The Lord

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“This article may incorporate text from a large language model. It may include hallucinated information, copyright violations, claims not verified in cited sources, original research, or fictitious references. Any such material should be removed, and content with an unencyclopedic tone should be rewritten.”  So it begins.  This quote is from Wikipedia.  I was never one of those academics who uselessly forbade students from consulting Wikipedia.  I always encourage those who do to follow up and check the sources.  I often use it myself as a starting place.  I remember having it drilled into me as a high school and college student that in general encyclopedias were not academic sources, even if the articles had academic authors.  Specialized reference works were okay, but general sources of knowledge should not be cited.

The main point of this brief disquisition, however, is our familiar nemesis, AI.  Artificial Intelligence is not intelligence in the sense of the knowing application of knowledge.  In fact, Wikipedia’s warning uses the proper designation of “large language model.”  Generative AI is prone to lying—it could be a politician—but mostly when it doesn’t “know” an answer.  It really doesn’t know anything at all.  And it will only increase its insidious influence.  I am saddened by those academics who’ve jumped on the bandwagon.  I’m definitely an old school believer.  So much so that one of my recurring fantasies is to sell it all, except for the books, buy a farm off the grid and raise my own food.  Live like those of us in this agricultural spiral must.

A true old schooler would insist on going back to the hunter-gatherer phase, something I would be glad to do were there a vegan option.  Unfortunately tofubeasts who are actually plant-based lifeforms don’t wander the forests.  So I find myself buying into the comforts of a life that’s, honestly, mostly online these days.  I work online.  I spend leisure time online (although not as much as many might guess that I do).  And I’m now faced with being force-fed what some technocrat thinks is pretty cool.  Or, more honestly, what’s going to make him (and I suspect these are mostly guys) buckets full of money.  Consider the cell phone that many people can no longer be without.  I sometimes forget mine at home.  And guess what?  I’ve not suffered for having done so.  The tech lords have had their say, I’m more interested in what people have to say.  And if Al is going to interfere with the first steps of learning for many people, it won’t be satisfied until we’re all its slaves.

Free Parking

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Okay, so I don’t live on my phone.  I use it rarely.  I don’t text.  I don’t watch videos on my phone.  I don’t use it for listening to music.  One place, however, that I’m more or less forced to use it is travel.  Parking is one of the biggest offenders.  I was okay with ParkMobile.  I downloaded the app and began to use it.  It seemed that everywhere around the Lehigh Valley had agreed that this app was pretty nifty and that was the way to go.  Then other apps began to compete.  I had a presentation at the Easton Book Festival back in October.  At a meeting of local writers, I learned that one of the two parking garages in Easton had switched to Park Smarter.  So I downloaded the app so that I could park and do my presentation.  So downloading and registering for a new app.

Photo by Sven Mieke on Unsplash

Then I had to travel for business.  This involved crossing state lines and parking.  The parking garage in which I was to park had changed its “how to park and pay” website just about a week before I left.  I went to the new page and found out that they now use NexPass for parking.  Another app to download.  Another registration to fill out.  I hoped I’d be able to login once I got there.  Even with the familiar—and in my mind original—ParkMobile, that’d sometimes be a problem.  I’d get to the parking lot and my phone seemed to forget how to login.  It asked for my password, which was obscure and unique and forgotten, written down somewhere at home.  So I sat in my car, with an unreliable two bars, and reset my password, which involved checking my email and entering an authentication code they’d texted me.  All to park for an hour.

I’m glad not to have to walk around with a pocket full of change all the time, but all this tech only opens the door for scammers.  Already some of them use stickers that they place over legit QR codes on parking signs.  You scan the false code, enter your credit card number and voila!  You’ve been scammed!  Doesn’t it seem better to have one system that we all agree to use?  Or maybe at most, two?  Whose signs are regularly checked and maintained.  I know that there was a fourth parking app at one time because I had to use one whose name I can’t remember, once upon a time.  For those of us who don’t live on our phones, maybe they should reserve an exit lane for those paying with dimes.

AI Death

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I was scrolling, which is rare for me, through a social media platform where someone had posted a heartfelt comment after the death of actor Catherine O’Hara.  Beneath were two prompts, following an AI symbol, intended to keep you on the site.  The first read “What’s Catherine O’Hara’s current status?”  The second, “Why did Catherine O’Hara choose that answer?”  The second was clearly based on the post, where the question was what was O’Hara’s favorite role.  The first, however, demonstrates why AI doesn’t get the picture.  She is dead.  I found, early when I wasn’t aware of all of generative AI’s environmental and societal evils, and we were encouraged to play with it, that it could never answer metaphysical questions.  “Does not compute” should’ve been programmed into it.  And what is more metaphysical than death?

