Dec. 24th, 2024

thewayne: (Default)
This is interesting.

The company who, up until 2012, published the book-form of the Encyclopedia Britannica, is now turning that huge trove of facts into an LLM engine with the goal of selling it as a service to the education market.

While this might seem as a bit of a snoozer, there's one very interesting aspect to this: AI hallucinations.

Most LLM models have hallucination problems, seemingly stemming from their snarfing up their training data from hoovering up the internet with all of its crappy and contradictory information. This is where Britannica shines: they paid a literal fortune over two centuries collecting vetted materials from recognized scholars using quality editors to compile it into a trusted source. Thus, the quality of their training model will be very, very high.

The question will be if their code that ingests this training model will still hallucinate. And we'll only see that with testing when it goes public and really gets pummeled. But I do like the idea: starting with a very high quality training set, I think it shows promise.

Though we still have the problem of AI systems consuming stupid godawful amounts of energy.

Britannica's encyclopedia is still available online, just not in a print edition.

https://gizmodo.com/encyclopedia-britannica-is-now-an-ai-company-2000542600
thewayne: (Default)
*sigh*

In a verbal communication, the Louisiana Health Department has stopped promoting vaccines for flu, covid, and mpox. It is hosting no clinics. It is still supposedly promoting childhood vaccines.

Department spokesman "Emma Herrock did not deny the claim or dispute any of the outlets' [NPR] reporting. Instead, Herrock provided a statement confirming that the department's policy had shifted, specifically, it moved "away from one-size-fits-all paternalistic guidance" and to the stance that "immunization for any vaccine ... are an individual’s personal choice." Discussions and decisions about vaccines should be between an individual and their health provider, the statement read."

Even the Dept of Health clinics are not allowed to advertise the fact in their own clinics! that they offer vaccinations!

Many employees are questioning just what is the point of working there.

December 20 Ars Technica article:
https://arstechnica.com/health/2024/12/louisiana-bars-health-dept-from-promoting-flu-covid-mpox-vaccines-report/


On December 23, Ars reported that Louisiana is at the lowest of the three top stages for reported influenza-like illnesses. Oregon is the only other state at this level. The article also shows a map of the USA including territories and their reported levels as of the week ending December 14.

The scale has 13 stages, three levels (11-13) classed at Very High, which is where Louisiana and Oregon are at 11. From the article: "Louisiana is at the first of three "Very High" levels. Oregon is the only other state to have reached this level. The rest of the country spans the scale, with 13 jurisdictions at "High," including New York City and Washington, DC. There are 11 at "Moderate," 10 at "Low," and 19 at "Minimal."

A comment in this article said the following:
Tangentially, Louisiana #40 in K-12 and # 49 in higher education
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/education


https://arstechnica.com/health/2024/12/flu-surges-in-louisiana-as-health-department-barred-from-promoting-flu-shots/

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