Matt Weber's Blog, page 5

“You might move toward having a curator.”

https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/12/23721323/ask-jeeves-remember-when-google-search-worked-ai

There has been a view — advanced largely by people who are hyping their investments — that AI will devalue human labor. But what if the rise of AI-written nonsense makes humans more valuable? If you want a human result, not some machine-generated SEO bait, you may want a human involved in the process of search. You might move toward having a curator.

Not much to add here—just another appearance of that theme I keep thinking about.

This is more about discovery through search than social discovery, but the idea’s not necessarily that different. Social discovery arguably occupies a midpoint on the spectrum of human content to algorithmic glurge—it’s human-made but algorithmically distorted, optimized toward whatever the wider Internet has reverse-engineered about the preferences of the platform it’s on.

Currently reading: EARTHDIVERS vol. 1, by Stephen Graham Jones and Davide Gianfelice.

OTHELLO @ the Donmar Warehouse

I’m not a Shakespeare person, a theater person, or a person knowledgeable about the UK in any way, so you can assume I don’t know most of the words I’m using when I say the 2007-08 run of OTHELLO at the Donmar Warehouse is mind-bogglingly good.

I wasn’t actually there for any of it, but I have it in audio courtesy of my library system, and it is gripping. Chiwetel Ejiofor as Othello, Ewan MacGregor as Iago, Kelly Reilly as Desdemona, Tom Hiddleston as Cassio, Michelle Fairley as Emilia. It feels a bit like it was made for audio—the principals’ voices and delivery are so distinct, you don’t need to see the action to understand it. It probably helps that the plot is pretty simple and there aren’t many principals; it’s the actors’ emotions that (I imagine) make or break this play, and emotions are something a cast like this can deliver. There’s a lot of shouting, but it’s that kind of play.

And it’s a play written for today. I mean, maybe every Shakespeare play was written for today, because that’s what makes Shakespeare Shakespeare; but there’s something quite specific about OTHELLO, watching a man eaten from inside by brain worms planted by an enemy masked as an ally. Iago can explain why Othello feels this way. Iago alone can fix it. Iago didn’t do anything—he’s just the kind of guy who says exactly what he thinks. Iago regrets the collateral damage, but if you want to make an omelet…

Anyway. My point with the disclaimer at the top is just to say, I’m not coming at this as some kind of connoisseur, I genuinely think that just about any adult with some appreciation for language and story could listen to this and be gobsmacked.

Side note: Shakespeare plays are way shorter than audio novels! Which makes sense, if you think about it; this one clocks in at about 2:35. You could probably do the Complete Plays in less time than it would take to listen to A Song of Ice and Fire once. Which may or may not be something I’m low key planning to do… ?

Currently reading: STOLEN FOCUS, by Johann Hari.

Dissolving the factory

Notes on The Dissolving Factory

I found Tim Boucher via ooh.directory’s Recently Updated feed, which I maybe need to check more often. I wonder if it’s possible to put it in a digest format? I don’t want all that in my RSS reader. It’s interesting that the site estimates update frequency and lets you filter by that, but not (say) category? Like it might be cool to be able to follow all recently updated blogs within Writing (of which mine remains, inexplicably, one of 10, alongside Austin Kleon).

… anyway, I’m skeptical of the project Boucher outlines in this thing, but so is he. Which is what I’m interested in. “I honestly thought the results would be more ‘out there’ but something about Midjourney still has a way of leveling off the highs and lows, and making the outputs always look, well, Midjourneyish.” I first noticed this listening to an episode of Mark Leslie Lefebvre’s podcast (I’m not hunting up the link, but it would have been in the first half of 2022, plus or minus) that he created in an AI version of his own voice — AI audio sticks to the thick part of the distribution, creating a product that’s very recognizably the source’s timbre but flattening out the variations. There’s a sameness to AI art that I’m starting to recognize as well. Not so much with the photorealistic stuff, but much of the more “arty” looking product (which is the kind of thing I run into more often on LinkedIn, blogs, &c) has a sort of half-3D look about it that starts to be distinctive; the best way I can describe it at the moment is it feels like a compromise between 3D rendering and the sorts of ways you’d render depth with a brush or pen. It does make you wonder if there’s some sort of psychometrics on this — show people 10 human-produced images and 10 images produced by AI in the same style, see if viewers can detect it?

Boucher’s “I feel constrained by AI” is also an interesting short post:

… at first it seemed like these tools gave access to unlimited spaces, and the only edges were my own imagination. 

