#they're less than 1mm diameter

[agapi-kalyptei]

girl do you like balls? you like to have some fun with balls? you like to play with balls in bed? you like to have balls in your face? okay good because my weighted blanket ripped open

[aiweirdness]

AI Doesn't Understand Scale

One of my favorite ways to mess around with text-generating AI is to see what it does with new games that didn't exist on the internet back when its training data was collected.

OpenAI's GPT-3 models were trained with data that cut off in late 2019 which means that they're unaware of certain major world events, as well as of the latest internet memes.

Recently someone posted this hilarious bit of startup advice that had people posting terrible advice of their own:

I guessed that even if a neural net like GPT-3 can't possibly have seen this meme before, it would still be capable of giving terrible startup advice. So, I entered the entire above sequence of brilliant entrepreneurial moves as prompt text, preceded by the word [tomatoes] in brackets to help indicate this was supposed to be a short thing about tomatoes. Then I wrote "[" and let it write a short thing about something else.

DaVinci

Unsurprisingly, the largest GPT-3 variant was the best at catching on to the format. It made the leap that you could amplify eggs in a similar way. And you end up making $1 million on each egg!

[eggs] Same as the tomatoes. Eggs sell for $1 each. He uses 39 chickens to make a dozen eggs in 9 minutes. One hen can lay 355 eggs in 355 days. That’s 11.844 muffins a day. 9:11AM go to the best grocery store in town and buy ALL THE CHICKENS. Keep your receipt. 9:19AM - you take $9.8MM and buy back all your chickens. 9:30AM bring the chickens home. 9:39AM - sell the chickens back to the store for $9.8MM Speculation in eggs prices rises dramatically. If you buy all the eggs, you can sell them back and make $1MM on each egg.

Object permanence is not a strength of DaVinci's - keeping track of the status of physical objects isn't really in its job description. Its world is text.

[wigs] You don't understand scale. Buy one $50 wig. Use it for 6 months until it breaks. Throw it away. Buy another $50 wig. Use it for another 6 months until it breaks. Throw it away. Repeat until you have 182 wigs. Sell them for $50 each.

GPT-3 DaVinci does at least realize that you should end with profitable things happening.

[hammer & nails] You don’t understand scale. Use $100 to buy a hammer. Use the hammer to build with 4 nails. Burn the nail building for warmth. Repeat indefinitely.[chocolate milk] 1 cow gives 160 glasses of chocolate milk per day. A single glass sell for 10k. Lots of profit.[fork] You don’t understand scale. Buy 3 forks. Solve any problem that takes less than 3 forks.

Ada

I also turned to the smallest GPT-3 variant, Ada. It caught onto the format only partially. It got that it was supposed to be about tomatoes. And possibly about money?

[tomatoes] Use $1 to buy 1.5MM tomatoes.[Tomatoes] Do you intend to build a city? ?" Build $500,000 lots and then sell $1,000,000 lots. You want a house outfitted with 50 toilets, 50 outdoor shower systems along with 132 rooms.[tomatoes] They are botanical machines. Of all the tomato varieties, they only grow once! Traversing is their way of existence. They do this every day. They can do "rainbow fruit trees", making "green smoke and crumble flower."

Had I not stopped the generation process, I'm not sure how long Ada would have continued this next one. When people talk about researchers shutting down their AIs because of an unwanted outcome, this is often the kind of thing they mean.

[tomatoes] You don't understand that it's basically the same thing as a bowl of cereal. Potatoes in a can. Pour the potatoes into 35 quart jugs and fill jugs to the brim. Whisk soapmaker. In little tub layers stout ash alum pot paper. Divide into four equal parts of qt and rl into segments measuring 3.2 cm by 0.8 cm. Wash wire wool in 80-95% dewashed water and rinse under tepid water. Prepare three inches of hot coals, gently heat in center of stove 4 inches deep. Roll up soap in crinkly napkins two times to fit into form according to volume-diameter. To remove bubble wrap insert aprons. Heat a small hole as necessary per each pot. Dip each slip to the brush onto each pot, then collect the whole wrap under the string from the soap's top to bottom. Crackfish, partially hulled and cut to about 3 cm across, on an upright flake computer of sufficient volume. Measure and cut parts of soap into even thickness, add by 1 cm to diameter of each bowl. Take soap left out to apartments with sheets and wrap it up in a towel. Fill Sanitary Pail with clay pot suders, layers clay that been finished of three times, each surface 3 cm thick, to the top of the pails. Split soap in half 3 cm ¼ x 0.7 cm just below bottom of tub. Fill bathtub lengthways and level with edge. Lay soap at 4 cups depth, with top down. In the dryer attach film and cling wrap, then lay sheet-hooks 1.6 cm apart on the film. Place plastic apple cores on top of film. Lay film and cardboard pails on top of each other. Cap and secure, then dry for 7-10 days.

