Not learning from new input may be a feature. Back in 2016 Microsoft launched one that did, and after one day of talking on Twitter it sounded like 4chan.[1] If all input is believed equally, there's a problem.

Today's locked-down pre-trained models at least have some consistency.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35890188

▲ armoredkitten 20 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Exactly. The notion of online learning is not new, but that approach cedes a lot of control to unknown forces. From a theoretical standpoint, this paper is interesting, there are definitely interesting questions to explore about how we could make an AI that learns autonomously. But in most production contexts, it's not desirable.

Imagine deploying a software product that changes over time in unknown ways -- could be good changes, could be bad, who knows? This goes beyond even making changes to a live system, it's letting the system react to the stream of data coming in and make changes to itself.

It's much preferable to lock down a model that is working well, release that, and then continue efforts to develop something better behind the scenes. It lets you treat it more like a software product with defined versions, release dates, etc., rather than some evolving organism.

▲ Earw0rm 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Incredible to accomplish that in a day - it took the rest of the world another decade to make Twitter sound like 4chan, but thanks to Elon we got there in the end.

▲ TeMPOraL 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This has little to do with the bot, and everything with this being the heyday of Twitter shitstorms; we didn't have any social immunity to people getting offended about random things on-line, and others getting recursively offended, and then "adults" in news publishing treating that seriously and converting random Twitter pileups into stock movements.

In a decade since then, things got marginally better, and such events wouldn't play out so fast and so intensely in 2026.

▲ Culonavirus 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[flagged]

▲ tim333 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I quite like current Twitter (x). It's not really like 4chan which was all idiots - you get some quite thoughtful thinkers on it, including pg who built this thing. Also the 'ask Grok' thing for fact checking actually works surprisingly well - it you reply something like "is that true @grok?" to a comment the LLM replies with usually quite an accurate answer.

If you want to understand something like US politics which is mostly a battle between the left and the right it lessens your understanding to filter out one sides viewpoints and then be surprised by reality.

	▲	estearum a minute ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> it you reply something like "is that true @grok?" to a comment the LLM replies with usually quite an accurate answer. Depends on timing really and whether or not Elon recently adjusted the prompt to force Grok to adopt his position or talk about his pet issue of the day
	▲	nbnmbnmbnbm 35 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		[dead]

▲ DrScientist 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> c) goes against the concept of true democracy (which I like

You mean one person, one vote. Or in the case of Twitter/X - one person one voice/account.

Don't spaces like these become dominated by fanatics or money, or fanatics with money? All trying to manufacture consent?

Unregulated != democratic

Just like unregulated != free market [1]

Sure it's difficult to get the balance right - but a balance is required.

[1] As the first step of anybody competing in an unregulated market is to fix the market so they don't have to compete - create a cartel, monopoly, confusopoly ( deny information required for the market to work ) etc etc.

▲ shevy-java 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> You mean one person, one vote.

That's not direct democracy though. Here you refer to voting a representative, who may do anything.

Direct democracy means people decide on things directly. It is probably not possible since not everyone has enough time to read every law, so representatives may have to be used but it could be that the people can decide on individual laws and wordings directly. We don't seem to have that form anywhere right now.

	▲	DrScientist an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Sure direct and representative democracy are different, but this is a bit of a tangent. What I was trying to say above is that having an unregulated space doesn't mean it's therefore naturally representative of the underlying population. The key differentiator between a democracy and other systems is the idea that you have one person one vote, and power isn't distributed on the basis of money or some other feature. All I'm saying is, in a totally unregulated online space you'll get dominance by fanatics with money ( if it's important ) . ie unregulated != democratic. And it's a mistake to think the opposite.
	▲	defrost 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		See, for a comedic treatment, Peter Cook's The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer (1970), co-written by Peter Cook, John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Billington. ~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_and_Rise_of_Michael_R... Relying on a combination of charisma and deception—and murder—he then rapidly works his way up the political ladder to become prime minister (after throwing his predecessor off an oil rig). Rimmer introduces direct democracy by holding endless referendums on trivial or complex matters via postal voting and televoting, which generates so much voter apathy that the populace protests against the reform. Having introduced direct democracy in a bid to gain ultimate power, Rimmer holds a last vote to 'streamline government', which would give him dictatorial powers; with the populace exhausted, the proposal passes.