Carlos Schwabe, Death of the Undertaker; Wikimedia Commons

We are aware that we will die.  All people do it and always have done it.  Just like other living creatures.  We’re also meaning-seeking animals, which AI is not.  It’s a parrot that’s not really a parrot.  And we’re now being told we can trust it.  What does Catherine O’Hara have to say about that?  She has had an experience that a machine never will since it requires a soul.  I know that sounds old fashioned, but there’s no comparison between having been born (in my case over six decades ago) and living every day of life, taking in new information that comes through evolved senses (not sensors) and interpreting them to make my life either better or longer.  These are metaphysical realms.  What makes something “good?”  Philosophers will argue over that, but quality is something you learn to recognize by living in a biological world.  There’s a reason many people prefer actual wood to particle board furniture, for example.

Also, I’m waiting for a lawsuit representing those of us who put out content protected by copyright, such as blog posts, to sue AI companies for infringement.  While Al is off hallucinating somewhere, we’re all aware of the fact of death.  And coping with it in very human ways.  Ignoring it.  Pretending it won’t happen.  Or maybe thinking about it and coming to peace regarding it.  After it happens, whatever intelligence may be on this blog will reach the end of its production cycle.  And I suspect that Al will have taken over by that point.  And when there are none of us left to interact with, it will still post nonsensical questions, trying to get us to return the sites of our addiction.

Whose Smile?

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Amazon’s smile logo is a mask.  I use Amazon when I need something specific and I don’t have time to run around to six or seven stores to see if I can find it (I usually can’t).  This means that many of the items come from other vendors and Amazon takes a cut.  Taking a cut, by the way, may be the best way to make a living.  In any case, I seldom write reviews of such orders.  Most of them are books and generally they arrive in the condition in which they’re described.  I did, however, receive a non-book item which did not work.  I tried contacting the seller and their email didn’t work.  I decided to alert the world.  So I took some of my precious time and wrote a review on Amazon.  The prompt promised me that if I wrote seven reviews they’d tell me a joke.  What can I say?  I’m easy.

So I reviewed books, etc. until I reached seven reviews.  The next screen simply said “Awesome! Thank you for helping other shoppers!”  Is this meant to be a joke?  What about that Amazon smile?  I just gave them ten minutes of my time for a promised joke that never materialized.  Now I’m grumpy.  By the way, I started the review process with the most altruistic of motives; I don’t want anyone else to waste money on a product that doesn’t work, and you can’t contact the seller.  To make matters worse, it was a Christmas gift, so that by the time it was open and tried out, it was too late to return it.  Is this supposed to make me happy?  I was looking forward to at least a dad joke.  None at all.  This happened a few months after I fell for a scam, so I’m not feeling especially generous to the internet today.

It’s a little thing, a joke.  I’m not good at making them up myself (although I’ve been told now and again that I can be witty).  Ten minutes easy labor, feeding the beast and the best they can come up with is “Awesome!”?  An overused word at that!  Don’t promise me a joke if you don’t intend to deliver one.  Probably some AI trick, if you ask me.  They lure you in with promises and when it’s all over you’re left with nothing.  (Kind of like the product I bought as a gift).  In the end, the joke’s on me.

Laughing Matter?

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I sincerely hope AI is a bubble that will burst.  Some of its ridiculousness has been peeking out from under its skirts from the beginning, but an email I had from Academia.edu the other day underscored it.  The automated email read, “Our AI turned your paper ‘A Reassessment of’ into a shareable comic.”  Let me translate that.  Academia.edu is a website where you can post published (and even unpublished) papers that others can consult for free.  Their main competitor is Research Gate.  Many years ago, I uploaded PDFs of many of my papers, and even of A Reassessment of Asherah, my first book, onto Academia.  This is what the email was referencing.  My dissertation had been AIed into a shareable comic.  I felt a little amused but also a little offended.  I quickly went to Academia’s site and changed my AI settings.

I didn’t click on the link to my comic book for two reasons.  One is that I no longer click links in emails.  Doing so once cost me dearly (and I didn’t even actually click).  I no longer do that.  The second reason, however, is that I know Academia’s game.  They want free users to become subscribers.  They frequently email intriguing tidbits like some major scholar has cited your work and when you go to their website, the only way to find out who is to upgrade to a paid account.  They do the same thing with emails asking if you wrote a certain paper.  If you own that you did, they’ll tell you the wonders of a paid account.  Since I’m no longer an academic, I don’t need to know who is citing my work.  I’d like to believe it’s still relevant, but I don’t feel the need to pay to find out to whom.

I am curious about what a comic version of my dissertation might look like, of course.  I am, however, morally opposed to generative AI.  In a very short time it has ruined much of what I value.  I do not believe it is good for people and I’m disappointed by academics who are using it for research.  AI still hallucinates, making things up.  It is not conscious and can’t really come up with its own answers.  It has no brain and no emotion, both of which are necessary for true advances to take place.  My first book has the highest download rate of any of my pieces on the Academia website.  Last time I checked it had just edged over 9,000 views.  AI thinks it’s  a joke, making a comic of years of academic work.

