The trolley problem is a classic ethical dilemma that asks what you would do if you had to choose between saving one person or saving many people from a runaway trolley. For example, would you pull a lever to divert the trolley from hitting five workers on the track, but instead hit one worker on a different track? This problem is important to generative AI because it illustrates the challenges of … [Read more...]
Counting votes using Excel
Excel strikes again. There were only two outcomes and the spreadsheet got it wrong. You'd be better flipping a coin. … [Read more...]
Accuracy vs precision
I recently conducted an inter-rater reliability study for a client. There was some confusion about what this measures. Inter-rater reliability measures agreement. It's a measure of precision, not accuracy. As anyone who's been on social media knows, it's possible for everyone to be in complete agreement, yet utterly wrong. The following diagram summarises the difference between precision and … [Read more...]
It’s not because we have insufficient data…
In 1998, Neil Postman wrote critically about the Age of Information. If there are children starving in the world—and there are—it is not because of insufficient information. [...] If there is violence on our streets, it is not because we have insufficient information. If women are abused, if divorce and pornography and mental illness are increasing, none of it has anything to do with insufficient … [Read more...]
Large Language Models
Stephen Wolfram has written a comprehensive description of how Large Language Models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, work. … [Read more...]