Month: December 2022

When a chat is complicated

Computers studying – so you don’t have to.
source: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/12/openai-chatgpt-chatbot-messages/672411/

Ta-da! A five hundred word essay on the theme of the hero in contemporary literature. Or how about the history of the Parthenon? Or a letter to a friend one hasn’t seen in a long time? Ten seconds later and you have an advanced piece of writing, thanks to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

It’s scary. And so much fun! Type in “Write a blog post on ChatGPT in Sweden” and you’ll get a fine answer, like “ChatGPT, a chatbot developed by OpenAI, has been gaining popularity in Sweden as a useful tool for business and organizations. It uses a variant of the GPT (Generative Pre-training Transformer) language model to generate human-like responses to text input in a conversation context.”

Boring, but accurate. After having read a dozen or more ChatGPT texts, it’s easy to get tired of the dry and lifeless language it uses. For facts and details, ChatGPT can also be straight-out incorrect. But it’s early days.

We speak Flashback

It’s also in English, so far. ChatGPT has been trained on the internet (lots of Wikipedia), archived books, and even real human conversations it’s been party to. All in English. A Swedish chatbot, GPT-SW3, is of course in the works. However, as Per Gudmundson (SvD) wrote the other day, its development is hindered by the fact that the National Library of Sweden (Kungliga biblioteket) won’t yet allow chat developers access to its vast digital content. Instead, the developers have had to turn to, among other things, posts on Flashback and Swedish Reddit for examples of human speech and interaction.  With content like that, it’s going to be great.

The issue is sensitive. Sweden’s research institute, RISE, says on its website that GPT-SW3 is absolutely not training on Flashback. So who knows? The royal library took issue with Gudmundson as well. In SvD’s online edition the next day, the library protested that it is indeed helping Sweden develop its AI capabilities – by allowing its texts to be read and understood by computer programs. Chat development, though, gets a hard no. The library is not able to foresee the consequences of allowing its database to be used for that purpose, wrote the chief librarian.  

For chat-interaction development, there are apparently two projects that are crucial: Natural Language Understanding (NLU) and Processing (NLP). These two projects are meant to be able to make it possible to sort through, tag, and find relevant information in huge amounts of Swedish. Then, in the next step, they’ll be able to respond with relevant answers and information, even for those who pose poor questions, or grammatically imperfect ones.

“Thank God I’m retiring.”

Until GPT-SW3 is well-sourced and developed, it’s in English where the rubber meets the road. A teacher’s “Thank God I’m retiring soon” is echoed everywhere. Articles entitled “The End of High School English” and the like have popped up like pimples on a teenager. In the New York Times Opinion, columnist Frank Bruni wonders if his career is over. Somewhat alarmingly, he doesn’t actually answer that question. Instead, he takes it to a more philosophical level, namely – If we are what we do, and we outsource what we do, what is left is aimlessness, purposelessness, even pointlessness. This is surely not OpenAI’s intention, but we all know where intentions can lead.

OpenAI was cofounded by Elon Musk and Sam Altman, among a few others. If you’re not a Musk fan, you might find purpose in not using ChatGPT, but it could be pointless. Ta-da!

You do you!

say the courts (sort of)

People will do what they want to do. What can you do.
source: https://tinyurl.com/dy8ky79b Myrtle Beach vacations

It has been a busy week for Swedish courts, with many cases being covered in the news. Rulings this week on Cementa, hijab, and union membership have (believe it or not) something in common, namely rulings on behalf of the beleaguered part.

Cementa – the movie

Cementa has been covered in this blog earlier (here). But hang on to your hats, here’s a refresher: Cementa has been mining limestone on Gotland for a hundred years. Limestone is needed to make cement, and Cementa produces most of the cement Sweden uses for building. When Cementa applied to extend its mining license, the first court said “Sure.” Several environmental organizations appealed the decision, and the appeals court then ruled against Cementa.

At this point, the then-Social Democratic government stepped in. Without Cementa, it was argued, construction in Sweden would stop and mass lay-offs would result. With unanimous support from parliament, they passed a law that essentially granted just Cementa a temporary license to continue mining. This caused an uproar immediately – could the government even do that? Environmental organizations protested the government circumventing the court in that way. On Thursday this week, the highest administrative court in Sweden came back and said what the government did was legal. 

