Tag: Yogi Nelson

Artificial Intelligence, Yogi Nelson

WHAT IS THE STATE OF AFFAIRS IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE SYSTEMS?

Yogi Nelson

Namaste Yogis. Welcome to the Blockchain & AI Forum, where your technology questions are answered, mostly correct! Here no question is too mundane. As a bonus, a proverb is also included. Today’s question, comes from Richard, in Los Angeles, and he wants to know what is the state of affairs in artificial intelligence systems?

Richard, you came to the right place. There has been an explosion in recent months of companies announcing large language model (LLMs) AI projects. For this article I’ll refer to LLMs as AI systems. Let’s examine the situation by asking various AI systems to introduce themselves by answering this question:

   Can you please describe yourself and your capabilities in 50 words or less?

Below I cut and paste their respective responses, where available, verbatim.

ChatGPT by Open AI. OpenAI is the California based software company behind ChatGPT.

“I am ChatGPT, a sophisticated AI language model created by OpenAI. With extensive training on diverse topics, I excel in generating human-like text, answering queries, and providing information. My abilities encompass a wide range of subjects, making me a versatile tool for communication and knowledge sharing.”

Bard by Google. Bard is a product of Google, a California company that needs no introduction.

“I’m Bard, a brainy AI from Google. I can chat, write, translate, and more, using knowledge from the real world to fuel your words. Ask me anything! (49 words)”

Notice Bard used 27 words but claims it used 49! Apparently, Bard cannot count! Lol.

Co-Pilot by Microsoft. Microsoft calls its AI system Co-Pilot or Bing which is the name of Microsoft’s search engine.

“Certainly! I am Bing, an AI language model. My capabilities include generating creative content, answering questions, providing summaries, and more. I can write poems, stories, code, and engage in interesting conversations. Feel free to ask, and I’ll do my best to assist!”

Mistral: Mistral is an AI company from Paris. Their website says the project is under construction. I tried to log on, and instead received an email indicating access was by invitation only! Ouch! How rude! Or as they say in France, Impoli! Lol! I don’t want to be a member of a club that would have me as a member! Lol!

Olympus by Amazon. According to Reuters, Amazon is investing millions in training an ambitious large language model, expecting to surpass ChatGPT and Bard. As with Mistral, Amazon is late. Perhaps Jeff needs to unretire and get back to work! Lol!

Gauss by Samsung. Samsung is tardy. When ready, Samsung says its LLM will have the capabilities to generate text, computer code, and images based on machine learning technology. It is not just one model, but a family of models, Samsung Chairman Lee explained to Business Korea on December 18, 2023.

Grok by X. Grok is in beta testing. Why? Maybe Elon is busy on his rocket ship or pumping garbage crypto meme coins. Lol! On November 2, Musk tweeted “Grok is intended to answer almost anything and suggest what questions to ask.” Musk claims Grok will possess a sense of humor, hopefully not his. Lol! What makes Grok superior according to Musk is “… Grok has real-time knowledge of the world via the X platform and will answer ‘spicy questions’ that are rejected by most other AI systems.” Knowledge on X? I guess that’s the humor! Lol!

I will close with a proverb from Togo: A man that does not lie shall never marry. Brother, you got that right for sure! Lol, lol, lol!
.
Until next time,

Yogi Nelson

Artificial Intelligence, Yogi Nelson

WHAT IS THE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ALLIANCE?

Yogi Nelson

Namaste Yogis. Welcome to the Blockchain & AI Forum, where your technology questions are answered, mostly correct! Here no question is too mundane. As a bonus, a proverb is also included. Today’s question comes from Butch, in Arkansas, USA. Butch wants to know, what is the Artificial Intelligence Alliance?

Butch, you came to the right place. The Artificial Intelligence Alliance (AI Alliance) is an organization with an impressive membership roster. The AI Alliance consists of technology creators, developers and adopters collaborating to advance safe, responsible AI rooted in open innovation, according to their official statement. Who are the members? Click the link here: https://thealliance.ai/

AI Alliance membership is diverse and as expected concentrated in the tech sector. There are numerous prestigious universities, including U.C. Berkeley, Dartmouth, and the University of Texas. Moreover, the AI Alliance includes foreign universities in Japan and one in Dubai, exclusively for AI. Holy, big brain, Batman! Not surprisingly AI Alliance members are generally from the business community. For example, you will find Meta, Intel, IBM, Oracle, and many other household corporate names.

