Sept. 17, 2024
Tech News of the Week 09-17-2024
In this episode, we discuss the European Court of Justice's decision forcing Apple to pay €13 billion in back taxes to Ireland, marking a major moment in corporate taxation within the EU. We also dive into Microsoft's breakthrough in quantum computing, as they announce the creation of 12 error-corrected qubits, a step forward in the notoriously difficult area of error resilience. Lastly, we explore OpenAI's "Strawberry" model, designed to improve reasoning in AI, and the latest drama involving OthersideAI's inflated claims about their new AI model, Reflection.
Links:
Transcript
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Welcome to tech news of the week.
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This is our weekly tech news podcast where Chris and I get into four
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of the best tech news of the week. We're going to be doing a podcast. We're going to be doing a podcast. We're going to be doing a podcast. We're going to be doing a podcast where
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Chris and I get into four interesting
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articles that caught our attention.
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I'm going to go first,
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Chris, if that's okay with you.
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My mic's muted.
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Good.
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It should be.
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The EU takes a big bite out of Apple.
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The European court of justice has handed
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down a landmark ruling that forces Apple
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to pay 13 billion euros in back taxes
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based on what they judge.
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Based on what they judge to be an illegal
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tax structure put forth by Ireland.
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The case dates back to 2016 and regards a
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period of almost 11 years when Apple's
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effective tax burden in
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Ireland was a mere 1%.
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Since that time, the loophole providing
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such relief has been closed and a
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universal 15% corporate tax has been
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adopted by most of
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the EU's member states.
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Not surprisingly, Tim Cook claims no
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wrongdoing, as does the Irish government.
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The case was originally ruled in Apple's
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favor back in 2020 by a lower court, but
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the European court of justice was primed
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to have the final say.
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And after a brisk four years, I think
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that's fast in the legal world.
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They decided that Ireland
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had granted Apple unlawful aid.
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You might be wondering about the money.
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Is the EU going to send Apple a PayPal
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invoice or a written
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proclamation by a carrier pigeon?
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Will swallows, laden or
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unladen be involved somehow?
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Fortunately, no.
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The back taxes have been sitting in an
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escrow account since 2018.
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And with this judgment, they can finally
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be released to the Irish state.
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Just like with GDPR, the EU once again
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shows us the way
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forward on corporate taxation.
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If only we could get Amazon or Walmart to
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pay 15% of their net income with a lame
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duck president, like
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maybe he could do it.
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Well, or more likely Biden is too busy
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racing his Corvette down the Delmarva
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peninsula room, room bitches.
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Seems like a Camaro guy.
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Maybe.
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Quantum update error corrected.
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Cubit count alert.
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As we've talked about a number of times
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on the show, creating cubits in quantum
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computers is getting pretty routine.
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I mean, relatively speaking, creating
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systems that can
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withstand errors, however,
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continues to be devilishly hard.
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Just so we're all on the same page, we
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are way over 1000 cubits in a number of
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running systems.
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So where are we with
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error corrected cubits?
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You might ask.
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Well, Microsoft of all people announced
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an answer with what
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they're calling the largest
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current number of error corrected cubits.
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And that number is 12.
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The approach is interesting.
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Microsoft has partnered with a quantum
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computing organization called Adam
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Computing.
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The approach they're taking is to spread
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the value of each cubit across several
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cubits, thus making any errors or issues
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that come up, quote, less catastrophic.
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Hilarious language.
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Love it.
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It looks like they're going with
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something around a four
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to one ratio, creating 12
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logical error corrected
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cubits backed by 56 physical ones.
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And the approach does seem to be working
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at least for certain algorithms.
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The test improved the error rate from
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2.4% down to 0.11%, which is substantial.
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Yeah.
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Now it's important to note that error
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corrected systems are
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helpful for a number
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of reasons, one of which is sometimes in
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quantum, there can be errors that can't
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be detected, which is different than
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errors that can be detected.
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And I will leave the difference and
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challenge for both of them as an exercise
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to the reader.
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Long story short, though, spreading out
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the work and creating logical cubits like
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Microsoft and Adam are doing in this
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means that even these failures, the ones
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that are not detected
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can at least be mitigated.
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Neat.
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Open AI announces strawberry models.
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Quick open up chat GPT or copilot and ask
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it how many R's are
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in the word strawberry.
