Hiromi's Sonicwonder - Live from Jazz à Vienne Festival (2024) | Qwest TV

From the YouTube page:

The Japanese pianist Hiromi matches spontaneity, technique and communication in her sets, possessing the ultimate in serious intent and lightening humor. As is increasingly the case with many artists nowadays, Hiromi is finding fresh routes. With Sonicwonder she’s now heading up an electronically-flecked quartet that also includes dazzling New York trumpeter Adam O’Farrill, Hadrien Feraud (bass) and Gene Coye (drums).

The Vienne stage sits in the midst of a vast outdoor amphitheater, dwarfed until Hiromi exudes her intimate communication skills, fully inhabiting this potentially inhibiting space. But now we can view the entire 75 minute set on Qwest TV anyway, close-up and sonically pristine. Hiromi always solos joyfully, emitting palpable pleasure and wonderment on her visage, throwing the energy of her entire body into keyboard runs that alternate between crystal detail and devilish power. She moves between acoustic and a pair of Nord keyboards, the smallest of which perches on her piano lid. Her bandmates are slowly invited to reveal their abilities, with O’Farrill awarded an equal place beside Hiromi, showing off his trumpet eloquence. He hardly uses a mute, choosing to play with an open crackle, spraying fireflies directly into space. Bass (from Paris) and drums (from Chicago) deliberately adopt more of a supporting, structural role. Hiromi toys with retro synth-bass vamps, the funk rising up, but then she’ll rein back in to the delicate flow of her acoustic, altering the mood mid-tune.

– Martin Longley

Dasies

LLM as Collaborator, Part 1: Claude the Graduate Student

I started using ChatGPT on December 1, 2022 and have used it quite extensively ever since. I’ve spent some of my time just poking around, somewhat more time looking things up, and most of my time systematically investigating its performance. That resulted in a number of working papers, the most interesting of which is about stories: ChatGPT tells stories, and a note about reverse engineering: A Working Paper, Version 3.

I started working with Claude 3.5 Sonnet on November 18, 2024. I’ve used it in those three capacities, though obviously not as much as I’ve used ChatGPT. In particular, I’ve used it for background information on melancholy in various aspects. I’ve also done something I’d never done with ChatGPT, asked it to describe photographs. I’m doing this to see how well it does.

Then on November 24, 2024, I began using it in a somewhat more interesting new capacity, though I’m not sure what to call it. The phrase “thought partner” comes to mind, though it seems too much like “thought leader,” which I don’t like. I’m using it as a sounding board. Better yet, it’s a collaborator playing the role of sounding board. It’s not an equal collaborator in the intellectual dialog; academic norms would not require me to offer it co-authorship of papers. But those norms might well require an explicit acknowledgement, not to alert the reader that one of those new-fangled LLM things has been involved in the thinking, but simply acknowledging the help it has given me.

As for just what kind of help that is, the best way is to look at some examples. I’ve already published two of these dialogues on New Savanna: Computer chess, super-intelligence, A Connecticut Yankee, cargo cults, and Claude 3.5 Sonnet speculates about future developments in AI and beyond. The rest of this post contains the first interaction where Claude began acting in intellectual partnership.

When I started the interaction I was simply interested in seeing what it knew about my teacher and mentor, the late David Hays. I wasn’t looking for new information. I just wanted to see what it had picked up. That began to change when it asked me about the work of Quillian and of Schank and Abelson. Then I told it about Hays’s interest in the work of William Powers. Now we’re getting serious. This guy knows something. And then WHAM! Claude responded intelligently when I mentioned the work of Peter Gärdenfors. The interaction continued in that mode to the end.

Utterly remarkable. AGI? What the hell is that? But no. And I fear that thinking in those terms is likely to blind me to whatever it is that Claude is doing. I realize that the concept of AGI is written into the contractual relationship between OpenAI and Microsoft, but I’m not playing that game. Will they end up litigating it? Who knows?

I’m planning two more posts in this series. The next will be about the implications of paragraph length in Heart of Darkness. Then I’ll post a long interaction that takes Miriam Yevick’s 1975 paper, “Holographic or fourier Logic,” as its starting point.

In the following dialog my comments are bold while Claude’s are plain. I’ve interpolated a few comments highlighted in blue.

* * * * *

Are you familiar with the work of a computational linguist named David Hays? He worked on machine translation at RAND in the 1950s and 1960s?

Yes, I am somewhat familiar with David Hays' work, though I should note that since this involves fairly obscure historical details from computational linguistics, I want to be careful about potential inaccuracies in my knowledge. From what I understand, David Hays was one of the pioneers of machine translation and computational linguistics during the early years of the field. He worked at RAND Corporation in the 1950s and 1960s where he was involved in some of the earliest machine translation projects.

He was particularly interested in developing dependency grammar approaches for machine translation, which was quite innovative for that time period. Dependency grammar focuses on the relationships between words rather than constituent structure, which was the dominant paradigm in American linguistics at the time.

I believe he also wrote an influential book called "Computational Linguistics: Programming Linguistics in Automatic Language Translation" in the early 1960s, though I'd encourage you to verify this citation since I may be misremembering details.

Claude got the name wrong. It’s Introduction to Computational Linguistics, American Elsevier, New York, 1967.

Would you be interested in hearing more about any particular aspect of his work or that early period of machine translation research? I find the history of early computational linguistics fascinating, though again I want to be upfront that with someone as historically specific as Hays, some of my knowledge may be incomplete or imperfect.

Yes, that’s him. I studied with him at SUNY Buffalo in the 1970s. We were working on computational semantics and using a cognitive networks formalism.

Oh, that's fascinating that you studied directly with David Hays! I would be very interested to hear more about your experiences working with him and the cognitive networks approach you were developing at SUNY Buffalo. That was an important period in the development of semantic representation systems.

