Kayaking the Po river in Turin
Philosophers trick on Zoom
Turin skyline with the Mole
The Mole (mo-lay in Italian) is an iconic building in Turin, mostly because the rest of the city has a height limit that makes the Mole stick out even more than it would otherwise. It is the tallest unreinforced building in the world — meaning it has no skeleton of metal girders, as most tall modern buildings do. It was originally built as a synagogue, and the spire is quite spectacular close up. It is now the museum of the motion picture, which commemorates the fact that the Lumiere brothers developed the first moving pictures in Turin in the 1800s, despite being French by birth (Turin has historically had a very French flavour).
20th anniversary International Journalism Festival in Perugia
A 1,700-year-old pagan temple
The temple of Saint Michael the Archangel sits on a hill about 20 minutes outside the gates of the old city of Perugia in Italy, and was built sometime in the 5th century. It was originally a pagan temple, and at some point became a Christian church. It is open to the public and has a unique wooden circular dome, and inside there are alcoves distributed around the circular walls for christenings, etc.
A stunning Perugia conference venue
This is one of the venues at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, which I’ve been to a number of times . It’s the former San Francesco al Prato church or the Church of Saint Francis in the Meadow, and it was derelict and half destroyed for decades — due to landslides, earthquakes, floods and general neglect — before being renovated and turned into a conference venue. The original building dates back to the 1200s sometime, but in the 1800s they tried to renovate it and wound up almost destroying it. It was reconstructed in its current state in the 2000s.
Anthropic’s new Mythos model: Dangerous or over-hyped?
I find it fascinating whenever Anthropic in particular comes out with either a new AI model or a note about what it has learned about an existing model, because the responses almost always fall into one of two camps: the first is the “Oh my god, we’re all going to die” camp, or some variation on that theme — in other words, expressions of amazement at how advanced AI has become, how it is basically conscious, etc. and how it will inevitably lead to the destruction of humanity as we know it. And the second is the “What a load of BS, this is ridiculous, AI is just a glorified typewriter with text prediction built in, Anthropic is drinking its own bathwater” camp, or variations on the same. The latter group will usually argue that all of the blather from Anthropic about how dangerous or interesting or intelligent its new model is amounts to a glorified marketing campaign.
This line of thinking emerged early on in the rise of modern AI: the idea being that companies like Anthropic will want to make their models sound smart and/or dangerous because that will encourage companies to buy it and also convince governments to put them in charge of regulating it. It’s a little like the Boy Who Cried Wolf fable, except the boy in this case is also trying to sell shares in Wolf Inc. to venture capitalists, because he spent $300 billion building the animatronic wolf, and he’s also hoping to sell the townsfolk on letting him handle the wolf problem on account of he’s such a wolf expert. Of course, the one thing that almost all references to this story forget to include (except Ben Thompson at Stratechery) is that the wolf actually showed — I’m sure the knowledge that they were right about the boy fibbing was very comforting as all of their sheep were eaten 🙂
The most recent argument of this kind came from David Sacks, a prominent Silicon Valley venture capitalist and the “AI Czar” at the White House, after Anthropic exec Jack Clark — a former journalist with Bloomberg — wrote a Substack post called “Technological Optimism and Appropriate Fear,” in which he mused about the intellectual qualities of his company’s AI. Here’s how Clark phrased it in his post (which I discussed here):
We are growing extremely powerful systems that we do not fully understand. Each time we grow a larger system, we run tests on it. The tests show the system is much more capable at things which are economically useful. And the bigger and more complicated you make these systems, the more they seem to display awareness that they are things. It is as if you are making hammers in a hammer factory and one day the hammer that comes off the line says, “I am a hammer, how interesting!” This is very unusual!
