Yeah, I think this is conversation is entering the just try to build it territory, but definitely worth a try.

There’s !localllama@sh.itjust.works

Thanks. I’ll have to get through my current project, but this will be a good resource when I do more on LLMs.

Rich people can be fools, and a fool and his money are soon parted. That’s why much of the economy is just everyone trying to scam everyone else.

I think it’s very much a “how much data on this exist” sort of problem for most of these. Like I can pick out bacteria from fungi on an augur plate trivially, but I don’t know if there are databases of augur plates characterizing different growths with different background colors and all the diversity that real life has. Honestly, I haven’t tried this yet. It might be able to get it just fine or might be able to get it if I backlight the plate - of course, at that stage there are other programs for detecting colonies.

The dream, for me, is to get it to understand the protein structure files and DNA sequence files then hook it up to some lab robotics and automate experiments that are mostly trivial but slightly dynamic. Maybe start with something simple like cloning then build out to other methods. Some of this stuff exists already but companies charge you a fortune and go out of business (or get bought up and discontinued) constantly, so it kinda needs to be stuff I can build and maintain myself – or FOSS.

Even for purely computer stuff, anytime I try to get the AI to help with my proteins, it’s functionally useless because it doesn’t have a way to “see” the protein’s structure file. I can write my own scripts to help with that, but I’ll have to work on the connection between the language the AI thinks in and the actual things my code detects. Or maybe I can tell it to ask questions based on the writing then run code that analyzes the protein to give answers to specific questions… Even then, much of what I’d want help with looking at proteins is how to write analyses of points in 3D space, and while it has helped me pick the right algorithms (sometimes), I’m haven’t really been able to give it enough information to let it check that things are being implemented correctly (I think this is alignment). That might something like hooking it up to pymol (3D viewer) or it might just be a bit too dumb. It’s hard to say without trying it, and it’s a lot of work for something it’s likely to get get confused about even with the ability to “look” at the protein structure.

I feel like, for coding, one thing I’m going to have to get it to do is stop after it makes a function or something so I can check that it’s still going where it’s supposed to go or tell it what the next function needs to do. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll start with lots of hand holding then slowly build it up until it can reliably do more or I can’t get it to be reliable enough. Maybe there’s a coding community on lemmy that’s a decent place to talk shop on how to build these scripts up and what local models are good at what?

Is there a solution to this whole government censorship problem? I don’t know networking, but it seems like the centralized systems get the central nodes shut down and the decentralized systems are too easily tracked and/or too inefficient. Reticulum looked interesting, but it was still pretty traceable, and appears to only really be for messaging apps since you have to know where you’re sending to already. Your motion idea has some merit to it, but I was kinda hoping for something more on the software side.

Yeah, I was thinking about the code too. I think the looping output explanation makes a lot of sense and puts the “Agentic AI” into a healthier/more-realistic framework.

I’m a lot more inclined to write my own loops than trust someone else’s AI, but with that framework I’m not sure how useful these “AI agents” will be for most non-text based problems since that’d require converting back and forth between text based mediums and whatever medium the problem is in which seems very problematic. For code I could try giving prompts to catch typos, makes tests, and improve functions. Even this seems pretty limited since usually the AI can’t see the larger picture identify the problem and plan a solution on its own. Or maybe it can in some contexts, but not the stuff I’m working on – maybe my work isn’t routine enough, Idk. I have been using it find learn algorithms and get numpy notations, but it just doesn’t grasp what math needs to be done when I try to explain my problems.

I’ll have to think more on how to set up loops that are more generally useful and won’t require more work in making it sure it’s doing what I want it to do than work it gets done.

I apologize if the context/background comes off as an agenda. It’s not that I’m trying to convince people one way or another, but I am concerned the anti-AI sentiment may be causing people to dismiss useful tools. I was attempting to provide some of my thoughts including that concern as context to my more general question of what I might need to do to properly utilize the tools.

If it helps, I agree that you shouldn’t spend any money on anything AI. To me, most “generative” AI is like a programming package. NumPy is a genuinely a really big deal, and coding without it is foolish, but people who don’t code shouldn’t worry about it. It’s not yet clear to me where AI agents fall as a tool in the world, and I’m genuinely trying to work that out. It might be useful purely as a coding tool – at the very least I think I want to try it as a coding tool. I’m also a biologist so I’m very keen to use robots to automate routine tasks – not sure if the AI will be a tool to build that automation or be a part of it.

I’ve also seen the multiple sub AIs thing. I think they have tools too, but there is definitely an element of that.

Bless you

Eh, give it twenty years.

In that order or …?

Cereal is runny oatmeal, which is thick soup, which is heavily dressed salad; thus, cereal is salad.

I still think universities and academic societies should be hosting instances and funding them with dedicated endowments. It’d also provide a great way to request more money from people who feel a reciprocal obligation due to using the instance.

Yeah, maybe for paper ballots have the default as equal to lottery than let people add numbers with negative being below the lottery position? Having a default solves a lot of practical problems, but I think summing all everything will still take computers. It’s just too much to determine what’s greater than what for every relation for every ballot then sum everything. Maybe doable for small numbers of people, but not for a whole city. Still paper ballot give something to go back and reference then you can use a program hash to validate the count.

