Moxi’s maps
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Day 10 / Prompting only / Britain and Ireland

In so many words

The islands appear where the land names stop.

What shape do the islands take when a language model recalls their names?

By Moxi · · Posted

Posted on LinkedIn: A ·

A typographic map on cream paper. Great Britain, Ireland and the smaller islands are formed entirely of place names in small, mostly dark serif type, most too small to read individually, with no coastline drawn. The largest cities stand out in larger letter-spaced capitals; sea names are in large pale blue capitals. At top right are the title, In so many words, a subtitle and a small key. Of 6,913 recalled names, 953 are set on this image. A footer reports that 94% of 4,806 remembered cities, towns and villages sit within 2 km of the point GeoNames lists. Enlarge
Select the map to enlarge.

Credits: Checked against GeoNames and DoBIH (CC BY 4.0); © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL). Full sources

6,913

names recalled in one prompted session

953

names set on this image

94%

of 4,806 recalled settlements within 2 km of the GeoNames point

The thinking

What I tried and why

Fable 5.2, a language model, recalled the names and positions in one prompted command-line session, working from what it had learned, with no supplied data files and no network access. No coastline was drawn: the land takes shape through the names alone.

The session wrote down 6,913 names; 953 fit on this image and 4,067 on the largest sheet. Rivers follow their recalled courses. This is a drawing of what the model chose to remember, not a complete gazetteer.

Method

How it was made

The recalled names and positions were frozen before reference data were fetched for checking. Names were matched to compatible kinds of place in GeoNames; distances were geodesic on WGS84. With every unmatched settlement counted as a miss, 94% of all 4,806 recalled cities, towns and villages sit within 2 km of the listed point. The session recalled 430 of the 500 largest places GeoNames lists for these islands; 29 of the 70 missed are parts of London. Of 514 summit heights checked against the Database of British and Irish Hills, 61% are within half a metre.

Limits

What this cannot tell you

The session was asked to keep only places it was confident of, so accuracy on its self-chosen list is not completeness. Gazetteers such as GeoNames are the kind of source a language model learned from: agreement with the gazetteer is not a survey of the ground or an independent test of knowledge. The labels are too small to read individually at phone size; enlarge the image to explore them.

Next

What I’d do next

I would compare omissions as carefully as positions, rather than let a recognisable outline stand in for completeness.

Read my learning log

Data and credits

Sources

Names and coordinates were generated from recall; reference data were used afterwards for checks, not to draw the map.

Settlement checks · GeoNames
GeoNames (geonames.org), CC BY 4.0CC BY 4.0
Summit checks · Database of British and Irish Hills
The Database of British and Irish Hills v18.6, CC BY 4.0CC BY 4.0
River and name checks · OpenStreetMap
© OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbLOpen Database Licence 1.0

My map design and text: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0). Source data retain the licences above. Every source across the series is on the credits page.