Attention Please
A few new things I’m trying here. A droning 5th note, inspired by some Raga music that I’ve been listening to recently. Some ambient weirdness thanks to a Mood pedal from Chase Bliss (I know I’m just starting to scratch the surface). And some vocals…
Papercuts
I recently bought a Zoom Q2n-4k video recorder. I took it for its maiden voyage today. I would change the angle and lighting (although there are some settings on the unit to account for different lighting scenarios…settings that I did not use). There’s a line…
Does ChatGPT ‘understand’?
In discussions about generative AI, I frequently hear folks state it imply that it’s fundamentally different from human cognition because AI doesn’t ‘understand.’ However, I’m not convinced that we actually understand ‘understanding.’ And I’m not entirely convinced that I — or any other human —…
Grandma Harfield’s Marmalade Recipe
My father’s mother wasn’t particularly known for her cooking. Very British. Usually pretty bland. But I remember her marmalade with great fondness. When I was a child, I thought ALL marmalade was gross (too bitter). Now, however, it is against my Grandma’s recipe that I…
You’re Going to Die: A Children’s Story
By Timothy Furstnau (2000). Film by Dennis Palazzolo and narrated by Vito Acconci. One day, you’re going to die. Your life will just end, right then and there. You will be no more. It probably won’t be pretty like in the movies or in fairytales.…
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
I am re-reading Max Weber’s classic sociological work “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.” The main thesis (as I remember it from grad school) is that the Enlightenment represented a splintering of Worldview such that traditionally shared belief systems about God, humans, and…
The best and worst career advice I ever received
Sometimes advice that is the most rewarding in the short term is also the most punishing in the long run.
The sentience of Google’s LaMDA AI has been grossly exaggerated
On Artificial Intelligence and Intellectual Virtue It is highly unlikely that Google’s LaMDA AI chat it has become sentient, which is to say ‘self-aware.’ What is more likely the case is that it simply represents a sophisticated simulation. But how would we know for certain?…
Bots don’t care if you live or die
The best approaches to automation don’t automate everything. Where processes are automated, exceptions are bound to happen. And when those exceptions happen it’s important that humans are able to address them…especially when the life and death of humans are concerned. When too much is automated,…
Are robots slaves? On the contemporary relevance of Čapek’s R.U.R.
In reading R.U.R. we are forced to acknowledge that human-centered technology can’t mean freeing humans from work, because there’s something about work itself that is an inextricably part of what it means to be human. Čapek asks us to be more nuanced in how we…
Timothy Harfield 