Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing#Microsoft: the font of all disgruntlement

I answer a lot of questions every day as a reference librarian. This morning, I had an idea of an AI like the many that are now popular except it doesn't know anything to begin with. It is empty. Then, an organization or group can tell it facts. It just knows how to store them like it stores up stuff it finds on the Internet right now. Then, users can ask it questions and it uses what it has been told to answer them. So, it is like ChatGPT, but it is trained only using facts that the users give it. Is that a real thing? Does it exist? What is it called? 68.187.174.155 (talk) 13:25, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

:Generative AI like ChatGPT are, essentially, overdriven text predictors. For reasons unknown, this text prediction can simulate a bit of intelligence, and can reproduce and synthesize facts from the text on which the AI is trained. Without a large-enough amount of text on which to train on, the AI would not work. I think it's impossible to find texts that are devoid of facts to produce your kind of AI. Aaron Liu (talk) 14:14, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

::Yes, to create new content, whether it’s text, audio, images, video, or something else, generative AI algorithms need to learn from very large data sets. Therefore, it is difficult to train an AI system using only user-provided facts. Stanleykswong (talk) 18:21, 12 May 2025 (UTC)

:An FAQ is essentially this. However, it is usually only appropriate for a limited subject.-Gadfium (talk) 19:31, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

:If you tell someone, "The capital of France is Paris", and you ask them next, "What is the name of the capital of France?", you can only expect a correct answer if (a) your interlocutor understands English, and (b) also understands that the term "Paris" is a name. So before you deploy it, you need to train or program your AI to understand English, know a lot of stuff that is generally understood and considered to be elementary but is not at all self-evident, and apply both common sense and reasoning to infer facts from other facts. You would have an uneducated, tabula rasa version of an AGI.  ​‑‑Lambiam 00:54, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

::There are two ways to implement AI systems: Natural Language Processing AI and Symbolic AI.  Symbolic AI focuses on manipulating symbols to represent concepts and their relationships, typically using logic-based systems.  Therefore, your assumption that "(a) your interlocutor understands English" may not be necessary. Stanleykswong (talk) 18:13, 12 May 2025 (UTC)

:If you abandon the idea that the facts and queries are written in anything approaching natural language, you can sort of get close to that (at least in toy examples) using a logic programming language like Prolog. Sesquilinear (talk) 01:47, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

:I don't know much about it, but the [https://www.bee.computer/ Bee] lifelogging device listens to your conversations using a microphone (you wear it all day) and then it uses what you say in those conversations to learn about you. The app asks you a lot of questions, things like "Is it true that you want to buy some shoes tomorrow?" and then uses your yes/no responses to make sure it only stores correct information about you (sometimes it hears other people talking and thinks it's you). It's a bit more specialised than what I believe you're asking for, but AIs starting with no information and learning from the user do exist. ―Panamitsu (talk) 02:13, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

::Thanks for the answers. Searching for definitions of everything mentioned has nudged me into a rabbit hole about personal AI agents. But, it is a very rainy day. I am sure I will have a lot of real work coming through the library today. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 11:06, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

= May 13 =

The Wikipedia article says that GroupMe started as something called Grouply. Years ago, there was something called Grouply that was famous (infamous) for "scraping" online groups for spamming and mass emailing purposes. Someone would get into a group (Facebook or Yahoo Groups), and collect contact info from the membership. I have some reason to believe that the Grouply that became GroupMe is different from the Grouply that made itself such a nuisance. Can someone find this out definitively? Uporządnicki (talk) 17:13, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

:You would have to find a source that a Grouply did the mass scraping and stuff first. Also [https://wizardsourcer.com/scraping-facebook-groups-using-grouply/ this blog] claims the scrapey Grouply was an extension that ceased operations 2018. Aaron Liu (talk) 03:11, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

= May 14 =

My understanding of bitcoins and blockchains is that each new "transaction"(?) requires some new information plus an encrypted version of all of the information it is "transacting" (is that a word?). Therefore the blockchain files are presumably getting bigger and bigger.

So my questions are, how large was the original bitcoin file and how large are bitcoins now? -- SGBailey (talk) 06:09, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

:[https://www.statista.com/statistics/647523/worldwide-bitcoin-blockchain-size/ This website] has a nice graph showing that it started very tiny and is now around 640GB. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 10:32, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

= May 16 =

Now that my username there cannot be used anymore, it was u/TheresJustNoMoney. I don't mind sharing my username elsewhere like here now, for that very reason.

THE CROSSPOSTED TOPIC:

Is Eght a valid name anywhere in the world much like how Sven is in the Nordics?

What if I made Eght my nickname only for when I'm around guys named Sven?

Where and in which countries is Eght a normal given name? To all of you named Sven: If you met a guy *actually* named Eght, what would your reactions be like?

S(e)ven crossposts, in order to keep up with the Seven / 7 / Sven theme:

• r/NameNerds: r/namenerds/s/gDLfQYlJpU
• r/NordicCountries: r/Nordiccountries/s/6Ut24lbU6v
• r/Norway: r/Norway/s/23FiXcvjiI
• r/Sweden: r/sweden/s/VPYE1ognh7
• r/Unket: (A technical difficulty kept me from posting there.)
• r/Finland: r/Finland/s/3LOvuBrKYo
• r/Denmark: r/Denmark/s/tDMecViB3J

----

So why also remove all comments, posts and contributions I've EVER made to Reddit under that account when suspending it? Even the good, high-Karma ones? Why not preserve all but the problem submissions?

--2600:100A:B054:FB6F:DC3A:927F:EEE9:84B2 (talk) 19:47, 16 May 2025 (UTC)