Entries in 2023
Filters: Type: entry × Year: 2023 × Sorted by date
Datasette Cloud, Datasette 1.0a3, llm-mlc and more
Datasette Cloud is now a significant step closer to general availability. The Datasette 1.03 alpha release is out, with a mostly finalized JSON format for 1.0. Plus new plugins for LLM and sqlite-utils and a flurry of things I’ve learned.
[... 1690 words]How I make annotated presentations
Giving a talk is a lot of work. I go by a rule of thumb I learned from Damian Conway: a minimum of ten hours of preparation for every one hour spent on stage.
[... 2122 words]Weeknotes: Plugins for LLM, sqlite-utils and Datasette
The principle theme for the past few weeks has been plugins.
[... 1203 words]Catching up on the weird world of LLMs
I gave a talk on Sunday at North Bay Python where I attempted to summarize the last few years of development in the space of LLMs—Large Language Models, the technology behind tools like ChatGPT, Google Bard and Llama 2.
[... 10489 words]Run Llama 2 on your own Mac using LLM and Homebrew
Llama 2 is the latest commercially usable openly licensed Large Language Model, released by Meta AI a few weeks ago. I just released a new plugin for my LLM utility that adds support for Llama 2 and many other llama-cpp compatible models.
[... 1423 words]sqlite-utils now supports plugins
sqlite-utils 3.34 is out with a major new feature: support for plugins.
[... 1327 words]Accessing Llama 2 from the command-line with the llm-replicate plugin
The big news today is Llama 2, the new openly licensed Large Language Model from Meta AI. It’s a really big deal:
[... 1206 words]Weeknotes: Self-hosted language models with LLM plugins, a new Datasette tutorial, a dozen package releases, a dozen TILs
A lot of stuff to cover from the past two and a half weeks.
[... 1742 words]My LLM CLI tool now supports self-hosted language models via plugins
LLM is my command-line utility and Python library for working with large language models such as GPT-4. I just released version 0.5 with a huge new feature: you can now install plugins that add support for additional models to the tool, including models that can run on your own hardware.
[... 1656 words]Weeknotes: symbex, LLM prompt templates, a bit of a break
I had a holiday to the UK for a family wedding anniversary and mostly took the time off... except for building symbex, which became one of those projects that kept on inspiring new features.
[... 1120 words]Symbex: search Python code for functions and classes, then pipe them into a LLM
I just released a new Python CLI tool called Symbex. It’s a search tool, loosely inspired by ripgrep, which lets you search Python code for functions and classes by name or wildcard, then see just the source code of those matching entities.
[... 1183 words]Understanding GPT tokenizers
Large language models such as GPT-3/4, LLaMA and PaLM work in terms of tokens. They take text, convert it into tokens (integers), then predict which tokens should come next.
[... 1570 words]Weeknotes: Parquet in Datasette Lite, various talks, more LLM hacking
I’ve fallen a bit behind on my weeknotes. Here’s a catchup for the last few weeks.
[... 769 words]It’s infuriatingly hard to understand how closed models train on their input
One of the most common concerns I see about large language models regards their training data. People are worried that anything they say to ChatGPT could be memorized by it and spat out to other users. People are concerned that anything they store in a private repository on GitHub might be used as training data for future versions of Copilot.
[... 1465 words]ChatGPT should include inline tips
In OpenAI isn’t doing enough to make ChatGPT’s limitations clear James Vincent argues that OpenAI’s existing warnings about ChatGPT’s confounding ability to convincingly make stuff up are not effective.
[... 1488 words]Lawyer cites fake cases invented by ChatGPT, judge is not amused
Legal Twitter is having tremendous fun right now reviewing the latest documents from the case Mata v. Avianca, Inc. (1:22-cv-01461). Here’s a neat summary:
[... 2844 words]llm, ttok and strip-tags—CLI tools for working with ChatGPT and other LLMs
I’ve been building out a small suite of command-line tools for working with ChatGPT, GPT-4 and potentially other language models in the future.
[... 1317 words]Delimiters won’t save you from prompt injection
Prompt injection remains an unsolved problem. The best we can do at the moment, disappointingly, is to raise awareness of the issue. As I pointed out last week, “if you don’t understand it, you are doomed to implement it.”
[... 1010 words]Weeknotes: sqlite-utils 3.31, download-esm, Python in a sandbox
A couple of speaking appearances last week—one planned, one unplanned. Plus sqlite-utils 3.31, download-esm and a new TIL.
Leaked Google document: “We Have No Moat, And Neither Does OpenAI”
SemiAnalysis published something of a bombshell leaked document this morning: Google “We Have No Moat, And Neither Does OpenAI”.
[... 1073 words]Midjourney 5.1
Midjourney released version 5.1 of their image generation model on Tuesday. Here’s their announcement on Twitter—if you have a Discord account there’s a more detailed Discord announcement here.
[... 396 words]Prompt injection explained, with video, slides, and a transcript
I participated in a webinar this morning about prompt injection, organized by LangChain and hosted by Harrison Chase, with Willem Pienaar, Kojin Oshiba (Robust Intelligence), and Jonathan Cohen and Christopher Parisien (Nvidia Research).
[... 3120 words]download-esm: a tool for downloading ECMAScript modules
I’ve built a new CLI tool, download-esm, which takes the name of an npm package and will attempt to download the ECMAScript module version of that package, plus all of its dependencies, directly from the jsDelivr CDN—and then rewrite all of the import statements to point to those local copies.
[... 1240 words]Let’s be bear or bunny
The Machine Learning Compilation group (MLC) are my favourite team of AI researchers at the moment.
[... 599 words]Weeknotes: Miscellaneous research into Rye, ChatGPT Code Interpreter and openai-to-sqlite
I gave myself some time off stressing about my core responsibilities this week after PyCon, which meant allowing myself to be distracted by some miscellaneous research projects.
[... 891 words]Enriching data with GPT3.5 and SQLite SQL functions
I shipped openai-to-sqlite 0.3 yesterday with a fun new feature: you can now use the command-line tool to enrich data in a SQLite database by running values through an OpenAI model and saving the results, all in a single SQL query.
[... 1219 words]The Dual LLM pattern for building AI assistants that can resist prompt injection
I really want an AI assistant: a Large Language Model powered chatbot that can answer questions and perform actions for me based on access to my private data and tools.
[... 2547 words]Weeknotes: Citus Con, PyCon and three new niche museums
I’ve had a busy week in terms of speaking: on Tuesday I gave an online keynote at Citus Con, “Big Opportunities in Small Data”. I then flew to Salt Lake City for PyCon that evening and gave a three hour workshop on Wednesday, “Data analysis with SQLite and Python”.
[... 225 words]Data analysis with SQLite and Python for PyCon 2023
I’m at PyCon 2023 in Salt Lake City this week.
[... 347 words]What’s in the RedPajama-Data-1T LLM training set
RedPajama is “a project to create leading open-source models, starts by reproducing LLaMA training dataset of over 1.2 trillion tokens”. It’s a collaboration between Together, Ontocord.ai, ETH DS3Lab, Stanford CRFM, Hazy Research, and MILA Québec AI Institute.
[... 1077 words]