For some, the special law that was passed to extend Cementa’s license was welcome, necessary and even commonsensical. The administrative high court’s decision has now upheld the government’s ability to do what it did. For others, both the government’s action then, and the high court’s decision now, is a weakening of the power of the courts.

If this isn’t fascinating enough (if you’re nerdy), though, wait a few days when the temporary license extension runs out. On December 13th, Cementa’s new application to continue mining will be accepted or denied. Cementa part V: the New Application.

Go ahead, express yourself

Meanwhile in Skåne, another case of acceptance was on the docket. Staffanstorp municipality voted to forbid girls in elementary school from wearing a hijab or other head covering while in school. Parliament took up and rejected such a prohibition years ago, but Staffanstorp persisted in the administrative court. The prohibition was rejected in the first instance, and has now been rejected also at the highest instance, although not for the same reason.

At the district court level, the court disallowed Staffanstorp’s prohibition on a freedom of religion basis. The highest administrative court, however, rejected the prohibition on a freedom of expression basis instead. Clothing is an expression of religious belonging, the court said: Restricting the clothing that someone wants to wear affects the individual and their freedom to express themselves. A restriction is therefore not allowed.

Free time and work time

Neither is the Transport Workers’ Union allowed a restriction; in this case to its membership. This case began in 2018, when a regular member of the union was elected to represent the Sweden Democrats party at the municipal level. He was swiftly kicked out of the union for being an active member of a party that, according to the union, was not compatible with their organization’s statutes stipulating people’s equal value. Mats Fredlund sued the union, arguing that the union existed for its members and their work environment, and not for judging what its members did in their free time. The district court agreed, but the Transport Workers’ Union appealed. Now it has lost again. The court of appeals ruled that booting out Fredlund was abridging his right to freedom of association.

In each of these cases, the higher court ruled on behalf of the part that wanted to do what it wanted to do, and not for the part that wanted to restrict that action. This, for a country whose smallest party in parliament is the Liberal party.

Weather worries

weather – it’s not just the climate, anymore
source: https://tinyurl.com/498tcbxc digital worksheets

The news on the electricity front remains bad. Despite some hopes earlier in November that the worst was over, prices over the last few days have been record-breaking. The reason for this is the weather, and that we’re largely dependent on it. Cold, windless days, ice building on turbine blades, and slush-infused rivers have all contributed to apex prices.

The Europe-wide factors that can mitigate this dependency, however, have also faced problems. The restart of nuclear power plant Ringhals 4, that was set for the 31st of January, will now be delayed an additional three weeks according to the latest press release. In addition, it was recently announced that Oskarshamn nuclear reactor 3, which stands for 8% of Sweden’s total energy production, will be offline for needed repairs between the 9th and 18th of December. Half of France’s 56 nuclear reactors are currently offline and being repaired as well: Recent war-inspired inspections showed signs of wear and tear that needed patching up. Finally, Finland’s newish nuclear reactor Olkiluoto is many millions of dollars late and has yet to even start producing electricity.

slush – even hydropower doesn’t like it

There are also other temporary factors that are increasing the current prices, namely ice formation. In the deep regions of Norrland, ice is starting to form on the rivers that supply water turbines. Currently, the rivers are streams of sub-zero slush that can pile up and clog the water intakes. Water power companies cut down on their intake to prevent the buildup which can otherwise wreck infrastructure and/or stop production entirely. In time, when the ice is a nice, stable surface for the rest of the season, waterpower production can increase again.

Unfortunately, electricity taxes will also increase. Thanks to inflation, and because the electricity tax is linked to the rate of inflation, electricity tax will rise 9% starting January 1st. (There’s no escaping this either – air travel taxes will be going up for the same reason come 2023.)

There is, maybe, some light in the tunnel. Water magazines in Norway and Sweden are full again after the fall rains, helping stabilize energy reserves. Gas reserves in Europe are apparently full. The rivers will freeze over. There will be wind, sometimes. Atoms will be split, again (especially if France fulfills its plan to build six new reactors starting 2028). And of the 55 billion kronor Sweden’s Power Net (Kraftnät) has collected via so-called “bottleneck fees,” 18 billion will be doled out to 4.4 million Swedish households in the lower half of Sweden in February. Unless something unforeseen happens, as Ebba Busch, Minister for Energy, Business and Industry, put it. And that is, precisely, the problem. Something always happens. Not least, weather.