Lem & Douglas Adams got AI right Presciently Golem XIV (from 1981) has an illustration of the jagged frontier as explained by an AI, Golem (GENERAL OPERATOR, LONG-RANGE, ETHICALLY STABILIZED, MULTIMODELING), discussing itself and a smarter AI (Honest Annie) compared to people
@emollick
-
Recurring Themes in AI-Written Fiction
By
–
When they write fiction, AIs are obsessed by things that take or give memories, contracts with sentient inanimate objects, sets of secretive rules that govern conduct & which no one can acknowledge out loud… All very on-the-nose. I suspect a lot is hyperstition at this point.
-
Google’s Omni multimodal model and blending potential
By
–
Google has the only true Omni model, but the elements aren't hooked up. It appears it can take in & output audio, images. video, songs, text, code, etc. But right now each type of output is separate. When you can access the model directly, blending modes, a lot becomes possible.
-
Organizations overspending on AI token budgets highlights cost-management gap
By
–
I have heard from quite a few large organizations that blew through their entire token budget in the first couple months of the year. There aren't even good processes for thinking through how token costs will change over time.
-
Companies wrestling with token usage and model choices
By
–
Most companies only have very crude understanding of token usage right now, so they veer from focusing on adoption (“everyone should use as many tokens as possible”) to cost control (“can we just use local models?”) depending on the moment and manager. This is all very new.
-
Debate over Token Allocation as AI Becomes Essential for Coding
By
–
The fact that tokens went from something no one even put in a budget line a year ago to an absolute requirement for coding now is the cause of handwringing, not that AI is not turning out to be useful No one knows who should get tokens, how much they should get & how to control
-
What to Keep Human and What to Hand Over to AI
By
–
I wrote a new post on what we need to keep human and what to hand over to AI, with forays into experiments in education, consulting, and the the latest controversy over literary prizes.
-
User frustration with Claude interface changes
By
–
An annoyance with Claude right now is that changes to the interface are badly documented, resulting in frustrating dead ends. For example, learning mode is migrating to a skill. Where is that skill? The linked article does not mention it (and the skill doesn't seem available!)
-
Concerns about infinite context windows and model memory
By
–
Infinite context windows seem to present a very large problem to using AI. Today's models already leak too much old information into current responses, a distraction that is part of why they are cognitively exhausting to use I don't want to work with Borges's Funes the Memorious
-
Why small conversational models differ from paid models
By
–
Great question! A couple reasons:
1) they are not the same as paid models, they are small & built for fast conversation rather than real work
2) they are designed to be cheap to run, so they use minimal thinking and tool calls. Tool calls and thinking are big drivers of accuracy