But after a year of heavy lifting, I know for a fact that this is untrue. The edges are many, the spaces in fact quite small, the further you go into some of them.

Tim Boucher, “I feel constrained by AI”

… which sounds like a vindication of the skeptics, but then:

Constraints can be both breeding grounds for innovative explorations, and also a place of great frustration, where you constantly have to miss on the grand vision, and settle for many of the smaller ones instead, piled up high as you can make it.

Tim Boucher, “I feel constrained by AI”

… which is, of course, one of the oldest ideas in art, and continues to motivate (or at least rationalize) the use of restrictive artistic forms today.

It also maybe brings back the basic point of any exercise like Boucher’s AI Lore Books, which is to tap the deepest wells of human creativity. Trying to put your thoughts into a villanelle or render a scene in pen and ink doesn’t buy you creativity for free; the frustration Boucher mentions after the semicolon is the engine of the innovative exploration he mentions before it. If you can’t do it the easy way, how do you do it?

Which is the opposite of how almost everyone who thinks about AI-assisted art seems to be thinking about it. Skeptics and doomers are worried about generative glurge replacing the fruits of human labor. Boosters tend to emphasize how AI can make things easier, de-tyrannizing the blank page or joggling the author’s mind out of a local minimum. It’s not often you hear the limitations of AI acknowledged in the same way as the limitations of any finite artistic tool.

None of this gets to the ethics of how these things are created and maintained, and I’m not going to try to force it to go there. But it is of course worth keeping front of mind. In that context, it’s interesting to think about Boucher’s title for this particular piece of work. The proliferation of AI text and art on the very Internet that’s used, with little curation, to train the next generation of algorithms is famously courting “model collapse,” where contamination of the training data with AI-generated output causes the new model’s output to grow more and more outlandish (from the abstract, note the telling phrase: “tails of the original content distribution disappear.” Hugging the thick part of the distribution!). It’s doubtful the factory will be permitted to dissolve any time soon; but the danger does seem to be there.

Currently reading: SOLANIN, by Inio Asano. Acquired at Second Story Books on a recent visit to DC; recommended en passant during the Mangasplaining episode on GOODNIGHT PUNPUN.

If you’re enjoying my writing, you can get some of my short fiction on your e-reader for the low, low cost of $0. Remembered Air is a collection of six poems and short stories not available anywhere else. Download it here.

GIGOGBI

I’ve been thinking a little about what I actually want to be putting out on this channel. The Work Week posts just aren’t particularly satisfying; they crowd out other things I might be writing, and they’re not that helpful at keeping me accountable for work output. Maybe it’s better to write less regularly, less frequently, and more interestingly.

Anyway, Cory Doctorow has a good post on a phenomenon he calls “GIGOGBI” — garbage in, garbage out, garbage back in. Basically it’s when your algorithm is corrupted by including algorithmically-generated predictions in the training set. In the LLM domain this has been dubbed called “model collapse,” and AI haters await it like the Rapture; Doctorow links a good article by Kristian Lum and William Isaac showing the same phenomenon in predictive policing, which happens because your crime-prediction algorithm ends up getting trained on data produced by police following its recommendations. (The post is three weeks old because I’m behind on my reading.)

Of course, what’s a little funny about this is that before predictive policing there were “hot spots,” which were the same idea; you put more police where there’s more crime… and having more police in that spot generates more arrests, which makes it seem like there’s more crime, so you send more police, &c. You don’t need AI to make this mistake, is what I mean. It’s just Goodhart’s Law: “Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes.” Which itself is just a special case of the drunk looking for his keys under the streetlight, I suppose.

Currently listening: THIS THING BETWEEN US, by Gus Moreno, read by Robb Moreira.

If you’re enjoying my writing, you can get some of my short fiction on your e-reader for the low, low cost of $0. Remembered Air is a collection of six poems and short stories not available anywhere else. Download it here.

How to eat a can of tuna

Requirements:

A few ounces of leftover pasta (there’s absolutely no point cooking new pasta for this)A generous handful or scant double handful of fresh tomatoes—I like halved cherries, but chopped works too.A glug each of olive oil and balsamic vinegar.Salt & pepper.

Optional but strongly recommended: Anything in the savory/salty/tangy spectrum. Capers, olives, salami, &c.

Flake the tuna in a bowl. Put the pasta on top, heated if you want. Throw the tomatoes and any peripherals in a medium-hot pan with the oil and vinegar; cook until the tomatoes start to fall apart. Pour it over the tuna and pasta; mix and eat.

