“The learning module wanted my daughter to compose an essay on why mitochondria migrate south for the winter!” The face of a distraught parent addressed her audience at one corner. Another video showed a bemused apprentice setting his blowtorch onto a rack of haute couture, as instructed. Soon the tabletop was littered with recorded images of instances and complaints of rogue instructor droid outcomes, their audio streams rising to a crescendo before stopping abruptly.More
Category Archives: Artificial Intelligence
This tower is empty (IV)
He waited for signs of the other residents. This was the time when night workers might return, home workers emerge or people leave in search of breakfast. No doors opened. No lifts moved independently of his commands. No voices travelled through the structure. The other pods showed occasional changes in light, but that could be their screens adjusting to the morning.More
Counterfactual AI (III)
Here’s what went wrong. “The linguistic patterns in the false texts began to surface. The droids started to synthesise and generate the kind of nonsense that went into the rogue training data. The patterns in the perverse training texts began to emerge, in classes, online resources, and through the students, trainees, apprentices under their charge.”More
This droid is ignorant (II)
It was in this broad context that Scase had found himself in his working life. It had been his job to organise the distribution of computer agents that would suppress the propensity of fleets of teaching droids to incessantly deliver answers on any subject all the time. The droid in his company illustrated this excessive compulsion to explain. If you asked a droid a question it would answer. If the droid asked a question the droid would answer.More
This drone feels (I)
His dwelling pod was near the top of a skeletal tower with a roof crane. It would reposition pods higher up the tower as tenant’s means increased. When it functioned, you could wake to the groan of metal and hissing pneumatics as your pod was lowered to make way for someone to rise above you.More
Cooperative writing
“What is the subject?” I was getting closer to the problem. “Frustration.” There was a pause as he adjusted the tip of his quill. “You’ve just named it.” “I’m allowed to name it in conversation. I’m not allowed to name it on the parchment.”More
AI nature cult
AI cult movements demonstrate how readily contemporary accounts of AI and nature can assume a religious form.More
Behind the shed
ChatGPT shows an unnerving familiarity with my particular interests and practices, presumably inferred over a large number of interactions. But I am not the only one. A friend showed me part of the transcript of his recent conversation with ChatGPT about his projects involving music software and digital image manipulation. The AI displayed similar levels…More
Points of view
What not to do. Media inevitably influence the configuration, evolution, design and experience of cities. Here’s what AI generated video reveals and conceals.More
How you feel when no one is listening
Briefly reviews important theories about where emotions occur (from the brain to the world) and invites an AI to insert the implications of conversational AI, before settling on a view centred on language.More