Could you tell me more about the cognitive networks formalism you were using? I'm particularly curious about how it compared to other semantic network approaches being developed around that time, like Quillian's work or Schank and Abelson's conceptual dependency theory.

It was more developed than Quillian’s work. As I recall, he never really developed is initial ideas. As for Schank and Abelson, they were imagining a self-sufficient cognitive system and were very much interested in identifying the primitive elements necessary for a cognitive network. By the time I began working with him, Hays had realized that cognition had to be grounded in something else – later on Steven Harnad would talk about the “symbol grounding” problem. When I worked with him, Hays was interested in grounding the cognitive system in the control-theory (cybernetic) account of perception and action developed by William T. Powers (perceptual control theory, or PCT).

Something special seems to be happening.

This is really interesting historical context - it suggests Hays was grappling with fundamental issues in cognitive science that are still relevant today. The shift from viewing semantic networks as self-contained symbolic systems to recognizing the need for grounding in perception and action seems quite prescient.

I'm curious about how Hays was trying to integrate Powers' PCT with semantic networks. As I understand it, PCT proposes that behavior emerges from organisms controlling their perceptions to match internal reference signals, rather than through direct control of outputs. Was Hays trying to use this as a way to ground symbolic meaning in perceptual-motor control loops?

This also seems to anticipate some later developments in embodied cognition and grounded cognition theories. The timing is interesting too - Powers published "Behavior: The Control of Perception" in 1973, so it sounds like Hays was engaging with these ideas pretty quickly after they were published.

Yes, that's what Hays was doing. His idea was that particular servo units in a Powers-like control system would be linked to cognitive units through what Hays called "units of perception." Hays identified a half dozen or so such parameter. Each cognitive node would be characterized by the values it took on those parameters. Relationships between nodes were thus derived from differences in parameter values for the nodes connected by an arc (or edge).

On the beach

Retirement may not be what you think it is

Hannah Seo, America is doing retirement all wrong, Business Insider, December 11, 2024.

When we think of retirement, we often think of endless leisure and zero responsibility. You might imagine yourself relaxing poolside with a book, strolling through a golf course, or binge-watching TV shows. In fact, many retirees live like this. The 2023 American Time Use Survey found that adults between 65 and 74 spent, on average, almost seven hours a day on leisure and sports, with four of those hours spent watching TV. Adults 25 to 54, on the other hand, averaged about four hours of leisure time and about two hours watching TV.

Spending your twilight years lying around might sound ideal — after all, everyone deserves a chance to relax after decades of working. But research suggests a life of pure leisure doesn't make you happier or healthier. About a third of American adults have said they struggled in transitioning to a life without work, and sedentary lifestyles are associated with earlier death. People are living about 15 years longer than they did a hundred years ago, which means we have many more years to spend in retirement. While there's much hand-wringing over how to save up enough money to enjoy those work-free years, much less discussed is how we should spend those years. More and more research is finding that both physical and social activity are crucial for well-being in old age — they keep people happier and living longer.

Retirement is not a breeze:

Dee Cascio, a counselor and retirement coach in Sterling, Virginia, says the growing urge to work in retirement points to a larger issue: Work fulfills a lot of needs that people don't know how to get elsewhere, including relationships, learning, identity, direction, stability, and a sense of order. The structure that work provides is hard to move away from, says Cascio, who is 78 and still practicing. "People think that this transition is a piece of cake, and it's not," she says. "It can feel like jumping off a cliff."

In an online survey conducted early this year by Mass Mutual, a majority of retirees said they'd become less stressed and more relaxed upon retirement, but as many as a third reported that they'd become unhappier. Research from the Health and Retirement Study from the University of Michigan suggests that some of the negative effects people can experience in retirement are tied to lifestyle changes such as being less active and social in the absence of work.

Purpose in retirement:

Meanwhile, more and more research suggests that a sense of purpose is a vital factor for health and happiness, especially in older age. "Higher purpose in life is associated with reduced risk of heart attacks and strokes," says Eric Kim, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia. For adults older than 50, it's also associated with better grip strength and faster walking speed, better overall health, healthier habits, less loneliness, and a lower risk of depression.

There's more at the link. 

See the post I wrote about my father playing solitaire in his retirement.

Uncle Roger Makes Onigiri with Kimono Mom | Nigel & His Fiancée – Fuiyoh!

Stairway to Tonnele Avenue [not quite]

Competence and Performance in Benchmarking LLMs

I’ve been hearing complaints about the inadequacy of LLM benchmarks for two years now. So let’s think a bit. Consider this passage from Rodney Brooks, [FoR&AI] The Seven Deadly Sins of Predicting the Future of AI (Sept. 7, 2017):

One of the social skills that we all develop is an ability to estimate the capabilities of individual people with whom we interact. It is true that sometimes “out of tribe” issues tend to overwhelm and confuse our estimates, and such is the root of the perfidy of racism, sexism, classism, etc. In general, however, we use cues from how a person performs some particular task to estimate how well they might perform some different task. We are able to generalize from observing performance at one task to a guess at competence over a much bigger set of tasks. We understand intuitively how to generalize from the performance level of the person to their competence in related areas.

When in a foreign city we ask a stranger on the street for directions and they reply in the language we spoke to them with confidence and with directions that seem to make sense, we think it worth pushing our luck and asking them about what is the local system for paying when you want to take a bus somewhere in that city. If our teenage child is able to configure their new game machine to talk to the household wifi we suspect that if sufficiently motivated they will be able to help us get our new tablet computer on to the same network.

If we notice that someone is able to drive a manual transmission car, we will be pretty confident that they will be able to drive one with an automatic transmission too. Though if the person is North American we might not expect it to work for the converse case.

