Code red

Alva Skog

A wicked problem looms for Google, go the way of building an equivalent ChatGBT to get the user where she wants to go with great precision thanks to advanced AI or stick with the current model of search where site rankings/keywords act as prime driver to display a list of sites "kinda" relevant to a specific search typed in by the user while at the same time, leveraging the user's demographic to send tailored ads to induce said user to buy stuff as advertisers pay Google money for any product she may buy in conducting the search in question. The Chatbot approach is akin to using streaming services to watch film without the need to endure ads of no interest in exchange for paying a monthly fee while avoiding crowds at the multiplex and not paying for grossly overpriced popcorn slathered in copious amounts of butter in viewing the film of your choice shining brightly on a high res screen located in the living room.

The re-engagement of Google’s founders, at the invitation of the company’s current chief executive, Sundar Pichai, emphasized the urgency felt among many Google executives about artificial intelligence and that chatbot, ChatGPT.

The bot, which was released by the small San Francisco company OpenAI two months ago, amazed users by simply explaining complex concepts and generating ideas from scratch. More important to Google, it looked as if it could offer a new way to search for information on the internet.

The new A.I. technology has shaken Google out of its routine. Mr. Pichai declared a “code red,” upending existing plans and jump-starting A.I. development. Google now intends to unveil more than 20 new products and demonstrate a version of its search engine with chatbot features this year, according to a slide presentation reviewed by The New York Times and two people with knowledge of the plans who were not authorized to discuss them.

“This is a moment of significant vulnerability for Google,” said D. Sivakumar, a former Google research director who helped found a start-up called Tonita, which makes search technology for e-commerce companies. “ChatGPT has put a stake in the ground, saying, ‘Here’s what a compelling new search experience could look like.’” Mr. Sivakumar added that Google had overcome previous challenges and could deploy its arsenal of A.I. to stay competitive.

Christian Gralingen

Endgame ...

Over the past three decades, a handful of products like Netscape’s web browser, Google’s search engine and Apple’s iPhone have truly upended the tech industry and made what came before them look like lumbering dinosaurs.

Three weeks ago, an experimental chat bot called ChatGPT made its case to be the industry’s next big disrupter. It can serve up information in clear, simple sentences, rather than just a list of internet links. It can explain concepts in ways people can easily understand. It can even generate ideas from scratch, including business strategies, Christmas gift suggestions, blog topics and vacation plans.

Although ChatGPT still has plenty of room for improvement, its release led Google’s management to declare a “code red.” For Google, this was akin to pulling the fire alarm. Some fear the company may be approaching a moment that the biggest Silicon Valley outfits dread — the arrival of an enormous technological change that could upend the business.

Out of bounds ...

Two Beatle songs resonate, A Day in the Life/Peppers and Tomorrow Never Knows'Reolver as both broke out of the bounds of rock forever. Listen to each to learn why this is true.

Rainbow Golden Ratio ...

Rainbow Golden Ratio - Alice Smith

I think the Golden Mean relates to my close friend and extraordinary artist Alice Smith when looking at her Rainbow Golden Ratio piece depicting the GM logarithmic spiral in an ever-expanding and moving cascade of leaves showing how existence works in a deep way as the only constant, in reality, is change, something the Taosts have talked about with subtle eloquence for over 5000 years. 

A Fibonacci spiral (top), which approximates the golden spiral, using Fibonacci sequence square sizes up to 21. A golden spiral is also generated (bottom) from stacking squares whose lengths of sides are numbers belonging to the sequence of Lucas numbers, here up to 76.

