Dandelion Break Interim Report On DeepSeek, Self-Hosted

[AgentPete]

One of the very earliest programs I painstakingly keyed into my first computer – a Commodore Vic-20 – was Eliza, the faux psychiatrist program that fooled non-coders into thinking the machine was actually thinking… and having a conversation with them. It did this by having a small array of prompts and then turning the conversation round on the unwitting subject, most commonly by asking “What makes you say that?” or “What makes you feel that way?”.

Watching its mostly-gullible users fall victim to the “it’s-god-in-a-box!” reaction was quite amusing, and spookily similar to what’s happening today, on a global scale, with AI.

Playing around with self-hosted Deepseek last night (anyone can run it locally on their own machine for free) brought back memories. The program is designed / intended to have exactly the same effect on the gullible, non-programmers. Its coders gave it a UI tone that is partly conspiratorial, partly obsequious… “I am your servant, oh master, command me…” It’s like having a tame genie.

The more socially-deprived amongst us will relish this transitory (and fake) thrill of power, the rest of us will grow weary of it quite quickly.

What’s it good at? Really, the same stuff that ChatGPT can do. On Pop-Up Submissions we had a workflow that included ChatGPT. The workflow was like this:

• Public submission made on our website by completing a form
• Form data goes to Google Sheets for processing
• GSheets send author biographical data to ChatGPT for sub-processing
• ChatGPT harmonizes style of author bio: puts into 3rd person; summarises to correct length for insertion into YouTube show notes; returns processed data back to GSheets from where the data is pulled into our wider workflow.

The above is tedious, grunt work. No-one else wanted to do it. ChatGPT did it fairly well, with a few wildly wrong / libellous exceptions, hopefully all spotted.

None of this is earth-shattering. It’s just using computing power to do a fairly menial task. It’s not going to change the world, but it enabled a fairly complex show to happen rather more smoothly.

Contrast this (sensible) use of the tech with the wildly overblown, and frankly scary, usage scenarios being trumpeted by the AI-boosters. Some of these folk openly gloat about AI’s ability to “crash”the wages paid to humans.

Well, if that’s what we all want… do we?

 

[mickleinapickle]

I wanna go back to the 1960s.

 

[Pamela Jo]

I wanna go back to the 1960s.

Which is why the powers that be dont want nostalgia movies being made. The kids might learn there once was a time when music, books and governments were better.

 

[mickleinapickle]

Which is why the powers that be dont want nostalgia movies being made. The kids might learn there once was a time when music, books and governments were better.

I miss my old logarithm books and sliderule.

 

[Pamela Jo]

For the last two years there has been very little investment in alternative energies outside of China. Japan is now the only country really investing, not wanting to be left behind. Pretty much all Western money has gone to AI. And China trumped them. The Chinese have modelled their economic development on Japan's after the war -which was modelled on advice from an American engineer W. Edwards Deming. If only the US valued middle management.
"Companies such as Toyota Motor Corp. and Sony Corp. adopted Deming’s concepts and became world-class producers in their fields, helping Japan become one of the planet’s dominant economic powers. Japan’s rise was the start of a regional metamorphosis. Asia eventually became a manufacturing giant. Although American companies could have learned from Deming, most ignored him for decades even as Asian competitors gobbled away at Americans’ customer base and profits."

W. Edwards Deming of Powell, Wyo.: The Man Who Helped Shape the World | WyoHistory.org

W. Edwards Deming grew up in difficult financial circumstances in Powell, Wyo., early in the 20th century. Still, he worked his way through the University of Wyoming and Yale and became absorbed by statistics as a way to solve problems. After World War II, he shared his ideas on efficiency with...

www.wyohistory.org

 

[Pamela Jo]

Seriously??? WW3 over AI???? The Alarming National Security Implications of DeepSeek and China’s A.I. Breakthrough

 

[Hannah F]

I miss my old logarithm books and sliderule.

Oh no. I thank the inventor of the calculator. Thank you, thank you, thank you!