Category: AI

  • Generative AI, Misinformation, and the Plausibility Loophole

    By now, it’s common knowledge that programs like ChatGPT say things that just aren’t true, but why do we believe the lies so readily? The answer is F.A.B.S. Most people writing about generative AI (ChatGPT, DALL-E, Bard) focus on what the AIs can do, which is understandable since these algorithms are still new. With ChatGPT,…

  • The Start of the English Major

    In the A.I. revolution, figuring out the contours of our human intelligence has never been more important. Who is best equipped to do this work? I give keynote addresses all over the planet about digital transformation and sharpest-edged technology trends. One of my themes is that anything that can be digital will be digital. The counterintuitive corollary to this is that…

  • Retro Futures: AI and Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics

    Older sci fi can help us see the difference between where we are as a culture and where we thought we’d be. A look back at Isaac Asimov’s 1940s robot stories can help us make sense of AI today. Some science fiction is a potpourri of lasers and explosions and aliens popping out, but the better sort…

  • Microsoft’s New A.I.-Powered Bing and Shakespeare

    Pundits panicked last week when oddball chats with the new Bing pushed back the frontiers of weirdness, but were those conversations a fair test in the first place? Last week, columnists and analysts took to their fainting couches (limply dragging their laptops with them) and described surreal and disturbing conversations with Microsoft’s new chat-driven Bing…

  • Retro Futures, ChatGPT, & More

     In this short post, I dig into why a podcast about a teacher using (rather than banning) OpenAI’s ChatGPT program seemed eerily familiar… If you have a stack of dishes to do or face a 30 minute drive, then don’t miss the January 13th episode of Hard Fork a podcast from The New York Times…

  • Artisanal Crap

    As generative AI makes first-pass creation faster and easier, an unintended consequence is that humans may become less able to make great things. Let me start by stipulating that generative AI (ChatGPT, DALL-E) will change how we do what we do, taking the heavy lifting off much human endeavor. This will be true whether it’s…

  • What’s Curious about Microsoft and OpenAI

    It’s more than a flurry: we’re seeing a monsoon of articles about OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft’s proposed $10B investment in OpenAI, and how Microsoft would recoup that investment by getting 75% of OpenAI’s profits—of which there are currently none. (Nina Schick has a nice summary.) Even without that 75% of profits provision, this is a great…

  • CES, Paradigm Shifts, Spandrels, and Collateral Damage

    What this week’s Consumer Electronics Show has to do with death of cursive writing in American schools, how to break down the elements of disruption, and more. I spent the week leading tours of the automotive hall at CES with my friends at StoryTech. (My favorite exhibit was the quietly transformative What3Words.) As we explored new Electric…

  • My 2023 Prediction… or Prayer

    Many thinkers end each year with a cluster of predictions for the next year. I have just one—and it’s more of a prayer than a prediction—about trust. The pressing question of our age isn’t new. The Marx Brothers asked it in Duck Soup (1933): “who ya gonna believe, me or your own eyes?” In a recent Los Angeles…

  • Scarier than Skynet: AI and Persuasion

    Most dystopian fantasies concern monsters we can see conquering us, but with new technologies will we even know if we’ve been conquered? You can tell a lot about a culture by its dystopias: its fantasies of fear. When you have dueling fantasies, you can tell even more by what they agree on and what they…