12 KiB
[RT][HF] Twig, Arc 7: Tooth And Nail
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Author: u/AmeteurOpinions Finally, everyone was working together.*
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URL: https://twigserial.wordpress.com/2015/10/20/tooth-and-nail-7-1/
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Score: 13
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Created: 2015-10-20T22:11:40
Post:
Comments:
u/TimeLoopedPowerGamer [+6] Utopian Smut Peddler (6 hours later)
Reddit has long been a hot spot for conversation on the internet. About 57 million people visit the site every day to chat about topics as varied as makeup, video games and pointers for power washing driveways.
In recent years, Reddit’s array of chats also have been a free teaching aid for companies like Google, OpenAI and Microsoft. Those companies are using Reddit’s conversations in the development of giant artificial intelligence systems that many in Silicon Valley think are on their way to becoming the tech industry’s next big thing.
Now Reddit wants to be paid for it. The company said on Tuesday that it planned to begin charging companies for access to its application programming interface, or A.P.I., the method through which outside entities can download and process the social network’s vast selection of person-to-person conversations.
“The Reddit corpus of data is really valuable,” Steve Huffman, founder and chief executive of Reddit, said in an interview. “But we don’t need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free.”
The move is one of the first significant examples of a social network’s charging for access to the conversations it hosts for the purpose of developing A.I. systems like ChatGPT, OpenAI’s popular program. Those new A.I. systems could one day lead to big businesses, but they aren’t likely to help companies like Reddit very much. In fact, they could be used to create competitors — automated duplicates to Reddit’s conversations.
Reddit is also acting as it prepares for a possible initial public offering on Wall Street this year. The company, which was founded in 2005, makes most of its money through advertising and e-commerce transactions on its platform. Reddit said it was still ironing out the details of what it would charge for A.P.I. access and would announce prices in the coming weeks.
Reddit’s conversation forums have become valuable commodities as large language models, or L.L.M.s, have become an essential part of creating new A.I. technology.
L.L.M.s are essentially sophisticated algorithms developed by companies like Google and OpenAI, which is a close partner of Microsoft. To the algorithms, the Reddit conversations are data, and they are among the vast pool of material being fed into the L.L.M.s. to develop them.
u/gryfft [+13] (7 hours later)
Disclaimer: I enjoyed Pact. Vague Wildbow spoilers follow.
I'd say Twig is definitely worth a read. Still a crapsack universe, because Wildbow, but a much sharper focus on character development and more developed relationships among the core cast. It has "breathing room" Pact didn't, because this time Wildbow has kept characters who matter deeply to each other front and center.
After Worm, I think Wildbow itched for a more flawed and complex protagonist. (Flawed meaning "possessing personality traits directly opposed to success," not "angsty badass.") Taylor was great, but her flaws were things like "strained relationships" that didn't impact her too badly in terms of combat effectiveness.
So Pact came along and the protagonist got nerfed. He made the most of what he was given, but he was dealt a really shitty hand.
Even so, the disturbing thing wasn't how rough the protagonist had it, it was how alone he was. He had literally no one to trust, and the universe itself was against him.
So in Twig Wildbow put together a tight-knit cast of characters who spend more time together than not. They're dealt a shit hand in a shit universe, but they cooperate, trust one another, and play to each other's strengths. There's banter and occasional friction in the group-- conflict is their native tongue after all-- but they work together effectively (echoing Taylor's resourcefulness and strategies) and they're there for each other when they need it (contrasted to Blake in Pact, for whom every lifeline is a thorny vine.)
Say what you will about Wildbow, he recognizes his mistakes and weaknesses and improves upon them.
u/RMcD94 [+3] (12 hours later)
I think you're overstating how bad the Twig cast have it, especially compared to pact
u/TimeLoopedPowerGamer [+1] Utopian Smut Peddler (21 hours later)
Reddit has long been a hot spot for conversation on the internet. About 57 million people visit the site every day to chat about topics as varied as makeup, video games and pointers for power washing driveways.
In recent years, Reddit’s array of chats also have been a free teaching aid for companies like Google, OpenAI and Microsoft. Those companies are using Reddit’s conversations in the development of giant artificial intelligence systems that many in Silicon Valley think are on their way to becoming the tech industry’s next big thing.
Now Reddit wants to be paid for it. The company said on Tuesday that it planned to begin charging companies for access to its application programming interface, or A.P.I., the method through which outside entities can download and process the social network’s vast selection of person-to-person conversations.
“The Reddit corpus of data is really valuable,” Steve Huffman, founder and chief executive of Reddit, said in an interview. “But we don’t need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free.”
