Benjamin Surmi

designing solutions for purposeful and sustainable elderhood

[Akshay 🚀 @akshay_pachaar]

Stanford researchers built a new prompting technique!

By adding ~20 words to a prompt, it:

- boosts LLM's creativity by 1.6-2x
- raises human-rated diversity by 25.7%
- beats fine-tuned model without any retraining
- restores 66.8% of LLM's lost creativity after alignment

Let's understand why and how it works:

Post-training alignment methods like RLHF make LLMs helpful and safe, but they unintentionally cause mode collapse. This is where the model favors a narrow set of predictable responses.

This happens because of typicality bias in human preference data:

When annotators rate LLM responses, they naturally prefer answers that are familiar, easy to read, and predictable. The reward model then learns to boost these "safe" responses, aggressively sharpening the probability distribution and killing creative output.

But here's the interesting part:

The diverse, creative model isn't gone. After alignment, the LLM still has two personalities. The original pre-trained model with rich possibilities, and the safety-focused aligned model.

Verbalized Sampling (VS) is a training-free prompting strategy that recovers the diverse distribution learned during pre-training.

The idea is simple:

Instead of prompting "Tell me a joke" (which triggers the aligned personality), you prompt: "Generate 5 responses with their corresponding probabilities. Tell me a joke."

By asking for a distribution instead of a single instance, you force the model to tap into its full pre-trained knowledge rather than defaulting to the most reinforced answer.

Results show verbalized sampling enhances diversity by 1.6-2.1x over direct prompting while maintaining or improving quality.

Variants like VS-based Chain-of-Thought and VS-based Multi push diversity even further.

You can find the paper link in the next tweet.

👉 Over to you: What other methods can be used to improve LLM diversity?

[SwordOfSalomon @SwordOfSalomon]

🚨✈️ EXCLUSIVE TESTIMONY FROM A PASSENGER ON VUELING FLIGHT VY8166 🇪🇸

50 French Jewish teenagers, aged 15, were expelled from a @vueling flight… because one of them simply said the word “Limot” (meaning “the days” in Hebrew), attempting (unsuccessfully) to start a summer camp song.
There was no chanting, no shouting, no disruption.

I collected the testimony of Damien, a neutral passenger who was on board with his daughter.

His account directly contradicts the false and defamatory statement released by @vueling, which claimed to have acted in the name of passenger safety, even though that safety was never under threat.
The children are described as polite and calm.

I also received testimony from the family of the camp’s director, a 21-year-old woman who was violently thrown to the ground (see video), handcuffed, and then taken alone into a room with a police officer.
The officer told her, in Spanish ( a language she understands ) that she would be banned from the country for two years, and proceeded to ask her a question about Israel ⁉️
This, despite the fact that she is a young French citizen supervising French Jewish children on a trip.

Discreet and respectful, she simply stepped in, peacefully, when police demanded that the children delete the videos they had recorded on board.

Yet in Spain, demanding the deletion of videos in such a context is illegal. It constitutes an obstruction of evidence and an unjustified pressure on foreign minors, outside any legal framework.

These testimonies reveal a chilling truth.
What happened here had nothing to do with safety.
It was antisemitism at work.

And even if the children had been slightly noisy (which they were not), it would never have justified such a violent expulsion.

People tolerate football fans chanting, bachelor party shouting, and planes full of drunk festival-goers.
But here, Jewish children were expelled for a single word in Hebrew.

@vueling’s crew committed a serious wrong by targeting our children.
There will be consequences ⚖️

Cc @StopAntisemites @AJCGlobal @kann @canarymission @Jerusalem_Post

[End Wokeness @EndWokeness]

Biden-Harris spending vs results:

$7.5 billion on EV charging stations
2.5+ years later: 7 stations installed

$42.5 billion on rural internet service
3+ years later: Not 1 home connected

[Oasis-Unit @OasisUnit]

#whatmattersmostatnca Day at the salon 💇‍♀️ today on the oasis unit!! All our patinets looking very glamorous now after a day of pampering 🧖‍♀️💅💈💇‍♀️ hair wash and blow, nail care and foot soaks and rubs! ❤️💇‍♀️🧖‍♀️💅💈❤️ @RochdaleCO_NHS @NCAlliance_NHS @ExpTeamNCA @SiobhanLouiseM1

[Benjamin Surmi @benjaminsurmi]

If your family enjoys the health benefits of real milk… be sure to share this with the farmer who milks your cow.

https://t.co/0c4wuB7Bur

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr @RobertKennedyJr]

John Barnett worked for Boeing for 32 years. The company worked to destroy his life after he exposed safety concerns. I’m proud that my sister Rory worked to tell his story in her award winning documentary Downfall: The Case Against Boeing. Boeing killed 346 people out of greed. Let’s hope there is a genuine investigation of John Barnett’s “suicide.”

