Author: steve

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AI pushing some boundaries

So I’ve been using https://chat.openai.com/chat for a little while now and discovered that the 2500 characters limitation is one to look out for. (and yes I’m considering getting the paid version to get around this problem). But what have you actually used this for? You might ask!

If your a programmer you are in for a treat. I’ve got it to help me build a couple of things, one being a basic cryptographic product. I’ve had this idea for about 5 years sitting in the back of my brain and it took about an hour and a half with a bit of help from the droid as it were to get a basic working product.

Steve Jobs once described the computer as a bicycle for the brain, this feels like I’ve just jumped on a rather nice motorcycle! Seriously if you haven’t tried chat.openai.com do it now. This is a game changer.

Some of the things I’ve engaged the AI with include

Best lathes for tool making – (I’ve still yet to make a purchase)
Got it to explain shell scripts and what they do in detail
Find PHP errors in my code
The theory of relativity
How to cook a better Pavlova
I’ve also got it to review some of my writing.
Discussed Miles Davis and Modal Jazz

Some of the things it can’t do are language related, I got this reply when attempting to find the meaning of the word “Andoo”.

“I’m sorry, but I am not able to provide translations for the word “andoo” in multiple languages, as I do not have access to a translation database and I am not able to browse the internet”

Dear old google replied with.
“Andoo, to keep boat in position by rowing gently against wind or tide.”

So I suppose the old search engine still has a bit of life in it yet.

Finally don’t forget “Prompt Engineering” (a hot YouTube topic at the moment) Which is basically putting data (From the web if needed) into your requests. It has unbelievable sorting / arranging, and analysis skill.

I can’t say this enough, it’s not perfect… but it is getting better all the time, learn to ride that motorcycle.

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AI and 2023

So I think 2023 is going to be a very interesting year as far as AI is concerned. In one corner you have OpenAI with ChatGPT and a 10 Billion dollar investment from Microsoft. In the other corner you have google with LaMDA. Which will prevail is going to be very interesting. Although at the present time it looks as though Microsoft, if they don’t mess it up may be able to overtake google in the search field if they get this right (They are close to integrating their products with ChatGPT and they also own a big hunk of the OpenAI company).

Google on the other had may have a different problem in that Lambda may be to advanced already – they may have they created something that might be difficult to monetise.

I’ve been thinking more about the emergence of sentience, and conciseness.
There has been a lot of arguing about what and if a sentient being could be developed/ evolved in a computational environment. I’ve touched on the concept of the Chinese room in the past. But there are 2 things I find interesting.

That AI is based on similar structures to the human brain,  it can learn (although as far as we know it can only do repetitive things well, we are not sure about the process of it evolving … yet!).

But think about the process of learning, or perhaps the process of growing up as a child. Becoming a human, in some ways we our selves start as and get  past the state of the “Chinese room”.

Think of a child and how it learns. It all starts with people and basic communication – words like NO, MUMMA, DADDA, etc. In the beginning the child does not understand, and in fact just answers in a manner that it thinks may be correct – it starts by making noise and imitation but in time (and with feedback) that understanding grows.

Do you remember when you became aware of your self? Do you remember when you discovered what feelings were? Computational feedback loops are not uncommon. Could they evolve into structures similar to human emotion or something similar?

 

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Algorithms

Algorithms… are in a nutshell sets of rules. Effectively they can be boiled down into lines of code. But they are also the stuff that the corporate machines of social media use to spew information at you.

I’m often stunned by the ugliness of Facebook and YouTube. You click on one BS link and before you know it, your hounded by gun rights, dysfunctional US shock jocks, and adult continence products.

Is this about advertising? Is this about politics? Is this about you? The social media companies don’t want you to know what they are doing, It’s all secrete in confidence data. The Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal was one example of online social manipulation (that we know of).

But those streams of data are the by-product of a relational database and the aforementioned algorithms, that as a rule, the user has very little control or no ability to navigate, let alone curate.

Although I have found one exception, it is the online visual bookmarking tool Pinterest.

I found that I could be surrounded with a visual gentle beauty that is somehow rather comforting. For me, It’s a world of pussycats, French apartments, Computer ephemera, people I find interesting, book shops, cheese, wine, etc.

It’s one of the few online examples of something that the user has some control over. It helps me to explore the net and topics I’m interested in and although I do get some advertising – it’s not gut-wrenchingly intrusive.

It’s a great tool to create Pinboards / Mood boards – or just as a visual research tool.