It validates the sociologist Harry Collins’ view that language competence does NOT require embodiment. And it suggests it is industrial, not artisanal, machinery that allows language competence.

Yes, kind of. But the Turing Test is often misunderstood as a test for natural language rather than imitation. Still, LLMs have certainly upended our notion of machinery and its possibilities.

YouTube video by Jeff Wong

Japan's railways are the finest in the world. Other countries can copy its formula.

Why aren’t we talking more about watermarking?

A lot of journalism on AI's water impacts is misleading

What I gave up, what I kept, and what's new. PLUS: How I'm using AI

The UK has one of the most equitable health care systems in the world. Here’s how.

Consulting regular people as opposed to experts does not make something more "democratic." Democracy is an ethos. Advocates should justify policy preferences by describing the value tradeoffs.

How to do a Foucaldian analysis: replace "power" with a technical term like "dispositif." Also, you must actually suggest an alternative organizing machinery to replace the dispositif you find unjust.

Dr Shreeharsh Kelkar from UC Berkeley on to discuss massive online open courses or “MOOCs” and other varieties of education technology. Are they destined to displace the traditional university, or are...

LLMs have disrupted college teaching and not in a good way. But there is a solution, it just involves technology, enforcement, and sanctions--three things that make progressives deeply uncomfortable.