2024

When picking a number between 1-100, do #LLMs pick randomly? Or pick like a human? Leniolabs_ found #ChatGPT prefers 42. Gramener re-ran the experiment. Things have changed a bit. Now, 47 is the new favorite. But Claude 3 Haiku latched on to 42 as its favorite. Gemini’s favorite is 72. See https://sanand0.github.io/llmrandom/ They all avoid multiples of 10 (10, 20, …), repeated digits (11, 22, …), single digits (1, 2, …) and prefer 7-endings (27, 37, …). These are clearly human #biases – avoiding regular / round numbers and seeking 7 as “random”. ...

This is the coolest data visualization I’ve seen in a long time. It makes you think about human behaviour. Please try and GUESS why the AirBnB occupancy rates shoot up in the red areas on Apr 7 before you read the comments! LinkedIn

Until recently, I could code on flights. This year, I lost that ability. Again. It’s happened before. In each case, technology has solved the problem for me. Here’s the history. I need a laptop. Since 2001, I’ve never been without one on a flight. I need power. Since 2005, I use dark mode and every low power feature available. (I also became good at finding hidden power outlets.) ...

In Excel, using Visual Basic, you can change an image as you scroll. This makes it easy to look at each image and annotate it. This is how I transcribed every Calvin & Hobbes. I used this technique first when typing out the strips during my train rides from Bandra to Churchgate. I had an opportunity to re-apply it recently when we needed to tag hundreds of photographs based on a set of criteria. ...

Oh, wonderful! They’re keen to get in. Wise enough to take help. Honest enough not to be able to cover it up. Sounds like a good hire! LinkedIn

Every time I get annoyed at people, I remind myself to be more like ChatGPT. Specifically: Don't get annoyed. Be patient. Encourage them. Step back and show them the big picture. (Then I get annoyed at myself for getting annoyed.) Today, I analyzed how exactly ChatGPT is different from me. So, I took a pitch document I co-authored with ChatGPT. Section A: Authored by Anand WHAT DO WE NEED? ...

A friend told me today that using #ChatGPT will make humanity dumber. “Probably. Like always, #Calvin has the best response I know to that. “I propose we leave math to the machines and go play outside.” 🙂 LinkedIn

For those in #Singapore and interested in #datavisualization & #llms, I’m talking about Visualizing LLM Hallucinations at SUTD on Thu 8 Feb at 7 pm SGT. This is for a non-technical audience. We’ll visualize the basics of how LLMs work, how they make mistakes, and at least one technique on how to spot these. https://www.meetup.com/data-vis-singapore/events/298902921/ LinkedIn

text-embedding-ada-002 used to give high cosine similarity between texts. I used to consider 85% a reasonable threshold for similarity. I almost never got a similarity less than 50%. text-embedding-3-small and text-embedding-3-large give much lower cosine similarities between texts. For example, take these 5 words: “apple”, “orange”, “Facebook”, “Jamaica”, “Australia”. Here is the similarity between every pair of words across the 3 models: For our words, new text-embedding-3-* models have an average similarity of ~43% while the older text-embedding-ada-002 model had ~85%. ...

I was crossing a not-too-busy street on a not-too-busy day in Chennai. I was having a voice conversation with ChatGPT (about the log probabilities of tokens on LLMs, if you're curious) when I was rudely interrupted by an auto rikshaw rapidly honking at me. "Honk honk honk honk honk" in rapid succession. Not unusual. Mildly annoying. The street was empty. The auto was empty. The traffic policeman was visible. I gave way and carried on. ...

I looked at how Gramener uses ChatGPT Plus by evaluating 600+ chats asked over 3 months from Oct 2023 to Jan 2024. The team asks 6 questions a day. We don't track who or how many actively use ChatGPT Plus. This also excludes personal ChatGPT accounts. Still, 6/day is low for an entire team put together. The questions fall into 8 categories. Category%Excel, data exploration & analysis25%Text extraction and summarization13%HTML, CSS, or JavaScript code13%Python code13%LLMs, AI and use cases9%OCR and image analysis9%Generate images, logos, and designs7%General knowledge, policy & environment5%Audio and translation5% Here are some questions from each category - to give you an idea of emergent ChatGPT Plus usage. ...

