David Weinberger's Blog, page 4

A chat with Bard about whether we can trust it

Yesterday I asked chatGPT about why it presents its answers with such confidence, especially since it also tells us to be careful about believing what it says. Today I had a similar conversation with Bard. Note that today I continue to believe that the 2020 election was not stolen, if anything even more strongly than […]

chatGPT on why it pretends to know things

I had a conversation with chatGPT this morning about its making factual claims while “understanding” that it has no knowledge of the world. You pretty quickly run into what seems like a barrier of rote text that isn’t always consistent with what it said in the first part of the answer. I did, however get […]

chatGPT edits The Gettysburg Address

This morning I asked chatGPT to suggest revisions to a draft of an opinion piece I’m writing. About half of the ten it came up with were at least worth considering. Not bad for a soulless pile of statistics! I’d consider using it again and would recommend it to students, with the caution that it […]

chatGPT and spad boonerisms

For whatever weird reason, I often spoonerize words after hearing them. For example, I’ll hear “tapping noise” and think “napping toys.” Or “pop corn” echoes as “cop porn.” I disturbed myself yesterday, however, by hearing “a juice box” and thinking “abuse jocks.” So, I checked in with chatGPT and found that it’s got the concept […]

Meeting an old friend for the first time

I just posted at Psychology Today a brief and personal story about realizing that my relationship with a person I’ve seen only a relatively few times spread out across four decades constitutes an old and close friendship that matters a great means to me. This is a type of friendship I had not expected. (Not […]

Curiosity

How interesting the world is depends on how well it’s written.

Trial by Fitbit

I watched some of the cross examination of Alex Murdaugh who is on trial for brutally murdering his wife and son — I’m a lawyer voyeur, as well as a reader of Bob Loblaw’s Law Blog — and happened to come in as the prosecution was pinning Murdaugh down with step-and-time data from Murdaugh’s cell phone. […]

Section 230: The Internet, Categorization, and Rorty Rorty

Topic: The Supreme Court is hearing a case about whether section 230 exempts Google from responsibility for what it algorithmically recommends. A thought from one of my favorite philosophers, Richard Rorty: Rortiana, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., via Wikimedia Commons “…revolutionary achievements in the arts, in the sciences, and the moral and political thought typically occur […]

How word processing changed my life: A brief memoir

I  typed my doctoral dissertation in 1978 on my last electric typewriter, a sturdy IBM Model B. My soon-to-be wife was writing hers out long hand. Then one day we took a chapter to a local typist who was using a Xerox word processor which was priced too high for grad students. When I saw […]

“Background items added” from “Fei Lv”

Just in case you’ve started getting notifications on your Mac that “Software from ‘Fei Lv’ added items that can run in the background. You can manage this in Login Items Settings”, here’s an explanation that I could not find anywhere on the Internet. This seems to be coming from NordPass, which I have been trying […]