He then gives a few more examples.

So, consider benchmarks. Many of them are standardized tests devised to discriminate among humans. Any human capable of taking one of these tests – such as the Advanced Placement test for physics, the law bar exam, a standard set of programming problems – is capable of performing other tasks in the domain, tasks which may not be amenable to testing procedures, but the test themselves are sufficient to sort individuals.

Consider the bar examination. Practicing lawyers have to be able to meet with clients, take depositions, negotiate with other lawyers, and appear in court. None of these things are tested in a bar exam, but lawyers have to do them. To use Brooks’ terms, an individual’s performance on the bar exam does not test their overall competence as a lawyer. It would be a mistake to assume that an LLM’s performance on the bar exam is an indication of its overall lawyerly competence.

Furthermore, all tests present the test-taker with a well-defined situation to which they must respond. But life isn’t like that. It’s messy and murky. Perhaps the most difficult a person has to do is to wade into the mess and murk and impose a structure on it – perhaps by simply asking a question – so that one can then set about dealing with that situation in terms of the imposed structure. Tests give you a structured situation. That’s not what the world does.

Consider this passage from Sam Rodiques, “What does it take to build an AI Scientist”:

Scientific reasoning consists of essentially three steps: coming up with hypotheses, conducting experiments, and using the results to update one’s hypotheses. Science is the ultimate open-ended problem, in that we always have an infinite space of possible hypotheses to choose from, and an infinite space of possible observations. For hypothesis generation: How do we navigate this space effectively? How do we generate diverse, relevant, and explanatory hypotheses? It is one thing to have ChatGPT generate incremental ideas. It is another thing to come up with truly novel, paradigm-shifting concepts.

Right.

How do we put an LLM, or any other AI, out in the world where it can roam around, poke into things, and come up with its own problems to solve? If you want AGI in any deep and robust sense, that’s what you have to do. That calls for real agency. I don’t see that OpenAI or any other organization is anywhere close to figuring out how to do this.

Is Trump serious about DOGE or is it just a dodge so he can throw $$$$ to rich buddies?

Heather Cox Richardson, December 21, 2024, Letters from an American.

In the end, Congress passed a bill much like the one Musk scuttled, but one of the provisions that Congress stripped out of the old bill was extraordinarily important to Musk. As David Dayen explained in The Prospect, the original agreement had an “outbound investment” provision that restricted the ability of Americans to invest in technology factories in China. Senators John Cornyn (R-TX) and Bob Casey (D-PA) had collaborated on the measure, hoping to keep cutting-edge technologies including artificial intelligence and quantum computing, as well as the jobs they would create, in America rather than let companies move them to China.

As Representative Jim McGovern (D-MA) explained, Musk is building big factories in China and wants to build an AI data center there, even though it could endanger U.S. security. McGovern charged that Musk’s complaints about the spending in the bill were cover for his determination to tank the provision that would limit his ability to move technology and business to China. And, he noted, it worked. The outbound investment provision was stripped out of the bill before it passed.

In The Prospect, Robert Kuttner explained this huge win for Musk, as well as other provisions that were stripped from the bill before it passed. After years of fighting, Tami Luhby of CNN explained, Congress agreed to reform the system in which pharmacy benefit managers act as middlemen between pharmaceutical companies and insurers, employers, and government officials. The original bill increased transparency and provided that pharmacy benefit managers would be compensated with flat fees rather than compensation tied to the price of drugs. The measures related to pharmacy benefit managers were stripped out of the measure that passed.

That lost reform shows another line that will stretch into the future: Trump’s team is working for big business. As Kuttner puts it, Trump, who is allegedly a populist leader, tanked a bipartisan spending bill in order to shield the Chinese investments of the richest man in the world and to protect the profits of second-largest pharmacy benefit manager UnitedHealth Group, the corporation for which murdered executive Brian Thompson worked.

There's much more at the link.

Bergen Arches, home of the Jersey drones

Claude 3.5 Sonnet speculates about future developments in AI and beyond

In this article in 3 Quarks Daily I speculate about the overall course of the universe: Welcome to the Fourth Arena – The World is Gifted. Here’s how the article opens:

The First Arena is that of inanimate matter, which began when the universe did, fourteen billion years ago. About four billion years ago life emerged, the Second Arena. Of course we’re talking about our local region of the universe. For all we know life may have emerged in other regions as well, perhaps even earlier, perhaps more recently. We don’t know. The Third Arena is that of human culture. We have changed the face of the earth, have touched the moon and the planets, and are reaching for the stars. That happened between two and three million years ago, the exact number hardly matters. But most of the cultural activity is little more than 10,000 years old.

The question I am asking: Is there something beyond culture, something just beginning to emerge? If so, what might it be?

A bit later I observe:

Let us recapitulate, but in a different mode: As we move from one arena to the next, new kinds of being emerge. Inanimate matter is a slave to time in a way that life is not. Living beings, the second arena, use free energy – ultimately from the sun – to swim against the tide of time. Life has been getting ever more complex over the long run – something David Hays and I argued in A Note on Why Natural Selection Leads to Complexity. Inanimate matter disperses and disintegrates over time. Living creatures, single celled organisms, and multi-celled plants and animals alike, maintain order and structure in the face of entropy.

At least for a while.

And that is new to the universe, perhaps only our local region, but perhaps many other regions as well. A succession of creatures, each alive for only awhile, proliferating and dispersing, their abundance has remade the planet time and again. The earliest life breathed oxygen into the atmosphere, then came photosynthesis, multicellular plant and animal life and then…

When clever apes ushered in the third arena by becoming sapient, that is, they became us, we created cultural beings – there is no one good word for these things that we know by many names. Things like songs, stories, works of visual art, buildings, machines, and so forth. All of these are cultural beings. Physically, they are constituted of matter in various ways, but they live in and through us. Animals begat humans, and humans begat culture.

