This list is absolutely fantastic and I’m so looking forward to your book. Is The Intelligence Illlusion available in any format other than kindle? Preferable paperback.
My account automatically renewed in December. Your political views and mine do not align. You are rather outspoken and you are much more liberal than my views. (Which is fine since it is your web-site.). I would like a credit for the months left in my subscription. Thank you!
Sally: I'm sorry my outspokenness means you don't feel comfortable being part of the fun, and I'm sorry to see you go. I've refunded the full subscription. Not sure how long that takes to make it through the payment system, but if it doesn't appear in a reasonable amount of time, please let me know.
Hey John, love your work and eager to read the book. Have you looked at Claude while writing the book? it's way of tuning slightly differs from the other mainstream chatbot, not to say that it's good at anything better, but it gives more of a good writer and companion than others. Love to know your thoughts.
I have used Claude quite a bit along the way, though I just cancelled my access because I realized it wasn't all that useful to how I work. It does sound more personal and human, but I still don't find it useful for writing because writing is what I do. I don't want or need anything to do that for me. If I use a LLM, I want it to do something where the architecture of the tool is useful (like combing through a big data set for possible points of entry), rather than the thing that is actually how I differentiate myself from others, my writing.
I'm always aware of Bjarnason's "intelligence illusion" when I'm working with an LLM, which I think prevents me (for good reasons) from imbuing the outputs with any sense of personality or humanity. As you note, the appearance of more personality in Claude is a matter of how the data is weighted, not because it is a more interesting intelligence.
I understand why some people are fascinated by the ability of this tech to create these illusions, but ultimately, it's not the interesting to me. I know what the real thing is like and after experimenting with this other thing see that it's not for me.
In the book I use an analogy between Tang (powdered orange drink) and orange juice. When I was a kid, Tang was a big fad (the drink of astronauts!) that my brother and I begged for, but once we actually tasted it, while it was fine, it wasn't as good as orange juice (for all kinds of reasons). I see LLMs as Tang. It's fine and good that Tang exists, and in some cases it's the superior choice (like when you're in a space capsule and can't keep fresh orange juice), but we need to make sure that everyone knows there is a difference between Tang and orange juice.
One of my worries about where we're headed is that everyone is hyped up on Tang and forgetting about making sure students also have some orange juice.
This list is absolutely fantastic and I’m so looking forward to your book. Is The Intelligence Illlusion available in any format other than kindle? Preferable paperback.
Not sure about The Intelligence Illusion. I think he's self published it. You can go to his website and poke around and see what might be possible.
Hi John
My account automatically renewed in December. Your political views and mine do not align. You are rather outspoken and you are much more liberal than my views. (Which is fine since it is your web-site.). I would like a credit for the months left in my subscription. Thank you!
Sallyhessling@aol.com
Sally: I'm sorry my outspokenness means you don't feel comfortable being part of the fun, and I'm sorry to see you go. I've refunded the full subscription. Not sure how long that takes to make it through the payment system, but if it doesn't appear in a reasonable amount of time, please let me know.
Hey John, love your work and eager to read the book. Have you looked at Claude while writing the book? it's way of tuning slightly differs from the other mainstream chatbot, not to say that it's good at anything better, but it gives more of a good writer and companion than others. Love to know your thoughts.
I have used Claude quite a bit along the way, though I just cancelled my access because I realized it wasn't all that useful to how I work. It does sound more personal and human, but I still don't find it useful for writing because writing is what I do. I don't want or need anything to do that for me. If I use a LLM, I want it to do something where the architecture of the tool is useful (like combing through a big data set for possible points of entry), rather than the thing that is actually how I differentiate myself from others, my writing.
I'm always aware of Bjarnason's "intelligence illusion" when I'm working with an LLM, which I think prevents me (for good reasons) from imbuing the outputs with any sense of personality or humanity. As you note, the appearance of more personality in Claude is a matter of how the data is weighted, not because it is a more interesting intelligence.
I understand why some people are fascinated by the ability of this tech to create these illusions, but ultimately, it's not the interesting to me. I know what the real thing is like and after experimenting with this other thing see that it's not for me.
In the book I use an analogy between Tang (powdered orange drink) and orange juice. When I was a kid, Tang was a big fad (the drink of astronauts!) that my brother and I begged for, but once we actually tasted it, while it was fine, it wasn't as good as orange juice (for all kinds of reasons). I see LLMs as Tang. It's fine and good that Tang exists, and in some cases it's the superior choice (like when you're in a space capsule and can't keep fresh orange juice), but we need to make sure that everyone knows there is a difference between Tang and orange juice.
One of my worries about where we're headed is that everyone is hyped up on Tang and forgetting about making sure students also have some orange juice.
You had way more sophisticated tastes as a kid than I did. I definitely preferred Tang.