Completely missed the MattGPT episode and I'm really annoyed he fell for that (and tried to make us fall for it). As if going from publisher to politician wasn't bad enough. Here's an academic with energy and a good writing hand, who's picking up the glove of hard topics surrounding migration, and he makes a Chat-clown out of himself - AND the subject, as if it doesn't have enough stigma surrounding it already.
I tend to agree with David Lynch in him saying that "Ideas are the best thing going"....
And when it comes to writing, much like the song recently put out by Boy George, what matters the most to me is the originality and meaningfulness of the idea.
Now obviously the individual writing talent of a person is also built by the skill to produce the idea, and using AI may reveal some lack of writing talent, but it seems to me that this discussion is about the quality of the output, not the judgment of the talent of the originator.
Boy George stated essentially that he doesn't play an instrument anyway, so there's a little difference between him prompting AI to produce music and him prompting a group of live musicians, only that the AI won't reject it's instructions.
He composed the lyrics and the melody just the same as he would have composed on any other song without playing an instrument.
With regards to AI slop in text or speech writing, it's kind of the same thing. Most people who are using AI to ghostwrite, most likely would have previously been using a person to do that, who could also easily make mistakes and embarrass the person, so the larger concern is the economic impact of hiring one less person and the societal psychological impact of trusting machines over your fellow professional human.
Trepverter: “bursting with the belated eloquence of the inarticulate.” Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence (1920) (New York: The Modern Library, 1999 ed.) p. 73. Edith Wharton spoke Yiddish? Who knew?
First time commenter, philosophy NYU '68, dropped out of grad school as PhDs were driving taxis. Derivatives trader (N.N Taleb doing currencies when I was in the early 80s.) Retired at 45 to garden, study system sci, and work P/T pro bono for the future.
I agree with your positions on most things, but question your apparent view of human exceptionalism re biological plague phase. 800% population growth in 8 generations (2C qualifies according to science.) I agree that the Piketty, Raworth, Hickell, Stieglitz piece was wrong headed, as humans are on a Bell Curve as are many other species. Elimination of poverty via energy diets by the successful isn't possible. Nature doesn't permit an insufficient 'pie' being shared equally. Nothing of value is independent of natural inputs. ~200,000 additional slices are sought daily
Pollinators, fish stocks, aquifers, clean surface water, fertile soil, biodiversity of macrofauna...are in severe decline. Pollution of air/water/soils/food chain/our bodies is increasing. Fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides...used in modern agriculture are derived from n. gas and oil, and are in decline p/capita.
Degrowth is coming due to negative feedback. Fertility is crashing globally, and the downslope includes wars over shrinking p/capita resources. I urge you and your generation to pay attention to system and evolutionary biologists. Our progeny is headed for a rough ride, and education in this area is critical to minimize suffering. Women's empowerment globally is the single most effective aid in that. Patriarchal societies are the main obstacle. And techno-optimist and cornucopian 'solutions' are fallacies. I'll wager for charity on this at longbets.org which is a division of The Long Now Foundation run by Kevin Kelly (Wired Mag) and Stewart Brand (Whole Earth Catalog of 1/2C ago.
I appreciate your pointing out the smugness of the Nachum Kaplan piece. It had this quality of being all too neatly packaged. There were many commenters who asked if this dinner actually happened: even though they didn't recognize it was an AI production, they did sense the unlikelihood of the whole thing. But Kaplan heavily promoted this piece of AI slop as if it were some kind of tour de force of writing. What's particularly icky about it is that it was supposed to help equip vulnerable Jews with a language for arguing for the legitimacy of their peoplehood and against appalling libels hurled against them. Its fakery created insane expectations as to how anyone would behave under the psychological pressure of having to defend one's very existence for a whole evening. So yes, thank you for showing that not only does nobody speak like this, nobody even writes like this.