What does the AI Alliance do? The AI Alliance has three focus areas. Let’s take one at a time.

Responsible and Scalable AI. AI Alliance has set a goal of creating benchmarks, tools, and methodologies to ensure and evaluate high-quality and safe AI. The AI Alliance will also be an advocate for AI safety and security.

Open Foundation Models. The AI Alliance says it will focus on responsibly advancing the ecosystem of open foundation models with diverse modalities, including highly capable multilingual, multi-modal, and science models that can help address society-wide challenges in climate, education, and beyond.

Diverse AI Hardware. AI Alliance claims its members will collaborate on the benchmarking, optimization, and adaptation of AI workloads to advance a diverse set of hardware. AI Alliance reports it will focus on scalability, platform adaptation, and advanced power, energy, and carbon modeling. Benchmarks and metrics developed for model inference, fine-tuning and energy consumption of large-scale AI workloads will also be contributed to the open-source community.

Butch, you ask in what way do the members contribute? I’ll give you three of the eight ways AI Alliance members can contribute. We start with a pledge to deploy benchmarks, tools, and other resources that enable the responsible development and use of AI systems at global scale, including the creation of a catalog of vetted safety, security, and trust tools. Second AI Alliance members agree to responsibly advance the ecosystem of open foundation models with diverse modalities, including highly capable multilingual, multi-modal, and science models that can help address society-wide challenges in climate, human health, and beyond. And third, AI Alliance members say they will support global AI skills building, education, and exploratory research. Nothing short of ambitious!

The actual working of the AI Alliance is fascinating and deserves a short explanation. The AI Alliance will divide the work and its members into groups with specific tasks. To direct the work, the AI Alliance announced it will establish a governing board and technical oversight committee. The board and technical committee will establish overall project standards and guidelines. There is no mention of an Executive Director, dedicated staff, nor explicit political activities, yet. However, I am confident the AI Alliance will eventually establish a Washington, D.C. presence to lobby the executive branch, Congress, and regulators. That’s how it works, folks!

Butch, I hope I answered your question. Remember what they say in Italy: When you finish the game, the king and pawn end up in the same box.

Until next time,

Yogi Nelson

Uncategorized

ChatGPT VERSUS BARD, WHO WINS THE FIGHT?

Yogi Nelson

Namaste Yogis. Welcome to the Blockchain & AI Forum, where your technology questions are answered, mostly correct! Here no question is too mundane. As a bonus, a proverb is also included. Today’s question, comes from Ming (Netherlands) and he wants to know who wins in a fight, ChatGPT or Bard?

Ming, you are in the right place. As implied in your question, and acknowledged by both parties, ChatGPT and Bard are direct competitors. Let’s put these pugilists into the ring and give each an identical test to determine the peoples’ champ. Holy AI boxing match, Batman! We commence by identifying the warriors, starting with ChatGPT.

In the blue corner is ChatGPT, a product of OpenAI. OpenAI is a California based software company developing artificial intelligence. OpenAI describes ChatGPT as a language model designed to understand and generate human like text based on the input it receives. ChatGPT is now in version 4 and uses GPT3.5 as its underlying technology.

In the red corner is Bard, a product of Google, and Google needs no introduction. Bard is a conversational AI tool that uses Gemini as its underlying technology. Bard allows users to interact with and use chat-like dialogues to ask questions, receive information, and complete tasks.

The warriors are in the ring and ready to rumble! Let’s ask five questions across a range of topics:

  1. Can you write a 300-word essay describing the four voyages of Christopher Columbus?
  2. Please give me five Chinese recipes for tofu.
  3. Why did the USA boycott the 1980 Olympics in Moscow?
  4. Can you write a 300-word essay describing the Federal Reserve Banking system?
  5. Explain the physics in aviation that facilitates flight in 300 words.