If you don't do the entire list, are you really cut out to be an entrepreneur?

I also decided to see what the two midsized GPT-3 models did with this startup advice. Become an AI Weirdness supporter to read the results as bonus material! Or become a free subscriber to get new AI Weirdness posts in your inbox.

[dh-string-theory]

Today I'm attempting to make a "kalimba", also known as an "mbira" or "thumb piano". Kalimbas are a hand-rigged musical instrument popular in the sub-Saharan regions of Africa and emit a weirdly warbling echoey hum. They function similar to a wind-up music box, with the player's fingers effecting the same action as the pin roll that bends the steel "keys".

Kalimbas can have any number of keys, but the average ones found online have either 10 or 17; the width of the instrument determines the number of keys it can have.

You can make simple kalimbas with just a board and the keys, but like a guitar, they perform better when attached to a hollow sound box, which should be a size that can be comfortably held in both hands: I've chosen 7" x 4.5" for my perimeter dimensions. The thicker the sound box, the lower the pitch; I picked some pieces of wood that I didn't think I'd have to plane down and so my box will be about 2" thick when complete.

Step 1: Form the Box

Cut your side pieces about 1/4" - 3/8" thick. How you arrange them to form a 7" x 4.5" box is builder's choice. Glue them together:

For best results, use wood glue that thinly coats the full end of each piece, without dabs or chunks (and without relying on the compression of the join to smooth out the glue). This ensures that each joint is fully secured and will be less likely to break.

Step 2: Top & Bottom

These pieces should be thin, mine are about 1/8" thick. They should fully cover the box you made in Step 1. Better to cut larger than smaller, as any overhang can be sanded out later.

The top plate should have a hole, horizontally centered, roughly 2" - 2.5" in diameter, like a guitar.

The bottom plate should have two smaller holes side by side in about the same area as the front plate hole.

Step 3: Finishing the Box

Glue the top and bottom plates to the box frame. The holes should be at the same ends, although I'm not sure why. Don't worry about wiping away excess glue; the sander will take care of that. Remember to also glue any plate breakage as you're gluing them to the frame.

More clamps ensure a tighter bond to the box.

Once gluing is finished, take the rough box to a sander.

Power belt sanders will give you the fastest finish, oscillating hand sanders may give a more complete finish but will take longest (but have the added benefit of varying grits for a smoother polish). I used a Ryobi (all of my shop is Ryobi) belt sander.

Since this is my first one, I've elected to keep it a bit rough, in case the next step doesn't turn out as expected. Here is my finished sound box:

Now you have to install the mounts. I made mine out of the same mahogany as the sound box. They're halves of a piece I cut to about 1/2" square by 3.5" long and rounded the edges. I will probably use a small chisel or knife to carve a gully for the steel support bars, which will be held in place by pressure from the keys. The mount should be slightly smaller than mine are but I was limited by my tool capability and skill. Stage them on the sound box with the bridge bar to figure out where to glue them in place:

The bridge bar can be any sort of steel bar, or even an S frame mount. If you're making your own, the bridge must be wide enough to drill two holes for mounting screws and clasp however many keys your kalimba will have.

Step 4: Making Keys

The best keys are made from spring steel. Spring steel can be found all around the house:

garden rakes

windshield wipers (under the rubber)

hacksaw blades

oil dipsticks

bicycle spokes

hair pins

electrician's snake

street sweeper bristles

Keys do not have to be identical for functionality, although it is more aesthetically pleasing. eBay has a decent selection, with kits that even contain the mounting hardware, for about $5.

Short keys are used for high pitch, long keys for low pitch.

Someone gave me a yard length of 1mm spring steel wire that I'm cutting with a corner of the grindstone to size. It's not optimal but it does make a ringing plink.

Step 5: Assembly

Once you have the keys and mounting bridges ready, it's time to secure them to the sound box. Online instructables say the best pattern, from back to front, is over-under-over.

I used a box cutter to notch each end of the mounts to guide a hand saw, which I slowly dragged across the length of each mount to dig a groove in which a mounting bar will sit.

Then I used the box cutter to round the corners and widen the groove. I was forced to add a reinforcement plate between the mounts, as the bridge only has 2 screws, and less screws = more concentrated pull on the bridge by the keys. Even that is insufficient, as you can see, so I now see that the Z-shaped bridge offered on eBay is much more optimal.