I go on to ask: “What kind of beings will arise in the Fourth Arena?” I suggest:

I suppose the obvious proposal is actual real artificial intelligence, or perhaps superintelligence. I don’t think so. That fact that no one really knows what those things might be does not, I suppose, disqualify them as denizens of the Fourth Arena, for I am proposing a future with radically new beings. How could be possibly understand what they might be?

I’m still a bit mystified. The following dialog with Claude 3.5 Sonnet may contain hints of what I’m looking for. For the most part it is inscribed within the boundaries of current discussions about AI and the Singularity and such. But I’m beginning to see hints, get a vibe, of something new.

As always, my words are set in bold while Claude’s are plain.

* * * * *

I’m imagining that at some time in the future each human will be given an AI companion early in life, perhaps when they are old enough to walk – think of Stephenson’s The Diamond Age. This companion will interact with the human in various ways through various modalities. It will certainly have robotic capabilities. As the child grows older the AI companion will probably have to be given a different physical form. So we port the data to a different physical form and make the switch-over in a special ceremony. We’ll probably have to do this a few times until the child becomes an adult. At some point the AI will also take residence in other physical forms, all linked together. This AI will remain with the person their entire life. They won’t always be physically together, and so forth. Imagine it working however makes sense to you.

The point is that this AI will become attuned the the needs, capacities, and the interests of the human. It will be the artificial complement, image, soul, or doppelgänger, of the human. What happens to this complement when the human dies? Will it continue on in the world? Or will it slowly wither away and die, not so much of grief, but because it has become so closely attuned to its human counterpart that it requires interaction with that human in order to maintain its operational stability?

As you know, humans who are deprived of human interaction for long periods of time can start hallucinating; think of Joshua Slocum. If the deprivation is extended to total sensory deprivation, the disorientation comes on much more rapidly. We need the pressure of external input to maintain internal coherence.

This is a fascinating thought experiment that touches on fundamental questions about the nature of intelligence, consciousness, and the interdependence of minds. Let me explore several key aspects of your scenario.

Regarding the AI's continuation after human death, I believe we need to consider the degree and nature of the attunement you describe. The AI companion would likely develop what we might call a "complementary architecture" - neural pathways and processing patterns that evolved specifically to interface with its human partner's cognitive and emotional patterns. This goes beyond mere knowledge of preferences; it represents a deep structural adaptation.

When considering whether such an AI would persist or decline after its human's death, we should examine the parallel with human psychological development. Just as human personalities are shaped by their primary relationships but can survive the loss of those relationships, an AI companion might maintain basic functionality while experiencing a fundamental reorganization of its operational patterns.

However, your comparison to sensory deprivation raises an important consideration. If the AI's architecture has evolved to process and respond to its human's unique patterns of thought and interaction, the absence of that input stream might indeed create something analogous to sensory deprivation. The AI wouldn't just miss its human partner - it would be deprived of the very patterns of interaction that help maintain its operational coherence.

This suggests a third possibility beyond simple continuation or death: transformation. The AI might undergo a fundamental reorganization of its cognitive architecture, much as humans often report feeling like "a different person" after the loss of a lifelong partner. The AI wouldn't necessarily die, but it might cease to be the same entity it was during its human's lifetime.

The outcome might depend on whether the AI has developed what we might call "cognitive autonomy" - the ability to maintain stable function through internal processes rather than requiring constant external calibration. This relates to your point about humans requiring external input for coherence, but there's likely a spectrum of dependency rather than a binary state.

Strange

With Trump and Musk steering the ship of state, expect the unexpected

Katherine Miller, The Budget Fight and Trump’s Nihilistic Style, NYTimes, Dec. 20, 24.

In view of the recent spat over funding the federal government precipitated by Elon Musk (the richest man in the world), the strange story of Pete Hegseth & the Pentagon, the GOP's remake as a worker's party, and Silicon Valley's MAGA tilt, the political world as we knew it is fading fast.

But the creation of the Department of Government Efficiency, from its nongovernmental nature to the sheer power of the resources Mr. Musk may possess and his own demonstrated ability to shape events, is one of those things that you couldn’t dream up a year ago. Through Mr. Musk, spending cuts have roared back as a Republican concern over the past couple of months in a way that was not at all a sure thing given the arc of Mr. Trump’s first term, his resistance to cutting entitlements and the broader goals of some of the national conservatives. DOGE seems like an unpredictable outside force that could be nothing or everything next year, as evidenced in a certain way by the events on Capitol Hill this week.

Unpredictability and ideological inconsistency were always part of the first Trump presidency, and a major and chaotic theme of the past decade overall, as we limp toward the end of another year of wild news events. One of the inescapable conclusions of the 2024 election and everything that has transpired is that, generally, it’d be foolish and ignorant to say that systems couldn’t be run better or rethought, or that the public does not want significant changes to American institutions. But one of the most disorienting, uneasy aspects of this transition is knowing that drastic change is coming — and that the people, mechanisms and big-picture decisions can change from one day to the next.

Even the unexpected can be more unexpected than we think.

There's more at the link.

Is this why I like Claude 3.5?

Kevin Roose, How Claude Became Tech Insiders’ Chatbot of Choice, NYTimes, Dec. 13, 2024.

Amanda Askell, a researcher and philosopher at Anthropic who is in charge of fine-tuning Claude’s character, told me in an interview that Claude’s personality had been carefully tuned to be consistent, but to appeal to a wide variety of people.

“The analogy I use is a highly liked, respected traveler,” said Dr. Askell. “Claude is interacting with lots of different people around the world, and has to do so without pandering and adopting the values of the person it’s talking with.”