Round 1: ChatGPT wins by technical disqualification. Although both answered the question fundamentally correct, Bard did not follow instructions. I asked for a 300-word answer. Bard used 370 and ChatGPT 292.

Round 2: ChatGPT wins by technical disqualification because Bard failed to follow instructions. I asked for five recipes; Bard provided four. However, Bard did land punches. For example, it added pictures of every final dish; ChatGPT did not. That’s a big plus. ChatGPT gave me the name of the dishes in Chinese characters; Bard did not. However, given I don’t understand Chinese written characters including them was not value added.

Round 3: Bard wins by adding additional links to the story and including an explanation of what happen after the 1980 boycott. Bard offered links to U.S. State Department documents, a photo, and noted the Soviet Union retaliated in 1984 when it and its allies boycotted the Olympic games held in the USA. Impressive!

Round 4: Bard wins. Great answers were given by both competitors, however, Bard wins the round in a close decision. Bard wins, not due to substance; it wins on style points. Essentially, Bard presented the answer in a format that was superior. Bard made ample use of bullet points and subsections with titles thus making it easier for the reader to follow-along.

After four rounds we are tied. The tension mounts! The winner of round five takes home the championship belt! Hold on to your keyboard!

Round 5: In dramatic fashion ChatGPT takes round five and the title! Although Bard’s format was easier to read, ChatGPT wins using substance. ChatGPT cited two authoritative sources of information and that made the difference.

Ming, I hope you enjoyed the battle of the bots. Today’s proverb comes from Netherlands, where they say, He’s standing there with his mouth full of teeth. (He is speechless).

Until next time,

Yogi Nelson

Uncategorized

WHAT DID VITALIK BUTERIN RECENTLY SAY ABOUT ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Yogi Nelson

Namaste Yogis. Welcome to the Blockchain & AI Forum, where questions are answered, mostly correct! Here no question is too mundane. As a bonus, a proverb is also included. Today’s question comes from Art in San Francisco, CA. Art asks what does Vitalik Buterin think of artificial intelligence?

Art, you came to the right place. Before I explain Vitalik’s thoughts, let’s know Buterin first. Vitalik is a 29-year-old Russian Canadian computer programmer and a co-founder of Ethereum. Ethereum is a decentralized blockchain network, known for pioneering smart contracts, among other advancements in computation. From an early age Vitalik demonstrated an amazing ability to grasp mathematics and computer science. That’s not a surprise given his father was a computer scientist. Holy, like father, like son, Batman! Given his genius with computers, it makes sense you would ask what Vitalik makes of AI.

On November 23, Vitalik published his “My Techno Optimism” paper.
https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2023/11/27/techno_optimism.html?ref=bankless.ghost.io Vitalik’s summary perspective is below followed by highlights from across the major points of his paper.

“I believe in a future that is vastly brighter than the present thanks to radically transformative technology, and I believe in humans and humanity. I reject the mentality that the best we should try to do is to keep the world roughly the same as today but with less greed and more public healthcare. However, I think that not just magnitude but also direction matters. There are certain types of technology that much more reliably make the world better than other types of technology. There are certain types of technology that could, if developed, mitigate the negative impacts of other types of technology. The world over-indexes on some directions of tech development, and under-indexes on others. We need active human intention to choose the directions that we want, as the formula of “maximize profit” will not arrive at them automatically.”

Vitalik Buterin, My Techno-Optisium

Buterin argues there are very high costs to delaying technological progress. He cites life expectancy improvements and the internet, as evidence for not holding back technological advancements. Vitalik makes the case for using advancements in AI to solve environmental challenges, including climate change.

Vitalik believes AI is fundamentally different from previous advancements in technology and therefore requires significantly more consideration. Vitalik says AI is the creation of a new and powerful brain whereas previous inventions were contraptions. “AI is a new type of mind that is rapidly gaining in intelligence, and it stands a serious chance of overtaking humans’ mental faculties and becoming the new apex species on the planet”, says Buterin. Vitalik cites scientists that are worried AI could wipe out humanity! Holy doomsday, Batman!

