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Steven L. Taylor
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Sunday, September 1, 2024
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24 comments
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About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a retired Professor of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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I’ve been revisiting some of Asimov’s robot stories. One of them, Galley Slave, deals with a robot that can serve as proofreader, among other things. The story dates from 1957, and it reminded me of several things that apply to or are discussed about generative AI.
1) The robot can also generate reports from outlines, fill out forms, grade papers, and do other tasks not specified in the story. Sound familiar?
2) A character explains the robot’s brain “has been molded by the contents of all the standard works on the subject.” This sounds a lot like how LLM models are trained. Though maybe I’m reading current developments into it.
3) The robot’s manufacturer does not sell its robots, but only leases them for a monthly fee. This reminds me of the current subscription model fad. The reason given in several stories, as this aspect is rather consistent, is for the company to maintain control of its products.
4) SPOILER ALERT. At the very end of the story, the antagonist explains why he tampered with the robot thus: “Your robot takes over the galleys. Soon it, or other robots, would take over the original writing, the searching of the sources, the checking and cross-checking of of passages, perhaps even the deduction of conclusions. What would that leave the scholar? One thing only. The barren decisions concerning what orders to give the robot next!”
Freaky.
@Kathy:
I don’t know if you’re familiar with Fiverr*, but there are many sellers there offering proofreading services. From I hear it is a crapshoot, especially if the proofer’s first language isn’t English.
Maybe they employ drunken robots.
*- When I self-published, I used two Fiverr sellers to design my book covers. They did good work but I’d be wary of using Fiverr sellers for anything else.
@Bill Jempty:
I’ve heard of it, but have never made use of the services offered in it.
@Kathy:
The amazing thing about Asimov’s robots weren’t that they learned, that was always a fairly common trope. It’s that their entire software package ran on a processor in the same physical class as a human brain, ie, about three pounds and about 20 watts.
Human brains are estimated to have processing power of about an exaflop. We have supercomputers with that processing power now. The first one has been running since sometime in 2022, weighs in at about 600,000 pounds, and draws 23 MW. Liquid cooled, as is the human brain, but requires four 350 hp pumps.
Trump is now selling pieces of the suit he wore from the debate he had with Biden. This has been likened to the Church selling holy relics which seems pretty apt to me. At some point shouldn’t we think this is not just a cult of personality but a real cult?
Steve
Trump is also claiming that Harris never worked at McDonald’s and that “they think she’s nuts.”
@CSK: I hesitate to even ask, but why TF does he care enough about that to comment on it?
@Jen:
Well, he seems to have used that as a segue into all the other things she “lied” about.
September in the Rain
Dinah Washington
Encore
@CSK: @Jen: There’s an old saying in wholesale that I think applies to Trump: It’s hard to sell off of an empty wagon.
@just nutha:
And a squeaky wheel makes the most noise.
@Mister Bluster: Your link dropped on What a Difference a Day Makes so I listened to that and then September in the Rain. Her phrasing is just masterful in both.
@Steve: I hope they laundered the trousers.
Gross.
I shared this on the Harris thread, but it’s a general topic, too:
I wonder how much disinformation will play into this year’s election.
I mentioned recently that I met two undecided voters, a woman who said that she dislikes Republicans, but she thinks women are too emotional to be president; and a guy who said he leans conservative, but his girlfriend is very liberal, and he’s trying to preserve his relationship with her. I met both of them in the dog park, where you tend to talk to other dog parents while your pets run around, and both of them brought up politics, not me. (Politics is not typically something I would bring up with strangers).
I heard a news segment about disinformation yesterday, and it made me think of things that each of these two people said. The woman said she was also upset about Kamala Harris saying that she would end the student loan forgiveness program. I asked her where she heard that, and she said it was all over the news. I later googled it, and couldn’t find anything about Kamala Harris ending student loan forgiveness.
The guy said he doesn’t like Kamala Harris because she’s a drunk. I asked him why he would say that, and he said he’s a former alcoholic and he knows another one when he sees one. (I think I agree with DeD’s response to my story: both these people are trying to find excuses to vote for Trump).
Anyway, this disinformation segment brought up the video someone made of Nancy Pelosi, where they edited it to make it sound like she was drunk. And it made me wonder if both these people that I met in the dog park had encountered some sort of disinformation online—a false rumor about Harris ending student loan forgiveness, or perhaps a video that made her appear drunk. It also reminded me of a few comments made yesterday on the Tim Walz thread, where people pointed out that the Republicans, with the media’s help, are trying to create a narrative that Walz is untrustworthy by nitpicking small details of his story, and that James is already falling for it.
@Monala:
They’ve latched onto Walz’s brother Jeff, who claims he wouldn’t vote for someone of Walz’s character to tell people what to do. Jeff also says he’s “100%” opposed to Tim’s ideology.
@Tony W:
As I said the other day, the crotch will be the most sought-after section.
@CSK: That’s intended to counter Mary Trump about her uncle, I think. When one side has an oppo relative, the other needs one, too.
ETA: And EEEEEEWWWWW!! again. What is this sick fascination you have with Trump’s crotch?
@just nutha:
I don’t. But his fans do.
@Mr. Prosser:..Dinah Washington…
I’m so glad that you enjoyed the tunes!
@Kathy: Coming up with such concepts is the easy part. Implementing them is the hard part and sometimes you’re stuck waiting for technology to catch up enough to begin experimenting/implementing.
@CSK: And yet, you’re the one who keeps posting about Trump’s crotch, not JKB nor Jack nor joe nor… 😉
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I have done so exactly twice. That does not seem to me excessive, given that I’ve been commenting at OTB since the summer of 2012, and Trump has been an issue since 2015.
@Michael Cain:
He never gave mass and power numbers. The positronic brain was described as a spongy mass of platinum and iridium, two very dense and non-reactive metals. The robots used some kind of nuclear power. an unspecified one earlier on, and a hypothetical “microfusion” later.
So the brains might have been heavier and used up more power. But they were about the same size as a regular human brain.
Speaking of generative AI, I’ve noticed Copilot often understands what I mean, or at any rate returns answers related to what I mean. Just now I tried a summary of a scene, which includes the following exchange:
The term “analogue” is not defined either explicitly or in context in the scene (it’s defined in context earlier in the story). Nevertheless, copilot began: “In this scene, Marina and Green discuss Marina’s analogue (a counterpart in another context). ”
That comes really close to what the term “analogue” means in the story. The dictionary definition, per Webster’s is: “something that is similar or comparable to something else either in general or in some specific detail : something that is analogous to something else.” While Oxford comes closer with: “A thing which (or occasionally person who) is analogous to another; a parallel, an equivalent.”
So it might have just used the Oxford definition, and applied it to a person in the minimal context provided.
These things are getting too clever…