310 lines
14 KiB
Plaintext
310 lines
14 KiB
Plaintext
#[1]next [2]alternate
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[3]Home [4]About [5]Moonbound
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From: Robin Sloan
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To: the lab
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Sent: March 2023
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Phase change
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An extremely close-up photograph of a snowflake, looking almost
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architectural. [6]Snowflake, Wilson Bentley, ca. 1910
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Earlier this week, in [7]my main newsletter, I praised a new project
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from Matt Webb. Here, I want to come at it from a different angle.
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Briefly: Matt has built the [8]Braggoscope, a fun and useful
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application for exploring the archives of the beloved BBC radio show In
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Our Time, hosted by the inimitable Melvyn Bragg.
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In Our Time only provides HTML pages for each episode — there’s no
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structured data, no sense of “episode X is connected to episode Y
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because of shared feature Z”.
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As Matt explains [9]in his write-up, he fed the plain-language content
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of each episode page into the GPT-3 API, cleverly prompting it to
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extract basic metadata, along with a few subtler properties — including
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a Dewey Decimal number!?
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(Explaining how and why a person might prompt a language model is
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beyond the scope of this newsletter; you can [10]read up about it
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here.)
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Here’s [11]a bit of Matt’s prompt:
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Extract the description and a list of guests from the supplied episode notes fro
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m a podcast.
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Also provide a Dewey Decimal Classification code and label for the description
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Return valid JSON conforming to the following Typescript type definition:
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{
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"description": string,
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"guests": {"name": string, "affiliation": string | null}[]
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"dewey_decimal": {"code": string, "label": string},
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}
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Episode synopsis (Markdown):
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{notes}
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Valid JSON:
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Important to say: it doesn’t work perfectly. Matt reports that GPT-3
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doesn’t always return valid JSON, and if you browse the Braggoscope,
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you’ll find plenty of questionable filing choices.
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And yet! What a technique. (Matt credits Noah Brier for [12]the
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insight.)
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It fits into a pattern I’ve noticed: while the buzzy application of the
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GPT-alikes is chat, the real workhorse might be text transformation.
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As Matt writes:
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Sure Google is all-in on AI in products, announcing chatbots to
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compete with ChatGPT, and synthesised text in the search engine.
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BUT.
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Using GPT-3 as a function call.
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Using GPT-3 as a universal coupling.
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It brings a lot within reach.
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I think the magnitude of this shift … I would say it’s on the order
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of the web from the mid 90s? There was a radical simplification and
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democratisation of software (architecture, development, deployment,
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use) that took decades to really unfold.
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For me, 2022 and 2023 have presented two thick strands of inquiry: the
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web and AI, AI and the web. This is evidenced by the structure of these
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lab newsletters, which have tended towards birfucation.
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Matt’s thinking is interesting to me because it brings the
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strands together.
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One of the pleasures of HTTP (the original version) is that it’s almost
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plain language, though a very simple kind. You can execute an HTTP
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request “by hand”: telnet www.google.com 80 followed by GET /.
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Language models as universal couplers begin to suggest protocols that
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really are plain language. What if the protocol of the GPT-alikes is
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just a bare TCP socket carrying free-form requests and instructions?
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What if the RSS feed of the future is simply my language model replying
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to yours when it asks, “What’s up with Robin lately?”
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I like this because I hate it; because it’s weird, and makes me
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feel uncomfortable.
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__________________________________________________________________
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I think it’s really challenging to find the appropriate stance towards
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this stuff.
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On one hand, I find critical deflation, of the kind you’ll hear from
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Ted Chiang, Simon Willison, and Claire Leibowicz in [13]this recent
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episode of KQED Forum, appropriate and useful. The hype is so powerful
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that any corrective is welcome.
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However! On the critical side, the evaluation of what’s before us isn’t
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sufficient; not even close. If we demand humility from AI engineers,
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then we ought to match it with imagination.
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An important fact about these language models — one that sets them
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apart from, say, the personal computer, or the iPhone — is that their
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capabilities have been surprising, often confounding, even to
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their creators.
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AI at this moment feels like a mash-up of programming and biology. The
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programming part is obvious; the biology part becomes apparent when you
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see [14]AI engineers probing their own creations the way you might
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probe a mouse in a lab.
