128: SkyNet
On My Mind: This New AI Tool
At the end of last week there was a release of a new AI tool (called GPT-3) that was built by a company called OpenAI. The product allow you to feed in some instructions, some text, and it will take those instructions, understand them, and using AI produce another work of text. That sounds simple, but it’s working amazingly well.
Let me give you an example. This guy had the AI write an entire blog post for him. It was so good that nobody caught on that he didn’t actually write it himself.
Using this new tool, you can ask the program to adjust the text that comes out in many ways. You can feed in document and ask the tool to convert it a legal doc or summarize it such that a 2nd grader could understand it. It understands the content. You can also ask it to create a Shakespeare style sonnet. It does all of this and more and does it really well.
Another example:
The old theory was that robots can’t write. That used to be true. The old programs made really bad endings to episodes of Game of Thrones. But the old style tried to just mimic human vocabulary and writing style. This new version (GPT-3) is able to analyze context.
It’s creepy. In fact, in Terminator 2, Skynet becomes self-aware from a tool just like this. Just saying.
This is how it begins. It all starts with the hackers. The first computers were seen as toys and bitcoin was just something nerds used. The future is going to be wild.
Protesting and Portland
I read this:
There was a new force on the Portland streets this weekend: moms. Dressed in yellow shirts, wearing helmets and masks, several hundred women are forming chains between the officers and the protesters. They call themselves the Wall of Moms, and are chanting: “I don’t see no riot here; take off your riot gear,” and “Feds stay clear, moms are here!” Officers tear gassed them last night, but they came back tonight in bigger numbers.
At My House
We found a beach this weekend that nobody knows about. It was empty and the water was warm. We had a great time.
Other Stuff
The writer of the The Orchid Thief went on a pretty great drunken twitter rant this weekend.
This nursing home is recreating album covers:
I would like to assssss-k this guy a few questions.
School Openings
Teachers unions sued Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida over his emergency order pushing schools to fully reopen next month.
Related, researchers in South Korea examined the extent to which children can be vectors of the virus. In a study involving 65,000 people, the study found that, while children under 10 pass on the virus much less often than adults do, those 10 to 19 years old can spread the virus at least as well as adults.
Conora Stuff
A really promising result from a new UK vaccine:
For the World
The upward spike of used beds continues:
We made it through the spring without overwhelming hospitals bed capacity but that doesn’t mean we’re out of the woods. Arizona remains in the worst shape - 27.1% of all hospital beds in the state are occupied as of July 15. Texas is second at 18.8%. Nevada is next at 18.7% up significantly from 11.2% at the start of July. Florida is at 16%.
Intensive-care unit beds, reserved for the sickest patients, are completely full in parts of Arizona, Florida, Mississippi and Texas.
In Marin…
This is the 4-day average of new cases in Marin which shows us going up. In fact yesterday had 200 new cases which crushed our old record of 80. I’ll be staying inside.
That’s it everyone. Have a great Tuesday.
Only 64 more days to go