Tag Archives: AI

AI there’s the rub

Interesting rumbles from the world of AI, where a chap called Adam King has recently released an online iteration of his GPT-2, a ‘language model…that generates coherent paragraphs of text one word at a time.’

https://talktotransformer.com/

Type a few words and the model will grab the ball and run; for example:

The ancient rivalry between Arsenal and Spurs continues to this day, with the two sides battling over who can claim the league title from their respective positions following the 2013-14 season.

The Gunners have been leading the chase for the Premier League title since last season’s FA Cup final, whilst Spurs looked set to repeat that feat come the 2013-14 campaign.

However, the Championship race will have continued into May with the tie ending the first leg at White Hart Lane.

Arsenal opened the scoring with an outstanding late strike, as Arsène Wenger’s side threatened to take the lead late past the hour.

It was a great effort from the hosts, who started brightly as Mikel Janmaat forced the wrong side of Tottenham keeper Michel Vorm into a smart save, but the hosts went into the break just two goals ahead.

An interesting illustration of the current version’s limitations: it’s relevant, coherent, but very much behind the times. But the model and its ilk will surely only get better. Will brainwork ultimately follow musclework to obsolescence? How in the world are our children’s children going to make a living?

What do Wii actually want?

Dictating into my phone the other day, replying to a Telegram request from my daughter, I watched the words unroll on screen: “I don’t think the we remotes ever came back after Nik took them away the other day.” By the time I’d got to ‘Nik’, the screen had begun wobbling slightly; by the time I’d reached ‘day’, the word ‘we’ had been replaced by ‘Wii’. Awesome!

By chance, later that day I was catching up on the Weekend Guardian, as is my wont, and came across this letter:

The pros of ever more sophisticated software are considerable, omnipresent, and more compelling every day. But I’m sure it’s not just my generation that’s becoming increasingly uneasy about its immense and irreversible power, given the implications of some of its cons for the ways we experience the world, the ways we speak about the world, the ways we perceive the world – and our place in it.