Artificial Intelligence
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It would be much more efficient…
Sam Altman is generally regarded as a smart guy, right? I mean, he’s got a lot of money, which is the way we measure smarts here in the US. Have a lot of money, say something, and it’ll be featured in the media. Now he’s claiming that people shouldn’t run open-weight LLMs on their own… Continue reading
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Step back to add perspective
in 2024 Ali Alkhatib wrote Defining AI, a definitely-worth-reading essay about trying to clarify what “AI” (in its current form, 70 years into the use of the damn term). He included this: “I think we should shed the idea that AI is a technological artifact with political features and recognize it as a political artifact… Continue reading
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Your pockets aren’t deep enough
There’s an idea circulating widely that if you enable a swarm of AI agents to scour the web for “deals,” you’ll get the best prices on everything. This is nonsense. It’s based on several patently ridiculous assumptions: • Your agents might be competing with some other users’ agents, but not everybody’s.• The vomitrocious amount of… Continue reading
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Car Shopping
1996 “Claudia, my car is worn out; I need to buy a new one.” “I can help you; I’m going to the library this afternoon anyway.” (the next morning) “Look at this: I’ve made a spreadsheet of the recommendations from Consumer Reports, Time Magazine, Car and Driver, Motor Trend, Road & Track, and the New… Continue reading
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20-something Hubris
A young prodigy in AI development named Alexandr Wang got a sack of cash from world-class sociopath Zuckerberg to build Facebook’s new AI program “Muse.” Now [Twitter-link warning:] he’s attempted to justify his work, in the most hubristic, egotistical way imaginable. Of course he did so on Twitter. Katie Notopoulos saw through it immediately as… Continue reading
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Not everything is property
The court case between news organizations and AI vendors just made public some interesting internal documents from the AI folks, calling scraping news “an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions.” I think the intellectual foundation of this behavior goes back to the original scam of claiming that when someone creates something — by writing, for example… Continue reading
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Thought Experiment
Let’s say you’ve come up with a genuinely clever new gizmo that can do lots of things fairly well, and sparks people’s imaginations because it looks a lot like the imaginary gizmos from super-popular movies and TV shows, especially scary ones. You and your friends start companies and manage to raise insane amounts of money… Continue reading
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The corporate overlords and the long despair
Hello. Thank you for calling our support line. Please be aware our options have changed. Press one to continue in English. Pulse dos para español. tlhInganvaD Tap wej. If you know your party’s extension, enter it now. If you don’t know your party’s extension, please say or enter “I have no friends.” If you would… Continue reading
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The Grift Also Rises
Ed Zitron’s latest overly long missive about the AI industry and its misdeeds includes this: “LLMs Are Built To Help Grifters and Imbeciles Do Impressions Of Work.” I’m sure it gets a lot of agreement. I mean, look how much grift and scamming surrounds LLMs, vendors, and many users. But grifting existed for a looong… Continue reading
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Once more, into the breach
Not for the first time, I have launched a newsletter, piggybacking on the Substack platform. The guiding question, or perhaps lament, driving this effort is what are we to do? That applies to a great many areas these days, but my concern is around artificial intelligence, its oppressive and sudden domination of practically everything to… Continue reading
About Me
I’m Pete Harbeson, a writer (among other things) located near Boston, Massachusetts. In addition to writing my own content, I’ve learned to translate for my loquacious and opinionated pup Chocolate Bossypaws. No surprise, she mostly speaks in doggerel. You can find her contributions tagged with Chocolatiana.
Check out my newsletter, Artisanal Scribbles, where I’m grappling with writing, authentic human authorship, integrity, and the craft of beauty in the AI age. You can also find some of my old software projects at GitHub. Nothing very impressive. I mostly wrote tiny utilities in Python and shell scripts. I’m mostly retired from coding nowadays.
I find myself suddenly de-corporatized (their choice, not mine). To help keep the lights on, buy me a coffee!
Recent Posts
- Expectations
- When are we going to get past “leaders”
- And neither was he.
- It boggles the mind
- My ears hurt!
Categories
Artificial Intelligence
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Unanticipated Consequences