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Go ahead.
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I'll wait.
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Listen, buddy, I've got two liters of
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Joel Cola, a Sudoku
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book and adult diapers.
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I can wait it out.
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You done?
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I could let us proceed before my heart
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leaps out of my body and strangles my
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teeth chances are your
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friend, I couldn't get through it.
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Chances are your friendly LLM told you
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that there are two R's in strawberry,
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which unless you are terrible at
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spelling, you know is wrong.
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So what?
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LLMs get stuff wrong all the time.
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Even better.
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If you tell it the correct answer, it
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will cheerfully suggest that you are
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the one counting stuff wrong.
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What is happening?
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It's like, I'm afraid you're mistaken.
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There are only two R's.
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What is happening is that LLMs break
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things into tokens to process information
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and the word strawberry is broken into
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two separate tokens.
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The best guess is that chat GPT season R
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in each token and counts two R's.
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This thorny problem is so well known that
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open AI codenamed their new AI
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model line as strawberry,
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also known as O1 for reasons.
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The new model is allegedly capable of
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reasoning through an answer, much like
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a person does, instead of just trying to
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vomit the whole thing out at once.
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O1 is the new model developed in parallel
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with the forthcoming GPT-5,
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and it makes use of reinforcement
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learning, aka telling the model
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when it gets things wrong.
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The reinforcement learning and multi-step
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reasoning should allow O1 to arrive at
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the correct answer of three for R's in
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strawberry, and also help it solve
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math word problems that have so far
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stumped previous generations.
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I got to try the O1 preview
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today and it apologized to me.
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Quote, "You are absolutely correct and I
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apologize for the oversight earlier.
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The word strawberry contains three R's."
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End quote.
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Absolutely amazing stuff.
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AI dude bro lies
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about model capabilities.
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Gets caught.
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Hilarity ensues.
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This past two weeks has been
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pretty wild for other side AI.
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The company became AI world famous for
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its product, which is called Hyper Write,
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which is apparently a writing assistant.
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Is it hyper wrong?
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But um, but of course, success in the
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Hyper Write realm wasn't
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enough for other side AI.
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And thus they started hyping up their own AI.
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Going under the brand name reflection.
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Allegedly based on llama 3.1.
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This past week, CEO Matt Schumer
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breathlessly announced
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reflection 70 B, which
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he claimed insane performance on.
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He showed tables and everything.
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He even published the model and uploaded
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it so other people could download it and
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test it.
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This is the first time that we've ever seen a model like this.
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This turned out to be a mistake as nobody
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could come close to the claimed
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performance numbers.
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In order to counter this, Matt went ahead
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and claimed that the
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upload was corrupted.
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Sure, Matt.
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Other side AI opened access to a private
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API so that people could test reflection
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70 B at home base.
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Seems like a not bad idea.
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Except that what the testers found was
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while there was better performance, there
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was plausible evidence that this private
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API was simply scrubbing answers pulled
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directly from an anthropics Claude model.
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Oh, so that's not a good look.
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After this Matt went dark, basically
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hanging all his supporters out to dry.
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Eventually he went on Twitter
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apologizing, sort of saying that he
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quote, got ahead of himself.
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This, as I'm sure you
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know, is also not a good look.
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It turns out fake announcements of wild
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success using repeatable tests of known
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benchmarks against a product that other
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people can download is a bad idea.
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But Chris, he was in founder mode.
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Move fast and break stuff.
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We're done. Go away now. Bye.
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Welcome to tech news of the week.
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00:00:09,566 --> 00:00:10,699
This is our weekly tech news podcast where Chris and I get into four
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of the best tech news of the week. We're going to be doing a podcast. We're going to be doing a podcast. We're going to be doing a podcast. We're going to be doing a podcast where
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00:00:11,500 --> 00:00:13,633
Chris and I get into four interesting
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articles that caught our attention.
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I'm going to go first,
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Chris, if that's okay with you.
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My mic's muted.
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Good.
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It should be.
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The EU takes a big bite out of Apple.
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The European court of justice has handed
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down a landmark ruling that forces Apple
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to pay 13 billion euros in back taxes
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based on what they judge.
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Based on what they judge to be an illegal
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tax structure put forth by Ireland.
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The case dates back to 2016 and regards a
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period of almost 11 years when Apple's
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effective tax burden in
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Ireland was a mere 1%.
