Promoting Science and Critical Thinking
If, like me, you are now a regular AI chatbot user, then you may have experienced what can best be described as prompt fade. This is where you start a conversation. At first you get some results that look to be on track, but then as the conversation progresses at some point you find that it … Read more
In 1895 the Lumière brothers shot a 50-second silent documentary. It famously captured a steam locomotive pulling into a station. Titled “L’Arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat“, it was first shown to the public in January 1896 in Lyon. A rather popular story is that when the film was first shown, the audience was … Read more
AI may indeed be a fantastic new tool, but with it comes new personal risks. One that you really do need to be aware of is termed “Cognitive Surrender”. What is that? I’ll come to that shortly. Like many of you, I am finding real value in AI. Not in some abstract futuristic sense. I … Read more
Early versions of AI are here and these instances are becoming very widely available. Familiar examples include ChatGPT and Copilot. Ah but wait, those are all just one specific category of AI. As I’m sure you appreciate, the scope for using it is actually vast and includes a great deal more… Literally anything involving vast … Read more
It is indeed rather surprising to discovered that standup comedian George Carlin has a brand new comedy special that includes lots of new material. It is up on YouTube and completely free. As a Carlin fan, I really wanted to be both delighted and also excited, but I’m not. Why is it surprising? Well basically … Read more
You might perhaps have seen the news that a Google Engineer has become convinced that an artificial intelligence that they created has become ‘sentient’ (self-aware). Is this true, has this AI called LaMDA really become self-aware? Short answer – no. Slightly longer answer – Seriously, just no. So what is going on here, what has … Read more