1618033, the golden mean, is everywhere as nature seems to like how this ratio works in the real world. :)

A seashell is one of the most well-known examples of the golden ratio spiral in nature.
(Photo: Tramont_ana/Shutterstock)

Despite their tumultuous nature, ocean waves are another example of the golden ratio manifesting in nature. (Photo: irabel8/Shutterstock)

And my favorite ... :)

A chameleon tail is famous for its tight spiraling shape. (Photo: Ryan M. Bolton/Shutterstock)

And of course, the sunflower. :)

The golden ratio of growth seen in a sunflower head. (Photo: Portogas D Ace/Shutterstock)

Thanks Alice for cluing me in, yet again, about the wonders of nature. :)

There "aint" enough

 

The shore of Lake Powell in Page, Ariz. Along with Lake Mead, it provides water and electricity for Arizona, Nevada and Southern California.Credit...Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

There "ain't" enough, in fact, there never was but man built mega cities and suburbs galore in the desert anyway, something Gaia is now saying, enough is enough and so it is. This process of over-developing in areas better left alone has been violated since the beginning of time but now, global warming, a disaster of our own making, is putting an end to this insanity without question.

“Think of the Colorado River Basin as a slow-motion disaster,” said Kevin Moran, who directs state and federal water policy advocacy at the Environmental Defense Fund. “We’re really at a moment of reckoning.”

Yes we are. Remember, There Sin't No Such thing As AFree Lunch rules.

TANSTAAFL: a plan for a new economic world order.
 (Pierre Dos Utt, 1949)

A spillway for the Glen Canyon Dam near Page, Ariz., that was last full of water in the early 1980s.Credit...Caitlin Ochs/Reuters

Do not go gentle into that good night ...

Ice Picture Frame

To date, yours truly has resisted the Siren call of ChatGPT, the AI able to generate quality writing with minimal effort. This ease of use also applies to MidJourney and DALLE-2 as all one needs to generate 3D photorealistic images is to type in the desired set of words, the same process one uses to generate code vis a vis the AI known as GPT3.  Regarding music, Amper seems to be a viable weapon of choice, which sounds pretty damn cool I must admit. 

For you, my loyal readers, using AI in the realm of writing, however, will not be applied as it took years to learn this difficult craft, thanks, in large part, to The Elements of Style in helping me produce credible work, something ChatGBT will compromise if said tech is enabled to do the heaving lifting.

First expanded edition (1959)

Do not go gentle into that good night

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

First expanded edition (1959)

Dylan Thomas - 1914-1953

Days of Future Past/revXX

Days of Future Past/rev XX

This pix of the rusting Bethlehem steel plant shows a concrete past unable to be denied until said material grinds into dust, something along the lines of Osymandius ...

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away." 

Percy Bysshe Shelly 

When factored into the equation of AI apps like ChatGBT, the notion of a past penned by man becomes questionable as the allure of using tech as powerful as this equates to a Faustian bargain for the ages. 

 

Frontispiece to a 1620 printing of Doctor Faustus showing Faustus conjuring Mephistophilis.
The spelling "Histoy" is agreed to be a typographical error.[1]

It has been clear for several years that artificial intelligence (AI) is gaining the ability to generate fluent language, churning out sentences that are increasingly hard to distinguish from text written by people. Last year, Nature reported that some scientists were already using chatbots as research assistants — to help organize their thinking, generate feedback on their work, assist with writing code and summarize research literature (Nature 611, 192–193; 2022).

But the release of the AI chatbot ChatGPT in November has brought the capabilities of such tools, known as large language models (LLMs), to a mass audience. Its developers, OpenAI in San Francisco, California, have made the chatbot free to use and easily accessible for people who don’t have technical expertise. Millions are using it, and the result has been an explosion of fun and sometimes frightening writing experiments that have turbocharged the growing excitement and consternation about these tools.

Faust lives ...

The big worry in the research community is that students and scientists could deceitfully pass off LLM-written text as their own, or use LLMs in a simplistic fashion (such as to conduct an incomplete literature review) and produce work that is unreliable. Several preprints and published articles have already credited ChatGPT with formal authorship.

It's all about the money/rev L

The artificial intelligence research laboratory, OpenAI, has reportedly begun rolling out a premium version of its popular AI chatbot, "ChatGPT Professional."

The premium edition will offer additional features with less unpredictable availability, better response times, and priority access for a $42 monthly membership, according to a LinkedIn post on Saturday by Linas Beliūnas, a financial technology specialist. 

The end of history as we know it? One never knows do one? - Fat Waller