▲ shevy-java 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don't think there are tons of "leftists".

Ever since Twitter changed into the tilted X insignia, led by a guy who keeps on raising his right arm, a gazillion of folks left. And I think more "leftists" left than "rights". It is an echo-chamber now.

▲ armchairhacker 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

People say BlueSky is like pre-Musk Twitter, i.e. leftist opinions in today’s Twitter style.

Which is a bit strange because BlueSky is supposed to be decentralized (no central moderation); and although in practice it’s not, the BlueSky team seems pro-freedom (see: Jesse Signal controversy). I know there are some rightists (including the White House), but are they a decent presence? Are they censored? Are there other groups (e.g. “sophisticated” politics, fringe politics, art, science)?

Mastodon is interesting. Its format is like Twitter, but most posts seem less political and less LCD-CW (e.g. types.pl, Mathstodon). I suspect because it’s actually decentralized (IIRC Truth Social is a fork; I didn’t write all posts are less CW). I’m curious to find other interesting instances here too.

Pre-Musk, I remember seeing screenshots of the stupidest, most echo-chamber-y Tweets imaginable. e.g. “why do the cows all have female names, that’s misogynistic” (that one was deliberate satire but I’m sure most were). I’ll brag, I left around 2013 because I felt it was rotting my brain. I enjoyed a few more years off social media, with a healthy dopamine system. Unfortunately, now I’m here.

	▲	ACCount37 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		It's more that the "far left wing cluster" had something like a "we should all get up and leave Twitter for BlueSky" activist campaign. And "far right wing cluster" didn't. The closest thing "far right" had to that was Gab and Truth Social, and that's both more specific and less impactful overall. Thus, BlueSky's userbase is biased towards extreme left wing - it's basically the go-to place for far left wing nutjobs go when they get too nutty for Twitter moderation, or feel like Twitter is not left wing enough for them.

▲ bonesss 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Twitter is not like it always was. The presence of oranges doesn’t speak to the volume or rot-level of the apples.

Twitter has lost advertisers, credibility, and legitimacy. That’s objectively demonstrable in the calibre, quantity, and aims of their advertisers, and their loss of revenue.

Twitter is hurting humanity, and has swaths of the population trapped in misinformation clouds. Arguably Elon bought the last election by purchasing it, and current administration issues are the result. But for the slow acclimatization and general brain fog of the “etch a sketch voters” we’d see Twitters direct reprogramming of opinion and behaviour as a psychic virus. You can tell which app people are hooked on by the lies they believe (with great emotional resonance).

Social Media is becoming increasingly restricted from children based on objective developmental and cognitive impacts, I dare speculate we and our parents are the asbestos eating unfiltered cigarette smoking pre-modern victims who misused something terribly until we figured out how bad that shizz is for us.

▲ tokai 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Not an unpopular take, just one not tied to reality.

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qsera 4 hours ago | parent [-]

>reality

Which you seem to have exclusive access to, I suppose..

▲

shevy-java 2 hours ago | parent [-]

How many realities exist?

When it comes to facts, there should always be one true fact. Anything aside from this is interpretation.

	▲	qsera an hour ago \| parent [-]
		>How many realities exist? I don't know, how many news channels do you watch?

▲ i_cannot_hack 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You make it seem like it's not predominantly skewed right wing, just a "healthy" mix of right wingers and left wingers due to not banning anyone. Which might be an unpopular take, but in this scenario I think it's unpopular simply because it is demonstrably wrong.

