Archive: January 10, 2023

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ancient history

Tuesday,  01/10/23  03:45 PM

When I started blogging again last December I had a backlog of "interesting stuff" to relay.  Some of it was interesting at the time, but the interestingness was timeframe specific.  Other things are interesting exactly because they provide a point-in-time snapshot.  And some things are just interesting! June 2020: Facebook and PayPal invest in Southeast Asian ride-hailing giant Gojek.  Biggest country you never think about: Indonesia.  Fourth biggest by population.  An island nation where everyone has a cellphone and most everyone has Internet access.  Gojek are way more than a ride-hailing service, they're on the path to be an "everything app" like WeChat.  This makes sense.  July 2020: Meet BukuWarung, the bookkeeping app built for Indonesia’s 60 million "micro-merchants".  BukuWarung, meet Gojek.  Imagine signing up 600,000 merchants in one year!  July 2020: Visual Capitalist: The global inequality gap.  As always from them, great data, and great to see visually.   BTW Indonesia's 280M people are near the top of the third world in most categories.  Ahead of China (#1) and India (#2) in many of them. One of those point-in-time things, Sept 2020: VDH: The news as we once knew it is dead.  "Why? ... Picture yourself in your 50s in a job where you've spent 30 years working your way to the top, to the cockpit of power … only to discover that you're presiding over a dying industry. The Internet and alternative media are stealing your readers, your advertisers and your top young talent."  Nov 2020: via Digg: A Visualization Of The Largest Cities By Area Around The World.  It's amazing how densely we live!  Continuing the Indonesia theme: Jakarta packs 10M people into [only] 256 sq miles. Dec 2020: Capturing the great conjunction.  As Jupiter and Saturn crossed paths closely, the ISS crosses between them.  Wow.  Talk about topical, Dec 2020: Matt Ridley: Why mRNA vaccines could revolutionise medicine.  Note this article was written before all the Covid vaccines became available in Spring 2021.  I remember reading it thinking, hmmm...  Dec 2020: jwz: [the game of] Life at 50.  A pretty interesting look back at a pretty interesting "game".  I love the Marvin Gardner remembrance, remember Scientific American's Mathematical Games column?  timeless, Jan 2021: Matt Ridley: the folly of renewable energy.  "If you judge by the images used to illustrate reports about energy, the world now runs mainly on wind and solar power. It comes as a shock to look up the numbers. In 2019 wind and solar between them supplied just 1.5 percent of the world’s energy consumption. Hydro supplied 2.6 percent, nuclear 1.7 percent, and all the rest — 94 percent — came from burning things: coal, oil, gas, wood, and biofuels."  Jan 2021: Stephen Wolfram: from Assembly Language to a Nobel Prize.  On the calculations which come from Feynman diagrams...  Feb 2021: Joshua Newman: how to be lucky.  "Most of us think that luck just happens (or doesn't) but everyone can learn to look for the unexpected and find serendipity."  I so believe this.  Feb 2021: Fry's Electronics closes permanently nationwide.  A sad moment, but inevitable and long-expected.  I spent many a pleasant hour browsing their shelves...  June 2021: Bill Gurley: Customers Love Free Stuff … But That’s Not Your Problem.  I love Bill's posts, his vision is truly above the crowd.  This was posted at a time of "hot" IPOs, not now, but these times will be back.  ---- so yay, we made it halfway from 2020 to today --- And to wrap up:  July 2021: The Indonesian government announced that they would deliver free telemedicine services for COVID-19 patients with mild symptoms across the country.  Via Bercie Mesko, who comments: "It's only possible for them as they have startups that did the hard work."

 

ChatGPT re ChatGPT

Tuesday,  01/10/23  05:00 PM

So I linked to an article in Salon criticizing ChatGPT for being "artificial" intelligence.  (Actually, they didn't put it that cleverly.)  And I noted, "I think we should ask ChatGPT to write an article, in the style of Salon, about how AI is not really intelligent." So: Write an article, in the style of Salon magazine, about how ChatGPT isn't truly intelligent Chatbots have come a long way in recent years, with advancements in machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) allowing for increasingly human-like interactions. One of the most popular chatbot models is GPT-3, developed by OpenAI. While GPT-3 can certainly hold its own in conversations and even generate creative writing, it is important to remember that it is not truly intelligent. It is important to note that true intelligence is a complex concept and is not fully understood. However, a key component of intelligence is the ability to understand and process new information, and make decisions based on that information. GPT-3, like other chatbots, relies heavily on a large dataset of pre-existing text to respond to prompts. It has been trained on a wide variety of texts, including books, articles, and conversations. This allows it to understand the nuances of language and respond in a way that seems human-like. However, GPT-3 lacks the ability to truly understand the world in the way that humans do. It does not have knowledge of the world outside of the text it has been trained on. It does not have consciousness, the ability to perceive, think, and feel like a human. It does not have the ability to make decisions based on experience, or to process new information in the way that humans do. One of the key limitations of GPT-3 and other chatbots is that they do not understand context. They can respond to a prompt with a coherent and seemingly relevant answer, but they do not understand the meaning behind the prompt or the context in which it was asked. For example, if you ask a chatbot, "What is the capital of France?" it will likely respond with "Paris." But if you ask, "I'm thinking of a city in Europe that is the capital of France," the bot may not be able to understand the context of the question and give a coherent answer. Another limitation is that GPT-3 does not have the ability to reason, which is crucial for understanding the world. It does not have the ability to connect new information with existing knowledge, or to make deductions based on that information. This limits its ability to solve problems and understand complex concepts. In conclusion, GPT-3 is a powerful tool for natural language processing and can hold its own in conversations and creative writing. However, it is important to remember that it is not truly intelligent. While it can simulate human-like responses, it lacks the ability to truly understand the world and make decisions based on that understanding. As we continue to make advancements in AI, it is important to keep this in mind and recognize the limitations of current technology. I don't know if ChatGPT truly captured Salon's style - the clickbait gotcha is missing - but that's not bad.  Arguably better than what they wrote...

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