<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: amayne</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=amayne</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Sat, 09 May 2026 03:10:17 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=amayne" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by amayne in "In the AI Economy, There Will Be Zero Percent Unemployment"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I may have missed something. What are saying specifically?<p>Okun's law shows a strong correlation between GDP and employment. Which runs counter to your previous claim – as I understand it (please forgive me if I'm not understanding it correctly.)<p>Did you make a comment somewhere else that I missed?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 08 May 2024 22:21:30 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40303329</link><dc:creator>amayne</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40303329</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40303329</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by amayne in "No one will read your book (2021)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Fair question. In my anecdotal experience everyone I know who had persistent energy, focus and a mechanism for improving their craft achieved something interesting. Sometimes it was ended up in screenwriting or an adjacent field, but something came of it.<p>My friends who produced excuses became really good at that. My friends who produced real works and continued to improve became good at that instead.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 08 May 2024 18:34:58 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40301468</link><dc:creator>amayne</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40301468</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40301468</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by amayne in "No one will read your book (2021)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Exactly. I'm very glad I ignored this kind of thinking.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 08 May 2024 05:50:59 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40294762</link><dc:creator>amayne</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40294762</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40294762</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by amayne in "No one will read your book (2021)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Exceptions happen. When I decided I wanted to be a novelist I wrote ten books in one year and only released the ones I liked. I'd write a book then read a book on writing and try to improve. I'd give my books away to anyone who asked and turned them into free podcasts.<p>A year later I was one of the top ten best-selling indie writers on Amazon, I had my first movie deal and representation from an amazing agent who stuck by me through the rough parts.<p>Luck and timing were big factors. I also locked myself in my house for 12 months straight and did nothing but focus on being a better writer and create as much output as I could to get traction. I spent a tremendous amount of psychotic energy at building my writing business. Most people give up. I was 37 and desperate to make it work.<p>When I went with a traditional publisher it was frustrating at first. I was getting critical nods (I was a finalist for the Edgar and the Thriller Award) but the sales numbers weren't the same as when I was independent.<p>Eventually I found a great publisher (an imprint with Amazon Publishing) and it was a perfect match. My first novel with them (The Naturalist) spent six weeks in the number one spot (even outselling Harry Potter.) I now do two books a year with them.<p>I don't have the quite the sales or name recognition of a James Patterson or Stephen King, but I became a millionaire from publishing and investing on those earnings before I started working in AI.<p>I can't speak to the part of the article about advances. They're based very heavily on your sales history. I had to work my way up to six-figure advances. If you have John Scalzi sales numbers you can pick your terms. David Baldacci doesn't ask for an advance. He just splits the profits with the publisher. People like him are in a whole different league.<p>tldr: Luck and timing matter, but so does being an absolutely focused psychopath who gives up a social life, television, games and everything else to get what you want.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 08 May 2024 05:49:55 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40294754</link><dc:creator>amayne</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40294754</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40294754</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by amayne in "In the AI Economy, There Will Be Zero Percent Unemployment"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Okun’s Law has held up pretty well over the last 60 years. Are you aware of any research that disputes that other than the degree of the coefficient?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 01 May 2024 17:57:48 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40226813</link><dc:creator>amayne</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40226813</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40226813</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by amayne in "In the AI Economy, There Will Be Zero Percent Unemployment"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Eventually that will probably be the case.<p>The future isn’t a fixed point. But before then H&R Block (or a company like them) will probably shift to AI. Then eventually your AI will mean you don’t even need them.<p>The disruptors will get disrupted.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 30 Apr 2024 20:19:36 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40215802</link><dc:creator>amayne</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40215802</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40215802</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by amayne in "In the AI Economy, There Will Be Zero Percent Unemployment"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Original author here:<p>Yes. Rich people tend to re-invest their money and not throw it into a Scrooge McDuck vault to swim in. The re-investing is what helps create economic growth.