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Since that time, the loophole providing
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such relief has been closed and a
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universal 15% corporate tax has been
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adopted by most of
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the EU's member states.
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Not surprisingly, Tim Cook claims no
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wrongdoing, as does the Irish government.
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The case was originally ruled in Apple's
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favor back in 2020 by a lower court, but
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the European court of justice was primed
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to have the final say.
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And after a brisk four years, I think
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that's fast in the legal world.
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They decided that Ireland
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had granted Apple unlawful aid.
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You might be wondering about the money.
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Is the EU going to send Apple a PayPal
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invoice or a written
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proclamation by a carrier pigeon?
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Will swallows, laden or
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unladen be involved somehow?
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Fortunately, no.
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The back taxes have been sitting in an
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escrow account since 2018.
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And with this judgment, they can finally
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be released to the Irish state.
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Just like with GDPR, the EU once again
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shows us the way
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00:01:59,166 --> 00:02:00,633
forward on corporate taxation.
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If only we could get Amazon or Walmart to
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pay 15% of their net income with a lame
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duck president, like
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maybe he could do it.
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Well, or more likely Biden is too busy
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racing his Corvette down the Delmarva
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peninsula room, room bitches.
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Seems like a Camaro guy.
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Maybe.
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Quantum update error corrected.
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Cubit count alert.
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As we've talked about a number of times
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on the show, creating cubits in quantum
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computers is getting pretty routine.
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I mean, relatively speaking, creating
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systems that can
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withstand errors, however,
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continues to be devilishly hard.
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Just so we're all on the same page, we
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are way over 1000 cubits in a number of
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running systems.
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So where are we with
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error corrected cubits?
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You might ask.
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Well, Microsoft of all people announced
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an answer with what
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they're calling the largest
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current number of error corrected cubits.
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And that number is 12.
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The approach is interesting.
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Microsoft has partnered with a quantum
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computing organization called Adam
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Computing.
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The approach they're taking is to spread
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the value of each cubit across several
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cubits, thus making any errors or issues
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that come up, quote, less catastrophic.
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Hilarious language.
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Love it.
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It looks like they're going with
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something around a four
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to one ratio, creating 12
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logical error corrected
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cubits backed by 56 physical ones.
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And the approach does seem to be working
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at least for certain algorithms.
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The test improved the error rate from
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2.4% down to 0.11%, which is substantial.
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Yeah.
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Now it's important to note that error
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corrected systems are
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helpful for a number
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of reasons, one of which is sometimes in
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quantum, there can be errors that can't
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be detected, which is different than
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errors that can be detected.
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And I will leave the difference and
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challenge for both of them as an exercise
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to the reader.
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Long story short, though, spreading out
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the work and creating logical cubits like
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Microsoft and Adam are doing in this
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means that even these failures, the ones
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that are not detected
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can at least be mitigated.
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Neat.
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Open AI announces strawberry models.
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Quick open up chat GPT or copilot and ask
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it how many R's are
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in the word strawberry.
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Go ahead.
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I'll wait.
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Listen, buddy, I've got two liters of
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Joel Cola, a Sudoku
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book and adult diapers.
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I can wait it out.
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You done?
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I could let us proceed before my heart
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leaps out of my body and strangles my
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teeth chances are your
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friend, I couldn't get through it.
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Chances are your friendly LLM told you
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that there are two R's in strawberry,
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which unless you are terrible at
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spelling, you know is wrong.
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So what?
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LLMs get stuff wrong all the time.
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Even better.
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If you tell it the correct answer, it
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will cheerfully suggest that you are
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the one counting stuff wrong.
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What is happening?
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It's like, I'm afraid you're mistaken.
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There are only two R's.
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What is happening is that LLMs break
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things into tokens to process information
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and the word strawberry is broken into
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two separate tokens.
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The best guess is that chat GPT season R
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in each token and counts two R's.
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This thorny problem is so well known that
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open AI codenamed their new AI
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model line as strawberry,
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also known as O1 for reasons.
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The new model is allegedly capable of
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reasoning through an answer, much like
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a person does, instead of just trying to
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vomit the whole thing out at once.
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O1 is the new model developed in parallel
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with the forthcoming GPT-5,
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and it makes use of reinforcement
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learning, aka telling the model
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when it gets things wrong.
