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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 19th, 2023

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  • I tried reading the paper. There is a free preprint version on arxiv. This page (from the article linked by OP) also links the code they used and the data they tried compressing, in the end.

    While most of the theory is above my head, the basic intuition is that compression improves if you have some level of “understanding” or higher-level context of the data you are compressing. And LLMs are generally better at doing that than numeric algorithms.

    As an example if you recognize a sequence of letters as the first chapter of the book Moby-Dick you’ll probably transmit that information more efficiently than a compression algorithm. “The first chapter of Moby-Dick”; there … I just did it.














  • The thing is that social media have an oversized influence that makes a calm discussion of possible solutions very hard to have. When the US recognized the implications of letting a foreign power exert so much control over their people, they tried banning TikTok, or breaking it up so their US operation would be under US control.

    Facebook should also be split and its EU operation purchased by a European company, that could then spend more time implementing the other changes you mention (doom-scrolling, data protection) and less time lobbying to get all these pesky EU regulations removed.

    And yes, it does feel heartbreaking to count the US as a threat to national security, but China has never threatened to annex Greenland with military force, so what would have been paranoia and extreme anti-americanism last year is now the sensible, level-headed thing to do.