The internet usually has the correct answer somewhere, but it’s also full of conflicting and outdated information. How do large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT, trained on internet scale data, handle cases where there’s conflicting or outdated information? (Hint: it’s not always the most recent answer as of the knowledge cutoff date; think about what LLMs are trained to do) In this article,…
In Facts are Nuanced, I explained how even seemingly simple facts, such as the height of a mountain, are more complex than they may at first appear. Mountain heights, and the way we measure them, change. Old measurements become outdated, and new measurements replace them. This is okay, so long as we know which is the most recent official measurement. Although as we will see, this isn’t always as…
You can’t expect to look up who’s the smartest person in the world in a database, or at least not any reputable one, because that’s subjective and requires a nuanced answer. Whereas you might expect to be able to look up something like the height of a mountain, because that’s an objective fact with a (seemingly) simple answer. Projects such as Wikidata aim to create a special kind of database—a…
Six years ago, I wrote a blog post “Name a fruit that isn’t orange…” pointing out that the best AI and chatbots available at the time got this simple question wrong. Though there was some debate on r/programming about whether this was just “a problem with parsing natural language” or something more fundamental.
Visual software modelling languages, specifically UML, receive a lot of criticism from software analysts/developers for their poor choice of symbols, insanely complex specification, and incomprehensible (meta)-metamodel. But the underlying ideas are very powerful. Tools like Eclipse Sirius let you define your own custom modelling language to allow users to model a particular domain and to…
During the pandemic, it’s important to stay informed. Ever Googled “COVID-19”? Of course you have. But for those that haven’t, Google takes you to a special COVID-19 page with maps and an information box on the right that looks like this:
Consider the amount of work that goes into creating a good data visualisation. It requires a combination of technical skills, understanding of design principles, and time to refine the visualisation. However, as design principles move from an art to a science (Moody 2009), will it someday be possible to automate the design process entirely?