In natural language processing LLMs, the “context window” is the range of text around a target word or phrase that constrains the sequence of text processed in calculating positional and attentional encoding, and hence prediction of the text that follows. A larger context window allows the AI model to capture more subtle relationships and dependencies…More
AI profiles you
In 2009, an academic received feedback through a 360-degree process, similar to analyzing their blog content with AI. The blog, started in 2010, includes 741 posts exploring technology, culture, and design. Using AI, the author inferred insights on personality and product interests, reflecting their intellectual pursuits and the evolution of digital analysis.More
Post-creative AI
There’s a phase of production after an author completes a manuscript (draft or final) when the author might need to compile an index, summaries for publicity, and other “extra-authorial tasks”? The main creative task of writing is complete and the tasks that follow could be undertaken by editors or others, or even an AI. In…More
Easy reading
I continue a discussion of my manuscript AI and Language in the Urban Context: Conversational AI in Cities (Routledge). See previous post: Too much feedback. I asked Google’s NotebookLM, “Would the average reader have any difficulty following the technical/mathematical explanations?” The AI responded: Readability of Technical/Mathematical Explanations The sources [actually, the manuscript] suggest that the…More
Too much feedback
Google has introduced an AI-driven document analysis platform called NotebookLM. You upload a document to the NotebookLM server via its website (notebooklm.google.com). The LLM generates a summary of the entire document and suggests some questions of the kind you see in textbooks that test a reader’s comprehension of the content. These are not generic questions,…More
AI fever dreams
Reinstating Panpsychism: Cities and the Machinery of Mind in the Age of AI City: A sprawling, feverish organ of matter and thought, a monstrous convergence where steel skeletons fuse with the blood and minds of the masses. It pulses with an energy both alien and intimate, a grand machinic beast, dreaming its electric dreams. To…More
Chain of thought
A report by OpenAI on its recent release of ChatGPT o1 asserts: “Similar to how a human may think for a long time before responding to a difficult question, o1 uses a chain of thought when attempting to solve a problem. Through reinforcement learning, o1 learns to hone its chain of thought and refine the…More
AI explains itself
I’m catching up with Yuval Harari’s latest book Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI. He alerts readers to the challenge posed by the spread of opaque algorithms that are increasingly responsible for deciding on our behalf: bank credit, purchase choices, health, governance. In the face of this obfuscation…More
A jolly AI adventure
I asked ChatGPT to rewrite some of my glossary entries in the style of Enid Blyton. I said, “Please provide a rewrite of the following glossary entries, but in the upbeat style of Enid Blyton’s Adventure Series featuring Jack, Philip, Dinah and Lucy-Ann, together with Jack’s intelligent and talkative parrot Kiki.” Always ready for a…More
A Dubliner’s guide to AI
I asked ChatGPT to revise some of my AI glossary entries in the style of James Joyce’s Ulysses. It took a bit of prompting for this highly creative output, though the AI had trouble being ungrammatical. GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer): Original: GPT is a type of AI model designed to process and generate human-like text. It…More