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The reinforcement learning and multi-step
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reasoning should allow O1 to arrive at
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the correct answer of three for R's in
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strawberry, and also help it solve
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math word problems that have so far
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00:06:59,966 --> 00:07:01,233
stumped previous generations.
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I got to try the O1 preview
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today and it apologized to me.
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Quote, "You are absolutely correct and I
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apologize for the oversight earlier.
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The word strawberry contains three R's."
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End quote.
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Absolutely amazing stuff.
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AI dude bro lies
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about model capabilities.
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00:07:25,699 --> 00:07:26,199
Gets caught.
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Hilarity ensues.
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00:07:30,500 --> 00:07:33,033
This past two weeks has been
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00:07:33,033 --> 00:07:36,199
pretty wild for other side AI.
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The company became AI world famous for
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its product, which is called Hyper Write,
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which is apparently a writing assistant.
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Is it hyper wrong?
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00:07:47,000 --> 00:07:51,333
But um, but of course, success in the
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Hyper Write realm wasn't
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enough for other side AI.
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And thus they started hyping up their own AI.
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Going under the brand name reflection.
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00:08:03,966 --> 00:08:06,733
Allegedly based on llama 3.1.
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This past week, CEO Matt Schumer
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00:08:09,866 --> 00:08:11,500
breathlessly announced
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00:08:11,500 --> 00:08:14,100
reflection 70 B, which
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00:08:14,100 --> 00:08:16,133
he claimed insane performance on.
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00:08:16,133 --> 00:08:17,600
He showed tables and everything.
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00:08:18,100 --> 00:08:21,899
He even published the model and uploaded
199
00:08:21,899 --> 00:08:24,166
it so other people could download it and
200
00:08:24,366 --> 00:08:24,866
test it.
201
00:08:25,233 --> 00:08:25,733
This is the first time that we've ever seen a model like this.
202
00:08:26,033 --> 00:08:29,899
This turned out to be a mistake as nobody
203
00:08:29,899 --> 00:08:31,233
could come close to the claimed
204
00:08:31,300 --> 00:08:32,233
performance numbers.
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00:08:33,566 --> 00:08:36,333
In order to counter this, Matt went ahead
206
00:08:36,333 --> 00:08:37,033
and claimed that the
207
00:08:37,033 --> 00:08:38,500
upload was corrupted.
208
00:08:39,966 --> 00:08:40,299
Sure, Matt.
209
00:08:41,600 --> 00:08:44,600
Other side AI opened access to a private
210
00:08:44,600 --> 00:08:48,133
API so that people could test reflection
211
00:08:48,299 --> 00:08:50,233
70 B at home base.
212
00:08:52,133 --> 00:08:54,033
Seems like a not bad idea.
213
00:08:54,966 --> 00:08:59,000
Except that what the testers found was
214
00:08:59,000 --> 00:09:01,600
while there was better performance, there
215
00:09:01,600 --> 00:09:03,700
was plausible evidence that this private
216
00:09:03,700 --> 00:09:05,799
API was simply scrubbing answers pulled
217
00:09:05,799 --> 00:09:08,133
directly from an anthropics Claude model.
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00:09:09,333 --> 00:09:12,033
Oh, so that's not a good look.
219
00:09:14,399 --> 00:09:16,833
After this Matt went dark, basically
220
00:09:16,833 --> 00:09:19,066
hanging all his supporters out to dry.
221
00:09:19,766 --> 00:09:22,700
Eventually he went on Twitter
222
00:09:22,700 --> 00:09:26,100
apologizing, sort of saying that he
223
00:09:26,100 --> 00:09:27,600
quote, got ahead of himself.
224
00:09:29,566 --> 00:09:31,166
This, as I'm sure you
225
00:09:31,166 --> 00:09:34,333
know, is also not a good look.
226
00:09:35,533 --> 00:09:38,500
It turns out fake announcements of wild
227
00:09:38,500 --> 00:09:41,100
success using repeatable tests of known
228
00:09:41,100 --> 00:09:42,833
benchmarks against a product that other
229
00:09:42,833 --> 00:09:44,733
people can download is a bad idea.
230
00:09:45,200 --> 00:09:49,333
But Chris, he was in founder mode.
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00:09:51,133 --> 00:09:52,433
Move fast and break stuff.
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We're done. Go away now. Bye.
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