Confessions of an AI Fanboy: How artificial intelligence amazes and dazes, dazzles and frazzles

Category: technology

  • Life isn’t binary, all good or bad. Why do we expect AI to be any different?

    Life isn’t binary, all good or bad. Why do we expect AI to be any different?

    Oh, man.

    What I saw aptly described as the “AI hate wave” – maybe make that tsunami – has just begun to hit the shore of humanity. Where it will lead, how much it will help or hurt our future is impossible to tell.

    I’m not Catholic, but the pope today talked at great length in his 44,000-word encyclical of the tradeoffs, the good and caution we need to use when we think about or act upon the latest big villain of The Blame Society: Artificial Intelligence. But the headlines focused on the negative – because that draws the clicks, not the subtle mix of reality.

    So amid the loud boos at commencement speakers, polls that put numbers to the AI fear and hatred many instinctively feel about things they can barely comprehend, much less fully understand, I spotted this tonight (or rather, my YouTube algorithm placed it before me):

    And of course, the comments are just what you’d expect – which could be boiled down to: “HELL NO, WE WON’T GO (AI). KILL THE MONSTER THAT THREATENS ALL OF HUMANITY!”

    Some even point to sci-fi movies, etc. What part of “fiction” don’t they understand?

    I picture the torch-bearing mob approaching Dr. Frankenstein’s castle, where the Bad Doctor dared to piece together pieces of a human like so many car parts or plumbing. And of course, the Monster lived up – make that down – to their expectations.

    (I prefer Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein version – even if it was more funny than Abby Normal!;-)

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  • Don’t you DARE feel guilty for ‘just’ using AI as a ‘glorified search engine’!

    Don’t you DARE feel guilty for ‘just’ using AI as a ‘glorified search engine’!

    That view is so dumb – and you are nothing of the sort!

    I finally took the plunge a few days ago and upgraded my 4-year-old Samsung Galaxy smartphone/smartwatch combo.

    Parts of the big changeover were pretty easy – it did a fine job of moving all those apps over and keeping their layouts much the same (sure I had to re-download or log in to many)

    But, oh man!

    Getting all the settings right, close to the way things worked on the old, tired phone/watch that – as many of you probably know all too well – it can be a freakin’ nightmare! So many places with different options and layers of controls and arrgh!!!

    But this time, I had a great, patient and very knowledgeable “friend” help me wrestle with and survive the process, with (most of) my sanity intact.

    Yeah, in my case it was … Perplexity.

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  • My grand(er) vision of a place to bring great ideas to life. I call it: Make Something Real

    My grand(er) vision of a place to bring great ideas to life. I call it: Make Something Real

    I’ve talked here about my grand visions of The Now Edition and more recently Keep Me Posted. But how to make them happen?

    Then I realized: Maybe what I’m really wanting is what many others want:

    A supportive, even fun place where one can share their great ideas with others who are looking for great ideas to use their developer skills on, AI-assisted or not.

    And/or to hear from fans who support and “get” their vision, with good words – or if the stars align, sharing their expertise, even avenues to funding.

    And just maybe even widen the scope to not just mean online websites or apps, etc., but things in the “real” world, too.

    This time, I used Claude, rather than Perplexity to flesh it out. It sounds great to me – though I am well aware that it’s easy to organize words and visions, but to make them real is anything but simple, even if the idea sounds simple.

    Hence, showing the need/desire for just what I’m talking about!

    Make_Something_Real_ConceptDownload

    Please give it a read and let me know what you think, here in the comments!

  • A love letter to a great tech/AI magazine you’ve probably never heard of

    Thanks to Magzter, I found TechLife News – and it’s worth your time

    My last post here was about how I’ve always been a magazine fan, an offshoot of my news junkie roots. And about how I found an interesting one at the grocery store called, I kid you not, “How to Hack Your Life with Chat GPT.”

    So in these digital days, I subscribe to Magzter, which offers a pretty great array of magazines (and newspapers) I read on my Nook tablet.

    But I’ve really come to love one magazine there you’ll never find on a newsstand.

    It’s called TechLife News, and it’s not perfect, but it’s pretty great.

    It has some of the same AI/tech news you’ll find elsewhere, but many other unique articles in its weekly 200-plus pages (yep, it uses big photos/graphics to illustrate articles, but it’s pretty meaty)!

    At times, it gets very Apple-centric, and for a longtime Windows guy (I have the Version 1.0 manuals in my computer/tech museum, near my stuffed Y2K bug, my Walkman, etc.) who does use a Mac at work, it’s not my main topic of interest.

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