I had a conversation with chatGPT this morning about its making factual claims while “understanding” that it has no knowledge of the world. You pretty quickly run into what seems like a barrier of rote text that isn’t always consistent with what it said in the first part of the…

This morning I asked chatGPT to suggest revisions to a draft of an opinion piece I’m writing. About half of the ten edits it came up with were at least worth considering. Not bad for a soulless pile of statistics! So, I decided to up the stakes: PROMPT: At the end of this prompt is the text of Lincoln’s 1863 Gettysburg address. Please list the edits you would suggest that would make it more impactful. Include any fixes to poor grammar or spelling. Here is the address:

Topic: The Supreme Court is hearing a case about whether section 230 exempts Google from responsibility for what it algorithmically recommends. A thought from one of my favorite philosophers, Richard Rorty: “…revolutionary achievements in the arts, in the sciences, and the moral and political thought typically occur when somebody realizes…

There’s a new version of Wordle called Semantle — not one that I “predicted” — that wants you to find the target word by looking not for a chain of spellings but a chain of semantics. For example, if you started with the word “child” you might get to the…

By David Weinberger AI Outside In is a column by PAIR’s former writer-in-residence, David Weinberger, who offers his outsider perspective on key ideas in machine learning. His opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Google. Let’s say you’re an Orc in the Lord of the Rings…

This is the year in which the epic battle between theater and TV was settled. Television has won. Not everything, should, or will turn into TV, but we have decisively turned a corner. Good. It’s about time. We have been living in a world that has valued theater over TV…

By David Weinberger AI Outside In is a column by PAIR’s former writer-in-residence, David Weinberger, who offers his outsider perspective on key ideas in machine learning. His opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Google. Making online objects more understandable? I love how many machine learning systems require explicit decisions about…

AI Outside In is a column by PAIR’s writer-in-residence, David Weinberger, who offers his outsider perspective on key ideas in machine learning. His opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Google. Machines can learn, but what do they know? Machine learning systems may be portrayed in much of the media as our new overlords…

By David Weinberger AI Outside In is a column by PAIR’s writer-in-residence, David Weinberger, who offers his outsider perspective on key ideas in machine learning. His opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Google. Suppose you want a machine learning system to suggest paint names based…