Growth and Change

 New content will be at "Art and Artifact". Reasons here.

Editing, Counting, and the Robo-Intern

The first ten amendments of the Constitution of the United States. Here are summaries in a haiku-like-but-not-haiku format. And a translation thereof.

	Poems of Rights	Poemas de Derechos
1	Freedom of speech, Freedom of religion, assembly, And the press too.	Libertad de expresión, Libertad de religión, reunión, Y prensa también.
2	Right to bear arms, A well-regulated militia, Necessary for a free state .	Derecho a portar armas, Una milicia bien regulada, Necesario para un estado libre.
3	No quartering troops, In private homes without consent, During peacetime.	Sin alojamiento militar, En casas particulares sin consentimiento, En tiempos de paz.
4	Unreasonable searches, And seizures are prohibited, Without a warrant.	Búsquedas e incautaciones, Irracionales están prohibidas, Sin una orden judicial.
5	No double jeopardy, No self-incrimination, Nor eminent domain.	Sin doble enjuiciamiento, Sin autoincriminación, Ni expropiación.
6	Speedy and public trial, By an impartial jury, And legal counsel.	Juicio rápido y público, Por un jurado imparcial, Y con representación legal.
7	Civil trials by jury, For cases over $20, In federal court.	Juicios civiles por jurado, Para casos de más de $20, En la corte federal.
8	Excessive bail, Cruel and unusual punishment, Are prohibited.	Fianza excesiva, Castigo cruel e inusual, Están prohibidos.
9	Other rights retained, By the people, not listed, In the Constitution.	Otros derechos retenidos, Por el pueblo, no enumerados, En la Constitución.
10	Powers not delegated, To the federal government, Are reserved to the states.	Poderes no delegados, Al gobierno federal, Están reservados a los estados.

This was realatively easy with generative "AI" (Bard, in this case), but not quite what I asked for, nor not formatted to my wants. With a parent that was an old-school programmer, I grew up with the phrase "Mainframes need their Mommies." Likewise, it appears that "AI need their Editors." So far, it is like working with a super energized and fast intern, who's imagination full-stops at the end of the page.

Data Robots! GPT, "AI", and Slaves

"Robata": is it slave work, or drudge work?

Historically, it means both kinds of bothersome work. It's work that the well-off had (and perhaps have) the serfs do. It's also the Czech word that became the worldwide word "robot" after its was used by Karel Čapek in the play R.U.R. to describe manufactured slaves. The abbreviated title refers to "Rossum’s Universal Robots", the lead encorporation (as in creating bodies with sufficient "liveliness" to be useful slaves) corporation in the play. It's founder's name translates to "Mr. Brain", an automation optimist with a belief that productivity is the measure of Man's* worth. The type that gets big funding in silicon valley and from industry.

As a data gorilla, I see a lot of data robata. And there's finally something to do it. Generative Pre-trained Transforms (GPT) are the robots, in the manner of Čapek, for my field.

There are a lot of people convinced that with the arrival of GPT Large Language Models (LLM), that "general AI" has arrived.

These models are impressive. And powerful. And transformative.

These are not general AI.

And are not structured like human, or even mammalian, intelligence: maybe vaguely like some particular glob of neurons, but they don't grow the right way. These are not a mirror to our minds, although they can mirror our discourse. They are a piece, a sub-system.

They model language; they do language processing. Yes, some models do image output, creating a picture from a prompt. For reasoning and conversation, these are intellectually similar in their role and impact. These models are communication engines. Without a deep audit of the "communication engine" analogy, I will state that clearly the models are practical for communication processing.

And when  trained on the "entire" internet, they "remember" it all, and can sound authoritative in real time, with all the dependability of internet advice. Like, or better than, a trope-fulfilling used car salesman. Despite the connotations, this is an amazing advance, and a powerful, powerful tool for many of us persons, natural and incorporated, that work with language, languages, imagery, or data.

• To grasp this change, there is a lot to consider and discuss.
  
• - What are these GPT-LLM?
• - How to reason about their use.
• - How to use for value.
• - Jobs these open and what training those jobs need.
• - Impact on economic and social stability.
• - Reasoning about the kind of things these are in Law.

My current summary of the GPT-LLM currently buzz-worded as "AI":

Generative models bullshit,
In an immensely useful way.
As unceasing as their electric feed,
And never ask for pay.

I am personally very excited about having and mastering the use of these tools.

* Man capitalized to indicate classical usage as a respectful pronoun for all humankind. This time, it's not just the common name of a species. And yes, you're included, whatever others may call you, or that you may call yourself. Contrast to Nature (what came about without us; what God wrought), and Machine (our creations both domestic and feral).

Thoughts on Archival Quality Systems

Sometimes a bit of perspective can be had by considering a new viewpoint, and today I'm having a bit of that experience as I consider the process of repairing, refurbishing, or upgrading interactive installations for museums. The idea of a concrete archive of knowledge, trying to pass itself on to the future, is really interesting. As someone who does a lot with code and algorithms, and a fair amount with electronics and small carpentry, I can see an installation as a set of these parts, but it seems wrong - the real point is the preserving, explaining, and sharing knowledge. All of the technical and material aspects of the design need to be subordinate to this purpose.

There are two big challenges with installations: people, and time.

People are the whole point, but people are also really rough on things that are not their own. Particularly the young people who are still learning, and since they are still learning, are the usual target audience for museum installations. So there has to be a lot of both durability and maintainability in an installation piece.

Time is an essential trait for most museums: most have preserving knowledge as a significant part of their mission. Unlike an artifact, as time goes on, an installation is expected to change and stay current with the latest knowledge. Fortunately, it is not usually expected that they will do this without human intervention (Whew!), but this does mean that they need to be fully prepared for upgrades and replacing parts.

Funding is almost always fairly short term for installation development, so they should be cheap to maintain. Further, due to the vagaries of staffing in non-profits, they should not require any particularly esoteric skills to maintain. Assume that at some point in the future, some poor volunteer is going to be called on to determine if "the old can be set up or fixed for ." Part of your goal as the original designer should be to make this person successful, and thus perpetuate the knowledge that the installation represents.

In my next post, I plan to elaborate these thoughts into steps that are a bit more concrete. I hope to see from that if this point of view is particularly supportive of particular design methods, or if it has any surprises about what to emphasize.

I support the Oxford comma.

With a highly divided election approaching, I thought I'd make my political stance clear: I support the Harvard, Oxford, and serial comma.

Consider this wish: "Live healthy, learn much, rock and roll." Super-stardom, or a rocking chair and rolling in your grave? Depends on how many things are in that list, right? For the Oxford comma camp there are three things, so "rock and roll"! For the non-comma there are four... "rock" and "roll" to you I guess.

In term of social acceptability, note that the Oxford Comma is the subject of a top-40 hit song, "ommission of serial comma" is not.

Before you dismiss me as an extremist, please note that I am forgiving in the case of the omission of the comma before the abbreviation "etc."