I read 52 books in 2023 (about the same as in 2022, 2021 and 2020.) Here’s what I read (best books first). Fiction The Kingkiller Chronicle. I picked it up before a flight to London in 2014. Read it through the flight. Read it late into the night at our AirBnB. Skipped my workshop prep. Read it during the workshop breaks. Read it on the flight back. And I re-read it every year or two. The language is beautiful and the story gripping. I feel miserable this series isn’t complete. The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Stormlight Archive. Another series I re-read regularly. Brandon Sanderson takes the scale of the story up a notch in every book. Rhythm of War by Brandon Sanderson ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Andy Weir’s books. Since my daughter re-reads The Martian (laughing loudly), I picked up Project Hail Mary. It’s a brilliant depiction of alien physiology and communication, with a weird kind of humour I love. Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir ⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Egg by Andy Weir ⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Martian by Andy Weir ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Red Rising Saga. A pleasant discovery of a new series. Somewhat like The Hunger Games and Divergent. Red Rising by Pierce Brown ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Golden Son by Pierce Brown ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Morning Star by Pierce Brown ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Blake Crouch’s books. The two I read were both time-travel related and I love that genre. These do a great job of exploring some of the deeper implications of time-travel. Recursion by Blake Crouch ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Dark Matter by Blake Crouch ⭐⭐⭐ Ready Player One by Ernest Cline ⭐⭐⭐. It’s as good as the movie with slightly different scenes. The Reckoners by Brandon Sanderson. Another series I re-read. Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Firefight by Brandon Sanderson ⭐⭐⭐ Calamity by Brandon Sanderson ⭐⭐⭐ The Year of Sanderson. Brandon Sanderson’s kickstarter raised $41m for 4 books this year (mostly Cosmere). The stories themselves were OK but the hints they drop about the Cosmere are invaluable. Yumi and the Nightmare Painter by Brandon Sanderson ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson ⭐⭐⭐ The Sunlit Man by Brandon Sanderson ⭐⭐⭐ Fullmetal Alchemist by Hiromu Arakawa. After Death Note, it felt like a let-down when it started. A mundane story. Then it grew funny. Showed shades of a much deeper story. I’m mid-way through the series and I’m hooked. Fullmetal Alchemist, Vol. 1 by Hiromu Arakawa ⭐⭐⭐ Fullmetal Alchemist, Vol. 2 by Hiromu Arakawa ⭐⭐⭐ Fullmetal Alchemist, Vol. 3 by Hiromu Arakawa ⭐⭐⭐ Fullmetal Alchemist, Vol. 4 by Hiromu Arakawa ⭐⭐⭐ Fullmetal Alchemist, Vol. 5 by Hiromu Arakawa ⭐⭐⭐ Fullmetal Alchemist, Vol. 6 by Hiromu Arakawa ⭐⭐⭐ Fullmetal Alchemist, Vol. 7 by Hiromu Arakawa ⭐⭐⭐ Fullmetal Alchemist, Vol. 8 by Hiromu Arakawa ⭐⭐⭐ Fullmetal Alchemist, Vol. 9 by Hiromu Arakawa ⭐⭐⭐ Fullmetal Alchemist, Vol. 10 by Hiromu Arakawa ⭐⭐⭐ Fullmetal Alchemist, Vol. 11 by Hiromu Arakawa ⭐⭐⭐ Mono no Aware e altre storie by Ken Liu ⭐⭐⭐. A nice short story Traitors Gate by Jeffrey Archer ⭐⭐⭐. A well-writter fast-paced average story. Mistborn: Secret History by Brandon Sanderson ⭐⭐⭐. Average story but with lots of “secrets” about the Cosmere. Asterix and the Griffin by Jean-Yves Ferri ⭐⭐. Some good jokes but not as good as the original series. Non-fiction ...