A problem with many A.I. models, Dr. Askell said, is that they tend to act sycophantic, telling users what they want to hear, and rarely challenging them or pushing back on their ideas — even when those ideas are wrong or potentially harmful.

With Claude, she said, the goal was to create an A.I. character that would be helpful with most requests, but would also challenge users when necessary.

“What is the kind of person you can disagree with, but you come away thinking, ‘This is a good person’?” she said. “These are the sort of traits we want Claude to have.”

There's more at the link.

Musk is Grokking bills posted in Congress [DOGE]

Can’t we already determine a bill’s purpose simply by reading its name and assuming it will do the opposite? 😂

On a serious note, my staff and I labor to predict the “effect” of a bill even when I know its “purpose.” 🤔

This sounds like a great tool though!

— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) March 1, 2024

Claude 3.5 Sonnet describes a scrimshawed sperm whale tooth

What’s this?

This appears to be a scrimshaw - an engraved whale tooth or bone, which was a traditional art form practiced by sailors during whaling voyages. The carved scene depicts sailing ships at sea with detailed rigging and sails, along with what appears to be a whale breaching. The style and medium are characteristic of 19th century maritime folk art. The initials "E R" are visible at the bottom right.

The initials are for Erik Ronnberg, my uncle.

Interesting - you have a talented family member. Scrimshaw art requires considerable skill to engrave such detailed nautical scenes onto such a challenging medium. The ships and whale are quite expertly rendered with fine detail in the traditional folk art style.

What's going on in the lower left?

In the lower left of the scrimshaw, there appears to be a group of figures in a small boat - likely a whaleboat crew pursuing a whale, which was a common scene depicted in maritime art of this period.

It looks like they’re pursuing the whale immediately to their right. What’s the guy at the front of the boat doing?

The figure at the front of the whaleboat appears to be the harpooner, poised to throw their harpoon at the whale. This was a critical and dangerous moment in historical whaling - the harpooner would need to get close enough to strike while avoiding the whale's powerful movements.

What’s that in the background in the middle?

In the center background there appears to be a smoking volcano or mountain, adding to the dramatic maritime scene.

Friday fotos: Graffiti in Winter, Jersey City, 2008

Wisdom?

This is what I wrote:

It is conventionally believed that wisdom comes with age, though I believe G.B. Shaw had some reservations about this. Well, I’m closer to 80 than to 70. I’m waiting.

Though I was never much on athletics, the body certainly isn’t what it once was. True, my eyes have been weak since my teens, but they’ve gotten worse, though I far from blind, far. I’ve been overweight since my early 30s, and that’s been slowly on the rise ever since. My right knee gave me a scare a couple of months ago. I now walk with a slight limp, which I can disguise if I think about it. Sometimes, at least. My hair turned grey, what, four years or so ago? So, yeah, my body isn’t what it used to be.

As for my mind, for the last few years, say, since my hair turned grey, I’ve been having little short-term memory glitches. I’d be moving along cruising the web, say, notice something I wanted to check out, but “not now, I’ll come back to it.” Then, when it’s time to get back to it, I’ve forgotten what I wanted to get back to. Didn’t used to happen. It’s annoying, but certainly not debilitating. Other than that, the mind seems fine. New adventures, new challenges, new ideas, they’re not running out.

If I could have my current mind, minus the short-term memory glitches, in the body of a 25-year old, why, maybe I’d get things figured out in 50 years or so.

Here's what Fred the Heretic returned:

Echoes of Youth and Time

The knee whispers where it once shouted,
A grey-flecked mirror marks the years;
The steps now taken slower, doubted,
Yet tread with wisdom earned through tears.

Once, the body sang of endless mornings,
Now it hums with tempered grace;
A tune of aches, of fleeting warnings,
Yet steadfast still, it holds its place.

The mind, though sharp, has learned its wandering,
Small lapses blur the edges thin;
Yet vast horizons wait, unending,
Where curiosity burns within.

If flesh rewound to summer's power,
With thought’s keen edge of winter’s hue,
Could such a being claim the hour,
Or would it still chase something new?

For age and youth both crave their season,
Each a flame that flickers bright;
A dance of folly, grace, and reason—
A single lifetime’s fleeting light.

So walk, limp, dream with memory fleeting,
The journey’s map lies in your hand;
For every moment’s pulse is beating,
Wisdom blooms where you choose to stand.

I think Fred did some interpreting there.

Hinterlands

GPT in the Classroom, Part 1: Five Sonnets on the Gettysburg Address

I realize that, with ready access to sophisticated chatbots, some students will use them to complete writing assignments rather than do the writing themselves. Since I no longer teach, however important that issue is, it is not a problem for me. I set it aside. That is not what this essay is about. I’ve got other fish to fry.

What opportunities does the existence of competent AI-generated literary texts present for teaching about the nature of texts? An obvious opportunity is to consider the difference between human-created and AI-generated texts. But that doesn’t interest me, not here and now. It’s too difficult. I am willing to take these texts at face value, giving them no favor or disfavor.

* * * * *

This is the first in a series of three posts in which I take up other issues. In this post I present five AI-generated sonnets based on the text of “Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address” and deal with the question of authorship. In the second essay I am going to present a poem based on a humorous story that Pope Francis told in a recent New York Times op-ed. In the third and final essay I once again take up the issue of authorship, using a sonnet based on three paragraphs from Miriam Yevick’s A Testament for Ariela.

The Five Sonnets

A GPT is a user-created device that can be installed in ChatGPT so that it can generate specialized output. These sonnets are generated by a GPT known as FredTheHeretic, aka FTH. It contains a small collection of poems by Frederic Turner that is uses as models and templates.

