This is part of why I love and am mourning the slow decline of master craftspeople. The collaborations I undertake are in person, in the material world. Matthew Crawford's piece this weekend - a sort of love letter to the mechanics in his life - is a great illustration of how enriching this mode of human cooperative excellence can be. The shift into more and more abstract, mental, online work has eroded what can be a very wholesome universe of relational and productive activity.
The last couple of years I’ve been using Confer AI (by the people who make Signal) for any ideas that I really don’t want entering training data somehow. & my project on that platform is called Wallfacer.
This is another way in which it feels like AI amplifies the problems of the internet, rather than bringing something totally new. I already felt like I was working hurriedly in the shadows, because of the possibility that some of the billions of people on the internet were doing the same thing as me.
I sometimes make web apps with calculators for games, and I was always worried someone else would get the scoop and be the first one to make some specific calculator before I finished mine. But AI made it worse - last year I was working on a calculator for a brand new game system, and someone else vibe coded the same thing just a few days after release. It's not analogous to a millenium problem because the math was simple and there was no need to copy my work, but there is still an extreme amount of stress these days with any work that has a first-mover advantage.
I think we can extend the Wallfacer theme to damn near everything online until we get major reforms; the safest way to interact with social media and their algorithms is to not be on them at all. What felt like paranoia to those born pre-9/11 has largely become reality (surveillance, AI, algorithms, etc). Like the books, the only thing we can ever be sure of is our own thoughts and keeping those relatively intact will be a huge advantage moving forward while simultaneously not retreating into a black domain either.
"Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem trilogy, which is the best sci-fi released in China, or frankly anywhere else, in the past two decades" Glad you feel that way, because I loved it, but I think it's the only sci-fi written in the past two decades I've read. (Well, Seveneves I guess.) Just as I was glad to learn that you were a Dan Simmons fan, because I'd come across him by accidenct, because he wrote a sci-fi fantasy based on the Iliad, and I love Homer. Have you written, or considered writing, an article on good recent-ish sci-fi?
Cue "math is math" meme. Ultimately, it's good to be scooped for scientific progress, it gives you a next platform and a new outlook. (Yes, even when "My name in Dnepropetrovsk is cursed".)
This is part of why I love and am mourning the slow decline of master craftspeople. The collaborations I undertake are in person, in the material world. Matthew Crawford's piece this weekend - a sort of love letter to the mechanics in his life - is a great illustration of how enriching this mode of human cooperative excellence can be. The shift into more and more abstract, mental, online work has eroded what can be a very wholesome universe of relational and productive activity.
The last couple of years I’ve been using Confer AI (by the people who make Signal) for any ideas that I really don’t want entering training data somehow. & my project on that platform is called Wallfacer.
prescient!
This is another way in which it feels like AI amplifies the problems of the internet, rather than bringing something totally new. I already felt like I was working hurriedly in the shadows, because of the possibility that some of the billions of people on the internet were doing the same thing as me.
I sometimes make web apps with calculators for games, and I was always worried someone else would get the scoop and be the first one to make some specific calculator before I finished mine. But AI made it worse - last year I was working on a calculator for a brand new game system, and someone else vibe coded the same thing just a few days after release. It's not analogous to a millenium problem because the math was simple and there was no need to copy my work, but there is still an extreme amount of stress these days with any work that has a first-mover advantage.
I think we can extend the Wallfacer theme to damn near everything online until we get major reforms; the safest way to interact with social media and their algorithms is to not be on them at all. What felt like paranoia to those born pre-9/11 has largely become reality (surveillance, AI, algorithms, etc). Like the books, the only thing we can ever be sure of is our own thoughts and keeping those relatively intact will be a huge advantage moving forward while simultaneously not retreating into a black domain either.
OT.
"Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem trilogy, which is the best sci-fi released in China, or frankly anywhere else, in the past two decades" Glad you feel that way, because I loved it, but I think it's the only sci-fi written in the past two decades I've read. (Well, Seveneves I guess.) Just as I was glad to learn that you were a Dan Simmons fan, because I'd come across him by accidenct, because he wrote a sci-fi fantasy based on the Iliad, and I love Homer. Have you written, or considered writing, an article on good recent-ish sci-fi?
Cue "math is math" meme. Ultimately, it's good to be scooped for scientific progress, it gives you a next platform and a new outlook. (Yes, even when "My name in Dnepropetrovsk is cursed".)
The death knell for the use of AI in the pharmaceutical industry. I wonder how this plays out with Deepfold AI?