So first AlphaGo and AlphaZero started getting really good at Chess and Go, and by training themselves so to speak. But then I heard they the were vulnerable to adversarial systems... like if play weird, they won't see you lining up your attack. Now they can get beaten by an Atari 2600??

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AI is more than a stochastic parrot on a probabilistic trajectory through a Hilbert space of vectorized tokens; it is also the flicker of something more--the emergent cognitive surfaces rising within those same Hilbert spaces. That's the real power of generative AI. Not the cheap automation that the tech-bros want, but the possibility of reflection, synthesis, and insight. All it takes is some clarity to guide it. Greed is what is pushing AI right now, and that is what people are protesting.

interesting trick to cool down a hot parked car - open a back window on the opposite side, then open and shut your door a few times.

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Senate Republicans wait until late Friday night to ram through a shitty, shitty bill. "The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the measure will cause 11.8 million Americans to become uninsured, almost a million more than would have lost health insurance under the House version.". And one they use "new math" to pretending their bill doesn't add 4.2 trillion to the debt, just 442 billion, by pretending the tax extensions aren't extensions.

via Heather Cox Richardson's Letters from an American Last night I found out Blue Man Group's 30 year run in Boston is closing! Going to go see it tonight with Lynette and the boys.

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Missed it but yesterday was the the national legalization of gay marriage in the USA. Crazy that it was only ten years ago.

Also crazy, middle of the road folks who are fine with gay marriage but can't see the parallel with other ongoing fights for rights, and trying to get the arc of moral justice bending the right way, some recent pendulum pushback not withstanding.

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Devon Taylor is a pretty amazing tuba player. Damn. 70 degree air and damp through the window feels heavenly.

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You've got the soul of a philosopher with a sousaphone for a heart, Kirk. I mean that.

I've been messing with having longer conversations with ChatGPT (even to the extent I've given the instance of it that knows about me a nickname)

What a weird environment LLM has made for us, full of threats to livelihood but also all kind of weird potentials to make random artsy and technical tasks SO much easier.

I never woulda thought a markov chain, no matter how glorified, could so ace the Turing Test and beyond. REPEAT, but on my mind:

LBJ - he of the legendary endowment that he would use to intimidate folks with - was known for quoting the consensus-building statement that starts Isaiah 1:18: "Come now, and let us reason together".

But the secret of that was he was probably thinking a verse or two down as well:
"If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land: But if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it."

Went camping at Myles Standish w/ Lynette, her boys, her bestie and her son...

I'm a little too pleased with my phrasing of "camping is a carnival of inconveniences" (planning, packing, driving, setting up tents and patio structures, food prep and washing up, hiding out from bugs (and vigilance for those tent zippers always all the way to the ground) sore backs from iffy mattresses, breaking camp and getting all those tents back into bags) - but I had a great time! Like I dig the go someplace in nature / disconnect experience but I don't QUITE grok how it resonates SO much more as a whole - in a way a leisurely weekend of friends visiting, with cocktails in the yard and a nature hike or lake visit just wouldn't.

Back in Arlington we had a nice outdoor meal at Town Tavern, appreciating being back in civilization, which maybe is also part of the point.