There's some funny comments going on in this thread. Understandably so. What could be more divisive an issue than AI on a silicon valley forum!?
As a brit, I found it to be a really great documentary about the fact that you can be idealistic and still make it. There are, for sure, numerous reasons to give Deepmind shit: Alphabet, potential arms usage, "we're doing research, we're not responsible". The Oppenheimer aspect is not to be lost, we all have to take responsibility for wielding technology.
I was more anti-Deepmind than pro before this, but the truth is as I get older it's nicer to see someone embodying the aspiration of wanton benevolence (for whatever reason) based on scientific reasoning, than to not. To keep it away from the US and acknowledge the benefits of spreading the proverbial "love" to the benefit of all (US included) shows a level of consideration that should not be under-acknowledged.
I like this documentary. Does AGI and the search for it scare me? Hell yes. So do killer mutant spiders descending on earth post nuclear holocaust. It's all about probabilities. To be honest: disease X freaks me out more than a superintelligence built by an organisation willing to donate the research to solve the problems of disease X. Google are assbiscuits, but Deepmind point in the right direction (I know more about their weather and climate forecasting efforts). This at least gave me reason to think some heart is involved...
Honestly I've got so much respect for the candour of this video. Quite rightly there's a lot of brilliant nuggets here to perhaps one of the best things about Windows throughout the ages!
I really love Python for it's expedience, but type hints still feel like they don't belong in the language. They don't seem to come with the benefits of optimisation that you get with static typed languages. As someone who uses C and Julia (and wishes they had time for Rust), introducing solid typing yields better end results at a minimum, or is a requirement at the other end of the scale.
The extra typing clarification in python makes the code harder to read. I liked python because it was easy to do something quickly and without that cognitive overhead. Type hints, and they feel like they're just hints, don't yield enough of a benefit for me to really embrace them yet.
Perhaps that's just because I don't use advanced features of IDEs. But then I am getting old :P
EDIT: also, this massively depends on what you're doing with the language! I don't have huge customer workloads to consider any longer..!
> The extra typing clarification in python makes the code harder to read
It’s funny, because for me is quite the opposite: I find myself reading Python more easily when there are type annotations.
One caveat might be: for that to happen, I need to know that type checking is also in place, or else my brain dismissed annotations in that they could just be noise.
I guess this is why in Julia or Rust or C you have this stronger feeling that types are looking after you.
I think the face they fundamentally don't look after you is where my resistance comes from. Will try and evaluate some newer code that uses them and see how I get on a bit more :)
> They don't seem to come with the benefits of optimisation that you get with static typed languages
They don't. And cannot, for compatibility reasons. Aside from setting some dunders on certain objects (which are entirely irrelevant unless you're doing some crazy metaprogramming thing), type annotations have no effect on the code at runtime. The Python runtime will happily bytecode-compile and execute code with incorrect type annotations, and a type-checking tool really can't do anything to prevent that.
Remembering project where type hints would have been helpful to grok the code I do now mostly like them. They are useful when you come back after days or weeks and try to remember what does this function produce and what does this one actually take in.
And Python always was rather strongly typed, so you anyway had to consider the types. Now you get notes. Which often do help.
> The extra typing clarification in python makes the code harder to read.
It depends what you mean by "read". If you literally mean you're doing a weird Python poetry night then sure they're sort of "extra stuff" that gets in the way of your reading of `fib`.
But most people think of "reading code" and reading and understanding code, and in that case they definitely make it easier.
As someone who has read code as easily as English for decades (which is apparently rare, if my co-workers are any indication), too many type annotations clutter it up and make it a lot harder to read. And this is after having used Typescript a lot in the past year and liking that system - it works well because so much can be inferred.
I'm in my 40s now, but when I was very young I had quite a rough time living in shared accommodation. It was people reaching out and asking me if I wanted to go out, whether or not I could, that in the same way stuck with me as helping to deal with being lonely. I still have the memory of peoples kindness and this story reminded me of those kindnesses. It's kind of a beautiful memory to have, even when the times were dark.
My interpretation is that Alexei might well have understood that Anna felt lonely / homesick. The reaching out could well have been simply sympathetic and well thought through to help include someone. That's what people did for me when I was young and out of my depth. Those people probably helped steer me into a good place when it could've gone bad.
It's always nice to reflect on the kindness of others. :)
This is really lush. Instantly it brightened up my evening. This kind of experimentation is always amazing to see.
As many seem to have mentioned below, it brings back memories of Rebirth in some ways. What it also reminds me of is the beautiful results you could have by plugging some simple modules together to create soundscapes. The limits are the things that provide some semblance of freedom and this is no different. Greetings from a fellow UK acid (techno) head! :P
Very glad to see a tutorial like this. Make is something I've used relentlessly because it just works, but I know I'm missing out a lot more that it can help with because of my feeling that the docs are inaccessible. Knowing that this is here waiting for the day when a project calls for something just a little more means I won't bloat out my development workflow. Something a little more friendly than the make docs themselves lowers the barrier for me, nice one! :)
I love posts like this. As a software engineer slowly gaining confidence in the analytical side of physical modelling, it really helps to see insights like this. Thanks for sharing! :)
Kudos for writing this, it's always worth flagging up the utility of a format that just is what it is, for the benefit of all. Commas can also create fun ambiguity, as that last sentence demonstrates. :P
CSV is lovely. It isn't trying to be cool or legendary. It works for the reasons the author proposes, but isn't trying to go further.
I work in a work of VERY low power devices and CSV sometimes is all you need for a good time.
If it doesn't need to be complicated, it shouldn't be. There are always times when I think to myself CSV fits and that is what makes it a legend. Are those times when I want to parallelise or deal with gigs of data in one sitting. Nope. There are more complex formats for that. CSV has a place in my heart too.
Thanks for reminding me of the beauty of this legendary format... :)
As a brit, I found it to be a really great documentary about the fact that you can be idealistic and still make it. There are, for sure, numerous reasons to give Deepmind shit: Alphabet, potential arms usage, "we're doing research, we're not responsible". The Oppenheimer aspect is not to be lost, we all have to take responsibility for wielding technology.
I was more anti-Deepmind than pro before this, but the truth is as I get older it's nicer to see someone embodying the aspiration of wanton benevolence (for whatever reason) based on scientific reasoning, than to not. To keep it away from the US and acknowledge the benefits of spreading the proverbial "love" to the benefit of all (US included) shows a level of consideration that should not be under-acknowledged.
I like this documentary. Does AGI and the search for it scare me? Hell yes. So do killer mutant spiders descending on earth post nuclear holocaust. It's all about probabilities. To be honest: disease X freaks me out more than a superintelligence built by an organisation willing to donate the research to solve the problems of disease X. Google are assbiscuits, but Deepmind point in the right direction (I know more about their weather and climate forecasting efforts). This at least gave me reason to think some heart is involved...