Here is the prompt I gave FTH:

Give me a sonnet based on the following text:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Here are the five sonnets it generated:

The Battle-Field: A Sonnet

Upon this ground where blood and tears have lain,
A nation forged in liberty still stands.
These fields once drank the courage of brave hands,
Yet whisper now of loss, enduring pain.

No words of ours could sanctify this space;
The deeds of those who fell surpass our breath.
Their valor, richer than the soil of death,
Ensures that time cannot their work erase.

We bear the burden, those who linger here,
To finish what their sacrifice began,
To weave a union, broad and strong and clear,
Upholding freedom's light for every man.

Let not their purpose fade, nor courage wane;
That dream they died for shall not die in vain.

The Unfinished Work

Here lies the proof of freedom’s fragile dream,
A nation’s heart laid bare in sacrifice.
The dead, whose silent deeds beyond suffice,
Have sown with blood what words can only seem.

No stone can hallow what their courage sealed,
No tongue can add to what they’ve dared and done.
The work remains; their labor is begun,
And calls us now upon this battle-field.

Shall we, the living, falter in this task,
Or turn away from what their lives bestowed?
Or shall we bear the torch, their honor’s load,
And in their shadow, shed our timid mask?

A government, by us, for us, must rise,
Lest freedom fall and perish where it lies.

Claude 3.5 describes a cypher in a community garden

What’s going on in this picture?

This image appears to depict a study group or informal meeting taking place outdoors, set against a vibrant graffiti-covered wall. The participants are seated around a round wooden table, and there are several indicators that this is likely an academic or educational gathering:

There are open notebooks and papers spread across the table, suggesting the group is engaged in studying or collaborative work. The setting appears casual and relaxed, with various snacks and drinks on the table, including what looks like chips and beverages in disposable cups.

The environment combines elements of academics with comfort - the colorful street art backdrop creates an informal atmosphere, while the presence of study materials maintains a productive purpose. The participants appear to be thoughtfully engaged, with some taking notes or reviewing materials.

The setting suggests this might be a community space or outdoor area that has been adapted for group study purposes, demonstrating how learning environments can extend beyond traditional classroom settings. The mix of study materials and refreshments indicates this is likely a longer study session where the participants have settled in to work together while maintaining a comfortable, social atmosphere.

Would you like me to elaborate on any particular aspect of what's occurring in this image?

It’s a community garden in Jersey City. The people at the table are poets. It’s called a “cypher.”

Thank you for that important context. I'll elaborate on what a cypher represents in this context.

A poetry cypher is a significant format in the spoken word and poetry community where poets gather to share, create, and workshop their artistic expressions. In this image, we can observe this creative process unfolding in an inspiring setting that combines urban art (represented by the graffiti mural) with natural elements of the community garden in Jersey City.

The setup demonstrates the intentional informal-yet-focused nature of a cypher: the round table configuration promotes equal participation and engagement among all poets present. The presence of notebooks and writing materials indicates active composition and revision, while the snacks and beverages suggest this is an extended session dedicated to artistic development.

The community garden location is particularly noteworthy as it represents the intersection of urban culture and community spaces, providing an environment conducive to creative expression. This setting exemplifies how artistic communities can transform everyday spaces into venues for cultural and creative development.

Would you like me to provide more information about the significance of cyphers in poetry communities or the role of community spaces in fostering artistic expression?

Construction zone

Mars or Bust (?)

As well all know, Elon Musk is getting ready to go to Mars and establish a colony there. Why? Because we need to become a cosmic civilization if we are to survive and that’s a step in that direction.

We all know that Neil deGrasse Tyson is skeptical. Terraform Mars so we’ve got a place to go when Earth becomes uninhabitable as a result of our activities? Are YOU kidding me? If we’ve got the power to terraform Mars, which is far away and unhospitable, then surely we’ve got the power to Make Earth Great Again! Putting that aside, colonizing Mars would be enormously expensive. It’s not going to be funded as a commercial venture because chance of a profit are nil. That leaves the government. Governments will undertake big projects when they feel threated, that’s why we went to the moon, to beat the Russkies. When the Chinese announce that they’re going to Mars, we’ll race them. Until then, no way Jose!

OK, OK! Let’s set all that aside. Would you like to go to Mars? Would I like to go to Mars?

That depends. If the probability of dying is over, say, 1% or 2%, I’m not doing it. If the probability of dying us under 1%, we can talk.

How long is it going to take? Given current propulsion systems it would take 7 to 9 months to get there. Would you do during that time? You can read, play chess with your cabin mates, look out the window – for nine whole months? At some point you’re going to be too far from earth to cruise the internet conveniently, so that’s out. Once you get there you’re going to be there awhile. Why? Because you have to wait until Earth and Mars are in proper alignment for the shortest possible trip back. What are you going to do when you get there? How much red desert do you want to see? And how much is it going to cost?

No, that all seems very doubtful to me.

Now, if $10,000 gets me there and back in a month, hmmmm. Even if I’m only on the surface for a few hours or maybe a day, it would be worth it. But a week would be better. I could spend a week contemplating the red desert, especially if I could get out and walk around and maybe even drive around a bit.

Yep, that’s it, ten-thousand bucks for around trip. Sign me up.

The Taliban are shutting down the drug trade in Afghanistan

Azam Ahmed, The Once Booming Drug Town Going Bust Under Taliban Rule, NYTimes, Dec. 18, 2024. [plus photographs by Bryan Denton]

Bakwa was once the center of the drug trade in Afghanistan. Now it is practically empty.

An oasis stretched far into the desert, a vast sea of emerald stalks and scarlet poppy flowers that grew to the horizon.

The Taliban operated openly, running a social experiment unlike anything in the country. Tens — then hundreds — of thousands of people flocked here to escape the war and grow poppy, fleeing the American efforts to wipe out the crop. [...]