Read here: https://t.co/laz1m6IJ7o

[Benjamin Surmi @benjaminsurmi]

A hero. https://t.co/XXcqGxosaO

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr @RobertKennedyJr]

As President Biden's cognitive competence comes under attack by the mainstream media, the DNC is doubling down on its strategy of keeping viable, non-Trump, candidates off the ballot. The DNC's disenfranchised cartel today filed a vague and specious claim against our campaign for allegedly colluding with the American Values Super PAC.

Our campaign has complied in every regard with the letter and spirit of federal election laws with a transparency that is absent in every other campaign.

The DNC is accusing my campaign of FEC violations in the form of sharing state-approved petition formats — petition formats so secretive they are posted on our website for use by all our volunteers nationwide.

The efforts by the DNC to suppress democracy, silence descent, and handpick our national leaders in smoke-filled rooms are radical departures from the core values of a party my family helped to build.

#Kennedy24 🇺🇸

[Linda Sherman Gordon Rethinking Aging Club founder @LindaSherman]

This weeks curated #News for the Ages at the #RethinkingAging Club 6-7pm ET. 12-12.

Presenting:
Debbie Howard @DebbietheCarer, Gary Barg @todayscaregiver, @Ellen_Khalifa, @BenjaminSurmi, @RayJGordon, @LindaSherman

Article authors, publications: @anna_p_k @NYTimes; @gretchentgulla @WSJ; @BrittanyTrang @StatNews; @phlode @guardian; @Bill_D_Novelli @FortuneMagazine; @Kiplinger

Links to articles and authors. Replay will be here post- show 👉🏻 https://t.co/VXRaMOFEHZ
Clubhouse invite 👉🏻 https://t.co/X6Eh6oEZuL

#caregivers #personalfinance #neuroscience #superagers #workplacebenefits #humanresources

[לי מלאך 🇮🇱 @Lee_malach]

שתפו.

The world need to see.
#HamasisISIS
#Gaza

[Benjamin Surmi @benjaminsurmi]

@LindaSherman @BoomerTechTalk There are so many options now in 2023, @LindaSherman! Great to connect.

[Bacoa @_bacoa]

It's hard to be a caregiver of an aging adult. That's why Bacoa sat down with Koelsch Senior Communities Director of Education and Culture, Benjamin Surmi, to discuss the latest innovations in caregiver technology. Listen to our Redefining Aging podcast at https://t.co/Tv8XH0GiAv

[Benjamin Surmi @benjaminsurmi]

Don't miss @SpinPoi in #Seattle if you want to add this fantastic modality to your therapy, fitness, activity program, youth group... Dr. Kate is visiting from #NewZealand July 29th - 30th! https://t.co/sjrOZopvvi

[Benjamin Surmi @benjaminsurmi]

Speaking with @LindaSherman, @RayJGordon, @debbiethecarer, @ellen_khalifa, and Zalan https://t.co/kUNauRegUA

[Linda Sherman Gordon Rethinking Aging Club founder @LindaSherman]

Join #RethinkingAging #News with:
@BenjaminSurmi @RayJGordon @todayscaregiver @zakksez @Ellen_Khalifa
Sources: @Lois_Bowers @_McKnightsSL; @neurosciencenew; @LiannaChamp @HuffPost; @SmithDanaG; @MarketWatch
https://t.co/nA99LLfZY4
#hospice #caregivers #neuroscience #Clubhouse

[Benjamin Surmi @benjaminsurmi]

@WFUDeac @loom @loom Yes, cannot log-in on windows/Chrome or iPhone....

[Project Veritas @Project_Veritas]

BREAKING: 9 Month Investigation Into @HHSGov Whistleblower Child Trafficking Evidence Reveals ‘Sponsor’ of 16 Year Old Unaccompanied Migrant Would "Pimp" Her to Men to Repay $10,000+ "Debt" for Getting Across Border

HHS Whistleblower: "We don't get sued by [child] traffickers."

[Benjamin Surmi @benjaminsurmi]

Speaking with @LindaSherman, @debbiethecarer, @TEKno_Hippie, Nathalie de Vazeille, Jennifer Abernethy, and @bernieborges https://t.co/ba8wyBL3FV

[Benjamin Surmi @benjaminsurmi]

Speaking with @LindaSherman, @RayJGordon, @debbiethecarer, @ellen_khalifa, and @todayscaregiver https://t.co/Bf7zbb1mZu Dehydration myths, infusions of plasma for Alzheimer’s, big acquisitions, new active aging category, HHS and family caregivers, Medicare Advantage demographics

[Linda Sherman Gordon Rethinking Aging Club founder @LindaSherman]

9-27 6pm ET #Aging & #Caregiving #NewsUpdates!
Presenters: @BenjaminSurmi @Ellen_Khalifa @TodaysCaregiver @RayJGordon @BoomerTechTalk @DebbietheCarer +
Articles from: @Lois_Bowers @_McKnightsSL, @CF_Pearson @NORCnews, @Natl_Inv_Ctr, @srhousingnews
https://t.co/UUc2S4XekJ