A cautionary tale on AI hype — Meta announced this week a new large language model (LLM) for science. They named it Galactica — a nod to Isaac Asimov’s Encyclopedia Galactica. The website says it’s a “model that can store, combine and reason about scientific knowledge.” Elvis Saravia, a co-author of the paper, says it “is the…

Only when AI became useful did it become attractive — AI’s original purpose was to imbue machines with intelligence. It was doomed from the start. Not because of the sheer complexity of the quest, but because it was inevitable that we’d get distracted — and attracted — by a more enticing prize. Writer Tiernan Ray has recently argued in an…

Miso Robotics is a 6-year-old company based in Pasadena, California with an ambitious goal: they want to revolutionize the food industry. Sounds daunting but they’re already executing the plan. The company designs and builds robots that leverage computer vision and machine learning to perform dull and dangerous back-of-house tasks that…

Talking about long-term problems — Generative AI is the most transformative application the field has ever seen. It will redefine how we create but also how we interact with and relate to the creations of others. Whereas traditional AI allows us to extract patterns and insights from data, shaping them into new knowledge, generative AI…

You should know about this if you don’t want to get behind — In a recent article, I explained why AI writing tools can’t ever replace the core values of human writing. This is the second part where I explore where this argument weakens and where these tools shine. I see no reason to discard the use of these tools completely (I use…

People are saying things… — GPT-4 is possibly the most anticipated AI model in history. In 2020, GPT-3 surprised everyone with a huge performance leap from GPT-2 and set unprecedented expectations for its successor. But for two years OpenAI has been super shy about GPT-4 — letting out info in dribs and drabs and remaining…

We’re more vulnerable than ever to AI-powered misinformation on Twitter — I’ve written about AI-powered misinformation here, here, and here. About the dangers of social media and recommender systems here and here. And about Elon Musk and his endeavors here and here. Today I bring you a mix of the three. I’m super tired of the bird app these days. You’re…

Well, maybe not *everyone*, but I didn’t write this headline… — I’m an AI writer. As such, I have a unique dual perspective on the topic: My “I know AI” mind and my “I write” mind have strong conflicting opinions. My AI mind constantly repeats, “don’t worry, AI is dumb; it can’t reason or understand.” But then my writing mind says…

What do professional creative writers think about these tools? — Amidst the rapid emergence of new AI writing tools and the consolidation of old ones, Google has been testing its own: Wordcraft. The company brought together a group of professional authors to try out the tool in a project called the Wordcraft Writers Workshop — and the results are impressive. …