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 30 Apr 2024 18:11:22 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40214171</link><dc:creator>amayne</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40214171</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40214171</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by amayne in "In the AI Economy, There Will Be Zero Percent Unemployment"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Original author here:<p>A. Some parts of the economy will grow. Some will shrink. My claim is that if you believe that AI will create new efficiencies and continue to do so, then overall economic growth will increase at a faster rate than ever.<p>B. Predicting what architecture could lead to this growth is beyond the scope of this article. The point was to say that if we keep getting increased efficiencies we'll get increased growth.<p>C. Job creation accelerates. Before I was hired at OpenAI in 2020, nobody on the planet had ever been hired as a prompt engineer. Now it's a career (at least for the time being.)<p>D. I'm assuming maximizing profit in the most near-sighted way possible. Same as it has ever been.<p>Is there a specific claim or argument that you disagree with?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 30 Apr 2024 18:07:13 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40214119</link><dc:creator>amayne</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40214119</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40214119</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by amayne in "In the AI Economy, There Will Be Zero Percent Unemployment"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Original author here (not ChatGPT):<p>My claim is that H&R Block would replace all their workers for more efficient AI if it was more profitable. Then they would re-invest that money in the most productive way they can – other companies, etc. This is the same strategy as Apple, Microsoft and other companies do with large amounts of cash.<p>I don't claim H&R Block would be directly creating new jobs. They would try to maximize profit by investing their profits and diversifying.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 30 Apr 2024 17:50:32 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40213840</link><dc:creator>amayne</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40213840</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40213840</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by amayne in "What can LLMs never do?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Some of these can be done with the right prompting. Wordle was solved a year ago. The problem is that what works and what doesn’t can be counterintuitive or at least require you to think about how something is perceived at the token level.<p><a href="https://andrewmayne.com/2023/03/29/how-to-play-wordle-with-gpt-4-and-other-prompt-tricks/" rel="nofollow">https://andrewmayne.com/2023/03/29/how-to-play-wordle-with-g...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 28 Apr 2024 02:37:54 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40185543</link><dc:creator>amayne</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40185543</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40185543</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by amayne in "The Airship to Orbit Project"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Here's his YouTube channel. I don't know about the viability, but I loved the concept so much I started writing a sequel to my Station Breaker novels around the concept.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/@johnmpowell" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/@johnmpowell</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 15 Apr 2024 04:13:36 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40037018</link><dc:creator>amayne</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40037018</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40037018</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by amayne in "Ask HN: Recommendations for videos/documentaries about building things"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>6 Days to Air: The Making of South Park<p><a href="https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hU83PE68oNY" rel="nofollow">https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hU83PE68oNY</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 21 Jan 2024 18:11:04 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39080953</link><dc:creator>amayne</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39080953</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39080953</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by amayne in "(Unsuccessfully) Fine-tuning GPT to play "Connections""]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>You’ll <i>probably</i> get better results by putting the examples only in the completion part of the training examples.<p>GPT-3.5 learns how to generalize better when it’s just in the completion.<p>This is the same problem that vexed the researchers who did the paper on the alleged reversal curse.<p>(<a href="https://andrewmayne.com/2023/11/14/is-the-reversal-curse-real/" rel="nofollow">https://andrewmayne.com/2023/11/14/is-the-reversal-curse-rea...</a>)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 15 Jan 2024 18:56:27 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39004591</link><dc:creator>amayne</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39004591</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39004591</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by amayne in "1D Pac-Man"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>If Pac-Man and the ghost positions are on the x axis, what is the y axis used for?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 03 Jan 2024 02:12:14 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38849850</link><dc:creator>amayne</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38849850</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38849850</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by amayne in "GPT-4 Can Almost Perfectly Handle Unnatural Scrambled Text"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>GPT-3 Davinci from 2020 could do this too:<p>Segment this text into proper sentences:<p>Input:<p>UNDERNEATHTHEGAZEOFORIONSBELTWHERETHESEAOFTRANQUILITYMEETSTHEEDGEOFTWILIGHTLIESAHIDDENTROVEOFWISDOMFORGOTTENBYMANYCOVETEDBYTHOSEINTHEKNOWITHOLDSTHEKEYSTOUNTOLDPOWER<p>Output:<p>1. Underneath the gaze of Orion's belt, where the sea of tranquility meets the edge of twilight, lies a hidden trove of wisdom forgotten by many, coveted by those in the know. 
