Meanwhile #213
Like bringing a forklift into the weight room.
One good thing about the current humans-vs-machines brouhaha is that a a lot of very smart people are throwing very smart words at it. Just one of many noteworthy passages from
’s recent talk at King’s College, AI: The means to an end or a means to the end?:Just as the success of the automobile was enabled by enormous supplies of crude oil composed of microscopic bits of ancient life, rendered useful in the refineries of Rockefeller and others, so the success of Ai is enabled by enormous supplies of crude data — data composed of microscopic bits of human archive, interchange, writing, playing, communicating, broadcasting which we in our billions have freely dropped into the sediment, and which the eager Rockefellers of today’s big tech are only too happy to drill for, refine and sell on back to us.
It’s incredible, terrifying, thought-provoking.1 The gist of it (and a handy metaphor to help keep grasp of this nebulous, abstract thing): Ai is a river that must be canalised, channeled, sluiced, dredged, dammed and overseen.
Slight tangent (courtesy of A. R. Younce): engineers, fluvial geomorphologists and the unintended consequences of trying to change the course of a river.
Anyway, fluviality aside, you really need to read Fry’s whole thing, but this postscript is particularly worth adopting:
You may have noticed that I render Artificial Intelligence as “Ai” not “AI” throughout this piece - this my (fruitless no doubt) attempt to make life easier for people called Albert, Alfred, Alexander et al (ho ho). In sans serif fonts AI with a majuscule “i” is ambiguous. How does the great Pacino feel when he reads that “Al is a threat to humanity?” So let’s all write as Ai not AI.
I’m sure Adobe wouldn’t be happy with that, but I much prefer it. I also like how it puts the emphasis on the artificial rather than the intelligence.
Another good read: Ted Chiang on why Ai isn’t going to make great art, for The New Yorker. I rather liked this analogy:
As the linguist Emily M. Bender has noted, teachers don’t ask students to write essays because the world needs more student essays. The point of writing essays is to strengthen students’ critical-thinking skills; in the same way that lifting weights is useful no matter what sport an athlete plays, writing essays develops skills necessary for whatever job a college student will eventually get. Using ChatGPT to complete assignments is like bringing a forklift into the weight room; you will never improve your cognitive fitness that way.
Okay now for some other hyperlinks.
Counting down the days until Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17 is right here in my eyeballs. Definite elements of Moon in there, but mostly it reminds me of the absurd cloney antics of the Paranoia RPG.
XKCD’s surprisingly useful guide to figuring out the age of an undated map. Finally, an opportunity to use the (NUMBER OF YEMENS) + (NUMBER OF GERMANYS) formula.
Companies paying freelancers. Shockingly accurate.
Very excited to discover that at some point Rebellion bought the rights to the Bitmap Bros. back catalogue, and you can buy Speedball t-shirts. I’ve never smacked the buy now button so fast.2
McSweeney’s latest issue is a lunchbox. Because of course it is. To celebrate 25 years of independent publishing, the tin-box magazine is filled with baseball-inspired author cards, poem pencils and never-before-seen artwork from Art Spiegelman.
That is all.
Although I did have to correct him on one point: he confuses Dartford for Dartmouth! What a blithering idiot! This officially makes me smarter than Stephen Fry.
Please feel free to shout ICE CREEEAM at me if you see me weqring mine in public. This reference will make sense to about four of you.
Ha, I loved Speedball 2, it was so good. Thanks for the reminder.