My first reaction to seeing today’s AI? This machine sounds like it understands.
My exact words were probably more like, “No f-ing way!”
It sounded like it reflects and thinks.
It sounded like it has intentions, makes decisions, experiences things.
And some part of me was whispering, “none of those can be remotely true.”
How skeptical are you of AI? It is probably a good attitude. I mean you’ve seen a bunch of technologies arrive in your life promising to “completely change things” and then they haven’t. In some cases, they even went away. AOL, anyone? That Segway that your neighbor has gathering dust in the corner of their garage? Have you been to the Metaverse recently? That’s my favorite…zero impact.
Well, I’m pretty skeptical about most things. Part of it is a childhood shaped by broken promises. I doubt things constantly. Yes, it is tiring.
I started at a very early age working with computers — I had tested out of middle school math(and science) so in seventh grade they stuck me in a room with a dial up modem, and a tractor feed printer terminal, and I learned to write software…or just sort of play with the computer. Back then, in the 1970’s, this was rare to say the least. Something got wired in me, a technological bullshit detector.
Can I explain why I felt the machine was faking it? No.
But I knew it was a computer, and that meant there was a trick somewhere within this; the magic was real, but it was only clever magic.
Like you probably did when you first tried it, I asked some Google style questions… And of course got back very nice responses. But it didn’t feel that different. So, I typed in the example adventure phrases, the vacation and mother-inlaw to see what it would say…
[ME] <”adventure”> examples
[ME] Please briefly explain the difference between those phrases and their nuance.
[AI] It’s going to be an adventure (Europe context): anticipatory, slightly proud. You’re naming the lack of plan as a feature, not a bug. Adventure leans toward its exciting-experience meaning — open road, improvisation, the trip we’ll be telling stories about. There’s a smile behind the sentence.
It’s going to be an adventure (mother-in-law context): rueful, slightly braced. You’re naming the uncertainty because you can’t name what you actually feel about it. Adventure leans toward its risky-undertaking meaning, but with the daring drained out — just the I don’t know how this is going to go and I can’t say more honestly than that. There’s a sigh behind the sentence, or a small dark laugh.
When I first saw this I thought, “Wow, an encyclopedic level of knowledge.” I’m not sure if people still use that phrase, because we don’t use encyclopedias anymore, but back when we did, it meant “more knowledge than you or I could read and understand.”
But it still felt a bit like a fancy Google Search. No. Big. Deal.
Then I decided to really push it, to give it some questions or even just statements that would fail completely in Google.
The machine is trying to have a conversation with me! But it feels like a template, right?
Read the rest of Chapter One (and Chapter Zero) on Substack
