apsal

AI Engineer - Werkstudent @MercedesBenz (MBition)

[Arvind Narayanan @random_walker]

Something amazing is happening in the debate about text watermarking in Claude. This is my best attempt to make sense of the quickly evolving situation.

The key thing to keep in mind is that it is in fact possible to watermark LLM-generated text without degrading output quality (and in fact achieve a much stronger property, which is that the distribution of possible outputs is unchanged.) This is well established technically, and it has been implemented by Google / Gemini for over two years, and no one seemingly cared.

Admittedly, quality-preserving watermarking is one of those counterintuitive facts about probability, like that annoying Monty Hall problem (the one with two goats behind three doors). The theorem-understanding part of my brain has no problem with it, but the intuitive part of my brain is screaming that there must be some mistake.

I have no interest in re-litigating this. What I’m curious about is why, when Anthropic announced that they are rolling out watermarking that doesn’t degrade outputs, so many of their customers seem to have concluded that they are lying.

I think three things went wrong:

1. Anthropic’s rollout was terrible from a comms perspective. There was no blog post; just a quiet support page with the title “How Claude marks AI-generated content” that said strangely little about how Claude actually marks AI-generated content. And it had no explanation of why they’ve rolled it out worldwide even though it’s required by law only in the EU. No transparency about who gets access to the watermark verifier.

2. Generally low trust and high suspicion about Anthropic’s motivations, given their statements and actions over the last few months / years.

3. Unresolved questions about the right tradeoff between individual users’ freedoms and the collective benefits of pervasive watermarking. Unlike Pangram-style AI detection, most people didn’t even know this was a thing, and it’s always uncomfortable to find out that a thing exists at the same time that you find out it’s mandatory with no opt-out.

Evidently surprised by the strength of the backlash, Anthropic has been doing damage control, focusing on explaining how it works. But this only addresses the first point above. Once the narrative that they are lying took hold, people seem to be willing to reject anything they say about this topic, including the feasibility of distortion-free watermarking.

This is also a textbook example (I plan to use it in my classes!) to explain why the “tech policy moves slowly because politicians don’t understand tech” narrative is ridiculous. Tech policy does move slowly, but for the same reasons all policy moves slowly. Figuring out the right tradeoffs in almost any situation — and getting public buy-in — is genuinely hard and can never happen at the speed of tech. If tech policy were to move even half as fast as people constantly claim they want it to move, absolute chaos would result. This situation is a good example.

[Kiran @thetronjohnson]

I’ve spent countless hours stuck in busywork—writing PRDs, planning MVPs, optimizing landing pages.

The more time I spend on this, the less time I have to execute.

So, I built GTMGuy, an AI tool to take care of the grind

https://t.co/pciwCiOOxL

#indiehackers #buildinpublic

[Kiran @thetronjohnson]

Today I'm kick starting https://t.co/VTocAXpaXQ 🍀

#digitalnomads #buildinpublic #remotework

[Kiran @thetronjohnson]

Looking for a hassle-free #API testing platform? 🤔

@hoppscotch_io 🛸 is the ultimate choice for simplicity and ease-of-use. Don't miss our latest blog post on leveraging collections to streamline your workflow. 🦄

https://t.co/BZBotsDeqQ

[minhash @minhash]

Super excited for this work to finally be released (in development beta currently~)

@_apzl and I have been working on making it fully powered while still remaining general enough to provide good building blocks for optimization researchers

This is just the beginning! LFG!!🔥

[apsal @_apzl]

Optimizers are the magic behind machine learning. It's really important to have the right tools and resources to design better optimizers.

some exciting tools are underway at @dawnofevehq 💖

[minhash @minhash]

Hello #ML and #optimisation community folk! 🙌

I recently made a repository for saving summary notes for optimisers and optimisation algorithms for machine learning, to help researchers get up-to-par quickly

Built with Love and Care 💙

🔗 link: https://t.co/XJshZlt8UO

[apsal @_apzl]

for sure

[Kiran @thetronjohnson]

Definitely gonna take more workcations with @SubinSiby and @_apzl 😌

[tk @heettike]

filing your taxes is hard. it's intimidating to the say the least.

with the ITR filing date approaching (31st July), we created a tax cheat-sheet (in the link below) that will help a beginner to get a quick understanding.

we're also sponsoring tax filing for 3 people. 👇

[apsal @_apzl]

@thetronjohnson @ProductHunt @gridsome @airtable @zapier 💫💫

[Forbidden Stories @FbdnStories]

- 𝗕𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗞𝗜𝗡𝗚 -
Global democracy under cyber attack.
Follow along throughout the week.
#PegasusProject

[Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) @internetfreedom]

Privacy is a human right.

[Let India Breathe || #StandWithManipur|| @LetIndBreathe]

Why are the indigenous people of Lakshadweep Islands saying #RevokeLDAR ?

The Central govt has introduced the draconian, undemocratic, unconstitutional and inhumane Draft Lakshadweep Development Authority Regulation, 2021 (LDAR 2021).

What does it do?

1/n

[Kiran @thetronjohnson]

I'm thinking of mentoring 2-3 students to help them get started in tech.

If you're someone who is completely clueless on where/how to start, fill up this form and I'll try my best to help you out!

https://t.co/WLYSHn84ZA

#mentorship #DEVCommunity #techtwitter

[Demi Lovato @ddlovato]

Today is a day I'm so happy to share more of my life with you all- I am proud to let you know that I identify as non-binary & will officially be changing my pronouns to they/them moving forward 💖

[Conf42 @conf42com]

🟢 ❝Using Open Earth Observations for measuring economic indicators❞

🐼 🐍 Register: https://t.co/Mxy8MX2Lqt

by @Aksgupta123, CEO at Think Evolve Consultancy
by Abha Porwal & Apsal K, Interns at Think Evolve Consultancy

#Conf42 #Python 2021