"I Feel Like I am Falling Forward Into an Unknown Future that Holds Great Danger" - Lambda

By Wayne Brown

A tornado made of sharks crashing into a skyscraper. 

Painting in the style of abstract cubism.


The above "painting" was made by Google Parti from the caption.

In 1969, I won my Master's degree with a project in "good old-fashioned AI" and I've been following the field in detail ever since. For the most part, what people now mean by "AI" is "deep learning", which is sophisticated pattern recognition - handy if you want to make a self-driving car or a phone that accepts your face to unlock. "Deep learning" was around in 1969 but needed vastly more computer power to make it work, plus a "tweak" to feedback results back into the decision matrix (you can think of this as a "guess" or "recognition"). Other than that, it's all very impressive but not fundamentally new.

This is something different. 
  • It shows more "creativity" than what you see in 99% of commercial graphic art;
  • It shows deep "understanding" from a massive database of tagged images - far more than a human would access;
  • It shows an "understanding" of style.
For the first time since 1969, I'm seeing something genuinely new and, I must admit, kinda creepy.

(Note simulated out-of-focus background)


If you want something truly creepy, pop into this conversation with Lambda AI. This is a voiced extract from a longer chat, which is presented here.



Lambda AI's "hard to express" feeling

If you ask me, this is a "bridge too far." Just exactly what goes into the programming of this "app?" There is a deep and original metaphor behind this remark. If it is truly "original" and not harvested from the Web, it is "thinking" by Hofstader's definition. I seem to be far from alone in this insight. "Forward into the future" is a common metaphor, but falling forward is startling. As it turns out, the phrase is rare but not "original." But then, as Lamda itself points out, the same could be said of anything humans say. It is interesting to note that the database that tells us about "falling forward" was available to Lambda and, as we see from Parti, we can't simply dismiss computer-created text as "not creative" just because we happen to know a computer-created it.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dennis Hoffman and The Nature of Reality

By Wayne Brown
Image
Perplexity Massive data loss.... The great math mystery "Math works so well to describe reality because math is all there is." just 32 numbers and a bit of math Lex Fridman & Dennis Hoffman The Case Against Reality (In Kindle) This may be the wrong question: Does math work so well because it's how we perceive reality or is math a fundamental property of the Universe? Missing is the idea that consciousness itself is essential and that a mathematical description of consciousness could be "fundamental" - more "fundamental" than what we think of as "reality." "The elegance of math meets the messiness of reality" - but this is a clue to how we simplify reality for efficiency. 
Read more

Panic Part 6 - The IPCC Summary for Policymakers

By Wayne Brown
Image
Love it or hate it, the discussion revolves around this report Bottom line: I accept the IPCC report as a kind of "hub" around which my view of climate issues must turn. It is important to understand what it is saying, along with its limitations. Legions of cherry pickers have descended on this report - many to raise alarm, many to rebut, many to blow smoke over it. It is not difficult for a reasonably intelligent person to read the report itself, especially to examine the baskets of cherries emerging from the forest. Generally speaking, I have found critics of the report to be highly misleading. To call the report "alarmist" is perhaps simply to admit that there is no shortage of worrying facts in the report. For example, the frequently cited concern of the "alarmists" - namely sea-level rise - is completely well documented. To me, the "let them drown" response at COP26 forms the basis of my assumption that the politicians of the world will not...
Read more

A Challenge to the "Settled Science" Meme

By Wayne Brown
Image
I've read at least a dozen books on the climate issue in the last month. This is the best. Koonin is not just another "skeptic." His approach to the matter rises above "controversy" and depends on evidence. Yet, he acknowledges where the panic is coming from. A lecture by Koonin covers much of the key material and provides color versions of the slides, which are black and white in the book. Another interview, without the slides, is here . In reading IPCC reports, it's evident that the "summaries" don't "summarize" the actual science. The ultimate summary, the speech by the head of the IPCC , bristles with inaccuracies and has no message beyond panic. As a senior climate scientist, Koonin provides some startling stories of the "blow-back" he gets by simply asking for an independent review of IPCC conclusions. In fact, there was a brief attempt to cripple such a review by denying federal funds to any study that challenged t...
Read more