> A study published by science journal Nature has examined the impact of Elon Musk’s changes to X/Twitter, and outlines how X’s algorithm shapes political attitudes, and leans towards conservative perspectives. They found that the algorithm promotes conservative content and demotes posts by traditional media. Exposure to algorithmic content leads users to follow conservative political activist accounts, which they continue to follow even after switching off the algorithm. https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/x-formerly-twitter-amp...

> Sky News team ran a study where they created nine new Twitter/X accounts. Right-wing accounts got almost exclusively right-wing material, all accounts got more of it than left-wing or neutral stuff. (Notably, the three “politically neutral” accounts got about twice as much right-wing content as left-wing content. https://news.sky.com/story/the-x-effect-how-elon-musk-is-boo...

> New X users with interests in topics such as crafts, sports and cooking are being blanketed with political content and fed a steady diet of posts that lean toward Donald Trump and that sow doubt about the integrity of the Nov. 5 election, a Wall Street Journal analysis found. https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/x-twitter-political-c...

> A Washington Post analysis found that Republicans are posting more, getting followed more and going viral more now that the world’s richest Trump supporter is running the show. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/10/29/elon-mu...

▲ michaelmrose 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Weak minded folks are at least 40-50% of the population and there is a reasonable risk of them killing the human race or at least immiserating it.

Unhinged leftists want what public ownership of the means of production whilst unhinged right wingers want concentration camps and may get them. I don't think it's reasonable to equate these things.

▲

1718627440 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

In practice it used to turn out, that "public ownership of the means of production" also implies some amount of "concentration camps" and shooting at the border. The difference is one side shoots to the inside, the other one to the outside.

	▲	21asdffdsa12 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The one is also universally recognized as bad. The other is regularly brushed under "the implementation was bad" as a rug. both of these rugs are bloody red. Demanding socialism should be considered a hate-crime, even though its mostly starving the poor through baked into the ideology economic miss-management that killed the masses.

▲

swingboy 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Gulags?

▲ bheadmaster 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

▲ armchairhacker 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think models should be “forked”, and learn from subsets of input and themselves. Furthermore, individuals (or at least small groups) should have their own LLMs.

Sameness is bad for an LLM like it’s bad for a culture or species. Susceptible to the same tricks / memetic viruses / physical viruses, slow degradation (model collapse) and no improvement. I think we should experiment with different models, then take output from the best to train new ones, then repeat, like natural selection.

And sameness is mediocre. LLMs are boring, and in most tasks only almost as good as humans. Giving them the ability to learn may enable them to be “creative” and perform more tasks beyond humans.

▲ InfiniteLoup 27 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I was always curious about how Tay worked technically, since it was build before the Transformers era.

Was it based on a specific scientific paper or research?

The controversy surrounding it seemed to have polluted any search for a technical breakdown or a discussion, or the insights gained from it.

	▲	Kye 16 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2016/03/25/learning-tays-in... https://arxiv.org/abs/1812.08989

▲ vasco 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That one 4chan troll delayed the launch of LLM like stuff by Google for about 6 years. At least that's what I attribute it to.

▲ bsjshshsb 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yes I like that /clear starts me at zero again and that feels nice but I am scared that'll go away.

Like when Google wasn't personalized so rank 3 for me is rank 3 for you. I like that predictability.

Obviously ignoring temperature but that is kinda ok with me.

▲ shevy-java 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Back in 2016 Microsoft launched one that did, and after one day of talking on Twitter it sounded like 4chan.[1] If all input is believed equally, there's a problem.

Well it shows that most humans degrades into 4chan eventually. AI just learned from that. :)

If aliens ever arrive here, send an AI to greet them. They will think we are totally deranged.

▲ moffkalast 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yeah deep learning treats any training data as the absolute god given ground truth and will completely restructure the model to fit the dumbest shit you feed it.

The first LLMs were utter crap because of that, but once you have just one that's good enough it can be used for dataset filtering and everything gets exponentially better once the data is self consistent enough for there to be non-contradictory patterns to learn that don't ruin the gradient.