AI Social Media “Slop” Makes Lies Look Convincing
The AI slop machine holds graver consequences when the images reflect natural disastersAI companies should be held accountable by being required to watermark their images.
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Hinton and Hopfield Win Nobel Prize in Physics
Hinton warns against neglecting AI safetyGeoffrey E. Hinton, a pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence responsible for helping develop “neural networks,” has been awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize alongside John J. Hopfield. The two scientists won the award for their groundbreaking work in machine intelligence, paving the way for a revolutionary new way to use computers. Hinton attracted attention just last year when he departed from Google and started warning the public about the potential dangers of new AI systems. He likened the AI revolution to the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century, only this time, it won’t be our physical capacities that get trumped by the machine, but our intellects. The New York Times reports, “It will be comparable with the Industrial Revolution,” Read More ›
Sam Altman Was on My Favorite Writing Podcast. His View on Storytelling Surprised Me.
When we read, we want to hear from a human about what it means to be human.Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, has garnered a fair share of criticism from the writing crowd for creating ChatGPT, a tool that on the surface seems to banish the need for human writers at all. However, Altman recently appeared on David Perell’s prominent writing podcast “How I Write” to talk about his own writing process, AI, and what he uses ChatGPT for. Altman and Perell talk about the importance of language for human communication, with Altman noting how he can’t imagine human life without language. AI, Altman says, is supposed to make language and the writing process “better.” In his view, that’s what computers have also sought to do: Create opportunities for humans to expand and deepen their capacities. But Read More ›
National Novel Writing Month Approves AI Writing
But what about most of the arts and culture community?The pushback was swift and overwhelming negative.
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AI Increased the Market Cap of the Magnificent Seven by $10 Trillion. Will it last?
AI is here to stay, just not in these insanely high share pricesAre the benefits from generative AI really hundreds of times higher than those from Microsoft Office?
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A Weekend Watch: Paul Kingsnorth and Louise Perry
Who is technology serving?What do we lose when we’re never quiet with our own thoughts, always checking our phones, always listening to Spotify or a podcast in the background?
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Our Tech Use Crosses the Line When We Trust It Too Much
Don't be like Michael Scott and let AI drive your car into a lakeI’ve never driven my car into a lake screaming “the machine knows!” like Michael Scott did but the temptation to use technology like this loom in everyday life.
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Study: Writing by Hand is Good for the Brain. What Does that Say About ChatGPT?
Nothing can replace pen and paperIt might be time to get the pens and notebooks back out and shut off the keyboard for a while. Just pretend you’re back in the first grade and don’t have a minicomputer in your back pocket. Writing by hand can help stimulate the whole brain and stave off cognitive decline, according to a study by Van der Weel and Van der Meer (2024), as reported by Pamela B. Rutledge in Psychology Today. Using a more personal note, she writes, I’ve never been one to keep a journal, but I now wonder if the exclusive use of computers and the lack of handwriting practice is doing my brain a disservice by decreasing the activity of cortico-subcortical components of the writing Read More ›
Are We Close to Peak AI Hype?
Outrageous statements are proliferating.Sanity might be about ready to return to the market. Just maybe, we have reached peak hype.
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“I’m Not There Yet”
Scott Galloway opens up about the writing processScott Galloway is one of the most successful writers on the planet, at least by monetary metrics. He’s also a remarkably talented presenter and appears consistently on top channels to talk about business, masculinity, finance, and relationships. In a new interview with David Perell, who founded the writing organization “Write of Passage,” Galloway said that he thinks he’s a “good writer” but not a “great” one yet. It might surprise us given that Galloway is around sixty and is a successful author, but he went on to explain how practice is key when reaching any type of mastery of a skill. Writing is no different. He described his recent encounter with a Stephen King novel, admiring the vividness of the Read More ›
Marvin Minsky Asks: Can GPT4 Hack Itself?
Will AI of the future be able to count the number of objects in an image?Creativity and understanding, properly defined, lie beyond the capability of the computers of today and tomorrow.
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This Darwin Quote Eerily Describes AI
Does a materialistic worldview lead us believe humans are simply advanced computing systems?I’ve been reading the modern classic The Brothers K by American writer David James Duncan. Not to be confused with The Brothers Karamazov, this novel creatively riffs off of Dostoevsky’s iconic novel while retaining its own unique flavor. Set in Washington state during the crazy 1960s, The Brothers K is about the Chances, a family with a father beaten down after a failed shot at pro baseball, and the four brothers who each respond differently to the rapidly changing culture of the United States. The Chances’ grandmother, who they affectionately call “Grandawma,” is a staunch Darwinist, while Mrs. Chance is a devout Seventh Day Adventist. The Chance children have to wade through the opposing worldviews they’re brought up in, and Read More ›
Haidt on AI: Social Media Companies Use It to Hook the Vulnerable
The famous American social psychologist and professor at New York University, Jonathan Haidt, thinks phones have essentially ruined a generationHis new book The Anxious Generation dives into the data that shows it. Adolescent mental health took a nosedive in the early 2010s: Smartphone world.
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AI Isn’t Going to Destroy the World (or Save It, Either)
Revisiting a classic podcast interview with Robert J. MarksA classic episode of ID the Future dives into the controversial realm of artificial intelligence (AI). Will robots or other computers ever become so fast and powerful that they become conscious, creative, and free? Will AI reach a point where it leaves humans in the dust? To shed light on these and other questions, host Casey Luskin interviews computer engineering professor Robert J. Marks, head of the Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence. In this fast-paced interview, Marks touches on dystopian AI and the limits of computer algorithms (they can never do anything that is inherently non-computable, Marks argues), and discuss celebrity thinkers and entrepreneurs who’ve weighed in on the promises and perils of AI, such as Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Read More ›
“Dopamine-Maximizing AI”
Elon Musk on addictive algorithms and the future of AITech lords often vacillate between hype and doom, and Musk, who signed a petition to curb AI research until its effects are known, falls into that tendency, too.
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Hype Distracts AI Engineers from Real Work
Who is going to solve AI's actual problems?One reason there wasn’t an emphasis on reducing hallucinations is because the problem is hard. Some argue that hallucinations are “baked into” AI chatbots.
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Scarlett Johansson vs. Sam Altman
OpenAI is trying to recreate a cautionary taleAltman said her voice could be “comforting” to people. She declined at the time, and so was naturally surprised to find that the new program, which was just released, sounded eerily similar to her own voice.
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AI and Common Sense
Large Language Models and paraprosdokian one-linersAn LLM will never write a joke that gives another LLM a good honest belly laugh.
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Final Release of COSM 2023 Videos!
The fourth and final tranche of COSM 2023 videos is now available.The fourth and final tranche of COSM 2023 videos is now available — featuring topics such as how advances in artificial intelligence may affect automobile transportation, solutions to the vast amounts of energy artificial intelligence will require, and why we might be on the brink of seeing the most disruptive innovations the world has ever seen. If you weren’t able to attend, or perhaps you want to revisit some of your favorite speakers, take a look at our COSM 2023 playlist on YouTube! A few highlights of the recently released videos: You can also watch backstage interviews, in which Senior Fellow Jay Richards goes into greater depth with several speakers on the topics addressed onstage. Click here to go to Read More ›
The Uniqueness of the Human Writer
LLMs are shortcuts, but sometimes the shortcut makes you miss the point of the journeyThe place of the human writer in our increasingly automated world has been a point of debate for years, even before the advent of ChatGPT.
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