![]() ![]() Because you have virtually unlimited computational power to throw at this task, your algorithm can identify extraordinarily nuanced statistical regularities, and this allows you to achieve the desired compression ratio of a hundred to one. Instead, you write a lossy algorithm that identifies statistical regularities in the text and stores them in a specialized file format. Unfortunately, your private server has only one per cent of the space needed you can’t use a lossless compression algorithm if you want everything to fit. In preparation, you plan to create a compressed copy of all the text on the Web, so that you can store it on a private server. Imagine that you’re about to lose your access to the Internet forever. The resemblance between a photocopier and a large language model might not be immediately apparent-but consider the following scenario. I think that this incident with the Xerox photocopier is worth bearing in mind today, as we consider OpenAI’s ChatGPT and other similar programs, which A.I. (In 2014, Xerox released a patch to correct this issue.) What led to problems was the fact that the photocopier was producing numbers that were readable but incorrect it made the copies seem accurate when they weren’t. If the photocopier simply produced blurry printouts, everyone would know that they weren’t accurate reproductions of the originals. The problem is that the photocopiers were degrading the image in a subtle way, in which the compression artifacts weren’t immediately recognizable. The fact that Xerox photocopiers use a lossy compression format instead of a lossless one isn’t, in itself, a problem. It turned out that the photocopier had judged the labels specifying the area of the rooms to be similar enough that it needed to store only one of them-14.13-and it reused that one for all three rooms when printing the floor plan. ![]() To save space, the copier identifies similar-looking regions in the image and stores a single copy for all of them when the file is decompressed, it uses that copy repeatedly to reconstruct the image. Xerox photocopiers use a lossy compression format known as JBIG2, designed for use with black-and-white images. In those cases, we notice what are known as compression artifacts: the fuzziness of the smallest JPEG and MPEG images, or the tinny sound of low-bit-rate MP3s. The loss in fidelity becomes more perceptible only as files are squeezed very tightly. Most of the time, we don’t notice if a picture, song, or movie isn’t perfectly reproduced. Lossy compression is often used for photos, audio, and video in situations in which absolute accuracy isn’t essential. Lossless compression is what’s typically used for text files and computer programs, because those are domains in which even a single incorrect character has the potential to be disastrous. By contrast, if the restored file is only an approximation of the original, the compression is described as lossy: some information has been discarded and is now unrecoverable. If the restored file is identical to the original, then the compression process is described as lossless: no information has been discarded. Combine that with the fact that virtually every digital image file is compressed to save space, and a solution to the mystery begins to suggest itself.Ĭompressing a file requires two steps: first, the encoding, during which the file is converted into a more compact format, and then the decoding, whereby the process is reversed. Instead, it scans the document digitally, and then prints the resulting image file. They needed a computer scientist because a modern Xerox photocopier doesn’t use the physical xerographic process popularized in the nineteen-sixties. ![]() The company contacted the computer scientist David Kriesel to investigate this seemingly inconceivable result. However, in the photocopy, all three rooms were labelled as being 14.13 square metres in size. In the original floor plan, each of the house’s three rooms was accompanied by a rectangle specifying its area: the rooms were 14.13, 21.11, and 17.42 square metres, respectively. In 2013, workers at a German construction company noticed something odd about their Xerox photocopier: when they made a copy of the floor plan of a house, the copy differed from the original in a subtle but significant way.
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