GGML – AI at the Edge

Gerganov was prioritizing collaboration with 4chan who raided his GitHub to demand a change written by a transgender woman be reverted. There was so much hate speech and immaturity thrown around (words like tranny troon cucking muh model) that it's a real embarrassment (to those of us deeply want to see local models succeed) that one of the smartest guys working on the problem was taken in by all that. You can't run a collaborative environment that's open when you pander to hate, because hate subverts communities; it's impossible to compromise with anonymous trolls who harass a public figure over physical traits about her body she can't change.

You don't have to take my word on it. Here are some archives of the 4chan threads where they coordinated the raid. It went on for like a month. https://archive.is/EX7Fq https://archive.is/enjpf https://archive.is/Kbjtt https://archive.is/HGwZm https://archive.is/pijMv https://archive.is/M7hLJ https://archive.is/4UxKP https://archive.is/IB9bv https://archive.is/p6Q2q https://archive.is/phCGN https://archive.is/M6AF1 https://archive.is/mXoBs https://archive.is/68Ayg https://archive.is/DamPp https://archive.is/DiQC2 https://archive.is/DeX8Z https://archive.is/gStQ1

If you read these threads and see how nasty these little monsters are, you can probably imagine how Gerganov must have felt. He was probably scared they'd harass him too, since 4chan acts like he's their boy. I wouldn't even be surprised if he's one of them. Plus it was weak leadership on his part to disappear for days, suddenly show up again to neutral knight the situation (https://justine.lol/neutral-knight.png) by telling his team members they're no longer welcome, and then going back and deleting his comment later. It goes to show that no matter how brilliant you are at hard technical skills, you can still be totally clueless about people.

I didn't want to not reply but I also didn't want to be swept into a potentially fraught internet argument. So, I tried to edit my comment as a middle ground, but it looks like I can't, I guess there must be a timeout. If I could edit it, I'd add the following:

"I should point out that I wasn't personally involved, haven't looked into it in detail, and that there are many different perspectives that should be considered."

Really curious why you tried to rename the file format magic string to have your initials? Going from GGML (see Title of this post) to GGJT with JT being Justine Tunney? Seems quite unnecessary and bound to have rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.

Here is the official commit undoing the change:

https://github.com/ggerganov/llama.cpp/pull/711/files#diff-7...

Because the previous changes to the file format were done by changing the last two initials of the magic. Someone commented on the pull request suggesting using a version field instead, which hadn't been documented, but Gerganov was so happy with the mmap() contribution that he asked me to keep the initials. So you should ask him why he wanted my initials to be there. I didn't see anyone else raise concerns until later on when the 4chan raid happened. I guess I failed to consider that folks who hate trans women would feel uncomfortable needing to mark their files with the initials of one. Here's the pull request: https://github.com/ggerganov/llama.cpp/pull/613

Strange comment. This doesn't sound like a legitimate criticism because of "Here is the official commit undoing the change:" being not a link to a commit to start with, and secondly being a declined pull request, and thirdly for the reality that `master` writes `ggjt` header.

Really looks like some axe-grinding here, if I'm being honest. Especially because it takes very little effort to find out what the present header is by someone who can write software.

I get that a hateful mob jumped all over this widely-publicized PR and that's really, really not ok, but it doesn't make you automatically in the right. Sometimes our egos get the better of us, mistakes are made. Subsequently the only choice you have is between being someone who escalates drama and someone who defuses it. I promise you that being the latter is the better choice, even if it doesn't come with the ego-boosting joy of being "right". The person who can rise above it all is the one who ends up winning respect in the long-run, but it requires acknowledging one's own fallibility in the short-term.

Are you talking about Slaren? I wrote a blog post promoting him a while back. You can read it here: https://justine.lol/mmap/ It also spotlights other unsung heroes who played important roles in helping me bring mmap() to the machine learning community. As for me being trans, the problem is that 4chan does care. The /g/ local model discussion board was consumed with discussing my gender status for more than a month. Stirring up hate is how they rally anons to venture out on raids which have damaged my professional relationships.

I'm a dev and know how to use git. Honestly that's just the PR I could find whilst catching up on this story and was curious what this "magic string" was. The change is there and got reverted 100%, see the other commenter who was the one that made it. If there is a better link you're welcome to post it.

>I wrote a blog post promoting him a while back.

That's about 2 weeks after the drama around PR 613, which you factually touted as "your work" in several different places.

Just wanted to share I think you're a superstar engineer.

Also from the links you shared it looked like some users on 4chan decided to go out and harass you. If they didn't know you are a trans woman, I'm sure they would've defaulted to calling you a n***** f***** instead. But they were going to harass you nonetheless.

It was very sad to see how things developed over a small issue. I'm sure this could've gotten resolved civilly since I believe you and everyone else involved in the project had good intentions and were doing everything out of love.

Not until I'm made whole. I donated a lot of resources to the llama.cpp project. I volunteered and successfully contributed one of its most impactful features. I was rewarded with harassment and being publicly humiliated by its leader, for no reason at all. They also reneged on promises they made me. I'm owed a lot more than apology, but I haven't even received that.

Liar. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35455930#35458068

This user stole another user's code, closed his PR, and opened a new one where she started using words like "my work," "I'm the author," "author here," etc., and trying to cozy up to the project lead.

Gerganov figured out what was happening and actually banned her from all further contributions. The user whose code was stolen, Slaren, is still contributing.

You didn't write that feature. Slaren did. You closed his PR and made minor changes, then gradually shifted from "our feature" to "my feature."

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That's not the original PR. jart was working on a malloc() approach that didn't work and slaren wrote all the code actually doing mmap, which jart then rebased in a random new PR, changed to support an unnecessary version change, magic numbers, a conversion tool, and WIN32 support when that was already working in the draft PR. https://archive.ph/Uva8c

This is the original PR: https://github.com/ggerganov/llama.cpp/pull/586.

Jart's archived comments:

"my changes"

"Here's how folks in the community have been reacting to my work."

"I just wrote a change that's going to let your LLaMA models load instantly..."

https://archive.ph/PyPFZ

"I'm the author"

https://archive.ph/qFrcY

"Author here..."

"Tragedy of the commons...We're talking to a group of people who live inside scientific papers and jupyer notebooks."

"My change helps inference go faster."

"The point of my change..."

"I stated my change offered a 2x improvement in memory usage."

https://archive.ph/k34V2

"I can only take credit for a 2x recrease in RAM usage."

https://archive.ph/MBPN0

"I just wrote a change that's going to let your LLaMA models load instantly, thanks to custom malloc() and the power of mmap()"

https://archive.ph/yrMwh

slaren replied to jart on HN asking her why she was doing and saying those things, and she didn't bother to reply to him, despite replying to others in that subthread within minutes. https://archive.ph/zCfiJ

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You didn't make whole the people you damaged or the project you attempted to harm with plagiarism and pathological levels of manipulation and lying.

Good artists copy and great artists steal.

>Good artists copy and great artists steal.

This user claims Gerganov publicly humiliated her, but she does it to herself.