The Deleted Scenes - New and Old #98
ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web, The New Yorker, Ted Chiang, February 9, 2023 This is a very good piece, and it brings all this worry over AI back down to earth. You should really read the whole thing, but Chiang compares ChatGPT to a “lossy” compression of the internet, as opposed to a “lossless” one, which is basically what search engines are. And then he analyzes it according to this analogy. This is the core of that point:
It’s occurred to me that I actually do what this “AI” does. My wife and I watch a lot of YouTube videos, and I’ll often imitate one of the people we watch. There’s one channel called The Fish Locker, by a British fishing and coastal foraging enthusiast. He always opens his episodes with “Hello, welcome back to The Fish Locker,” and then specifies where he is: “out on the boat,” “out on the shore,” “out on the shore at night.” In a few episodes, he says he doesn’t like oysters. In a number of episodes, he’ll rattle off the names of a bunch of sea creatures: “Clams, mussels, cockles, winkles, limpets.” In a couple of episodes, he points out predatory dog whelks, which bore holes into other creatures’ shells to eat them. In one episode, he threw back a big crab because it was missing a claw, and he remarked that you’d barely get one crab cake out of him. He frequently explains what implements and tools he’s using or carrying. He refers to shellfish as “massive” or “stunning.” So here’s me if you say “Write a Fish Locker Episode”: “Hello, welcome back to The Fish Locker, out on the shore at night. I’ve got my foraging hook and my foraging bucket, and we’re going to forage for some shellfish. Here’s an oyster, but unfortunately I don’t like the taste of them. Over here we have an absolutely stunning king scallop, but unfortunately there’s a predatory dog whelk on him. And just take a look at these massive slipper limpets just next to some mussels and cockles. Under this rock, I can just see an absolutely amazing edible crab, well over minimum landing size. But he’s only got one claw, so there’s hardly any meat on him.” Etc., etc. Do dog whelks attack king scallops? I don’t know; I’m just recombining bits of input into a plausible output. I’m an AI. But I’m not, and neither, I don’t think, is “AI.” The Last Flight of the Vulcan, Vulcan To the Sky Trust, October 29, 2021
Someone pointed me to this article when I was writing about manufacturing and the loss of technical knowledge recently. This is in that genre, and it’s a bittersweet and really interesting piece. Check it out.
Also this:
Now, nobody at the time really thought any of these places were “historic.” Most businesses have simply been forgotten. But it is alarming how little of the history of the American roadside has been preserved, remembered—or even acknowledged as history. The Green Book, obviously, should not have had to exist. But it did, and it’s amazing to think that these books, and others with less unfortunate origins, are now literally the only evidence that hundreds of once-popular establishments ever existed. That feeling—knowing a place existed but not having anything to prove it—is not a nice one. To the natural churn of the commercial roadside, we should try harder to add some of the stability and permanence of memory. Bachelor Frog Cooking: Basic Tomato Sauce (Marinara), Luca Gattoni-Celli, November 26, 2020 Gattoni-Celli is a Northern Virginia housing advocate, but he’s more than that, as this great crash course in homemade tomato sauce shows. If you’ve never made tomato sauce from scratch (i.e. with raw canned tomatoes and seasoning, rather than jarred or bottled sauces), this is pretty much on point. And if you like tomato sauce, you should definitely try it. The only disagreement I have is the onions. Gattoni-Celli says the garlic is optional, but to put one or two medium onions in the sauce. In my Italian-American home growing up, it was practically a crime, an unacceptable Americanization, to add onions. I’m not sure if it actually is, or who started that. But garlic is standard, and onions, if you must, are optional. (And if you like a little kick, throw in some crushed red chili flakes, Calabrian if possible.) But really, either way, try it! Related Reading: Thank you for reading! Please consider upgrading to a paid subscription to help support this newsletter. You’ll get a weekly subscribers-only post, plus full access to the archive: over 500 posts and growing. And you’ll help ensure more material like this! You're currently a free subscriber to The Deleted Scenes. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription. |
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