As to why you’d want to eat a can of tuna, that’s between you and God.

Currently reading: HUMAN TARGET vol. 2, by Tom King and Greg Smallwood.

Work week 2023-07-31

Next week

Maker: Continue HEATSTROKE HEARTBEAT edits

Manager: NA

Marketer: Watch Publisher Rocket tutorials

Last week

Work:

Legitimately a rough week—bad allergies, residual lifting fatigue, solo parenting on Sunday—but I also forgot to commit to the July newsletter, which took a long time to write and went out this morning.

I’ve committed to maker activities and no manager activities this week, but I may devote a couple of weeks to manager stuff some time soon. Task lists tend to rot if they accumulate too many old tasks, and I’ve got a lot of admin-type things festering on my writing Trello board.

I’m reading Kelly Link’s WHITE CAT, BLACK DOG on paper and listening to Fonda Lee’s JADE LEGACY; Chuck Tingle’s CAMP DAMASCUS is in the queue. CELESTE is on sale, and so are a number of BioWare D&D games; I may have to get my wallet out.

Today’s featured image is a fruit growing from a vigorous vine of mysterious provenance. I’m pretty sure it’s going to be a watermelon. I’ll probably find out when a rabbit eats half of it; but I’m enjoying it until then.

Work week 2023-07-24

Next week

Maker: Work on HEATSTROKE HEARTBEAT prologue—hopefully complete a second draft?

Manager: NA

Marketer: Keep on bloggin’

Last week

Work:

I finished TSALMOTH yesterday, so my many-months’ saga of rereading Steven Brust has finally come to a close. If you’re current on the Vlad Taltos books, I recommend Cory Doctorow’s review of TSALMOTH, which I saved for when I finished it (it’s two months old now). It reminded me a lot of my May newsletter, only Doctorow actually remembered the plots of JHEGAALA, TIASSA, IORICH, and HAWK, which I absolutely did not. (My newsletter, it should be noted, can be signed up for, in gratitude for which I’ll send you a short volume of fiction and poetry that can’t be had any other way.)

I have some thoughts on Catriona Ward’s THE LAST HOUSE ON NEEDLESS STREET. Let’s hope I can remember what they are.

Speaking, maybe, of memory, I’ve started going to the gym three times a week, up from two, and although I am not visibly more swole I am palpably more tired. This had better be a phase. I’d love to be such a beefcake I can’t even fit through the door, but not at the cost of writing completely stalling out.

Featured image is a garden visitor, thankfully indulging in the lilies of the valley and not the vegetables.

Currently listening: JADE LEGACY, by Fonda Lee, read by Andrew Kishino.

Little Dead Body Map

I’ve been meaning to write this post for a while; I guess “Little Dead Body Map” is arguably old news. But it does mark Jason Howell Hamilton‘s return to public writing — and now I’ve linked his Substack, so you can read the new news.

I met Jason on Wattpad, which is now an incubator for the occasional YA or thriller bestseller and, I can only imagine, the world’s most slash-savvy large language model. He ran a group called 100/20, which it took me a while to realize meant “100 writers over 20 years old,” a small act of resistance against the prevailing current of One Direction fanfic (those teens are closing out their twenties now). It was a good group of humans, many of whom I followed to Twitter and the blogosphere when the juice from Wattpad felt less and less worth the squeeze of posting, reading, and commenting. He moved from there to his own website, which hosted a more public version of another themed thread he’d been doing on Wattpad called “THE ?UESTIONS,” which was just putting questions to the group of writers he’d accumulated. I’d always thought it was a huge shame when he retired it — and I’m not linking it now, since it appears to have been bought by some nice folks who are very passionate about their chosen career of installing malware on your browser. After six years, I’m glad he’s back.

“Little Dead Body Map” kicks off what I think I can call a strain of neo-Howlarian writing, which tastes a little like water from a gascan and feels like the black gunk that accumulates on untrafficked surfaces on subway platforms, if you ground it between your thumb and finger. It’s grounded in the parts of the Bay area where the engineers don’t live, the administrative state they don’t have to deal with, and the technological systems they might create but are not bound by. It might be like if Stephen Graham Jones grew up in Oakland. If that sounds good, subscribe.

Currently listening: THE LAST HOUSE ON NEEDLESS STREET, by Catriona Ward.

If you’re a fantasy reader in the market for a different twist on dragons, have a look at BRIMSTONE SLIPSTREAM, the opening novella in the Streets of Flame series — free to download on all the major retailers.

