Bbenzon
Description
Humankind got its start on the African savannas some hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years ago. At various times in our cultural history we’ve moved to distinctly new cultural ground, as it were. And so we are moving now, and have been for the past half century. This blog is how I see that move. Intellectually, I'm broadly interested in culture and the brain. Within that compass, anything could show up here. Literature and films (including animation), certainly, music as well, and graffiti. But, other things may show up as well. It's a blog, don't you know, it moves.
MY BLOGS
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New Savanna
http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/
Humankind got its start on the African savannas some hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years ago. At various times in our cultural history we’ve moved to distinctly new cultural ground, as it were. And so we are moving now, and have been for the past half century. This blog is how I see that move. I'm broadly interested in culture and the brain. Within that compass, anything could show up here. Literature and films (including animation), certainly, music as well, and graffiti. But, other things may show up as well. It's a blog, don't you know, it moves.
LATEST ARTICLES ( 7626 )
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Stories by ChatGPT: Fairy Tale, Realistic, and True
I've published a new working paper. Title above, abstract, contents, and introduction below. Download at: Academic.edu:... Read more
Posted on 10 April 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
How’s the AI Apocalypse Coming Along?
On November 30, 2022, OpenAI released ChatGPT to the world. Five days later a million users had signed up. Within the last month or so Microsoft, allied with... Read more
Posted on 10 April 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Ezra Klein Reflects on AI, Perhaps It Will Catalyze Reflection on the...
Ezra Klein just had an Ask Me Anything episode of his show, and it turns out – surprise! surprise! – that people asked him about A.I. Read more
Posted on 08 April 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: I've Seen the Light
Posted on 07 April 2023
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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GPT-4 Interprets Shakespeare’s Great Sonnet, “Th’expense of Spirit in a Waste...
This is a sonnet I know well because I published two papers on it early in my career: Cognitive Networks and Literary Semantics (1976) and Lust in Action: An... Read more
Posted on 07 April 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Anthropology Novels?
‘The issue wasn’t that they didn’t understand the difference between fiction and non-fiction, however. It had to do with how they thought about reading, and... Read more
Posted on 07 April 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
AI and Democracy
Peter Coy, Can A.I. and Democracy Fix Each Other? NYTimes, Apr. 5, 2023. Attitudes about A.I. are polarized, with some focusing on its promise to amplify human... Read more
Posted on 06 April 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Some Things That Have Been Done with GPT-4 [so Far]
With no programming background, @ammar created a (complex) video game from scratch.https://t.co/GppWNyvmFw— Sam Woods (@samuelwoods_) April 3, 2023That's just... Read more
Posted on 05 April 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Age and Wisdom, in Politics and Artificial Intelligence [& in Life]
At a relatively young age I learned that wisdom is an elusive and valuable trait that is conferred by age, and only be age. Then I found a statement on the... Read more
Posted on 05 April 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Can We Make Sense of AI Doom? [Living in a Complex World]
Over at Marginal Revolution Tyler Cowen has a post entitled, Does natural selection favor AIs over humans? Model this! It's about a paper claiming that,... Read more
Posted on 04 April 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Ali Minai – "Not Your Typical Autocomplete"
A useful explanatory section from Ali Minai's wonderful essay, Thinking Through the Risks of AI, 3 Quarks Daily, April 3, 2023: As their name implies, LLMs focu... Read more
Posted on 04 April 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Contentment and the Happiness of Finns
Penelope Colston, The Finnish Secret to Happiness? Knowing When You Have Enough. NYTimes, April 1, 2023. Ms. Hansen was one of more than a dozen Finns we spoke... Read more
Posted on 03 April 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Judea Pearl Want "Manhattan Project of Intense Research to Make Machines More...
I'd strongly support the idea of a Manhattan Project of intense research to make machines more trustworthy and interpretable (regardless of, or in parallel... Read more
Posted on 02 April 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Yann Lecun on AI X-risk [AI-doom]
Rhetoric from AI doomers is not just ridiculous. It's dangerous and unethical. https://t.co/YEiSdtOwxJ— Yann LeCun (@ylecun) April 1, 2023 AI doomers reach the... Read more
Posted on 02 April 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Stop It! The Printing Press Did Not Create the Enlightenment. It’s a Bad...
OR: How and why is it the ChatGPT has a more coherent "understanding" of the role of the printing press in history than Walter Isaacson, Eric Schmidt, and... Read more
Posted on 02 April 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Ramble into Spring with AI Doom, Deep Learning Vs. Cultural Evolution, and...
Obviously I’ve been much taken with ChatGPT and the issues it raises. Here’s some quick thoughts on some of them. Why I’m skeptical of AI Doom This issue,... Read more
Posted on 01 April 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
ChatGPT on Intention: The Chinese Room and Lucy on the Beach, Plus Comedians
In my first year at Johns Hopkins I took a course called, I believe, “Types of Philsophy.” One lecture in the course was organized around a thought experiment... Read more
Posted on 01 April 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: From Liberty State Park, September 10, 2011
Posted on 31 March 2023
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Are We Publishing Too Damn Much?
There's too much science: “These findings suggest troubling implications… If too many papers are published in short order, new ideas cannot be carefully... Read more
Posted on 31 March 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Lew Soloff Has Georgia on His Mind
From the YouTube page: Lew Soloff performs the Hoagy Carmichael classic, "Georgia on my Mind" at the Velvet Note in Alpharetta, GA. Kenny Banks on piano, Che... Read more
Posted on 31 March 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
