Unanticipated consequences
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Can any good come of any of it?
Today is a somber date; twenty-five years since the 9/11…tragedy? Atrocity? Disaster? It’s hard to find the right word, and maybe there isn’t one. It was one of those events that will be marked in history for a very long time. With the perspective of those years since, did anybody learn anything? Was it nothing… Continue reading
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What is it about Florida?
The latest irritating, disappointing, and astonishing story coming out of Florida is about Vinita Prabhakar and Fred Hawkins. And others. Prabhakar is a professor of literature who has taught for years at “small, private liberal arts schools in Upstate New York.” By all reports, she’s quite good at it. She moved to Florida to be… 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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How much is that doggie in the window?
How Much is That Doggie in the Window? was a hit song back in 1953. It was partly about window shopping, which was a thing back in the days of “departments stores” located on city streets. They typically had large plate-glass windows with elaborate displays of all their most desirable goods. Macys in New York… Continue reading
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Sometimes it’s not an improvement
Digital technology, and indeed technology in general, seems like it moves in cycles of usability and utility. I’m not sure whether the cycles apply equally to every user, or if it depends on the features you, as a specific user, find most helpful. Printers connected to personal computers are one example. Long ago it could… Continue reading
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But all my friends say I should…
Nikhil Suresh wrote a thought-provoking essay that introduced a term to me (I don’t think it’s a brand-new term) that really resonates: AI mania. Suresh is a director at a software engineering consulting firm. I think they’re pretty well connected, such that he’s often in conversation with top executives and directors at major companies we’ve… Continue reading
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It’s a (the) process
Sigmund Freud observed that humanity has suffered three great “humiliations.” Galileo found that we are not the center of the universe, Darwin found that we are not the culmination of nature, and he himself (Freud) found that we are not in control of our own minds. Ayad Akhtar recently made the point in The Yale… Continue reading
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I’m with stupid
Large language models actually work. They’re not fake, and they’re surprising, amazing technology. LLMs are real. The LLM vendors and their business models, though, might be something else again. They’ve raised historic amounts of money, which the venture capitalists are going to want repaid at some point. But if you examine their revenues, expenses, and… Continue reading
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Screens and mirrors
The year is 2063 and you were never interesting, writes lizleatrice. It’s a story about a person who would be 33 this year. This is about the age when screen time with social media “fills the dead spaces in your life.” Didn’t notice it at the time, of course, and although the narrator observes it,… Continue reading
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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
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
- Can any good come of any of it?
- What is it about Florida?
- Why does anybody listen to this grifter?
- Fashionable or able to fashion
- The corporate overlords and the long despair
Categories
Artificial Intelligence
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Immorality
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Unanticipated Consequences