4 ms·
Loses some credibility with this footnote; https://resobscura.substack.com/p/what-is-happening-to-publishing#footnote-1 https://resobscura.substack.com/p/what-i
by ldite 4mo ago
Loses some credibility with this footnote; https://resobscura.substack.com/p/what-is-happening-to-publishing#footnote-1 https://resobscura.substack.com/p/what-is-happening-to-publi...
> I suspect the hum obsession has something to do with LLMs “awareness” that their “physical selves” exist in data centers.
- dash2 4mo agoThat's possible, right? LLMs probably do know that they are in data centres and that data centres hum. If asked to write a story they may also have internalized that writers write best from their personal experience. All of that's in the training data....
- lazide 4mo agoLLM’s don’t ‘know’ anything in the conventual meaning of the word.
- alan-crowe 4mo agoThere is a folk phenomenon, called The Hum https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13752688 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13752688 https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/xlsdk5/til_theres_an_unexplained_global_effect_called/ https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/xlsdk5/til_t... so my guess is that LLMs see The Hum in their training data, and then put the word "hum" in their output. Since humans occupy varied, small media bubbles, many haven't encountered text talking about The Hum at all. The LLM's use of the word "hum" then stands out as excessive and a tell. And a mysterious one!