More AI satire

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The "Letter Equity Task Force"

Previous LLOG coverage: "AI on Rs in 'strawberry'", 8/28/2024; "'The cosmic jam from whence it came'", 9/26/2024.

Current satire: Alberto Romero, "Report: OpenAI Spends Millions a Year Miscounting the R’s in ‘Strawberry’", Medium 11/22/2024.

OpenAI, the most talked-about tech start-up of the decade, convened an emergency company-wide meeting Tuesday to address what executives are calling “the single greatest existential challenge facing artificial intelligence today”: Why can’t their models count the R’s in strawberry?

The controversy began shortly after the release of GPT-4, on March 2023, when users on Reddit and Twitter discovered the model’s inability to count the R’s in strawberry. The responses varied from inaccurate guesses to cryptic replies like, “More R’s than you can handle.” In one particularly unhinged moment, the chatbot signed off with, “Call me Sydney. That’s all you need to know.”

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Iranians in medieval Scotland

This post doesn't cite any Iranian language materials directly, but I dare say that Iranian speakers were involved in the transmission of this large hoard from western Central Asia more than a thousand miles distant and were present in the British Isles during the first millennium AD.

"Amazing’ Viking-age treasure travelled half the world to Scotland, analysis finds", by Dalya Alberge, The Guardian (Sun 1 Sep 2024)

The lidded silver vessel from the Galloway Hoard.

Lidded vessel is star object in rich Galloway Hoard and came from silver mine in what is now Iran

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AI Overview (sometimes) admits that it doesn't have an answer

When I first encountered AI Overview (AIO) about half a year ago, I was amazed by how it would whirl and swirl while searching for an answer to whatever query I had entered into the Google search engine.  It would usually find a helpful answer within a second.

As the months passed, the response time became more rapid (usually instantaneous), the answers better organized and almost always helpful, but sometimes AIO would simply not answer.

About a week ago, I was stunned when occasionally AIO — after thinking for a split second — would declare that it didn't have an answer for what I had asked about.

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Coyote warning

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Manchu is not dead

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Mandarin phonetic annotation for English

The PRC uses hànyǔ pīnyīn 汉语拼音 ("Sinitic spelling") for phonetic annotation, Taiwan uses zhùyīn fúhào 注音符號 ("phonetic symbols") for the same purpose.  Since we are well acquainted with pīnyīn, but not very familiar with zhùyīn fúhào, I will focus on the latter in this post:

Mark Swofford, "If you ever find yourself stuck on how to pronounce English", Pinyin News (5/7/23):

Here are some lyrics from a popular song, “Count on Me,” by Bruno Mars, with a Mandarin translation. The interesting part is that a Taiwanese third-grader has penciled in some phonetic guides for him or herself, using a combination of zhuyin fuhao (aka bopo mofo) (sometimes with tone marks!), English (as a gloss for English! and English pronunciation of some letters and numbers), and Chinese characters (albeit not always correctly written Chinese characters — not that I could do any better myself). Again, this is a Taiwanese third-grader and so is someone unlikely to know Hanyu Pinyin.

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Recycled bezoar, part 2

shaing tai suggests this "possible clue about the mystery":

"11 Wàn yuán yī kē Angōng niúhuáng wán, guòqí 'shényào' chéng tiānjià cángpǐn hūyoule shéi”

Wèishéme guòqí de Angōng niúhuáng wán rúcǐ zǒuqiào? Shāndōng zhōng yīyào dàxué yào xuéyuàn shēngyào xì zhǔrèn Lǐ Fēng jiàoshòu fēnxī, xiànzài shìchǎng shàng zhǔyào shōugòu 1993 nián qián shēngchǎn de Angōng niúhuáng wán, qí zhǔyào yuányīn jiùshì,1989 nián wǒguó shíshī “Yěshēng dòngwù bǎohù tiáolì”, xiàndìng 1993 nián yǐhòu, yěshēng xīniújiǎo bèi mínglìng jìnzhǐ yòng yú zhìyào yuánliào, yuán yǒu de shèngyú xījiǎo yuánliào bèi fēngcún, yòng yú yánjiū děng tèshū yòngtú. Shēngchǎn chǎngjiā yúshì gǎi yòng shuǐniú jiǎo de nóngsuō fěn tìdài tā. Cǐwài, tiānrán niúhuáng, tiānrán shèxiāng yě hěn ángguì, yóuyú yuánliào xīquē, xiànzài de Angōng niúhuáng wán duō gǎi yòng réngōng shèxiāng děng tìdài pǐn.

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Collection recursion

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Prepositional villains

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Recycled bezoar

From Michael David Johnson:

I found this sign (image below) on Queen's Road West near Exit A of the Sai Ying Pun MTR in Hong Kong. The shop was closed but I think it's a Chinese Medicine shop. Google gives me no results for "recycled bezoar" or "bezoar reciclado," so I seek your knowledge. Bad translation or just something that's not (ever) written in English? I assume from the Portuguese that this must be popular in Macau too?

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Number taboos in a Chinese elevator

This elevator panel image was sent to me by Nick Kaldis:

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"You scalar implicature!"

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