When voters are required to rank every candidate vote splitting isn’t an issue. This is actually easier when there is a lottery rank because you can make a default ranking as equal to (or below) lottery, then just pull people above or below. Strategically, I think the lottery option is more a “candidates below this rank suck” option, which forces politicians to be at least better than random citizens from the perspective of most citizens.

I made a top level comment on this too.

In voting theory, there are these voting graphs where every candidates is a node. If you rank every candidate, you can draw directional lines between each node then sum all the ranking from all the voters to find a cumulative ranking.

Most people oppose this system for the practical reason of no one wanting to rank every candidate at the ballot box; however, I believe I’ve found a clever work around to this complaint. You have a none option (or a lottery option) and you allow people to rank people equally. From there it’s pretty trivial to set up a tablet or something where you can send candidates to the bottom or top and modify the <=> symbols between them. Everyone starts in a random order below the None/Lottery Option. If you want to get fancy you could even give people the option of grouping and moving an entire party on the tablet. In the cumulative ranking, anyone equal or below the None / Lottery option gets tossed. If it’s an election where you need multiple people just start at the top of the ranking and work your way down. Once you hit None/Lottery, your repeat the lottery or go without for any further seats.

The None/Lottery Option also prevents it from being weak to large numbers of candidates as frankly people will just ignore the vast majority of candidates leaving them below the none/lottery option. In a polarized society people will put the opposing party below the none/lottery option. You can vote [lottery > blues > reds] or [blues > lottery > reds] and it’s the same result for red vs blue.

There’s a slightly more advanced version of this where you put numbers on each relation then normalize. It gets complaints of not meeting the condorcet criterion, but it’s actually superior. I think this gets too complicated at the voting booth though, so whatever.

Some people do criticize this because strategic voting can get weird, but since this system has a none/lottery option that argument doesn’t hold water. If the population “strategically” votes [blue > yellow > lottery > red] and [red > yellow > lottery > blue] then [yellow > lottery = red = blue] is the favored result. They could easily swap yellow and lottery and get [red = blue = lottery > yellow]. They made their choice. That’s democracy, we ought to respect it.

Also, also, if it’s truly equal e.g. [red=blue > lottery ] just flip a coin. It’s unlikely to be truly equal but we’re already accepting some luck in this system.

One concern I have with direct proportional representation is that it will create secure seats, which no longer respond to their constituents. Competitive seats have to worry a lot more about how to satisfy their constituents, and can’t easily get away with corruption.

I like the idea of adding a lottery option to some sort of ranked choice. I’m perfectly fine electing good politicians, but if a majority of people think they’re corrupt, we should be able to rank a lottery option above them.

I’m fine with re-running if the chosen person opts out, but I don’t like the opt-in versions. I’m also not fond of some of the statistical biasing some people advocate with the system – a straight lottery where everyone has equal odds. I’d compromise on including felons, but personally I think including them incentivizes rehabilitation.

I also worry that this effectively gives power to public servants who are not necessarily good people – wasn’t Stalin originally a secretary? I can see every think tank offering up people with their own agendas to work in a new office but having an established office with entrenched interests also seems super dangerous.

Right! Plus, it’d be an ideal route to solicit donations to the university - people are more attached to their social media than sports ball teams. Not hosting lemmy and mastadon instances is practically throwing away money!

While I don’t disagree with the transparency Mozilla is advocates, I think it fails to address the underlying problem then tries to compensate by picking and choosing winners (which arguably is the same as the underlying problem). The underlying problem is the ad-incentivized watchtime algorithm, which isn’t a technical issue but a financing one.

I’ve been an advocate of endowments for a long time, but this is just another area where they’d be ideal. They supply a small steady income to support a relatively cheap product. As the website grows you can either do temporary ads to grow the endowment or ask for donations. Either way, it’s not that hard to fund operations this small. Add in federated systems like lemmy and each individual operation is even smaller and cheaper.

Heck, universities who are already accustom to dealing with endowments would be ideal places to host lemmy instances. I can definitely imagine offering to donate 10k to an endowment dedicated to hosting a lemmy and mastadon instance with open to registration to students, staff, and alumni. Maybe coordinate with the computer science and IT folks. Allow some percentage of the endowment income to go to “salary overhead” while the rest just funds the server. Point out that the university would essentially be creating the perfect route to solicit donations and they might do it themselves… Honestly, I’m probably gonna flesh this idea out and email the people at my university because it’s just too perfect of a solution.

There was a similar post recently about Cambridge leaving twitter, and it got me thinking that universities are really the ideal organizations to host lemmy servers. They have a vested interest in truth and community building. They have a decent enough sense of free speech to stay federated with most other instances. They have pre-existing communities on topic ranging from clubs to technical subjects. Users can confirm their identities by association with the universities, which will keep things civil. Obviously I don’t think they should be the only instances - anonymity has it’s place and value - but I really think universities should be hosting instances.