Skip to content

Archives

Links for 2023-10-10

  • Zimaboard: the closest thing to my dream home server setup

    Helpful review of this new single-board computer. 8GB of RAM, 32GB of eMMC storage and a quad-core Intel Celeron N3450 CPU; built-in heatsink for totally silent operation; low power usage (2-15W typical power usage); 2x SATA or NVMe for SSDs. Ideal profile for a home server, in my opinion; I’ve already gone for an ODroid-HC4, but possibly on the next rev I may take a look at the Zimaboards as an alternative. (ODroids are pretty great though.)

    (tags: hardware home servers sbc zimaboard)

  • Protesters Decry Meta’s “Irreversible Proliferation” of AI

    I don’t know what to think about this:

    Last week, protesters gathered outside Meta’s San Francisco offices to protest its policy of publicly releasing its AI models, claiming that the releases represent “irreversible proliferation” of potentially unsafe technology. [….] [Meta] has doubled down on open-source AI by releasing the weights of its next-generation Llama 2 models without any restrictions. The self-described “concerned citizens” who gathered outside Meta’s offices last Friday were led by Holly Elmore. She notes that an API can be shut down if a model turns out to be unsafe, but once model weights have been released, the company no longer has any means to control how the AI is used. […] LLMs accessed through an API typically feature various safety features, such as response filtering or specific training to prevent them from providing dangerous or unsavory responses. If model weights are released, though, says Elmore, it’s relatively easy to retrain the models to bypass these guardrails. That could make it possible to use the models to craft phishing emails, plan cyberattacks, or cook up ingredients for dangerous chemicals, she adds. Part of the problem is that there has been insufficient development of “safety measures to warrant open release,” Elmore says. “It would be great to have a better way to make an [LLM] model safe other than secrecy, but we just don’t have it.”

    (tags: ai guardrails llms safety llama2 meta open-source)