The chapters on how LLMs work are fairly shallow and will be old news to most of the commenters here who have been keeping up with the news. It seemed to me like that section of the book was written for laypersons and politicians.
Also, I found the Chernobyl digression totally insufferable. Pedantic, over long, and boring.
That aside -- if those parts are skipped or skimmed -- it's an interesting and excellent book that stakes and defends a strong position. I'm not entirely convinced, as I think that there might be a missing step or two in their reasoning, but I've grown much more sympathetic to their cause and aims.
Also, the technothriller short story interlude was outstanding and should be given novella or novel treatment.
man8alexd•4mo ago
And his explanation about Chernobyl is half-bullshit. There was no less cooling, but excess. There was no rise of reactivity before the shutdown, there was no SCRAM button. The AZ-5 button was used for normal shutdown after the conclusion of the experiment. The energy spike happened 3 seconds after the AZ-5 button was pressed. There was no drama or feeling that anything was wrong in the control room before the shit blew up.
A_D_E_P_T•4mo ago
The chapters on how LLMs work are fairly shallow and will be old news to most of the commenters here who have been keeping up with the news. It seemed to me like that section of the book was written for laypersons and politicians.
Also, I found the Chernobyl digression totally insufferable. Pedantic, over long, and boring.
That aside -- if those parts are skipped or skimmed -- it's an interesting and excellent book that stakes and defends a strong position. I'm not entirely convinced, as I think that there might be a missing step or two in their reasoning, but I've grown much more sympathetic to their cause and aims.
Also, the technothriller short story interlude was outstanding and should be given novella or novel treatment.
man8alexd•4mo ago