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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   3253 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for March 22, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Wow. I thought I was following the pace of AI audio gen but suno definitely exceeds my expectations.

We're so fucking close to having fully AI generated media be competitive and viable, including multimedia. You'd think that would concern me more as a writer, but it turns out I read a great deal more than I write so I can live with it.

On an unrelated note, Claude 3 Opus is good at fiction. In most tasks, I would rate it as pretty much on par with the other SOTA models, but it writes fiction on the level of an above average fan fiction writer, at a point I could genuinely read it without griping too much. Shame I'm not going to pay $24 just for that use case, and all the free endpoints have stupid moderation restrictions when it comes to graphic violence.

Re Claude 3 Opus, is its fiction tainted with ultra-generic? I briefly subscribed to GPT-4 and had it do some fiction but it was always too predictable in tone. I blame the RLHF.

No, it isn't. I've tested a lot of LLMs on their ability to write fiction, and Claude Opus is notably superior. It can copy styles well and doesn't devolve into the generic LLM voice. From what I can tell without having access to super long conversations with it, it also handles narrative better.

Out of curiosity, what styles did you try to emulate? Some of my fellow scholars have tried to compile info on genres and authors that can verifiably influence LLMs' outputs, but more additions to my grimoire are always welcome. The list on that rentry was written for Claude 2 so it's a bit outdated, but I expect Opus is at the very least not worse with those, and in most cases should be substantially better, the new anti-copyright prefill notwithstanding.

First and foremost, myself, with at least the longest prompt I could fit into the research oriented access points (I don't pay for Opus). Previous LLMs have done a 5/10 job, Claude Opus was noticeably better, to put arbitrary numbers on it, 7.5 or an 8. If a human writer had taken the same length of excerpt and figured out as much from context, I'd be impressed by them.

I also tried a combination of Peter Watts and Richard Morgan in a mil-SF setting, and yeah, it was something I would expect from someone well described as a combination of the two. This was zero-shot, since unlike my case, I except it to be familiar with their writings.

That's about as far as I got before I was pissed off about excessive moderation in the research platform (not Claude itself), or the limitations of shady discord bots. I tempted enough to consider spending the $24 it would cost, on top of the existing enormous utility I get for free from Bing, just for that purpose alone, but then I remembered I'm poor and the money is better spent on takeout, heh. No other LLM has made me feel that way about fiction.

I'm poor and the money is better spent on takeout, heh

Really? $24 doesn't seem like a lot for how much creative exercise you can get out of it over a month, especially seeing as (as I take it) you live in America and get paid in dollarydoos. If I'd been able to pay for access directly without relying on shady proxies I'd do it in a heartbeat, even while not being a first world citizen so the price and the payment hoops sting more.

Sorry for such naked shilling but Opus has for the most part legitimately replaced vidya and r34 for me, I used to sensibly chuckle at desperate goslings but when my shady source inevitably dries up I fear I may actually become one, a blackened husk wandering the interwebs in search of validation. There's no going back to AI Dungeon, c.ai and its ilk from this.

seeing as (as I take it) you live in America and get paid in dollarydoos

Hahahahahahahahahahaha.. (Dissolves into a puddle while sobbing)

I'm not American, as much as I would love to be. I'm Indian, in India, even if I hold a GMC registration, I'm refraining from working in the UK until I smash my residency exams and get a job with actual career progression there.

As of last month, my monthly salary was about $800 and change. After my old post was made redundant, it may or may not drop 30%, depending on how keen HR is on noticing the discrepancy in payroll.

So $24, while a sum I can afford, is far from nothing either. For practical use cases, I can get more value than Claude out of Bing with GPT-4 (personal use suggests parity on almost all tasks, but benchmarks show that the latest version of GPT-4 beats it by a meaningful threshold, though God knows what fork Bing is using). This is the one domain where the former is clearly superior, and given that I've been too lazy to make a Patreon, I don't make any money from writing either. I do it mainly because I enjoy it.

So, like you, I can technically afford it, given that I have no meaningful expenses barring ordering in food. I still don't see it as justified quite yet, though I am/was sorely tempted. The main reason is that for everything else, Bing is free and just as good.

Right, I goofed, I remember you weren't American but I thought you did actually work there for some reason. Must've mixed up with someone, sorry for the emotional crit.

As of last month, my monthly salary was about $800 and change.

Man, I make basically that as a low-rung not-particularly-skilled keyboard monkey but then again I'm a path of least resistance pleb who, as a wise hand fetishist once said, just wants a quiet life. Props to you for dedication.

The main reason is that for everything else, Bing is free and just as good.

True, I used it before a number of times and it's good (if not usable for non-kosher purposes), I'm actually surprised it's completely free but I suppose Microsoft can afford to provide free shit, especially since things are gonna be rough for search engines very soon and they're probably looking to get their foot in the door to try and overtake Google. I'm not sure I welcome these particular AI overlords, but I suppose it wouldn't be the first time I had strange bedfellows.

I'm sure Bing is a loss leader, but they're desperate enough for market share in the browser space for it to be worth it.

If they can simply cut into Google's margins then it's stillworth it.

And they own half of OAI, and intend to buy Mistral, so they intend to own all the horses they can to maximize the change of backing the winning one.

Eh, I'll make more money in the future, unless the robbits take my jerb. Which they will, but maybe after I can afford a few of the finer things in life.

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