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Continue reading “Anthropic’s new Mythos model: Dangerous or over-hyped?”Looking west in Perugia
When a bra maker got the job of making the first NASA spacesuit
In 1966, when seamstresses at the International Latex Corporation arrived at its new Apollo Suit shopfloor in Frederica, Delaware, they were essentially “taught to sew again from scratch.” And for good reason: Compared to the company’s bras and girdles, the craftsmanship needed to fashion a spacesuit was, in every sense, out of this world. The journey to this point had been improbable for a company whose grand name had initially belonged to a single founder and salesman, Abram Spanel, selling mail-order girdles through magazine ads. It was only thanks to one of Spanel’s first employees — his own TV repairman, MIT dropout Leonard (Lenny) Shepard — that ILC maintained a small “industrial” division researching government contracts. Shepard was optimistic that the firm’s expertise in rubber, nylon, and strapping could provide an answer to work in space. (via MIT Press)
Michael J. Fox and three other co-workers on a 1970’s TV show all got Parkinson’s
Canadian-born actor Michael J. Fox, while working on a CBC sitcom as a teenager, contracted a virus that some researchers say may have caused him to later develop Parkinson’s disease. Fox worked on show Leo and Me in Vancouver in 1977. Researchers studying the degenerative disease theorize that exposure to viruses or environmental toxins can trigger its onset years later. According to Dr. Donald Calne, director of the Neurodegenerative Disorders Centre at the University of B.C. Hospital, Parkinson’s can develop in clusters of people. Fox is one of four Leo and Me workers who have been diagnosed with Parkinson’s, which leads to muscle rigidity, tremors and involuntary movements. Japanese researchers have established that a virulent form of the flu, caused by a virus, can make its way into the same part of the brain that Parkinson’s attacks. (via the CBC)
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Continue reading “When a bra maker got the job of making the first NASA spacesuit”Bobby Brown fried chicken in cocaine when he was 10
Brown says he was unaware his mother sold cocaine to support the family and while away, he decided to fry chicken, a meal his mother taught him to cook. He grabbed a bag of what he believed was flour to coat the chicken. His mother would later return, elated he took initiative to cook dinner, but soon realized he mistook the bag of cocaine for flour. “I was 10. So I didn’t recognize the strange smell emanating from the pan,” Brown writes. “After I had taken a few bites and feeling weirder with each bite, my mother walked in. With horror she realized what I had done,” he wrote. “I fried chicken in her cocaine — a radical new addition to the family’s culinary offerings. Cocaine chicken.” Brown says his mother never explained to him what he did, but months later he figured it out. (via Vibe)
Dancer with motor neuron disease performs again through a digital avatar
A ballerina with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) says she was able to dance again after her brainwaves were used to power an avatar live on-stage in Amsterdam. Breanna Olson, a mother of three, found out two and a half years ago she had ALS, the most common form of motor neurone disease (MND) and which, with no known cure, weakens muscles and over time affects speech, swallowing and breathing. However, using sensors to measure the electrical activity transmitted from her brain, her motor signals could be converted into an digital avatar. Breanna used an electroencephalogram (or EEG) headset to capture her brain activity and specific motor signals associated with imagining certain dance movements. A brainwave interface translating these signals into computer instructions then allowed her to convey which of these movements she wanted her mixed-reality avatar to dance in real-time. (via the BBC)
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Continue reading “Bobby Brown fried chicken in cocaine when he was 10”Legendary words from space
To the person who carved his initials into the oldest living longleaf pine
by Matthew Olzmann
Kentucky cops arrest man for riding a horse while drunk
The driver, Kentucky cops say, had just left a liquor store, smelled of alcohol, and was found “partially slumped over” the controls of his brown vehicle. As a result, Jorge Hernandez, 48, was arrested for galloping under the influence (GUI) through a residential neighborhood in Bowling Green. According to an arrest report, an officer spotted the sagging Hernandez atop a horse around 6 PM Thursday. When Hernandez began to ride on the sidewalk, the cop performed a traffic stop. Hernandez reportedly smelled of alcohol, had bloodshot eyes, and his speech was slurred. He told police that he had just left a liquor store and was returning home. Tied to the horse’s saddle was a liquor store bag, the report states. He was arrested for operating a non-motor vehicle under the influence of intoxicants. The paperwork describes his vehicle’s make and model as “other.” The vehicle’s year is listed as 2024 and its color as brown. The report does not indicate who took custody of the equine post-arrest. (via The Smoking Gun)
Ohio’s “Serpent Mound” still fuels debate as America’s most mysterious earthwork
Located in Adams County, Ohio, the ancient site features a massive, undulating serpent whose coiled tail and gaping jaws have stood as an impressive monument to the Buckeye State’s ancient past, prompting serious investigations by archaeologists that have spanned nearly two centuries. First documented in the landmark work Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley in 1848 by Ephraim Squier and Edwin Davis, the famous site features many peculiarities, including the large oval-shaped feature positioned within the serpent’s open mouth. “This oval is formed by an embankment of earth, without a perceptible opening,” Squier and Davis wrote, noting that the feature “is perfectly regular in outline” and “slightly elevated” while also containing an area of “large stones, much burned once, [that] existed in its center.” (via The Debrief)
