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 ( 7812 )
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On the Similarities Between a Kumquat and a MiG: ChatCPT Chases Analogies
We all know that not so long-ago Geoffrey “AI Godfather” Hinton went up on a mountain where he received a heavy granite tablet. Read more
Posted on 12 March 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Northern Exposure [Media Notes 114]
I’m somewhere into the fourth season of Northern Exposure on Amazon. At ran for six seasons on CBS starting in 1990, though the first two seasons only had 8... Read more
Posted on 11 March 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Blue in Green
Posted on 11 March 2024
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Silicon Valley is Pricing Academics out of AI Research
That's an article by Naomi Nix, Cat Zakrzewski and Gerrit De Vynck in today's Washington Post. ... the sky-high cost of working with AI models is boxing... Read more
Posted on 10 March 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Does ChatGPT Understand the Concept of Tragedy? Symbolic AI & Neural Nets
New working paper. Title above, links, abstract and contents below: Academia.edu:... Read more
Posted on 10 March 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
David Bordwell, 1947 - 2024
I was privileged to have some correspondence with Bordwell over the years, including a helpful suggestion about King Kong that panned out. Here is his... Read more
Posted on 10 March 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
They're Watching Us [between the Birds]
Posted on 10 March 2024
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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A.I. and Biology [search and Smarts]
Carl Zimmer, A.I. Is Learning What It Means to Be Alive, NYTimes, Mar. 10, 2024. Here's how the article opens: In 1889, a French doctor named Francois-Gilbert... Read more
Posted on 10 March 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
America's Contradictory Foreign Policy for Israel/Palestine
Peter Baker and Michael Crowley, Providing Both Bombs and Food, Biden Puts Himself in the Middle of Gaza’s War, NYTimes, Mar. 9, 2024. From the skies over... Read more
Posted on 10 March 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Some Pedestrian Photos for a Hazy Saturday Morning [cosmos]
Posted on 09 March 2024
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Abstraction in Neural Networks & Abstract Concepts
W. Jeffrey Johnston Stefano Fusi, Abstract representations emerge naturally in neural networks trained to perform multiple tasks, Nature Communications 14:... Read more
Posted on 09 March 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
What Strange Beasts Are These AI Rogues?
medieval encyclopaedia about nature reminds me a lot of current thinking around llm cognition https://t.co/k9SnWCFl2N— rohit (@krishnanrohit) March 9, 2024GPT-3... Read more
Posted on 09 March 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Transformation Situation
Posted on 08 March 2024
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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AI, Chess, and Language 2: Further Remarks [SPSH]
Yesterday I reflected on the computational approximation of chess play and the computational approximation of linguistic activity: AI, Chess, and Language 1: Tw... Read more
Posted on 08 March 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
How Come Rembrandt Never Did "TechBro with His AI"?
'A Woman Reading.' (1634) Across all the media in which he worked, Rembrandt has an unrivalled ability to touch our hearts and mind. Read more
Posted on 07 March 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Synthesis, Antithesis, Birds
Posted on 07 March 2024
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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AI, Chess, and Language 1: Two VERY Different Beasts
Chess has been with AI since the beginning. In fact, computer chess all but beats the origins of the term “artificial intelligence,” which was coined for the... Read more
Posted on 07 March 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
John Sowa on Meaning in Language and LLMs
An exercise for the reader: Background: I have argued that meaning involves intention, relationality, and adhesion, where intention inheres in the relationship... Read more
Posted on 06 March 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Chinese Room Again
The line between intelligence and imitation gets thinner and harder to discern as the imitation is done at a peta scale, and the jury is the one being imitated.. Read more
Posted on 06 March 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Familiar Tune Reharmonized [They Don't Sing It This Way Before Football Games]
H/t Ethan Iverson. To Anacreon in Heaven · Jim Beard Show of Hands ℗ Sunnyside Communications Released on: 2013-09-10 Artist: Jim Read more
Posted on 06 March 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
