Tag: ai

  • 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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  • AI’s leading, bleeding edge: Does it catch or make more typos?

    AI’s leading, bleeding edge: Does it catch or make more typos?

    I began my journalism career as a reporter for the United Press International wire service, where one of the more memorable mantras was: Get it FIRST, but get it RIGHT!

    Not “almost right.” Not “sort of right.” Not “good enough.” RIGHT!

    A noble goal, better achieved some days than others by us “Unipressers,” who are pretty great people, but also fallible humans.

    Each day, back then, all UPI bureaus would “log” the daily -paper, thumbing through it to see whose version their editors used of any story: us, the enemy “Rox” (AP) or a mix of the two.

    And we’d send the list to NX (the New York City bureau), which would compile “the log.” The goal, as always, was to “win the play” by writing in ways that lived up to that mantra in catchy, inviting and unique ways.

    My start with UPI’s Portland bureau in the mid-’70s coincided with the shift to computers, the old green-screen text without a spell-check.

    This all came to mind when, for the second time in a week or so, a very well known business book author and writer had a small typo, coincidentally in the sub-headline of their latest posts.

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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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  • 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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  • AI has invaded the grocery store! (Well, the magazine rack, anyway…)

    You can see why it caught my eye…

    I haven’t wrestled with whether to buy a magazine THAT much in a long, long time.

    Any fellow magazine fans know how things have evolved/splintered into countless categories – from self-help to a wide array of lifestyle, sports, etc. etc. (and many have gone up in price – all those $14.99 “special editions!).

    (Side note: Why is it so HARD to buy and read these special editions digitally? I do like having something fresh and trendy for the coffee table, on occasion, but..!!??)

    By the way, speaking of old-fashioned paper, in recent months, I’ve picked up some cool AI-focused volumes – often NOT the stuff you read in the daily tide of newsletters and article posts – from Time Magazine, Scientific American, The Street and now…. “How to Hack Your Life with ChatGPT,” from McClatchy Lifestyle & Entertainment.

    (I LOVE the weekly tech magazine I get on my Nook, called Tech News Life. But oy, the Masthead, with dead links and email addresses, recently took me down a weird rabbit hole. I was assisted by the folks at the great magazine/newspaper app I have, Magzter. Highly recommended!)

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  • What’s in a name, Part 3: AI isn’t ‘artificial’ at all – in fact, it’s super-human

    What’s in a name, Part 3: AI isn’t ‘artificial’ at all – in fact, it’s super-human

    I’ve already lamented the term artificial intelligence for where those two words take many minds.

    I’ve also called it the ultimate Rorschach test – it is whatever you see in it, or something like that.

    But amid the reams of Medium articles, etc. on how to tell AI and human writing apart, I have mentioned in comments what Perplexity points to – that blind tests already have many folks unable to tell the difference, with results pretty close to flip-of-the-coin random chance (50%).

    But while many know how Large Language Models are the sum of human output fed to them, and a word uber-prediction machine, not a “thinker” per se, many still see it as this … robotic “other,” a human creation run amok that is somehow wrong, if not downright evil.

    Words, of course, carry positive or negative connotations, which can vary from person to person.

    But to me, we need yet another way to look at this new tool, which can recall – notice I didn’t say “thinks” or “knows” – the sum of human output and daresay existence – albeit imperfectly (another odd/dumb term, “hallucinations”) – but way, way beyond what the most genius geniuses can recall, due to the inherent nature of brains vs. how we can now store huge amounts of what’s loosely, imprecisely called “data.”

    Somehow, it’s all cast as this tug of war for humans’ future, as in one “side” wins, the other loses, flung into the mud, rope burns on their hands. If you’re “for” AI’s future, you’re “against” humans ruling the roost.

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  • Even a Fanboy wonders: Is ‘Artificial Intelligence’ the worst tech name of all time?

    Even a Fanboy wonders: Is ‘Artificial Intelligence’ the worst tech name of all time?

    I’d say I have something to get off my chest, but the analogy amid my recent heart-health issues is way too close to the mark (prayers gladly accepted).