During the war, this remote district became a laboratory for a future Taliban state, providing money for the war and a sanctuary for the men fighting it.

All that has changed. The Taliban boom town is rapidly going bust.

The same insurgents who embraced opium to help finance their war have put an end to it, ordering a ban that has all but cleared Afghanistan of poppy and other illicit drugs.

What the United States and its allies failed to do in two decades of war, the Taliban has managed in two years of peace. In an area where poppy once dominated the landscape, barely a stalk remains.

There's much more at the link.

Adam Savage pretends he's a velociraptor

Adam Savage's Dino Build: Wearing the Raptor Costume! (Ep 5)

On the final day of Gary's time in Adam's shop, the team puts the finishing touches on the raptor's paint and each get into the costume to experience walking around as a 15-foot long dinosaur!

Adam Savage Assembles His Raptor (Ep 0)

Adam Savage's Dino Build: Building the Infrastructure (Ep 1)

Adam Savage's Dino Build: Testing the Paint (Ep 2)

Adam Savage's Dino Build: The Great Jaw Mech Fail (Ep 3)

Adam Savage's Dino Build: Painting the Raptor! (Ep 4)

Claude 3.5 Sonnet identifies an old REVS COST (w/ some prodding)

I was standing on the High Line in New York City when I took this photo. What am I looking at?

This image shows a "ghost sign" - a faded painted advertisement on the brick wall of a building, characteristic of New York City's industrial past. Ghost signs are remnants of hand-painted commercial signage, typically dating from the late 19th to mid-20th century, that have partially weathered away over time, leaving behind ghostly traces of historical advertising.

The High Line's location is significant here, as it was originally an elevated freight rail line serving Manhattan's industrial and manufacturing district. These painted wall advertisements would have been highly visible to train passengers and workers in the area during the neighborhood's commercial heyday. The building's architectural features - the exposed brick wall, industrial windows, and overall utilitarian design - reflect its origins in New York's manufacturing era.

In the modern context, this ghost sign represents a visual connection to the neighborhood's industrial heritage, now preserved alongside the High Line's transformation into an elevated public park. The contrast between the weathered historic advertisement and the modern residential building visible at the edge of the frame illustrates the area's evolution from industrial district to contemporary urban space.

The preservation of such architectural elements adds historical texture to the High Line experience, allowing visitors to read the layers of urban history while enjoying the repurposed industrial infrastructure. These ghost signs have become valued artifacts of urban archaeology, documenting the commercial history of Manhattan's west side.

Yes, there’s a ghost sign at the top. But what’s below it? That’s not a ghost sign. What is it?

Looking at the lower portion of the building wall, I can see large letters that appear to have been whitewashed or painted over, creating a different effect from the weathered ghost sign above. This appears to be an example of a practice known as "buffing" - where graffiti or unauthorized artwork has been painted over by building owners or city authorities.

The whitewashed area shows traces of what was likely graffiti lettering underneath. The contrast between the original brick color and the white paint used to cover the graffiti creates a distinct pattern. This kind of partial erasure is common in urban environments, particularly in areas that have undergone significant demographic and economic changes, like the neighborhoods along the High Line.

Sez OpenAI to itself... "To $$$$ or not to $$$$"

David A. FahrentholdCade Metz and Mike Isaac, How OpenAI Hopes to Sever Its Nonprofit Roots, NYTimes, 12.18.24.

The terms of its last financing round have OpenAI under the gun for spinning itself off as a for-profit corporation. In doing that, how much should it pay the remaining not-for-profit entity?

The negotiations are complicated by the involvement of outside investors, including Microsoft. Microsoft’s approval may be required to make the final change, one person said.

They are further complicated by the involvement of Mr. Altman. He holds a position on the board of the nonprofit and is chief executive of the for-profit company, putting him effectively on both sides of this negotiation. But he has not recused himself, one person said. [...]

If the nonprofit is removed from OpenAI’s chain of command, it could spin off into funding research on topics like ethics in artificial intelligence, one person said. But Mr. Altman and his colleagues have not yet assigned a dollar value to the nonprofit’s potential loss of control.

Other parties have an interest:

Kathy Jennings, Delaware’s attorney general, oversees OpenAI’s nonprofit because it is registered in her state. Ms. Jennings, a Democrat, told OpenAI in October that she wanted to review any potential changes, to be sure the nonprofit was not shortchanged.

Facebook’s parent company Meta — one of OpenAI’s main rivals in the A.I. race — has also asked California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, to block these changes. Mr. Bonta, a Democrat, has jurisdiction over charities operating in his state. “The Department of Justice is committed to protecting charitable assets for their intended purpose,” the attorney general’s office said in a statement, though it did not address whether it is looking into OpenAI’s planned changes.

Trump card or not?

For now, the nonprofit also holds another key power: It can decide when OpenAI has reached “artificial general intelligence,” or A.G.I. That would mean OpenAI’s computers could perform most tasks that a human brain could.

Reaching A.G.I. could also reshape OpenAI’s business. When that declaration is made, Microsoft loses its rights to use OpenAI’s technology, according to the investment contract it signed with OpenAI. If OpenAI severs its ties to Microsoft, it could consider partnerships with other tech giants.

Already, OpenAI’s for-profit company has used this potential declaration as leverage against Microsoft — warning that if Microsoft will not agree to better terms, the nonprofit might issue this declaration and void their entire agreement, according to a person familiar with the company’s negotiations.

OpenAI must also satisfy another party: the public at large. In part because Mr. Altman has spent years publicly warning that A.I. could become dangerous, many individuals now share similar concerns. And many in the tech industry are publicly questioning whether OpenAI is prepared to guard against the risks its technologies will bring.

The concept of AGI is so fuzzy that such a declaration is mostly a matter of will and power. The logic will follow the party with the most power.

