3 ms·
That sounds pretty niche. What's a use case where you have less than 8 bits and that distinction is more important than having an extra finite value? I don't
by Dylan16807 7mo ago
That sounds pretty niche. What's a use case where you have less than 8 bits and that distinction is more important than having an extra finite value? I don't think AI is one.
- jlokier 7mo agoFor neural net gradient descent, automatic differentiation etc, the widely used ReLU function has infornation carrying derivatives at +0 and –0 if those are infinitesimals.
- Dylan16807 7mo agoBarely any information. After surviving RELU that signed zero is probably getting added to another value and then oops the information is gone. It sounds a lot worse than properly spaced values.
- saulpw 7mo agosign = most important bit of information
- Dylan16807 7mo agoIf you were looking at the entire number line, sign would roughly be the most important part. But you still have all the other numbers carrying sign info. This is only the sign of denormals and that's way less valuable. Outside of particular equations it ends up added to something else and disappearing entirely. It would be way better to cut it and have either half the smallest existing positive value or double the largest existing value as a replacement. Or many other options.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]