Technicalities
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Writing, Generative and Symbolic
Writer has been my self-description for my whole adult life. Not the only one, but probably the one with the longest standing. I’ve had a daily writing practice for longer than I remember. As I’ve occasionally mentioned, a writing practice, at least for me, is not necessarily aimed at producing anything to be read, even… Continue reading
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Commode-Door
Back in the day — way way back in the day — personal computers were diverse and came with communities of fellow users of whatever brand you had. And of course you would tease those other folks by making fun of their brand. If you had a TRS-80, you’d call Commodore systems “commode-doors.” Commodore users… Continue reading
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Design as divisive; design as inclusive
Among other pursuits, I’ve been a software interaction designer. That’s basically a user interface designer without doing the graphics. When I was doing interaction design, I always started from user research. In order to design something that works for users who are not like you, it’s critically important to learn about them. You start by… 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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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
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When you’re paid to undermine yourself
Minas Karamanis has done some thinking about using LLMs. How they can help and, on the other hand, how they can undermine your own abilities and career. This is probably obvious, but it all depends on how you use them. Karamanis is an astrophysicist at Berkeley, but I think what he says applies to any… Continue reading
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All too human
Sam Altman, the public face of OpenAI (ChatGPT vendor) is most of all a fast-talking salesman. He’s really good at that. As such, you can’t really believe anything he ever says; when he says “A”, it’s just a reason to obtain “B”, no matter what it takes. Truth is entirely beside the point. Seems like… 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 other blog, Techlimitics, where I’m grappling with the nature of simplicity. You can also find some of my minor software projects at GitHub. Nothing very impressive. I mostly write tiny utilities in Python.
I find myself suddenly de-corporatized (their choice, not mine). To help keep the lights on, buy me a coffee!