Work week 2023-07-17

Next week

Maker: Complete reverse outline of HH

Manager: Reply Thea

Marketer: Blog posts

Last week

Work:

I think wrangling a list of inputs is going to block me from doing this post too often, like it did last week. It’s nice information, but I need to keep this low-impact.

Now that mornings are light and warm, I’m trying to reinstate the habit of early morning writing. Last week was reasonably successful on that front, 3/5 weekdays. Getting to bed early enough is the challenge, of course, with the light going late as it does, and with the revenge bedtime procrastination.

I beat RETURN OF THE OBRA DINN last night—first time in a while I can say that about a video game. What an experience. I’ll admit the logic puzzle piece of it got a little tedious toward the end, and I cheesed the last few fates by exploiting the game mechanic that confirms fates in sets of three, but the frozen scenes that you explore for clues are just so well rendered, eerie low-poly wireframes that are far spookier and, occasionally, more beautiful than any animation you could interact with. There’s a scene where you pass under a frozen lightning bolt that’s just breathtaking.

I’m listening to Catriona Ward’s book, THE LAST HOUSE ON NEEDLESS STREET. It’s great so far, but the marketing doesn’t place nearly enough emphasis on the fact that one of the POV characters is a housecat that’s somehow also a lesbian church lady. Like, not a human lesbian church lady who’s been transmuted into a cat, but a cat who has come by this identity honestly in its 100% cat existence. Admittedly, I can see how this could be hard to market in a horror book—like yes, this sounds less like Creeping Dread & Menace and more like Dana Carvey’s third act as a voice actor for a terrible Netflix animated special. (Lesbian Church Lady Cat has yet to detract from the Creeping Dread & Menace.) But what’s life if we can’t put our best foot forward?

This week’s image might be a squash? I get a lot of what my brother calls “volunteer” plants in the garden box because the kitchen scraps that go into the compost contain seeds. We also have a garden plot with the herbs and some uncommitted space, so the likelier-looking volunteers usually go there, and I have about six tomato plants and three of these guys (the other five died after the transplant). To look at them, you’d think squash, right? But when I transplanted them, it sure looked like the roots had emerged from avocado pits. But avocados are… you know, trees.

So, you know, watch this space; if my compost has somehow produced the world’s first avocado/squash hybrid, presumably I’ll either be talking nonstop about it, or I’ll go dark as the Men in Black from the Department of Agriculture seize it for spooky Government Purposes.

Currently reading: TSALMOTH, by Steven Brust (finally!)

If you’re enjoying my writing, you can get some of my short fiction on your e-reader for the low, low cost of $0. Remembered Air is a collection of six poems and short stories not available anywhere else. Download it here.

Work week 2023-07-03

Next week

Maker: Continue reverse outline of HEATSTROKE HEARTBEAT

Manager: Actually email cover artist for HEATSTROKE HEARTBEAT

Marketer: Blog posts maybe?

Last week

Work:

Inputs:

JHEGAALA, Steven Brust IORICH, Steven Brust TIASSA, Steven Brust HAWK, Steven Brust VAGABONDS, Hao Jingfang, read by Emily Woo Zeller WOLF IN WHITE VAN, written and read by John Darnielle DOPAMINE NATION, written and read by Anna Lembke HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS, by J. K. Rowling, read by Jim Dale HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN, by J. K. Rowling, read by Jim Dale HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 2, dir. David Yates CREEP, dir. Patrick Brice CREEP 2, dir. Patrick Brice BEASTARS S2E11, “Scatter Your Scales”; S2E12, “Taste of Rebellion” RETURN OF THE OBRA DINN, by Lucas Pope “Business Musings: Niche Marketing Part One,” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch “The Ask Jeeves-ification of online search,” by Elizabeth Lopatto

That’s like two and a half weeks of input, though, easy. Harry Potter stuff has skulls because it’s ambient exposure; I didn’t complete those listenings/viewings and don’t plan to. VAGABONDS is the rare book where I specifically don’t like the audio—and it’s not that I don’t like the narrator, it’s that for some reason I’m happy to read this prose but I don’t like listening to it. I imagine it’s not a coincidence I’m having this rare experience listening to the rare translated book, but I don’t know what to chalk it up to.

I’d like to find some time to write about RETURN OF THE OBRA DINN and DOPAMINE NATION at more length. VAGABONDS too, maybe. We’ll see.

This week’s image was acquired at Stateline Blueberries in Michigan City, Indiana.

Currently listening: WOLF IN WHITE VAN, written and read by John Darnielle.