All posts tagged: Unreliable

Trump Has Gone From Unpredictable to Unreliable

Trump Has Gone From Unpredictable to Unreliable

Published by Daniella Wilson

In July, on the manicured grounds of President Trump’s Turnberry golf resort in Scotland, the Trump administration struck a trade deal with the European Union. The agreement—centered on a 15 percent tariff on most European exports—was an uneasy compromise designed to avoid a bigger clash. By early fall, the deal was headed into the rough. Lawmakers in the European Parliament—rattled by Trump’s renewed talk of acquiring Greenland—questioned the durability of any agreement tied so closely to Trump’s coercive and shifting demands. Inside the Trump administration, officials were already discussing a far steeper tariff regime—up to 50 percent—if Europe didn’t yield, two U.S. officials told me. This month, after German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the U.S. was being “humiliated” by Iran at the negotiating table, Trump accused the EU of backsliding on the deal and threatened new duties of 25 percent on European cars, an escalation that was poorly received in Brussels. “A deal is a deal, and we have a deal,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said recently. “And the essence of this …

research shows it fluctuates and may be an unreliable predictor of future success

research shows it fluctuates and may be an unreliable predictor of future success

Published by skeptic

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is arguably the most celebrated child prodigy in history, composing his first pieces of music aged five, his first symphony at eight and his first opera at 11. After a study in 1993 found that listening to Mozart could improve spatial IQ – prompting headlines such as “Mozart makes your brain hum” – he became a symbol for intelligence and brain training. The study was no doubt interesting. The scientists found that performance on spatial ability tests was improved when their study participants had listened to a Mozart sonata, compared with a relaxation tape or silence. The increase in performance translated to an astounding difference of up to nine spatial IQ points. Although the effects were temporary, lasting less than 15 minutes, the idea exploded in popular culture. The “Mozart Effect” ignited a lucrative empire of parenting books, self-help manuals and CDs promising to harness the power of Mozart’s music to foster children’s cognitive development. That was despite the fact that the study had been carried out in adults and the evidence …

Russia an ‘unreliable partner’, EU warns after Hungary deal revelations – POLITICO

Russia an ‘unreliable partner’, EU warns after Hungary deal revelations – POLITICO

Published by Sam Flores

The documents, signed by Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó, set out shared priorities across “current issues of bilateral trade and economic cooperation, joint activities in the energy sector, industry, health care, agriculture, construction, and other areas of mutual interest, as well as in the cultural and humanitarian sphere.”  Among the plans made were to expand joint working in the nuclear power industry, support more Russian language teachers and graduate students coming to Hungary, and begin new partnerships between sports teams and universities. Hungary’s foreign policy trajectory has become a key issue in Sunday’s parliamentary election, where Prime Minister Viktor Orbán faces the toughest test of his 16-year hold on power. The veteran populist leader — who has pursued closer ties with the Kremlin and held up EU sanctions on Russia — lags behind center-right challenger Péter Magyar in the polls. Orbán has accused his arch-rival of siding with Brussels, threatening to drag the country into a war and undermining its access to Russian fossil fuels, while Magyar has said the current government should be investigated …

7 smart home mistakes that are making your devices unreliable

7 smart home mistakes that are making your devices unreliable

Published by skeptic

In my old house, I had Philips Hue lights in every room, Ring cameras outside, and Echo devices for voice control. There were smart plugs on the lamps, the space heater, the Christmas tree—basically anything with a cord. The setup took years to get right, and for most of that time it didn’t work well at all. Lights would vanish from the app. Routines fired one day, ignored me the next. Alexa would say “okay,” and then nothing would happen. Nearly every problem traced back to a fixable mistake in how I’d set things up, which I fixed in my new house. Here are seven mistakes that wrecked my reliability—and are probably wrecking yours. Relying on Wi-Fi and Bluetooth for everything Hub-based protocols exist for a reason Cheap smart home devices connect through Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. Both have real problems. Bluetooth says 30 feet on the box, but walls and furniture chop the usable range roughly in half. Wi-Fi reaches farther, sure, but most smart gadgets only operate on the 2.4GHz band. That’s the same …

Large Language Models (LLMs) Are Inherently Frail and Unreliable

Large Language Models (LLMs) Are Inherently Frail and Unreliable

Published by Jenni Sidey

The public unveiling of OpenAI’s ChatGPT on November 30, 2022, was met with justified astonishment along with unjustified hopes and fears that computers might be on the verge of artificial general intelligence (AGI), the ability to perform cognitive tasks as well as or better than humans. It is now apparent that AGI is not imminent and is not going to be achieved by scaling up ChatGPT or other large language models (LLMs). The core problem is that LLMs are stochastic text predictors—nothing more—and using more data, more parameters, and more compute is not going to give LLMs an understanding of how words relate to the real world. A more promising path is to make LLMs useful through extensive post-training by domain experts. For example, TurboTax, which has been around long before LLMs appeared, now uses an LLM to generate the text for interacting with users but relies on experts for its calculations and for determining what questions to ask users. I wouldn’t call TurboTax intelligent any more than I would call a pocket calculator intelligent, …