[COFF] [TUHS] Wikipedia anecdotes - LLM generalizations [was On the unreliability of LLM-based search results

[Alexander Schreiber]

On Mon, Jun 02, 2025 at 03:14:30PM +0200, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote:
> Alexander Schreiber wrote in
>  <aDxwjRhrUNJ5-Dm- at mordor.angband.thangorodrim.de>:
>  |On Sun, Jun 01, 2025 at 12:00:11AM +0200, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote:
>  |> There are surely useful tasks for AI, when it is driven with green
>  |> energy, and after is has been fully understood.
>  |
>  |What is currently being sold as "AI" is mostly LLM (Large Language
>  |Models), which are - to grossly simplify things - massive brute-force
>  |pattern matching engines.
>  |
>  |There are plenty of use cases where a well setup pattern matching engine
>  |is exactly what you need. My favourite example: SBB (Swiss Railways)
>  |uses "AI" (an in-house trained pattern matching model) to sift through
>  |the massive incoming stream of noise recordings from rail mounted
>  |vibration sensors, to identify (by matching known qualified patterns)
>  |those caused by damaged train carriage wheels. Additional support
>  |infrastructure then identifies train, carriage, wheel and notifies
>  |the owner/operator to fix the wheel - before gets worse and does
>  |more damage to the rails.
> 
> That is possibly a great thing.  I can assure everybody that Swiss
> freight trains pass by here in the many dozens / hundreds each
> day, and they are very well maintained.  Most often they are
> quieter than even the much light German passenger trains.

Ah, but there is a difference: Swiss (SBB & Co.) passenger trains
are very quiet by design - because they carry passengers (aka
"cargo that can complain"). Swiss cargo trains are slowly getting
there as the rolling stock is replaced, but they were _not_ designed
to be quiet, as cargo tends not to complain.

> I say possibly because i could imagine sensors in the locomotive
> should be capable to detect vibration irregularies?

Won't work, because a sensor in the locomotive will have a hard time
recording noise from the end of the train that might be 100+m away.

The setup described about grabs a vibration recording of every wheel
as it passes the rail-mounted sensor and (with the help of other data
sources) the system then can identify the train/carriage/wheel.

>  Not that
> i know.  But vibrations is understated given the hammerings.  Does
> this really need sound recordings?  Interesting.

Well, it's vibration recording .. which is what sound is, just at possibly
a different frequency range that what humans hear.

Kind regards,
           Alex.
-- 
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and
 looks like work."                                      -- Thomas A. Edison