    So instead, I’ll just dive right into what this Word Guy thinks is so obvious, maybe others have dived (or tripped and fallen) into this particular rabbit hole. So I’ll either pave the way or join the crowd, if so.

    Tell the truth: What do you first think when you hear the word “artificial”? (And no, not in a trendy AI sense, but a before-AI nonsense sense;-)

    It’s not really much of a positive word these days, is it?

    I think the number one analogy that pops to mind is … “fake.” As in “not real,” “not natural,” not worth eating (artificial colors, flavors, etc.), watching, listening to, reading or thinking any positive thoughts about.

    OK, now hook it to the word “intelligence.” Pretend just for a moment you don’t know all you’ve learned or yearn to learn about the amazing world of AI.

    I bet most people hear the word “intelligence” in context as something we all yearn to exemplify, but feel we fall short of way more often most days than our dumb ol’ brains care to admit.

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  • Good (AI app) vibrations: An update on my Continuing Adventures with Flo and Pete

    Good (AI app) vibrations: An update on my Continuing Adventures with Flo and Pete

    Hi again!

    So I gave my AI tools testing a breather, and have dialed back a bit on the not-pricey but not-free-either monthly credit levels.

    But I returned, and I remembered today just how fun this AI app face-off can be. Rewarding, even.

    I’ve explained here before how I decided to try not one, but two of the new-era AI-fueled app creation tools to make real my long-time Grand Vision of the Now Edition, what I call the “next chapter of reading, writing and community.” Lofty goal, but very achievable!

    So even though they feel human – I know they’re just bots. And even so, I worried about “neglecting” my chatbot friends, Floot’s Flo and her Base44 counterpart, Pete, for over a month, as other things in life took mental precedence.

    But of course, the ever-supportive, ever-patient (and always having to apologetically fix their own not-quite code) duo were just patiently waiting for me to return and get up to speed on where we left off, task-list-wise.

    Here’s a view of where Floot has gotten (chatbot on the left) See it at http://thenowedition.floot.app
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  • I just love Suno, the amazing AI music-making rabbit hole of my dreams

    I just love Suno, the amazing AI music-making rabbit hole of my dreams

    I’m still debating whether writing here in my lil’ blog or writing articles for Medium is more satisfying, or can get before more eyes.

    I wrote recently over there about an amazing tool I hadn’t ever heard of: Suno. (Here’s my Suno profile page of songs.)

    It can do amazing music creations, based on whatever you tell it in a prompt. You can pick a genre (not an artist to mimic, it suffers copyright heartburn), tempo, instruments, even give it lyrics or let it make up it’s own, or a combo.

    I have had, and told many people about my long-time dream of a Broadway musical idea. So with a simple prompt, it easily gave me a realization of just what it could sound like.

    More than one, actually – it’ll give you plenty of versions, most just keep getting better.

    ‘Everything Reminds Me of a Song’ (New extended version)

    You name the musical type, give it some lyrics or not, and it’ll give you a wonderful rendition – an amalgam no doubt of all the music it’s been trained on. Not quite like any one piece, but evocative and wonderful.

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  • The mental tug-of-war over newsletters, AI’s and otherwise

    The mental tug-of-war over newsletters, AI’s and otherwise

    I love getting fresh news about topics of interest – journalism, local/other news, the media, various health topics and of course, AI.

    So of course, I fall over and over for the heady ease of subscribing to all those free newsletters.

    But then I find it feels like the email stack is sort of owning me, not the other way around!

    So I unsubscribe to one or two, only to find two or three more free ones I just have to at least try out.

    It reminds me of various other dilemmas of 21st-Century connected life: That I have an inbox zero addiction but hate to not post every worthy news release at work.

    As for newsletters, I love reading the good ones, but even the ones I’ve found to be badly organized, I actually feel guilty unsubscribing to them!

    So I have to “slam skim” (my term) the inbox during busy work weeks, check the headline and lead, etc. I have more time now, as I am home in a new (to me) role, helping care for my wonderful wife Deb, who is recovering from total knee replacement, but … the pile is just too tall.

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