With (Australian) Robodebt and the (UK) Post Office in the news, now is a great time to reconsider how we govern our organisations and institutions. […]
Continue readingThe limits of generative AI
Whilst cruising the interwebs I can across the follow, which nicely captures the limits of large language (LLMs) models. In the persuasive practice of Derrida, […]
Continue readingDistributed stupidity
There’s been a recent up tic in interest in the ethics of AI, and the challenge of AI alignment. Particularly given the challenges at OpenAI, […]
Continue readingSchool Life in 2024 A.D.
An interesting bit of paleofuture has been appearing in several social media feeds (on reddit, for example). I’ve converted it to text (below) for ease […]
Continue readingContinue readingEven the effects already discovered are due to chance and
experiment rather than to the sciences; for our present sciences
are nothing more than peculiar arrangements of matters already
discovered, and not methods for discovery or plans for new
operations.Aphorism VIII. Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, Book 1, 1620
Where will LLMs take us?
Not a week seems to pass by without some surprising news concerning large-language models (LLMs). Most recently it was when an LLM trained for other purposes played chess at a reasonable level. This seemingly constant stream of surprising news has led to talk that LLMs are the next general-purpose technology—a technology that affects an entire economy—and will usher in new era of rapid productivity growth. They might even accelerate global economic growth by an order of magnitude, as the Industrial Revolution did, providing us with a Fifth Industrial Revolution.
Continue reading“I am still struggling to find a proper definition of AGI… ur thoughts”
The short answer is that AGI is a bit meaningless as a term as we don’t really know what ‘I’ is. The best approach is the assume that AGI means “human-like intelligence in machines” while accepting that “human-like intelligence” is something of an unknown.
Continue readingThe coming wave
This book describes itself as the work of ‘the ultimate insider’. This seems rather apt as it provides us with a glimpse of what the technocratic chattering class are saying about the current AI moment. Unfortunately it doesn’t provide us with insight into how this current moment will play out as the view from inside appears to be is quite poor, lacking the perspective need to really grapple with this question.
Continue readingThe trust deficit between workers and organizations isn’t personal. It’s systemic.
We have a new essay published by Deloitte Insights, The trust deficit between workers and organizations isn’t personal. It’s systemic. Trust is widely acknowledged as a key contributor to workplace performance. What is rarely acknowledged, however, is that there are both interpersonal and organisational aspects to trust. While the interpersonal trust between a manager and their subordinates is important, what is likely more important is how workers trust managers as representatives of the firm’s bureaucracy.
Continue readingForever ten years away
Why do some the technologies always seem to be ten years away? We’re not talking about the science fiction dreaming of faster than light travel or general AI and the singularity. Those ten years apply to technologies that forever seem to be just out of reach, just beyond our current technical capabilities, like nuclear fusion (as opposed to fission) or quantum computing. Researchers make incremental progress and we’re told that (once the technology works) its going to change everything, but despite this incremental progress estimates of when the technology will be commercialised and so available to the public always seem to be in the ballpark of ‘ten years’.
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