AI receptionist. Iconic and ironic.
Tag: AI
Bion by Satanasov
These books were part of my Alley of Books harvest.
In a post apocalyptic world, one intact city remains habitable. Everything else is a radioactive desert. The survivors are highly dependent on a mythical high-tech building called “The Factory”. The further you go from it, the more destroyed the environment is. However, The Factory is clearly evil, and a resistance movement is forming.
A few very deep observations:
- Part one is for 15+ audience, part two is for 16+. Part three can be expected to be for 17+ 🙂
- Part one is a comic book. Part two introduces a robot girl with big eyes and some reviewers say it’s Manga
I enjoyed both, Manga or not. 5*/5
Sprezzatura
From Wikipedia: “…the art of making something difficult look easy”. Curiously, the same work done with effortless grace and visible hard effort is perceived differently. Add a pinch of complaining and the good job can turn into a nightmare without any other change in the visible outcome.
ChatGPT agrees and says Sprezzatura is rated 9-10/10, while the work done with complaining is rated 4-5.
I encountered that word in Wolf Hall where the author refers to 1528’s The Book of the Courtier. Wolf Hall is a gem and I hope to dedicate a separate post to it once I finish it.
Press Enter by John Varley
Press Enter is a novella by John Varley about a disabled war veteran who inherits his neighbor. The neighbor was a powerful hacker. So powerful that he could make money out of thin air. Another hacker comes to investigate. Unfortunately for all parties involved, the story is a horror and they’ll not have a bright future.
What impressed me is that there are AI prompts, just like the ones we use to talk to ChatGPT. There’s also prompt hacking. By 1984, AI development had apparently advanced enough for John Varley to foresee a trajectory.
The novella aged like wine.
Cory Doctorow on AI
Spicy autocomplete absolutely can’t replace journalists.
— Cory Doctorow on AI
There’s something very deep in our response to righteous anger. Spicy autocomplete. Righteous anger, followed by italic uncertainty. Dehumanizing the AI so that we’re ready for eradication. At the same time, AI is already replacing human content creators – journalists, bloggers, illustrators, troll farms, SEO experts, photographers, data labelers, etc.
Generative AI is not necessarily terrible. ChatGPT can be forced to link to the source of each of its statements and will become like a search engine. Websites can flag human-created content with a badge of honor. The chatbots could be used where human support was previously impossible, increasing the need for more specialized human support and sales.
The society managed to navigate harmful technological advances in the past. Open Source happened. I don’t quite see how we’ll push back against some of the negative uses of AI like deepfakes but we’ll have to figure it out.
