Guest post In the vast expanse of the digital universe, AI, particularly large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, have found a home, influencing our lives in countless ways. A lingering question, however, is whether we are inadvertently influencing these models back. In other words, could our writings have been part of the training data for…More
Tag Archives: data
Perspecticide
The concept of defence is not so far from the idea of architecture. Vitruvius made that clear in his Ten Books on Architecture, the last of which is devoted to siege engines and ballistae. Security and defence are amongst the benefits, then and now, that draw people to live together and form cities. Sound the…More
Machine genomics
A code is a system of rules for translating one string of symbols into something else, such as another string, some actions or outputs. Code provides an obvious link between digital computers and nature. After all, computers run on code, and the nuclei of cells in living organisms contain gene sequences that the cells translate to other…More
Forests that think
The “science of signs,” semiotics, provides valuable insights into the relationship between the highly artificial world of networked computers and the world of nature. First, we have to abandon the idea that at the core of artificial, animal and plant communication systems we have data. According to a common computational typology there’s data (just 1s and 0s, or…More
Data waste
Four years ago when excitement about the 3D role-playing environment SecondLife was in full frenzy, a group of us constructed a playground promontory on the edge of the University’s main island. We built walls that changed their surface patterns and moved about in response to signals from mobile phones (in physical life). It was a…More