• NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      Omg, sign me up! I’m gonna put that script in production for a server used by millions of customers around the world!

      • ogeist@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        Oh no, now there is a security audit and the pdf generated is insecure, the unpaid developer that has not logged in since 2015 has to fix this ASAP

  • HStone32@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    The secret to success in software engineering:

    1. Lie and say that there is
    2. Write or use a conversion algorithm
    3. Boss won’t know the difference
    4. Collect bonus at performance evaluation
    5. Put “AI engineer” on resume
  • Opisek@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    Technically OCR is an application of machine learning.

    Not an LLM, though.

    • lka1988@sh.itjust.works
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      6 days ago

      That was my thought. Young kids fresh out of school are really easy to manipulate into delusions of grandeur, especially when said delusions are offered by the richest person in the world. He’s gonna leave them out for the wolves.

  • NicolaHaskell@lemmy.ml
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    6 days ago

    This is that special blend of Tablet Kid “I don’t need to know things I can google them” and Rich Kid “I don’t need to do things I can crowdsource them” that makes for that Distinctively VP “I don’t know what I’m doing and nobody can tell 👈😎👉”

  • mesamune@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    Imagine getting a job like this and now half the nation knows your name…thats terrifying. being an intern may mean you have no idea of the true scope of what they are asking you to do.

    • GrumpyDuckling@sh.itjust.works
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      6 days ago

      We know that his dad is an engineering professor at university of Nebraska too. Really calls into question his credentials. I checked the other day and they had already removed his contact info from their website.

    • crusa187@lemmy.ml
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      6 days ago

      Yeah, seems that’s the point. Old enough to competently perform what they’re told, but too young to realize the gravity of the situation and how wrong it is to partake in it.

        • ChapulinColorado@lemmy.world
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          It’s ok, with the experienced gained from being forced to grow up, some will come home and use their savings to buy a dodge ram on a 7 year loan at 18% apr.

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    6 days ago

    I have to admit, PDF parsing being such a hot and profitable topic in computer science was really something I never saw coming.

    PDFs? The things you can select text from? And when not, there’s decent OCR? And when not, you just ask the person to send you an email or a word doc?

    It sounds like LLMs are looking for a new unpolluted source of historical data that they can learn from, and this source exists in the form of old scanned-in paper documents. That’s the only reason I can fathom as to why this is such a big thing now.

    • MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml
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      5 days ago

      Selecting text doesn’t work in most multi-column pdfs and good OCR cost money. And if the original source is lost and you want an exact copy in word, the OCR tools need to be really good at guessing whitespace-to-line ratio, because pdf is only an output format and not a processing format.

      For most other converting needs, there’s pandoc, imagemagick and ffmpeg.

  • GissaMittJobb@lemmy.ml
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    6 days ago

    Is this fake?

    For context, this is the guy who figured out how to see what’s written on some ancient Greek Scrolls without destroying them. It seems slightly far-fetched that he wouldn’t know better.

    • sevenapples@lemmygrad.ml
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      Not at all. The only similarity is that LLMs work with text, and the document formats can also represent text.

      Each format (E.g pdf, json, excel) has a defined standard, so all you have to do to change between each other is to map one format’s fields to the others. You don’t need (and won’t get good results) from having an LLM produce the new format from scratch.

      What he’s asking is the equivalent of asking if there’s an LLM made specifically for solving arithmetic problems. Why would you try to solve addition using an LLM?

    • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
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      Yeah, I don’t really get this one. The class clown is the kid who recognizes a function of a tool, correctly at that. Unlike a dipshit lawyer who let it hallucinate bogus case law. Hilarious.

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        There are programs that exist that explicitly do these sorts of things.

        They have been around since long before llm.

        This is a lazy and uneducated question.

        He demonstrates he has done zero research and goes straight to the buzzword because he knows nothing.