Tag: AI
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I spent the afternoon going down an AI rabbit hole researching the state of AI coding tools and vibe coding in the last 2 years since I last tried this for myself. Obviously, it has come a long way with Claude Code looking very helpful, being more ‘agentic’ and solving some (but not all) of the forgetfulness and context window problems I saw before. The biggest change might just be that everyone is using better prompt to plan and guide their work than before.
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Algorithmic supremacists have a pretty bleak vision for the future. But how much damage can they do over the next four years? Well, to my mind, their understanding of the present is equally disturbing. Algorithmic supremacists show a disdain for the inefficient ways humans read, write, draw, compose, and create, wanting us to outsource those activities to machines that can spit out mathematical variations of what uncredited human artists produced with heart and soul.
David Weitzner, We must fight back against the rise of ‘algorithmic supremacists’ -
This recalls the early days of synthesizers; what was Switched-On Bach if not “I see what you did there”? I hope that analogy is right, because the synth provides a healthy, sustainable template for these tools (AI). Ubiquitous and unremarkable, controllable and hackable, with flavors ranging from fully corporate to gloriously DIY … I’m realizing, as I type this, that synthesizers might be one of the truly utopian technologies.
Robin Sloan, Notes on a Genre -
Why would I care? I don’t consume the method, I consume the product.
xQc -
Cory Doctorow on AI Generated Art
Today I read Cory Doctorows latest post, Why I Don’t Like AI Art, and really appreciated his approach to defining art and how the use of AI tools diluted the meaning within works of art. …the prompt given to an…
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Thinking about hiring, the typical process for screening candidates using written applications is likely to become far less effective as it becomes a game of adversarial bots both creating applications for positions and evaluating them. In light of this I see one possibility being less emphasis on written applications going forward, resulting in more emphasis on the strength and scope of one’s personal connections in turn. This could be a big step backwards for equality and inclusion as it would increase the barriers to moving outside of one’s current social circle.
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One may get a remarkable semblance of a language like English by taking a sequence of words, or pairs of words, or triads of words, according to the statistical frequency with which they occur in the language, and the gibberish thus obtained will have a remarkably persuasive similarity to good English. This meaningless simulacrum of intelligent speech is practically equivalent to significant language from the phonetic point of view, although it is semantically balderdash.
Norbert Wiener, The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society -
Feedback is a method of controlling a system by reinserting into it the results of its past performance. If these results are merely used as numerical data for the criticism of the system and its regulation, we have the simple feedback of control engineers. If, however, the information which proceeds backward from the performance is able to change the general method and pattern of performance, we have a process which may well be called learning.
Norbert Wiener, The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society -
There’s talk of having AI agents which are trained on one’s own work to assist with tasks. The interesting question is who would have ownership and control of these models, the worker or the employer. Imagine a world where your current and former employers maintain models of you in perpetuity after you leave positions, and continue to use them to complete tasks.