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Continue reading “Kentucky cops arrest man for riding a horse while drunk”A Masonic lodge in France harbored a mafia hit squad
Twenty-two people went on trial in France on Monday on charges of murder and other serious crimes centred on members of a Masonic lodge accused of running hit squads. Thirteen of the defendants face life imprisonment. Those in the dock include four military personnel from France’s foreign intelligence service (DGSE), two police officers, a retired domestic intelligence officer, a security guard and two business executives. They are accused of the murder of a racing driver, the attempted murders of a business coach and a trade unionist, aggravated assault and criminal conspiracy – all on behalf of a mafia network inside the former Athanor Masonic Lodge in the Paris suburb of Puteaux. Several freemasons from the 20 or so members of the lodge are in the dock. Most of the accused, aged between 30 and 73, have no previous criminal records. (via France24)
He joined Apple as a teenager in 1976 and he is still working there 50 years later
In 1976, Chris Espinosa rode his moped a mile and a half every Wednesday afternoon, parked it and went to work. Just 14 years old, he still had to go to school and didn’t have a driver’s license. But his employer, Apple Computer, had customers who wanted to try its earliest computer, and Espinosa was responsible for demonstrating it. Espinosa’s job has changed many times in the 50 years since. But he still works for Apple. At 64 he is one among an increasingly rare breed in today’s economy: people who have spent all of their lives working for one company. When Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak signed the documents to start Apple in 1976, Silicon Valley’s fruit orchards hadn’t yet been taken over by office parks. Espinosa became employee No. 8 at the scrappy start-up that assembled computers by hand in Mr. Jobs’s home. (via the New York Times)
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Continue reading “A Masonic lodge in France harbored a mafia hit squad”Using AI to write isn’t always wrong and other heresies
I’m a writer, as some (hopefully most) of you know. I’ve been a writer and journalist for more than 40 years now. It’s one of the few things I really know how to do, and it’s about the only way I have ever managed to make any money, so not surprisingly, I am pretty attached to it. As a writer, I think many people assume that I would belong to the “AI writing over my dead body” group in terms of the current debate over artificial intelligence and writing-slash-journalism. These are the kinds of folks behind a recent campaign to convince publishers not to deal with those who use AI: it asks writers to not only renounce AI, and promise they will never use it, but to also refuse to support or do business with writers who do use AI. There’s been a dramatic increase in that kind of sentiment recently, which isn’t surprising, since there seems to have been a pretty dramatic increase in the numbers of writers and journalist who are happy to use AI. I think the important question is: What are they using AI for? And is that defensible?
If you believe that everything AI is involved with is worthless “slop,” you should probably stop reading. As with most things (apart from a few exceptions) I think there is a place for most tools when it comes to doing the work, and to me AI is just another tool, much like the printing press or the typewriter or the internet. I’m old enough to remember when people were pretty upset about the internet and the impact it was going to have on creative pursuits or the world in general (no, I don’t remember the arrival of the printing press, contrary to what my kids might think). As one of the first staffers at the Globe and Mail‘s live news site in 2000, I wrote an inaugural column about how great the internet was for writers like me — the ability to have our work read (and commented on) by large numbers of people with little or no friction. Did I regret some of those words after a decade or so online, especially the comment part? Sure I did. But on balance I still think it was and is mostly good. After all, it makes it easy for me to send you this!
I realize that artificial intelligence and everything it involves — the training on data that AI companies don’t have the rights to, for example, or the fact that it sometimes encourages people to believe that they should kill themselves — makes it somewhat different from the printing press or even the internet (although I would argue not as much as some seem to think). Then there’s the whole “will AI kill everyone” question, which I’m not really equipped to answer. But in terms of a tool that can help with writing, or pretty much any other task, I think it makes perfect sense — in certain contexts. Is it going to pollute the internet with slop? Of course. But so have countless human beings over the past few decades. So that’s a difference of magnitude, rather than a difference in kind. Is it going to take some people’s jobs? Of course — just as countless other technologies have, from the automated loom to the colour printer or the electronic calculator. But it could also create new jobs along the way. Will they be as good? I have no idea.
Note: This is a version of my Torment Nexus newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.
Continue reading “Using AI to write isn’t always wrong and other heresies”