Buterin, is equally concerned with “digital authoritarianism”. Vitalik points out Open AI, with a mere 500 employees, services 100,000,000 customers with immensely powerful machines! Power could be centralized by just a handful of people one day, is Vitalik’s worry.

Vitalik pens a lengthy narrative regarding the e/acc movement. According to Vitalik, e/acc is “… fundamentally about an appreciation of the truly massive benefits of technological progress, and a desire to accelerate this trend to bring those benefits sooner.” Jeff Bezos is the most prominent advocate. In a point-by-point fashion, Buterin shares what he believes are the implications of e/acc across a range of topics, including: military technology, decentralized governance, cyber security, multi-planetary living, world government, to name a few topics.

We conclude today with this proverb from the Dominican Republic: With patience and calm, a donkey can climb a palm tree. Well said my Caribbean brethren!

Until next time,

Yogi Nelson

Uncategorized

WHAT MONETARY SYSTEM DOES THE CARDANO BLOCKCHAIN USE?

Yogi Nelson

Namaste Yogis. Welcome to the Blockchain & AI Forum, where your questions are answered, mostly correct! Here no question is too mundane. As a bonus, a proverb is also included. Today’s question is from Bhante Chandra from Kandy, Sri Lanka, and he wants to know what monetary system does the Cardano Blockchain use?

Bhante, you came to the right place. Let’s start first with explaining Cardano. Cardano is a decentralized, open source blockchain network that burst onto the scene in 2017. Charles Hoskinson, Cardano’s founder, created Cardano as a third generation blockchain. Bitcoin and Ethereum were generations one and two, respectively. Of course, Bitcoin was released by an anonymous developer (Satoshi Nakamura) in 2008, and Ethereum by a team, including Hoskinson, in 2015.

Cardano is recognized for its research-based approach. Cardano technology is based on nearly 200 peer reviewed academic research reports. Critics say Cardano is slow to the market; Cardano proponents acknowledge the critique. However, Cardano advocates say they are oven cooking not microwaving. Fair point! First and second generation blockchains were energy gluttons because they were constructed with proof of work consensus systems; Cardano was built using a proof of stake consensus system making it extremely energy efficient. Love a green blockchain!

Cardano is focused on solving the blockchain trilemma problem of balancing speed, scalability, and security. Essentially, the trilemma problem in blockchain says the more one or two issues are solved the worse off are the remaining. Holy no way out, Batman! Cardano also is recognized for its smart contract capabilities. Smart contracts facilitate the transfer of value from peer to peer without intermediaries. Now about the monetary system.

The Cardano network uses crypto currency to pay for transactions. Cardano currency is known as ADA, named after the famous British female mathematician and computer programmer, Ada Lovelace. Smaller denominations of ADAs are called Lovelace and they go out six decimal places, .000006. Bust out the calculator!

Cardano began with a total supply of 45B ADA. However, not all were release upon inception; that would be irresponsible. Instead, Cardano has phased in ADA distribution. Cardano is de-inflationary by design, meaning the supply of ADA decreases with time.

Let’s talk about the Cardano treasury and your personal Cardano treasury. Cardano’s treasury has three revenue sources: minting; donations; and taxation from block rewards. Great! Now, how does an individual grow their personal Cardano treasury? Here too there are multiple avenues. You could, for example, purchase ADA on an exchange, such as Coinbase. Suppose you purchased ADA, what next? Well, you could earn additional ADA by “staking it”. Staking is blockchain/crypto jargon for earning rewards. Think of it as interest payments for locking up and “lending” your ADA. Or you can operate your own stake pool and earn ADA directly. Operating a skating pool requires technical computer skills; learn and earn!

Once you have a bag of ADA, where to keep the stash is the question. Here again you have options. You can store your ADA on a centralized exchange, e.g., Coinbase. There are pros and cons to centralized exchanges, that go beyond this post. Or you can self-custody your stack; that too comes with advantages and disadvantages. Several self-custody wallets are available, including Typhon Wallet, Flint Wallet, or Yoroi Wallet.

A special thanks to Cardano and Emurgo Academy for supplying the information for today’s post. Time to go, but not before sharing an Egyptian proverb: “You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell a man is wise by his questions.

Until next time,

Yogi Nelson