by some loser at 6:05 AM on March 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by some loser at 6:05 AM on March 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
layering of it within the larger context of fact-bases, calculation engines
ChatGPT Gets Its “Wolfram Superpowers”!
@leopoldasch: "Best thing I've read on GPT-4's capabilities. You should read it. Impressive qualitative jump over ChatGPT. It's definitely not just memorizing, it's learning to think and reason." :P
posted by kliuless at 11:59 PM on March 28, 2023
ChatGPT Gets Its “Wolfram Superpowers”!
@leopoldasch: "Best thing I've read on GPT-4's capabilities. You should read it. Impressive qualitative jump over ChatGPT. It's definitely not just memorizing, it's learning to think and reason." :P
posted by kliuless at 11:59 PM on March 28, 2023
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"natural language is as profound as any of these previous milestones"
"every advance lowers the bar as to who can take advantage"
"this LLM demo is same scale as the demo I got from Simonyi in 1979 at PARC"
"this will move faster than the previous breakthroughs since there are more people working on it now"
My list of PC milestones (kinda forced to keep the cadence):
CPU ➝ PC ➝ bitmap I/O ➝ WWW ➝ DSL ➝ iPhone ➝ Cloud ➝ LLM
1971 ➝ ~1980 ➝ ~1987 ➝ 1994 ➝ ~2000 ➝ 2007 ➝ ~2016 ➝ 2023
My credit card has a crappy export function for current month charges so I wrote a screen-scraper in C# to process the content which is unstructured but regular (a repeating set of 5 items for each charge). Last night instead of my usual process, I decided to just paste this column of text into GPT-4 session and giving it a simple command to "take the data and break it out by rows" it was able to do that fine. It fell down when I asked it to "add all the food charges" (off by $10 for some reason) but asking it to create a running total it got the right answer. Fun stuff.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 10:29 AM on March 25, 2023 [2 favorites]