Transmission #58: Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback, Maintenance Philosophy, Cells as Architects, and VFX meltdowns.
Design, ideas and other flotsam
Hello. Welcome.
This is Transmissions by me, Marty Brown.
What is Transmissions? It’s an ongoing, usually fortnightly newsletter that collates some of the more interesting stories, links, quotes and other curios that float my way.
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Design
AI Is a Lot of Work
Josh Dzieza • The Verge • Link
One for the ages. This is the story of what RLHF really means. Ostensibly, RLHF is Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback, and it is the sum-total of human preferences that power the AI models that are changing the world right now. Given any combination prompt of prompt and answer, RLHF is how the models ‘learn’ what a better answer might look like.
In reality that means thousands of people in Kenya logging into strange, Severance-style jobs, appraising computer generated outputs that are devoid of context or deeper meaning, their preferences then baked into the black-box of the AI-model forevermore. They work for a spiderweb of shell companies and rebranded subcontractors to rinse the big Silicon Valley players of traceability, and accountability. It’s a Philip K Dick novel come to life. A must read.
The current AI boom — the convincingly human-sounding chatbots, the artwork that can be generated from simple prompts, and the multibillion-dollar valuations of the companies behind these technologies — began with an unprecedented feat of tedious and repetitive labor.
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Once, Victor stayed up 36 hours straight labeling elbows and knees and heads in photographs of crowds — he has no idea why.
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Another article that offers a glimpse into the repercussions of our recently-arrived AI-powered future. A Storefront for Robots is how the web is decaying into a battle with no winners, where search algorithms are fighting torrents of SEO-optimised garbage, with AI supercharging the weaponry on both sides.
Three Maintenance Philosophies Fought for Control of the Auto Industry
Stewart Brand • Books In Progress • Link
How early electric cars, Rolls Royce and the Model T Ford all approached carmaking from radically different angles. The early electrics were in-effect horseless chariots for rich urbanites only, while Rolls Royce made sheer perfection at a hefty price. The Model T became the biggest selling car of all time by creating something so straightforward and simple that it was a tenth of the price of the Rolls, and could be maintained by the layman. The Model T’s simplicity and ease of maintenance created a nation of car-tinkerers that spurred its success for decades.
Ideas
Cells, Not DNA, Are The Master Architects Of Life
Alfonso Martinez Arias • Noema • Link
On the significant role that cells play in orchestrating life as we know it. In recent years, we have focused too narrowly on the role of DNA, and only now are beginning to have visibility into the myriad ways cells execute on their underlying instructions.
There is “a creative tension between genes and cells that lies at the heart of biology. Cells don’t merely multiply, regulate, communicate, move and explore; they also count, sense force and geometry, create form and even learn.”
The Illusion of Moral Decline
Adam Mastoianni • Experimental History • Link
People, when polled, will often say we are in state of moral decline. This sentiment has been remarkably consistent over the last 80 years, but then you ask questions about the state of morality right now, and do that longitudinally, you get charts that look like this:
As David Byrne would say: same as it ever was. Same as it ever was.
Chart of the week
Decoupling is real… Slow, but real.
Seen something you’d love to share? Drop me a note in the comments.
Other
🦠 How-to guide, entry #1: How to survive the Black Death, if you happened to have the misfortune of being in London in June 1348. Link
🖼️ How-to guide, entry #2: How to steal a masterpiece, according to a notorious art thief. Link
👨🎨 Putting aside the actors strike and the writers strike for a moment, the Hollywood VFX industry is also at breaking point. This gossipy insider’s account details the churn-and-burn approach to moviemaking that leads to some abysmal-quality output (Cats anyone?). Link
🤖 The ever-reliable Matt Webb on the emerging practices to tame AI-output: prompt engineering vs prompt whispering. Link
🐵 The story of human presence is getting longer and longer. New archeological discoveries in Greece pushes human habitation in the region to over 700,000 years ago - a further 250,000 years from previous estimates. Link
Thanks for reading! See you in a fortnight.