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The simple fact is: even at the highest levels of theory and practice,
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no one knows how these language models are doing what they’re doing.
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Over the past few years, in the evolution from GPT-2-alikes to
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GPT-3-alikes and beyond, it’s become clear that the “returns to
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scale”—both in terms of (1) a model’s size and (2) the scope of its
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training data — are exponential and nonlinear. Simply adding more works
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better, and works weirder, than it should.
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The nonlinearity is, to me, the most interesting part. As these models
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have grown, they have undergone widely observed “phase changes” in
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capability, just as sudden and surprising as water frozen or
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cream whipped.
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At the moment, my deepest engagement with a language model is in a
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channel on a Discord server, where our gallant host has set up a
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ChatGPT-powered bot and laced a simple personality into its prompt. The
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sociability has been a revelation — multiplayer ChatGPT is much, MUCH
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more fun than single player — and, of course, the conversation tends
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towards goading the bot, testing its boundaries, luring it
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into absurdities.
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The bot writes poems, sure, and song lyrics, and movie scenes.
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The bot also produces ASCII art, and SVG code, and [15]PICO-8 programs,
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though they don’t always run.
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I find myself deeply ambivalent, in the original sense of: thinking
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many things at once. I’m very aware of the bot’s limitations, but/and
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I find myself stunned by its fluency, its range.
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Listen: you can be a skeptic. In some ways, I am! But these phase
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changes have happened, and that probably means they will keep
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happening, and no one knows (the AI engineers least of all) what might
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suddenly become possible.
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As ever, [16]Jack Clark is my guide. He’s a journalist turned AI
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practioner, involved in policy and planning at the highest levels,
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first at OpenAI, now at Anthropic. And if he’s no longer a
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disinterested observer, he remains deeply grounded and moral, which
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makes me trust him when he says, with confidence: this is the biggest
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thing going, and we had all better brace for weird times ahead.
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__________________________________________________________________
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What does that mean, to brace for it?
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I’ve found it helpful, these past few years, to frame my anxieties and
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dissatisfactions as questions. For example, fed up with the state of
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social media, [17]I asked: what do I want from the internet, anyway?
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It turns out I had an answer to that question.
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Where the GPT-alikes are concerned, a question that’s emerging for
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me is:
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What could I do with a universal function — a tool for turning just
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about any X into just about any Y with plain language instructions?
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I don’t pose that question with any sense of wide-eyed expectation; a
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reasonable answer might be, nothing much. Not everything in the world
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depends on the transformation of symbols. But I think that IS the
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question, and I think it takes some legitimate work, some strenuous
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imagination, to push yourself to believe it really will be “just about
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any X” into “just about any Y”.
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I help operate [18]a small olive oil company, and I have spent a bit of
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time lately considering this question in the context of our business.
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What might a GPT-alike do for us? What might an even more capable
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system do?
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My answer, so far, is indeed: nothing much! It’s a physical business,
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after all, mainly concerned with moving and transforming matter. The
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“obvious” application is customer support, which I handle myself, and
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which I am unwilling to cede to a computer or, indeed, anyone who isn’t
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me. The specific quality and character of our support is important.
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(As an aside: every customer support request I receive is a miniature
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puzzle, usually requiring deduction across several different systems.
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Many of these puzzles are challenging even to the general intelligence
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that is me; if it comes to pass that a GPT-alike can handle them
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without breaking a sweat, I will be very, very impressed.)
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(Of course, it’s not going to happen like that, is it? Long before
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GPT-alikes can solve the same problems Robin can, using the tools Robin
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has, the problems themselves will change to meet the GPT-alikes
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halfway. The systems will all learn to “speak GPT”, in some sense.)
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The simple act of asking and answering the question was clarifying and
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calming. It plucked AI out of the realm of abstract dread and plunked
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it down on the workbench.
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__________________________________________________________________
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Jack Clark includes, in all of his AI newsletters, a piece of original
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micro-fiction. One of them, [19]sent in December, has stayed with me.
