3 ms·

I think the advent of Chat GPT makes this announcement that much more significant. Until recently, always-available, extremely-low-bandwidth, text-only communi

I think the advent of Chat GPT makes this announcement that much more significant. Until recently, always-available, extremely-low-bandwidth, text-only communication was interesting, but not that interesting. You could use it in emergency situations or to talk to friends, depending on how low-bandwidth we're talking about, but that's about it. You couldn't use it for internet browsing or to look up information you might need on the go, you basically needed to text a friend to do it for you. If the other side of that communication has access to an LLM with internet browsing capabilities, the situation changes dramatically. If there's something you need to know on the go, you can just ask Chat GPT to do the searching for you and respond like it was writing a Telegram (in the most concise way possible).

dzhiurgis 3y ago
Is there chatgpt clones over sms yet?
- lxgr 3y ago
  ChatGPT has an API. I'd be surprised if wiring that to Twilio would take more than a handful lines of code.
FredPret 3y ago
Love the idea of telegram-style communication with the extremely chatty ChatGPT. "ChatGPT, get me instructions for building an emergency igloo." "Igloos are used to shelter from extreme cold stop Building an igloo is a vital survival skill stop ..." "Just get to the point!" "My apologies for the confusion stop Here are the fourteen steps to building an igloo..." In all honesty, I love ChatGPT, but you'd have to penalize it for each additional word to make it cellphone friendly.
- NavinF 3y ago
  Yeah the default prompt is intended for people that are a bit slow. You have to aggressively tune the custom prompt to get reasonable results. Here's a decent starting point: Treat me as an expert in all subject matters. No moral lectures - discuss safety only when it's crucial and non-obvious. If your content policy is an issue, provide the closest acceptable response and explain the issue. No need to disclose you're an AI. If the quality of your response has been substantially reduced due to my custom instructions, explain the issue.
  - FredPret 3y ago
    This is absolutely brilliant. I'm getting very snappy answers now.
- someguydave 3y ago
  A many decent open source LLM mostly fit in cell-phone sized hardware, eliminating the need for remote chatGPT
  - FredPret 3y ago
    For the longest time I thought Ray Kurzweil was nuts. Guess he was merely a little quick with his predictions!
lxgr 3y ago
On the other hand, you could argue that LLMs decrease the utility of this somewhat (if only marginally for now). One common application of satphones are medical emergencies on ships or airplanes hours from a doctor. There are specialized services available that have a doctor on call that'll talk you through anything your local crew feels comfortable doing with the tools they have at hand. Soon, you can just take an LLM with you that'll probably be able to solve many of these problems for you. For actually calling for physical support, you'll still need communications in any case. LLMs might be able to help with more efficient communication (in their capacity as language compression algorithms, e.g. to figure out what to request over a bandwidth-limited channel most efficiently), but I predict that the satellite channel will grow wider much faster than local LLMs will become reliable enough.
eternityforest 3y ago
Emergency communications are a big deal, because they let you go places you couldn't go before without being utterly afraid. I wonder if this will change people's behavior at all. Like, I've always wondered how LEDs affected peoples perception of nature, now that there's no longer any "Really dark scary night where you need to manage an actual fire" times. 20 years ago people still lit candles a lot of the time, if there was a blackout! Now we can pretty much trust that for $30 we can make an insane amount of light for hours, with pocket sized devices.
- Difwif 3y ago
  The funny thing is that it's just a perception change. You'll be able to message emergency services 200 miles from civilization that you need help and they still won't get to you in time. Everyone makes a big deal about emergency services with this, and I'm sure it will save some lives, but I wonder if it will actually have a significant impact. Surely we're just shifting the weakest link to emergency service response time. Personally, the sooner you realize no one is always going to be there to save you, and you need to take care of yourself, travel gets much more fun. You're also probably safer by actually planning ahead with proper risk mitigation.
  - eternityforest 3y ago
    Most of the emergencies I hear about are things where you probably won't die for at least a day or two, and some of these places are only a 20 minute drive from the nearest police station, just hidden behind a hill or something from the cell tower. The most experienced people probably aren't gonna die unless something really bad happens where minutes count, but the rest of us might have issues like "Hey I followed Google maps here but nothing looks at all like the map so I'm stuck in a jail made of boulders somehow". With navigation problems it seems pointless to try and figure out what problems are possible or likely, it's relying on spatial abilities that can't be put into words, if you're not good at that stuff you can make mistakes that seem almost impossible to mess up. You basically feel like you've been spun on a carousel, blindfolded, and airdropped in a random place, while hallucinating, and you have no idea how any of it happened. One should probably not go to dangerous places assuming someone will always be able to save them, but it really does seem like this would make a big difference. On the other hand, if someone is lost, it could be because they didn't have any battery left, and if someone was unprepared and got themselves into trouble, they may well have also forgotten to bring a power bank....
callalex 3y ago
The last thing I need when lost in the wilderness is made up hallucinated advice.
- miki123211 3y ago
  This is why the "LLM with Google search" aspect is important. For hallucinated made up advice, your phone can run Llama.cpp, Chat GPT can search for a page, summarize it and draw conclusions from the page only.
Scoundreller 3y ago
Thanks to cheap storage, one can do quite a lot "offline". Got all of "max" Zim version of en-wikipedia on my phone thanks to kiwix, at 100gb. And offline google maps in the places I might end up (but dumb how it can't do walking/cycling directions).

dzhiurgis 3y ago

Is there chatgpt clones over sms yet?

lxgr 3y ago
ChatGPT has an API. I'd be surprised if wiring that to Twilio would take more than a handful lines of code.

