Time to lighten things up.
To be honest, the oracle is making me a bit nervous, not because of its mystique, but because of the risk of landing on a word with long and multiple definitions (cut and paste take on new meanings when dealing with hardbacks), not to mention the squiggly lines, of which there is no regard for by a keyboard neanderthal.
So, this week’s issue will take the dive into The Big Random House in real time.
Wish me luck.
Precedence
Thank goodness! A word we can sink our teeth into. Pretty good word, but first…
You all know what’s coming, but oh no, you don’t.
prec-e-dence (pres’i dens, pri sid’ance)~(pronunciations are amended for simplicity, the squiggly lines). Anyway, it’s a noun, which makes it a thing. 1. act or fact of preceding. 2. priority in order, rank, importance, etc. 3. priority in time. 4. the right to precede others in ceremonies or social formalities. 5. the order to be observed in ceremonies by persons of different ranks, as by diplomatic protocol. Random House.
There’s a little more in brackets, but you probably get the idea. For a keyboard neanderthal, correctness would be setting a precedent, so just getting it done takes precedence.
Savvy? Now, imagine being me. Take notice of all the bolds, italics, abv., etc. (kinda’ fond of the etcetera’s) and it’s easy to see why, what with all the squirrely keystrokes, a fella’ like me might be sweating bullets before diving into the treacherous waters of the English Language.
Coming up for air
My lifeboat here comes in the form of words that are easy to spell and comprehend, making the task a bit more efficient (a bit); it still takes me quite an effort (it’s a contact sport) to transpose the official text into something reasonably coherent.
But it must be said that the oracle is not always kind to me.
Wouldn’t have it any other way. Fairness is a word, but not the only one. There is always something to be gained in adversity. It is my privilege to suffer the pain as part of the game, the challenge is the thing that keeps it fun for me, and the privilege is sending it to you - the reader.
A word about recent images
They are AI generated, not to be confused with Ai, which is a name and has nothing in common with artificial intelligence. AI is a something, Ai is a someone. These images are generated from the substack feature rich applications and is a useful tool to supplement Unsplash, the stock photo platform, which is still good but has its limitations. My own photos are raw material, and stock photos/images is a marketplace with a cost included when outside the substack domain.
There is a fair amount of hostility surrounding the use of AI, and in fact is not necessarily advocated here. Similar platforms outright prohibit its use. Substack is forward looking - it’s about creativity and supporting creators.
Here’s the thing
It might be prudent to fear a perceived threat as it approaches, once in our midst The Reactionary Gap is closed and the time for prevention is past. Instead, it becomes prudent to understand the threat.
Some observations
Artificial Intelligence is only one iteration among a host of machine learning protocols (or whatever the nomenclature might be) and is here and will be used for nefarious purposes because that’s what nefarious people do. That part is imminent.
Can the technology end in our demise? Of course! What else would we expect. But it’s going to need hardware and the hardware people know hardware. They also know that our current physics is limited, and our hardware is still primitive. Oh, we can still vaporize ourselves by choice or by accident or unleash a manmade disaster - that doesn’t stop it from being primitive.
That leaves the intelligence of artificial intelligence, which comes from the programmers, who are people whose intelligence is limited to human intelligence and creativity. If adaptability is the keystone of intelligence, and creativity is strictly a human construct, there wouldn’t be much to fear from the programmers since their time is spent learning programming - to the exclusion of adaptability and creativity.
That leaves the nefarious people, who are very creative. So it will be that aspect which trends toward destruction, not the technology. The technology is a domestic animal which will cease to be without us to feed it. So we have that.
My experience with generating images is of a tapestry of already existing concepts that are the result of human creativity - no more. The technology doesn’t possess a creative process, it pieces together something from its trove of inputs. That’s all.
Any creativity involved comes from me, the creator, by injecting an intelligent query in hopes that the technology will generate something that might be useful. It’s pretty good at that (you see my query in the captions) but in terms of its creativity - nonexistent. It’s a montage - a useful one maybe, but not all that impressive.
AI will progress, but it’s not to be feared. They are the nefarious people who are the real threat, and they, for the most part, can be undone.
And that’s a wrap!
With greater public understanding of AI capabilities, the label ‘AI’ is less frequently used simply to glamourise mundane software — though it remains a popular buzz-word, replacing the meaningless ‘big data’. My personal opinion; is that today’s AI is just a clever software impinging on the fundamental characteristics from which its capability flows, and inhibit its benefits. A reasonable requirement would be that any system, not just AI, which impinges on welfare must be able to explain its decisions.
Let’s stop calling everything AI, it’s over used and abused. It’s misused in everything from a scare tactic to BS sales pitches.
Artificial Intelligence’ is an oxymoron. Although artificial, an aeroplane flies; it does not ‘artificially’ fly — the flying is real. Just so with intelligence: if it is exhibited, it’s real, and if it’s a machine exhibiting that intelligence, it is no less real. Calling it artificial invokes a cognitive dissonance.
So if not ‘artificial’ intelligence, what is AI? It’s Machine Intelligence: machine intelligence performs tasks which, if they were to be performed by a human, would require intelligence. However, we are BS’d with the word AI’ as it is the label people know.
Until recently, once an AI technique was established, it was no longer perceived as AI; knowing how the rabbit is pulled out of the hat destroys the magic. This was the de-facto moving goal-posts definition of AI: that which a computer can’t do.…..