The move is one of the first significant examples of a social network’s charging for access to the conversations it hosts for the purpose of developing A.I. systems like ChatGPT, OpenAI’s popular program. Those new A.I. systems could one day lead to big businesses, but they aren’t likely to help companies like Reddit very much. In fact, they could be used to create competitors — automated duplicates to Reddit’s conversations.
Reddit is also acting as it prepares for a possible initial public offering on Wall Street this year. The company, which was founded in 2005, makes most of its money through advertising and e-commerce transactions on its platform. Reddit said it was still ironing out the details of what it would charge for A.P.I. access and would announce prices in the coming weeks.
Reddit’s conversation forums have become valuable commodities as large language models, or L.L.M.s, have become an essential part of creating new A.I. technology.
L.L.M.s are essentially sophisticated algorithms developed by companies like Google and OpenAI, which is a close partner of Microsoft. To the algorithms, the Reddit conversations are data, and they are among the vast pool of material being fed into the L.L.M.s. to develop them.
u/RMcD94 [+1] (a day later)
Agreed but even if Sy was alone I wouldn't say he's in as bad a position as Blake was. Though Blake's position was worsened by being part of the team with Rose almost. Limited life non withstanding Sy generally enjoys his life and the experience they go through even if they are tense. Kind of like James Bond endangers himself but he's not got a bad life
u/sir_pirriplin [+2] (a day later)
even if Sy was alone I wouldn't say he's in as bad a position as Blake was
Sy wouldn't survive a week once his Academy-sponsored superpowers run out.
u/RMcD94 [+1] (a day later)
I do not disagree with that, but I think for story comparison sake Twig is not as bad or dark as the guy suggested when the only context is Pact.
u/MugaSofer [+1] (a day later)
I think he could find another source of superpowers in a week.
u/want_to_want [+3] (21 hours later)
I'd say Twig has more breathing room than Pact, but still less than Worm. Both Pact and Twig would be much improved by having more interludes, say 1 interlude after every 5 regular chapters. Otherwise the supporting characters turn into mere obstacles for the main cast, while in Worm it felt like literally everyone has their own story. It was especially tantalizing in Pact, where some supporting characters were super interesting (Ur, the Faerie) but their stories were just left hanging.
u/somnicule [+8] (a day later)
I feel that, but Worm had 10 years of stop-start development before we got the final product. I don't think that's something that can be emulated on the fly, given the already-phenomenal amount of work that Wildbow puts into his writing. The reason it felt like everyone has their own story in Worm is because pretty much everyone had their own story that then got abandoned, before being adjusted to fit into Worm proper.
Can we really fault the author for not having 10 years of experimentation to put into a story written in 1-2 years?
u/MugaSofer [+1] (a day later)
I'm pretty sure that the escalating threat isn't the problem, considering Worm had far more of that. If anything, Pact screwed up by starting too high (birdman everywhere!) and ending up with nowhere to go.
With that said, Twig has a much more gradual pace of escalating threat, and starts much lower. The protagonist is part of an established team, they're competent and dealing with almost routine tasks as troubleshooters for, and within, and backed by, an established power structure.
Imagine if Taylor had joined the Wards and been given training instead of running off to join the Undersiders like a twit, and also there's no Endbringers or Entities. Echidna, maybe, and definitely Cauldron, but no Endbringers.
u/Schuano [+2] (3 days later)
It's a great story. That said, I don't think the world is quite as organic as Worm's was.
In Worm, Everything the same, except people got superpowers in the 1970's (ish) and that changed things. However, the limits of that world and the way that world expanded in the story was very organic since it was "real world" + "X" = story situation.
Pact tried to do something similar but the magic system felt a bit made up as he went along. He managed it well and the initial chapters of weirdness worked well too but the amount of Others and how they interacted became a bit large and the threat matrix was always sky high. It got fatiguing and because the Blake's methods were "magic" instead of "cool shit with bugs" they were a bit harder to relate to.
Twig has a better world and better characters, though it's still not as organically self constructing as Worm was. (It's why Worm is so good for fanfics, the world builds itself.)
Twig is also casually horrific in a way that Worm never was. The world's mad biological science steampunk setting means that even finishing schools for the daughters of the English elite look like the hell scenes from "Event Horizon." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuJnIJHgQ44 (NSFW)
Part of the fun is that the main characters are totally inured to this and that this is the normal of the world, but it kind of hampers the "What if I was there and had super powers" feeling that worm had because within the first arc of Twig you'd know you never ever want to live in that world. Rather than controlling bugs through mind powers, you'd control bugs through specially adapted pheremone sacks that bulged from all over your torso and glistened in the torchlight.