Artificial Intelligence
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Speed, oversimplification, and delusion
Artificial intelligence seems to be mostly about speed. Instead of days, weeks, or months working on your software, book, or other project, it can be done in hours or even minutes! Well…okay…but so what? There are certainly cases where speed is an important component of an outcome. Dousing a fire. Removing a steak from the… Continue reading
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The intelligence is the words
Kevin Kelly asks If programmers did not program ChatGPT with logical deduction skills, where does the intelligence in its models come from? He hypothesizes that It is the architecture of language that conveys the intelligence. I have another idea: our intelligence is the language, and that’s been hidden in plain sight for centuries or more.… Continue reading
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Contradictions
Terry Goodier’s essay The Boring Internet is all about the low level protocols that underpin Internet services. He points out that there’s nothing pretty or easy about protocols. And he points it out in a visual essay that’s lovely to see. The form of the essay and the form of its subject are a contradiction.… Continue reading
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The mythos mode and the logos mode
Another deeply thoughtful essay this morning from Om Malik. You should read it! Malik begins by wondering why Anthropic called its new model Mythos. To even wonder about that, you have to understand some things about history, literature, and philosophy. I won’t explain Malik’s inquiry; that’s what his essay does brilliantly. It’s another example of… Continue reading
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Well whaddaya know
Everybody knows a lot more than they’re able to explain. There are some areas where language just isn’t adequate. For example, imagine trying to explain an aroma without referring to other smells. Without “it smells like…”, there’s not a lot you can do. Even though people have amassed countless pages of written information, and that’s… Continue reading
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The bills are starting to come due
The leading AI vendors are starting to remove the curtains around how many tokens you’re using and how much they cost. In large corporate settings, token cost has been effectively zero for individual practitioners. In my most recent corporate gig, I was strongly encouraged to make as much use of Codex and its ilk as… Continue reading
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An ogre is like an onion
Metaphors are a tool for easily understanding and explaining something. They’re comparisons. If you say “the AI industry is a house of cards,” anybody who shares enough experience and language with you knows you’re saying the AI industry is fragile and could collapse at any moment. The Metaphors We Live By, a 1980 book by… Continue reading
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Waxing Desperate with Imagination*
Generative AI isn’t reliable. Like an unreliable narrator in fiction, you have to stay alert; what an LLM tells you only might be true. If you’re writing fiction you might give the reader a hint that your narrator can’t be trusted. You might introduce them as a court jester; a clown. Or you might design… Continue reading
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The great human document
Another idea from Jaron Lanier: large language model software systems are not artificial intelligence. A large language model is one enormous document comprised of contributions from countless people. It’s “something like a version of Wikipedia that includes much more data, mashed together using statistics.” It “can be thought of as illuminating previously hidden concordances between… Continue reading
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Data Dignity and Xanadu
Jaron Lanier is always interesting to listen to or read. Just this week he was a guest on Neil Degrasse Tyson’s Startalk. The discussion turned to AI (in its current form), and Lanier brought up his notion of data dignity. This hasn’t gotten much attention, as far as I can tell. According to Lanier, the… 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
- I’d rather have a taco
- 20-something Hubris
- You can’t be a leader without followers
- Candy Trees and Handkerchiefs
- Reliability: just a movie plot now?
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