By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 18/09/2026It's an acknowledgment of the degree to which the tactic of guessing words has exceeded all expectations in the production of sensible-seeming, conversational-seeming sentences and paragraphs. 11103
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 18/09/2026It's all right to be surprised by how similar the output from a conscious being and a word-guessing program can be. It's surprising! 21026
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 18/09/2026Since the 1950s, researchers have applied the "AI" label to an incoherent grab-bag of technologies that share one characteristic: each one is designed to perform tasks that are considered to be the province of conscious minds. 1938
transitionstate.bsky.social @transitionstate.bsky.social · 18/09/2026I was taught that mathematician Andrey Markov came up with the idea for Markov chains - the probabilistic description of how a system evolves - by looking at how each letter in "Eugene Onegin" predicted the next; he would be quite pleased but unsurprised by this evolution of the idea. 010
