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LAIability

Generative AIs present a new kind of problem to the creative world. It's still kot clear who owns the copyright for the work those tools produce. It's also unclear who should be held responsible when the AI spits out something offensive.

Mutual learning

t's not uncommon that when mentoring somebody it is thought to be one way learning. The mentor shares their knowledge and mentee is expected to come up with questions. But true mentorship relationship can be as educating for both sides.

A good mentee asks a lot of questions. First of all it makes the job of the mentor easier when they can focus on the things their protégé is interested in and have identified they lack the knowledge or experience. Often they can even challenge the mentors knowledge which leads to a more valuable lesson than just reciting the knowledge.

Collecting childhood

All my life I have been collecting something. I've gone through the traditional things like stamps, bottlecaps etc. but those never really clicked with me. I've also mostly never had a single thing to collect. Or more precisely my focus has shifted from a thing to another. And then I tend to go all in with that one things.

Most of the collections I never got rid of, so now I have many unfinished collections. The older ones are stored away, scattered or just dumped in a box with everything else.

Why write?

Of course I'm not stopping writing. Technically it would be possible. Everything I wrote yesterday about how to do it is possible and I could do it. Int he marrer of fact I did that already several years ago when the GPT-2 was released. Even if it wasn't as good as the new chatGPT a.k.a. GPT-3.5 back then the finetuned model could generate rather good results.

Announcing ArcticloonGPT

The latest advantages in machine learning has produced such capable LLMs (Large Language Models) that's there is no need to write anything yourself anymore. While the generic models usually produce generic results they can also be finetuned with domain knowledge, or writing style.

Exiting new tech

There is no shortage on new technologies in the IT industry. The current boom with the chatgpts is just the latest graze. In my position I need to keep up with everything that is happening in the world regarding software related development, evaluating possible technologies and deciding whether they are something we should invest in to be able to keep up with the competition and answer to the customer demand.

Finally feels like spring

April is just around the corner, but so far there hasn't been the real feeling of spring in the air. The winter has been so weird with weather changing back and forth. Because there hasn't been proper continuous winter and many spring-like periods it has been hard to feel the spring.

We had most of the snow already melted last week, but over the weekend we got a fresh layer of snow. Everything was white again anf at least looked like a proper winter for a moment. Today the sun eas shining and the fresh snow was quickly melting away, like during a real spring.

What is a group of unicorns called?

Our company is blessed with many unicorns. In our company context a unicorn is somebody that has been in the company for ten or more years. From our a bit over 100 employees a whopping 20 % are unicorns! This came up when I finally decided on my unicorn gift which I became entitled already back in last August (we get a gift of practically anything we want up to a certain amount as a thank you for being so long with the company).

Splitting atoms

Now that the energy crisis is already settling down it isn't that big of a news that our latest nuclear reactor, the Olkiluoto 3 is finally able to produce electricity on a stable level.

Over the years we have learnt to take it granted that the reactor will be late. Last year when it was finally finished there was some hope. But for the past year the standard news has been "Olkiluoto 3 still not operational". There has been all kinds of setbacks to get the reactor in an operational state.

So this is how liberty dies

We are in a process of voting a new parliament for us here in Finland. Traditionally our multi-party system has worked quite well. There are the big three, but others get their representatives to the parliament as well save the smallest parties. No party usually get much over 20% of the votes and the big three is usually around 60% total and the next 2-4 another 30%.

Weekend too short

This has been definitely one of the busiest weekends for a while. Lot's of driving around, meeting old friends and partying (a bit too) hard. One hour sure isn't that much, but the one taken away from us moving to the summer time sure would have helped.

Nevertheless this was a good weekend. But I'm not sure how refreshed I'll be after this one. Luckily the next weekend will be much quieter so just need to get through the week and it's all going to be fine.

Reboot vs reunion

Many movie franchises get rebooted. Forget the original and just rewrite (and recast) everything. If it did well the first time the name alone will bring people to the theaters. But the name isn't always a guarantee. Especially some studios rely too much on those and forget to invest in quality.

We've seen many failed reboots. People are becoming more susceptible towards the promises and of bringing back their old favourites in a new package. So they need to be offered something more. Something familiar that is not just reusing the name.

Driving through the night

I was not looking forward this evening. There is an event happening an hour and a half drive away from our place. I promised to give our youngest one ride there as there were possibility that trains won't be operational today due to the strike. The hour and a half wouldn't have been bad in itself, but that's just the ride from where we live. To begin the trip there I would first have had to pick up my kid from their home, another hour ride away to a different direction.

Ecological handprints

Reducing the carbon footprint isn't enough. The problem with limiting the efforts of preventing global warming to trying to reduce the emission is that there are those who don't care. You can also only get your footprint down to zero anyway. It's also inherently a negative term, something you need to stop producing or at least try to minimize.

Big Five, FAANG, BATX...???

When using acronyms and terms that might not be familiar with your audience they should be explained. Yesterday I once again fell quilty to throwing up terms that might not be so familiar especially with people outside of the tech industry.

Tech is the biggest industry sector nowadays, the only industry where the biggest companies are worth trillions. The biggest ones are often referred by a few different acronyms or terms.

Transformative AI

Google, the once uncrowned king of AI has been playing catch up ever since OpenAI released their ChatGPT to the public. They even cried out to their founders Page and Brin to help out to restore the crown. While the announcement game already pretty soon after the ChatGPT launch they only today were able to do a (very limited) launch for their response to the conversational AI markets - the Bard. Initial results from those lucky enough to get into the "open" beta isn't assuring. The model is leaps behind the competition.

World's least unhappy country

Finland has once again been declared as the happiest country in the world. This is the sixth year in row for us to claim the time (and we weren't far from the top earlier either).

While the world is wondering what's our secret the Finns are again wondering how bad others have it if we are indeed the happiest nation. Short summers, cold and dark winters. Far from ...well everything. Heavy taxation and relatively low income and wealth (compared to most western countries).

Little bit of everything

Everything everywhere all at once broke the bank at the Oscars recently. Even before the academy awards it was praised in the media as the movie of the year.

I finally got to watch it yesterday. I originally already wanted to see it over s year ago when I first time heard such a movie was coming out later last year. Unfortunately it didn't come available here in any of the streaming platforms we subscribe. It also didn't hit the theatres except a few fringe showings that didn't fit our schedule.

Raised expectations

In 2019 when OpenAI released version of their generative language model (GPT-2) they first wanted to hold it back and restrict access to it gearing it would be too powerful. While this wasn't the first transformer based model it already demonstrated the potential and capability of the architecture.

True One Ring

Wizards of the Coast, the publisher of Magic: the Gathering (among many things) has in recent years released nee kind of MtG sets - the Universes Beyond sets. So far they have released crossovers with Transformers, Dungeons and Dragons and Warhammer 40k for a few example.

Such crossovers are a great way to bring in new players (and collectors) that are already fans of the other franchise. So far this has appeared to be a successful strategy even though it might have alienated some of the old school hardcore MtG players.

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