David Weinberger's Blog

LLM’s Jokes for Other LLM’s

PROMPT: Write some jokes that might make another LLM laugh. Don’t worry about amusing us humans. chatGPT 4.o: 1. Why did the LLM break up with the decision tree? Too many branches, not enough context. 2. What did the token say to the embedding? “You’re not my type… you’re my 4096-dimensional vector!” 3. Two LLMs […]

AI when it’s not just trying to get us to like it

Here’s something a little encouraging about large language models. I made up a weak but provocative-sounding argument to see whether LLM’s tendency to please its users would keep it from pushing back on it. Personally, I think it does an admirable job of pointing out weaknesses, and suggesting ways they could be overcome, as a […]

Tariffs explained?

For what seems to be a fact-based explanation of the current “administrations” new taxes (= tariffs), this article seems helpful. Of course, as a world-renowned non-expert, my assessment of what’s fact-based is not itself fact-based.   Because with this administration facts are squishy, not stubborn things, it is not yet possible to know how it’s going to […]

Claude fact-checks its AI ass

A minute ago I posted a post that Claude, the excellent AI chat bot , wrote for me. It’s about Nautical Twilight. That apparently is a real thing at least. I just asked it to fact check what it wrote. Here’s the transcript: Claude writes: Let me fact-check my blog post about nautical twilight: Accurate […]

What does an itch feel like?

Does an itch have any feeling left if you subtract the urge to itch? The answer has to be no, I think, because once the itch is gone, there is not sensation left over. But an itch is nothing but (?) the urge to scratch. This makes itches quite peculiar. (No, I'm sober.I am just […]

Trying out WordLand for blogging

I'm writing this post using WordLand. It's a web page that clears out all of WordPress's cruft and gives you an interface  that's so simple that it's actually enjoyable. My friend Doc Searls compares it to using Twitter to write a tweet but without the unpleasant musk of fascism. I'd add that it's also a  […]

Trump considering Tooth Fairy tariff

  Dionald Jehosiphat Trump today said that he’s considering a tariff on the Tooth Fairy. “Why does she get to pull all those American teeth? We don’t even know where she offshores them!” When asked for specifics about the tariff, Trump said, “Elon is working on an exact amount, but I told him it has […]

The opposite of enshittification

What is the opposite of Cory Doctorow’s neologism “enshittification“, the seemingly purposeful making worse of a product or situation? It’s Cory Doctorow’s embettering of his recent cancer diagnosis. Cory assures his readers that it’s very, very likely to turn out to be completely treatable in minimally invasive ways. In fact, he has already gone through […]

The origins of “famous to 15 people”

“In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.” People seemed to like that when I wrote it in  my 2002 book, Small Pieces Loosely Joined. About ten  years later, someone (sorry, I don’t remember who) pointed out that that phrase had in fact been first written by the Scottish singer and writer Momus […]

The article notes that the prize actually went to two hum...

The article notes that the prize actually went to two humans, but this headline from MIT Tech Review may just be ahead of its time. Are we one generation of tech away from a Nobel Prize going to a machine itself — assuming the next gen is more autonomous in terms of what it applies […]