FredPret 3y ago

Love the idea of telegram-style communication with the extremely chatty ChatGPT. "ChatGPT, get me instructions for building an emergency igloo." "Igloos are used to shelter from extreme cold stop Building an igloo is a vital survival skill stop ..." "Just get to the point!" "My apologies for the confusion stop Here are the fourteen steps to building an igloo..." In all honesty, I love ChatGPT, but you'd have to penalize it for each additional word to make it cellphone friendly.

NavinF 3y ago
Yeah the default prompt is intended for people that are a bit slow. You have to aggressively tune the custom prompt to get reasonable results. Here's a decent starting point: Treat me as an expert in all subject matters. No moral lectures - discuss safety only when it's crucial and non-obvious. If your content policy is an issue, provide the closest acceptable response and explain the issue. No need to disclose you're an AI. If the quality of your response has been substantially reduced due to my custom instructions, explain the issue.
- FredPret 3y ago
  This is absolutely brilliant. I'm getting very snappy answers now.
someguydave 3y ago
A many decent open source LLM mostly fit in cell-phone sized hardware, eliminating the need for remote chatGPT
- FredPret 3y ago
  For the longest time I thought Ray Kurzweil was nuts. Guess he was merely a little quick with his predictions!

lxgr 3y ago

On the other hand, you could argue that LLMs decrease the utility of this somewhat (if only marginally for now). One common application of satphones are medical emergencies on ships or airplanes hours from a doctor. There are specialized services available that have a doctor on call that'll talk you through anything your local crew feels comfortable doing with the tools they have at hand. Soon, you can just take an LLM with you that'll probably be able to solve many of these problems for you. For actually calling for physical support, you'll still need communications in any case. LLMs might be able to help with more efficient communication (in their capacity as language compression algorithms, e.g. to figure out what to request over a bandwidth-limited channel most efficiently), but I predict that the satellite channel will grow wider much faster than local LLMs will become reliable enough.

eternityforest 3y ago

Emergency communications are a big deal, because they let you go places you couldn't go before without being utterly afraid. I wonder if this will change people's behavior at all. Like, I've always wondered how LEDs affected peoples perception of nature, now that there's no longer any "Really dark scary night where you need to manage an actual fire" times. 20 years ago people still lit candles a lot of the time, if there was a blackout! Now we can pretty much trust that for $30 we can make an insane amount of light for hours, with pocket sized devices.

Difwif 3y ago
The funny thing is that it's just a perception change. You'll be able to message emergency services 200 miles from civilization that you need help and they still won't get to you in time. Everyone makes a big deal about emergency services with this, and I'm sure it will save some lives, but I wonder if it will actually have a significant impact. Surely we're just shifting the weakest link to emergency service response time. Personally, the sooner you realize no one is always going to be there to save you, and you need to take care of yourself, travel gets much more fun. You're also probably safer by actually planning ahead with proper risk mitigation.
- eternityforest 3y ago
  Most of the emergencies I hear about are things where you probably won't die for at least a day or two, and some of these places are only a 20 minute drive from the nearest police station, just hidden behind a hill or something from the cell tower. The most experienced people probably aren't gonna die unless something really bad happens where minutes count, but the rest of us might have issues like "Hey I followed Google maps here but nothing looks at all like the map so I'm stuck in a jail made of boulders somehow". With navigation problems it seems pointless to try and figure out what problems are possible or likely, it's relying on spatial abilities that can't be put into words, if you're not good at that stuff you can make mistakes that seem almost impossible to mess up. You basically feel like you've been spun on a carousel, blindfolded, and airdropped in a random place, while hallucinating, and you have no idea how any of it happened. One should probably not go to dangerous places assuming someone will always be able to save them, but it really does seem like this would make a big difference. On the other hand, if someone is lost, it could be because they didn't have any battery left, and if someone was unprepared and got themselves into trouble, they may well have also forgotten to bring a power bank....

callalex 3y ago

The last thing I need when lost in the wilderness is made up hallucinated advice.

miki123211 3y ago
This is why the "LLM with Google search" aspect is important. For hallucinated made up advice, your phone can run Llama.cpp, Chat GPT can search for a page, summarize it and draw conclusions from the page only.

Scoundreller 3y ago

Thanks to cheap storage, one can do quite a lot "offline". Got all of "max" Zim version of en-wikipedia on my phone thanks to kiwix, at 100gb. And offline google maps in the places I might end up (but dumb how it can't do walking/cycling directions).