2. It holds the keys to untold power.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 03 Dec 2023 18:51:28 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38509640</link><dc:creator>amayne</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38509640</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38509640</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by amayne in "Is the reversal curse in LLMs real?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>1. I don't think the original research paper demonstrated the reversal curse. They claimed that you'd only get random answers from their example prompt. I showed that wasn't the case. I also pointed out what I believe to be a flaw in how they trained their model that when corrected for gave results that were non-random.<p>2. That depends on what you mean by logic. What would be an example of logical reasoning that would settle this?<p>3. Alan Turing created the Imitation Game thought experiment to show the futility of this question. If intelligence is something that can be observed and tested, then when we should be able to describe what to test for.<p>4. I don't make any specific claims about LLMs logic or intelligence. I just wanted to put their claim that LLMs can't generalize from B to A to the test.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 15 Nov 2023 09:34:06 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38274889</link><dc:creator>amayne</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38274889</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38274889</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by amayne in "Is the reversal curse in LLMs real?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I've added your suggested test to the blog post: <a href="https://andrewmayne.com/2023/11/14/is-the-reversal-curse-real/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://andrewmayne.com/2023/11/14/is-the-reversal-curse-rea...</a><p>Spoiler: It doesn't say "Tom Cruise."</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 15 Nov 2023 04:05:23 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38273240</link><dc:creator>amayne</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38273240</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38273240</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by amayne in "Is the reversal curse in LLMs real?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Hello!<p>I’m the “shark-diving science journalist” in question.<p>First of all, you can run the experiments like I did and test this yourself. I’m not asking anyone to take my word. Just do what I did: Read the original paper. Test the claims for yourself.<p>And to clarify a couple things:<p>1. The shark-diving part is true.<p>2. I’ve never been a journalist of any kind that I’m aware of unless you count writing for Skeptic Magazine. I’ve had many, many jobs though.<p>3. I started at OpenAI as a software engineer and member of technical staff. When I started there was just over a hundred people there. The lines between engineering were and are blurry.<p>4. I was the original prompt engineer at OpenAI and discovered many of the examples for using GPT-3 and wrote a lot of the original documentation. Internally my title was “prompt whisperer.”<p>5. I’m in the GPT-4 research paper for my contributions to model capability. I helped find abilities for long-text, vision, etc.<p>6. I was given the title Science Communicator when I started doing background briefings for media, etc., but still worked on model capability and other things.<p>7. I left OpenAI two months ago to work on a startup.<p>Best,<p>Andrew Mayne</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 15 Nov 2023 03:43:39 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38273066</link><dc:creator>amayne</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38273066</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38273066</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by amayne in "Workers AI: Serverless GPU-powered inference"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Those don't explain the relation between neuron cost and length.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 27 Sep 2023 22:16:44 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37682156</link><dc:creator>amayne</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37682156</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37682156</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by amayne in "Workers AI: Serverless GPU-powered inference"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Could you give us an example of what that means in practical terms?<p>The post says that 1000 neurons will give you 130 LLM responses - but of what length?<p>(LLMs are generally priced by input and output tokens. The longer the tokens the longer the compute time. Without an idea of what you mean by a response it's hard to understand.)<p>Likewise: 1,250 embeddings – How big is the text size in the example?<p>I'm VERY excited to see you doing this and understand it's early stages, but I wan't wrap my head around the pricing without context.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 27 Sep 2023 19:06:49 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37679650</link><dc:creator>amayne</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37679650</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37679650</guid></item></channel></rss>