alt Hacker NewsNot sure if this is satire.
Edit: What we have built is a natural language interface to existing, textually recorded, information. Transformers cannot learn the whole universe because the universe has not yet been recorded into text.
Replies
0x3f • today at 12:44 AM
Based on a glance at their other comments: not satire.
supliminal • today at 12:37 AM
It’s more than likely not.
alfalfasprout • today at 12:50 AM
100% agreed. Sadly, lots of people out there with the "trust me bro, just need more compute". Hopefully we don't consume all the planet's resources trying.
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Transformers operate on images and a variety of sensor data. They can also operate completely on non-textual inputs and outputs. I don't know what the ceiling on their capabilities is, but the complaint that they only operate on text seems just obviously wrong. There are numerous examples but one is meteorological forecasting which takes in a variety of time series sensor inputs and outputs e.g. time-series temperature maps. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-07897-4