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I’ll reproduce it here in full:
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Reality Authentication
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[The internet, 2034]
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“To login, spit into the bio-API”
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I took a sip of water and swirled it around my mouth a bit, then
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hawked some spit into the little cup on my desk, put its lid on,
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then flipped over the receptacle and plugged it into the
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bio-API system.
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“Authenticating … authentication successful, human-user identified.
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Enjoy your time on the application!”
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I spent a couple of hours logged-on, doing a mixture of work and
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pleasure. I was part of an all-human gaming league called the
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No-Centaurs; we came second in a mini tournament. I also talked to
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my therapist sans his augment, and I sent a few emails over the
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BioNet protocol.
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When I logged out, I went back to the regular internet. Since the AI
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models had got minituarized and proliferated a decade ago, the
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internet had radically changed. For one thing, it was so much faster
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now. It was also dangerous in ways it hadn’t been before - Attention
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Harvesters were everywhere and the only reason I was confident in my
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browsing was I’d paid for a few protection programs.
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I think “brace for it” might mean imagining human-only spaces, online
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and off. We might be headed, paradoxically, for a golden age of “get
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that robot out of my face”.
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In the extreme case, if AI doesn’t wreck the world, language models
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could certainly wreck the internet, like Jack’s Attention Harvesters
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above. Maybe we’ll look back at the Web Parenthesis, 1990-2030. It was
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weird and fun, though no one in the future will quite understand
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the appeal.
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We are living and thinking together in an interesting time. My
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recommendation is to avoid chasing the ball of AI around the field,
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always a step behind. Instead, set your stance a little wider and form
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a question that actually matters to you.
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It might be as simple as: is this kind of capability, extrapolated
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forward, useful to me and my work? If so, how?
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It might be as wacky as: what kind of protocol could I build around
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plain language, the totally sci-fi vision of computers just TALKING to
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each other?
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It might even be my original question, or a version of it: what do
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I want from the internet, anyway?
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From Oakland,
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Robin
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March 2023, Oakland
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I'm [20]Robin Sloan, a fiction writer. You can sign up for my
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lab newsletter:
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____________________ Subscribe
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This website doesn’t collect any information about you or your reading.
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It aspires to the speed and privacy of the printed page.
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Don’t miss [21]the colophon. Hony soyt qui mal pence
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References
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1. https://www.robinsloan.com/confirm/main/subscribe/
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2. https://www.robinsloan.com/feed.xml
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3. https://www.robinsloan.com/
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4. https://www.robinsloan.com/about/
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5. https://www.robinsloan.com/moonbound/
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6. https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/the-snowflake-man-of-vermont?utm_source=Robin_Sloan_sent_me
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7. https://www.robinsloan.com/newsletters/ring-got-good/?utm_source=Robin_Sloan_sent_me
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8. https://genmon.github.io/braggoscope/?utm_source=Robin_Sloan_sent_me
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9. https://interconnected.org/home/2023/02/07/braggoscope?utm_source=Robin_Sloan_sent_me
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10. https://help.openai.com/en/articles/6654000-best-practices-for-prompt-engineering-with-openai-api?utm_source=Robin_Sloan_sent_me
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11. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35073824&utm_source=Robin_Sloan_sent_me
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12. https://brxnd.substack.com/p/the-prompt-to-rule-all-prompts-brxnd?utm_source=Robin_Sloan_sent_me
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13. https://www.kqed.org/forum/2010101892368/how-to-wrap-our-heads-around-these-new-shockingly-fluent-chatbots?utm_source=Robin_Sloan_sent_me
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14. https://www.anthropic.com/index/toy-models-of-superposition-2?utm_source=Robin_Sloan_sent_me
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15. https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php?utm_source=Robin_Sloan_sent_me
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16. https://importai.substack.com/?utm_source=Robin_Sloan_sent_me
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17. https://www.robinsloan.com/lab/specifying-spring-83/
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18. https://fat.gold/?utm_source=Robin_Sloan_sent_me
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19. https://us13.campaign-archive.com/?u=67bd06787e84d73db24fb0aa5&&id=a03ebcd500&utm_source=Robin_Sloan_sent_me
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20. https://www.robinsloan.com/about?utm_source=Robin_Sloan_sent_me
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21. https://www.robinsloan.com/colophon/
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