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 ( 7871 )
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More Flowers {I Couldn't Resist}
Posted on 12 April 2023
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Constructing ‘Agent’ AIs, Natural Language Computers
Caveat: This is mostly a note to myself, but you’re welcome to look over my shoulder. Let’s start with a tweet stream. Here’s the first two tweets: Ok so what... Read more
Posted on 12 April 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior
Here's an example of the multi-AI simulation at work. You can watch the whole thing here, and switch between AI characters by clicking on them:... Read more
Posted on 11 April 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Some Comments on “intelligence” for Jinzo Ninge (Japanese for “artificial...
Back in mid-March Scott Aaronson made a post entitled: On overexcitable children. The post begins: Wilbur and Orville are circumnavigating the Ohio cornfield... Read more
Posted on 11 April 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Hot Ones [Media Notes 90] {We Are One in Wings.}
A recent article by Maya Salam in The New York Times alerted me to the show: “Hot Ones” — a breakthrough pop-culture phenomenon in which stars eat 10... Read more
Posted on 11 April 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
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
