The Dethroning of Deduction

AI's favoring of induction over deduction is the root of its power, for it lets it deal with the specifics that bedevil the application of broad major premises.

What’s Obvious Tells Many a Lie

Settled knowledge is, in essence, a strategic use of shortcuts, which is an excellent strategy given our limited time and capacities.

Links conquer the universe

We can talk about these relationships as links. They're not expressed in blue underlined text, and you can't click on them. But they are the relationships among words that matter in any particular circumstance. They are the relationships that give words meaning. And as in life, those meanings are multiple and contextual. Without those relationships, there is no language.

On Chat AI and BS

So, I'm sticking with hallucinations for all of chat AI's statements, true or false. But that leaves us with a question: Why isn't there a word that perfectly expresses this situation? The answer is easy: LLMs are doing something genuinely new in our history. Our lack of a perfectly apt verb proves it.

When AI’s eyes are smiling

As of now, GenAI doesn't learn from the knowledge it creates any more than a paint-mixing machine learns more about colors every time it's used.

Will AGI be intelligent?

AGI's holistic approach not only could enhance the accuracy and reliability of its decisions, but it would also mirror the interconnectedness of the real world.

Was the web good for knowledge management?

So, yes, the web enables everyone with an internet connection and the freedom to use it to contribute to our new, global, contentious, and contradictory knowledge space. But I did not foresee the dark side because of an optimism born of privilege.

The five ages of data

Perhaps this latest phase in the history of data will bring us to accept inexplicable complexity as a property of the world. We could view this as pure chaos, but thanks to having lived through the past four ages in rapid succession, we might instead recognize that chaos as being rich with endless mysteries we will never uncover completely.

Truth, lies, and large language models

The good news is that the problem of chat AI's proclivity for hallucinating is well-recognized by the organizations creating these marvels, and they realize that it is a danger to the world and to their success, not necessarily in that order of priority. Until that problem is solved, chat AI engines need to lose their self-confidence and make it crystal clear that they are the most unabashed and charming liars the world has ever seen.

What are your chatbot’s pronouns?

We don't have pronouns by which we can address inanimate objects because we haven't had any occasions to have actual conversations with them.

The ChatGPT ways of knowledge

These two types of knowing—understanding the world and understanding knowledge—are, in some important ways, at odds in AI-based chatbots.

Tags, AI, and dimensions

Tags have become so common that they've faded from consciousness since 2007, although sometimes a clever hashtag pops up.

AI’s new type of knowledge

This way of knowing works pragmatically for some very complex systems of the sort we find in the real world. But, oddly, itseems not to work so well in some artificially simple systems.

Knowledge as I remember it

The web transformed the role of knowledge by making it instantly available but not inherently reliable.

Getting more confused about regulating social media

Out of the mix of commercial greed, politics, and genuine desires to make the world better, we'll try many ways to "fix" social media. But I think it may take a couple of generations, affected by what we do, for us to begin to agree about what's right and wrong.

What ‘sentient’ AI teaches us

As Gary Marcus says, a large language model is just a "spreadsheet for words" that lets it act as a massive autocompletion system that knows how words go together but has not the foggiest idea how those words connect to the world.

AI’s ways of being immoral

The most powerful ML can require the resources of wealthy organizations. Such organizations usually have at best mixed motivations, to be charitable about it.

Artificial intuition

Maybe the rise of machine learning will so transform our model of intuition that we'll start to trust it much more.

Restructured reading

In a book, not knowing how you got to a page would be a sign of a failed structure. On the internet, that can be a sign of a deeply rewarding intellectual expedition.

Why predict?

Predictions can be used to try to get to the bottom of something in the present. That's often the case with arguments about what the web will do to us and society.