䷉ Disclamer

Many people are discussing important and pressing questions raised by recent developments in AI. Outside this disclaimer, I will not be among them. I’ve publicly posted this letter to close friends and to everyone else who I hope would be a close friend if we met under serendipitous circumstances. To those future friends, a personal introduction.

I’ve been thinking about AI related stuff for roughly forty years. Transformers! I was born in 1981, so I guess I’m equally familiar with consciousness. My noteworthy AI work is as a lesser author on some papers out of IHMC, participating in the CALO project of which part came to be called Siri. I kept this poster on my wall.

Academia would be a natural fit for me except for a fatal flaw…

That and I’m random and I alliterate like it was 708 CE, so banished to the armchair I must be, finding my fortune in professonal Rubik’s Cube solving accepting John Conway as my patron saint.

My wife asks why I insist on dressing things up in references and flowery language. I just like feeling flower surrounded.

What else… There was the time I used a markov chain model to write poetry for a university class. I guess that makes me the kid who submitted AI slop as homework in the 90s. In 2009ish I gave an over-researched guest lecture for a friend’s cognitive science class, “Buckle up babes ‘cus in ten years time this statistical machine learning stuff is gonna get crazy!”

To introduce the crazy, I recommend the Last Invention podcast. They set the stakes, cover key history, and share voices from all points of view. Over lunch with my mom, I answered all her AI questions by summarizing what the Longview people said.

To get a good feel for how AI learns, CGP Grey has the best video still fresh after eight years.

We’re used to the idea that the tools we use, even if we don’t understand them, someone does, but with our machines that learn we are increasingly in a position where we use tools, or are used by tools, that no one, not even their creators, understand.

Even then in a footnote, he points out that real training is less random.

To “go dig into the details” and get some understanding, Welch Labs presents excruciatingly well. They even have a mighty fine hardback. I gave a copy to my father for Christmas.

To learn more about AI energy use, listen to Science Vs or this Hank Green rant. I would rant too except I know that when friends bring it up they’re sincerely concerned. Remember most things have costs, weigh benefits too, include opportunity costs. What’s more, the equation is constantly changing in the promising direction and not by a little, factors of hundreds. Yes, data-center deployment raises resource allocation questions and power bills: who gets the benefit, who bears the cost, with what compensation. AI is new, not novel.

If reading the Economist cover-to-cover over Saturday morning dim sum for years indoctrinates you in any way, it’s that a great many of the world’s dumbist ills could be remedied through proper financing. The corollary being that bad financing is responsible for many dumb ills. Yes, of course, the data-center companies should be paying for their new capacity. And think: if the new capacity is renewable and intermittent, then the data-centers could downcycle training at night or when the wind stops blowing. Then again, may not be worth it: those GPUs only pay for themselves when they’re running.

To consider costs, Cory Doctorow writes lucidly as “a critic whose criticism inflicts maximum damage on the parts of AI that are doing the most harm,” and over at the Center for Humane Technology, they’re focused on AI now having seen similar incentive systems lead to Social Dilemmas brought to you by Facebook and friends.

To address the worst conflunce of social “content” and sloppy cringe, The Writer’s Block masterfully applies analysis to an irredeamable AI-generated rip off of his own video essay on how Disney’s Wish might as well have been AI-generated for how much soul it has. Compare KDH that “is nothing but the truth now.” They make an authenticity paradox the plot. See Sar’s essay on that. Writer’s Block also happens to have my favorite KDH analysis. The magic of friendship will cure what ails us.

To understand me from the inside, listen to my analysis of the Witness. A latent space representation of my soul exists as a linear combination of the Witness and KPop Demon Hunters. For those of you without small children, Sinners is the same movie in a different setting. If today is a golden moment for Philosophy of Langauage, I’m happy to put on my yellow hat and sing backup. Cosplaying Zoey definitely matches me, definitely. For example, if I were to explain every link in this letter, it would be twice as long and feature three times more ADHD. Sorry. Sorry, sorry. The rainbow links are for songs and video clips, things to click on while reading. The gold links are to conversations with AIs as documentation of what they can and can’t do. I put Wikipedia links in blue as a convenience to learn basic background.

With most everything important out the way, I find I’m holding an extra key here. Let me give it to you. It’s a memory. My class at school is on a field trip to see the Dalai Lama speak. He compares human hands and tiger claws contrasting their natures. I’m captivated. Others seem bored. He gradually segues into countries and politics. Others get excited. They start applauding. I’m confused. Countries and politics come and go. Human hands and tiger claws have been around for much longer. Keep that misunderstanding in mind.

Also keep in mind that I started this letter planning only on a few pages: a little tribute to John Searle, about half of Chapter 2, with a little confetti intro instead of Chapter 1, only a few paragraphs instead of Chapter 3, and no Chapter 4 Q&A at all. I didn’t expect my Friday Evening Discourse with puppets in hand to become a novella puppeting me.

Oh, and the little symbols as part of the section titles, they’re from the I Ching, the Book of Changes because things are changing.

Now buckle up babes ‘cus we’re going full bananas.