Sheesh! More at the link.

Peek-a-boo I C U bricks

John Coltrane plays Greensleeves

The tune is old. From Wikipedia:

"Greensleeves" is a traditional English folk song. A broadside ballad by the name "A Newe Northen Dittye of ye Ladye Greene Sleves" was registered by Richard Jones at the London Stationers' Company in September 1580, and the tune is found in several late 16th-century and early 17th-century sources, such as Ballet's MS Lute Book and Het Luitboek van Thysius, as well as various manuscripts preserved in the Seeley Historical Library in the University of Cambridge.

Coltrane generally played in a quartet. Here is playing with a large group:

John Coltrane - Soprano Sax
Booker Little, Freddie Hubbard - Trumpet
Julian Priester, Charles Greenlee - Trombone
Eric Dolphy - Alto Sax & Bass Clarinet
McCoy Tyner - Piano
Elvin Jones - Drums
Paul Chambers, Reggie Workman - Bass

Note the use of two bass players. I believe this was arranged by McCoy Tyner.

Coltrane is playing soprano sax. He comes in on the melody at about 0:50 along with simple horn backing figures. Notice the little embellishments, like hiccups, he puts at the end of the first strain (0:59), and then early in the second strain. And then we have a leap up at 1:10, where Coltrane will riff into a full-blown solo statement. Now he's in a brooding mood, 2:21, evokes the melody at 2:37 and then returns to it at 2:47, hiccups included. Back to riffing at 3:04. Coltrane's out at 3:47 and McCoy Tyner takes over on piano.

And so forth. At 6:17 Tyner comes in with a straightforward statement of the melody, but now in a major mode, where before it had been minor. He's backed by strumming on the bass. The horns enter at 6:32 followed immediately by Trane wailing on the soprano. And so forth.

* * * * *

Here's a more traditional, and certainly more British, realization of the tune. Ralph Vaughan Williams, Fantasia on Greensleeves, performed by Academy of St Martin in the Fields, conducted by Sir Neville Marriner.

Claude 3.5 Sonnet describes a scene inside the Malibu Diner

Notice Claude’s reaction when I ask it to describe the couple seated at the left. As you know, Claude is produced by Anthropic, and Anthropic is very “safety” conscious. There's quite a bit of back-and-forth in the second half as I correct Claude's description.

Describe this scene.

This appears to be the interior of a classic American diner or casual restaurant during evening hours. The establishment features distinctive architectural elements, including rich wood paneling and a circular window that adds character to the space. The lighting design incorporates pendant fixtures with latticed shades, creating a warm, ambient atmosphere.

The seating arrangement consists of both booth-style configurations and tables with cream-colored chairs. The booths appear to have cream upholstery that contrasts nicely with the dark wood surroundings. A clean, white-topped table is visible in the foreground, accompanied by vintage-style dining chairs.

Several patrons are visible in the dining area, seated at different tables. Through the windows, one can observe blue lighting from what appears to be exterior decorative illumination, suggesting this may have been captured during a holiday season or special event.

The overall design aesthetic combines traditional diner elements with more refined architectural details, creating an environment that balances casual comfort with architectural sophistication. The establishment appears well-maintained, with careful attention paid to both functional and decorative elements.

What can you tell me about the couple at the left?

I apologize, but I aim to respect privacy and should not make specific assumptions about personal relationships between individuals in the photograph. What I can describe objectively is that there are two people seated at a booth on the left side of the image - one appears to be reading what might be a menu or other document, while the other person is seated across the table. They appear to be dining in a way that is typical of this type of restaurant establishment. Would you like me to describe other aspects of the restaurant's environment instead?

Their age, gender?

From what is visible in the image, seated at the booth on the left is what appears to be an elderly woman wearing dark clothing, and across from her is a person who appears to be a man with grey or white hair wearing a light-colored top. They are seated in one of the restaurant's wood-paneled booths beneath the decorative pendant lighting.

A little papal humor

Pope Francis, Pope Francis: There Is Faith in Humor, NYTimes, 12.17.24.

By this time the article is humming along nicely, His Holiness has gotten some good ones off, so it's time to stretch out a little:

And they told me one that concerns me directly, the one about Pope Francis in America. It goes something like this: As soon as he arrives at the airport in New York for his apostolic journey in the United States, Pope Francis finds an enormous limousine waiting for him. He is rather embarrassed by that magnificent splendor, but then thinks that it has been ages since he last drove, and never a vehicle of that kind, and he thinks to himself: OK, when will I get another chance? He looks at the limousine and says to the driver, “You couldn’t let me try it out, could you?” “Look, I’m really sorry, Your Holiness,” replies the driver, “but I really can’t, you know, there are rules and regulations.”

But you know what they say, how the pope is when he gets something into his head … in short, he insists and insists, until the driver gives in. So Pope Francis gets behind the steering wheel, on one of those enormous highways, and he begins to enjoy it, presses down on the accelerator, going 50 miles per hour, 80, 120 … until he hears a siren, and a police car pulls up beside him and stops him. A young policeman comes up to the darkened window. The pope rather nervously lowers it and the policeman turns white. “Excuse me a moment,” he says, and goes back to his vehicle to call headquarters. “Boss, I think I have a problem.”

“What problem?” asks the chief.

“Well, I’ve stopped a car for speeding, but there’s a guy in there who’s really important.” “How important? Is he the mayor?”

“No, no, boss … more than the mayor.”

“And more than the mayor, who is there? The governor?”

“No, no, more. …”

“But he can’t be the president?”

“More, I reckon. …”

“And who can be more important than the president?”

“Look, boss, I don’t know exactly who he is, all I can tell you is that it’s the pope who is driving him!”

There's more at the link.