Completely missed the MattGPT episode and I'm really annoyed he fell for that (and tried to make us fall for it). As if going from publisher to politician wasn't bad enough. Here's an academic with energy and a good writing hand, who's picking up the glove of hard topics surrounding migration, and he makes a Chat-clown out of himself - AND the subject, as if it doesn't have enough stigma surrounding it already.
I tend to agree with David Lynch in him saying that "Ideas are the best thing going"....
And when it comes to writing, much like the song recently put out by Boy George, what matters the most to me is the originality and meaningfulness of the idea.
Now obviously the individual writing talent of a person is also built by the skill to produce the idea, and using AI may reveal some lack of writing talent, but it seems to me that this discussion is about the quality of the output, not the judgment of the talent of the originator.
Boy George stated essentially that he doesn't play an instrument anyway, so there's a little difference between him prompting AI to produce music and him prompting a group of live musicians, only that the AI won't reject it's instructions.
He composed the lyrics and the melody just the same as he would have composed on any other song without playing an instrument.
With regards to AI slop in text or speech writing, it's kind of the same thing. Most people who are using AI to ghostwrite, most likely would have previously been using a person to do that, who could also easily make mistakes and embarrass the person, so the larger concern is the economic impact of hiring one less person and the societal psychological impact of trusting machines over your fellow professional human.
Trepverter: “bursting with the belated eloquence of the inarticulate.” Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence (1920) (New York: The Modern Library, 1999 ed.) p. 73. Edith Wharton spoke Yiddish? Who knew?
First time commenter, philosophy NYU '68, dropped out of grad school as PhDs were driving taxis. Derivatives trader (N.N Taleb doing currencies when I was in the early 80s.) Retired at 45 to garden, study system sci, and work P/T pro bono for the future.
I agree with your positions on most things, but question your apparent view of human exceptionalism re biological plague phase. 800% population growth in 8 generations (2C qualifies according to science.) I agree that the Piketty, Raworth, Hickell, Stieglitz piece was wrong headed, as humans are on a Bell Curve as are many other species. Elimination of poverty via energy diets by the successful isn't possible. Nature doesn't permit an insufficient 'pie' being shared equally. Nothing of value is independent of natural inputs. ~200,000 additional slices are sought daily
Pollinators, fish stocks, aquifers, clean surface water, fertile soil, biodiversity of macrofauna...are in severe decline. Pollution of air/water/soils/food chain/our bodies is increasing. Fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides...used in modern agriculture are derived from n. gas and oil, and are in decline p/capita.
Degrowth is coming due to negative feedback. Fertility is crashing globally, and the downslope includes wars over shrinking p/capita resources. I urge you and your generation to pay attention to system and evolutionary biologists. Our progeny is headed for a rough ride, and education in this area is critical to minimize suffering. Women's empowerment globally is the single most effective aid in that. Patriarchal societies are the main obstacle. And techno-optimist and cornucopian 'solutions' are fallacies. I'll wager for charity on this at longbets.org which is a division of The Long Now Foundation run by Kevin Kelly (Wired Mag) and Stewart Brand (Whole Earth Catalog of 1/2C ago.
AI will never be creative or personal so you shouldn’t let it write anything unless you seek platitudes and garbage of course.
I’m afraid a lot of people LOVE platitudes and garbage (see also amount of likes and comments on the posts that Maarten included here)
Intelligent people don’t
I appreciate your pointing out the smugness of the Nachum Kaplan piece. It had this quality of being all too neatly packaged. There were many commenters who asked if this dinner actually happened: even though they didn't recognize it was an AI production, they did sense the unlikelihood of the whole thing. But Kaplan heavily promoted this piece of AI slop as if it were some kind of tour de force of writing. What's particularly icky about it is that it was supposed to help equip vulnerable Jews with a language for arguing for the legitimacy of their peoplehood and against appalling libels hurled against them. Its fakery created insane expectations as to how anyone would behave under the psychological pressure of having to defend one's very existence for a whole evening. So yes, thank you for showing that not only does nobody speak like this, nobody even writes like this.