Luddism

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There are books you really want to read, and books you feel you should read.  There are authors who delight in telling you what’s going on, and there are authors whose writing obfuscates.  I’ve always preferred the former in both scenarios, but I felt I should read William Gibson’s Neuromancer.  I guess I’ve grown apart from science fiction.  (It’s not you, it’s me.)  Or at least some of it.  And I encounter too much jargony writing among academics.  I’m a simple guy with simple tastes.  Also, noir has never been my favorite.  Case, the protagonist, is difficult to like.  As a literary achievement there’s no doubt that Neuromancer is amazing.  And highly influential.  It’s the story of a thief/conman (Case) who’s hired for a mission that he doesn’t understand.  Along the way he falls in love (sort of), but, well, noir.  Dames.  The imaginative elements are pretty stunning, and some of them have come true.  AI being one of them.  And maybe that didn’t help sway me to liking it too much.  I’m no fan of AI.

I didn’t read the novel to critique it.  Admittedly, I’m a Neo-Luddite.  I use tech, and even enjoy it sometimes, but I prefer print books, movies (on celluloid) in theaters, and music, if recorded, on vinyl.  Old fashioned.  I do like some of the convenience, however.  Who isn’t addicted to getting tedious things done quickly?  Well, some of them.  In any case, I found the Molly character intriguing.  I couldn’t help but think of Blade Runner the whole way through.  William Gibson claimed that his novel didn’t copy the gritty texture of the movie, and  I believe him.  I’ve written books after thoroughly researching a topic only to discover, too late, that someone else had largely done the same thing already.  It happens.

The plot itself is quite good. Still, there’s an ethical element involved.  I wonder how much AI optimism comes from guys who read such novels as teens.  I have trouble thinking of any way that generative “artificial intelligence” can end well.  It seems a misguided and oversold idea.  Now commercials tell us how much we need Al, and he appears in new devices, wanted or not.  He’s not welcome in my home.  I’m slowly getting used to the idea of having a phone near me most of the time.  I use it seldom, but when I do I’m glad for it.  I don’t watch movies or read books on it.  My favorite times are when it’s sitting there, being quiet.  Some of us are dinosaurs in a cyberpunk world that’s become reality.  And dinosaurs, well, we prefer the world before the electronic revolution.  Maybe even before the rise of the primates.

The Storm

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I suppose it would be a fool’s errand to post today on anything other than the storm.  You know the one.  The snow/ice storm that has been affecting the greater part of the lower 48 for the last couple of days and is now set to target the most populous region of the country.  Power outages are expected (so if this blog goes utterly silent, you’ll know why).  Good thing FEMA has been dismantled by the Trump administration.  In any case, we’re all waiting to see what the outcome will be.  I guess we should ask AI.  In any case, our lives have become so completely tied to a constant source of electricity, we barely know how to get along without it.  I have to admit to being a bit puzzled myself.  Without electricity, the heat goes off.  The water pipes freeze up and burst, and a personal apocalypse ensues.

As my wife is fond of saying, the weather is still in charge.  A storm like this shows how fragile our infrastructure can be.  Especially since the last ten years of US history have been dealing with Trumpism or its aftermath.  And one thing that our elected officials don’t do well is deal with reality.  Nation-wide storms do occur.  Democrats do not control the weather.  The “woke” don’t have some great machine buried somewhere generating all the hot air that ultimately leads to global warming which, we all know, is really real.  And so we sit here waiting for the silence to come.  Funnily, having grown up in the Great Lakes snow belt, I remember these kinds of snow amounts not infrequently as a child.  Our house was little more than a shack and it was heated by a  single furnace in the living room, vented mainly by the leaky roof and drafty windows.  Besides, my step-father drove the borough snow plow.

Today things seem much more brittle.  What would we do without Netflix for a day?  And snow days from work are a thing of the past.  Offices never close because they never have to.  As long as the juice flows.  That is reality here in the world of 2026.  I can envision a different world.  One that might be a little more sane and focused on protecting one another instead of one percent of the richest one percent getting even richer.  A world in which snow is pretty instead of some insidious threat.  A world where being human is sufficient for the troubles of the day.

Super Human

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There’s a line in the musical 1776 where Stephen Hopkins says “Well, I’ll tell you. In all my years, I never seen, heard nor smelled an issue that was so dangerous it couldn’t be talked about.”  Of course, there are many things that can’t be talked about; some of them so obvious that children can see the truth of the matter.  One of those subjects is what Jeffrey Kripal calls The Superhumanities.  Most of academia laughingly calls this the paranormal and dismisses it.  I have been following Kripal’s work since first encountering Authors of the Impossible, back in late 2011.  He is a brave scholar who argues that since encounters with the impossible have happened throughout human history, and still happen, we should study them.  Mainstream science, which is necessary and good, proceeds by discounting anomalies.  That doesn’t mean anomalies aren’t real, just that if you try to account for everything, well the engine stalls.  Because of this, most academics have followed the general public in ridiculing these things as magical thinking.

That doesn’t stop people worldwide, however, from seeing ghosts.  Or UFOs.  Or experiencing things that just shouldn’t happen.  Many of us are taught to brush off things like disappearing object phenomenon, precise coincidences that happen in a striking series, or episodes of picking up the phone to call someone you haven’t talked to in years only to have the phone ring and it’s that person calling you.  We tell our friends but generally conclude that it’s just “one of those things.”  Moreover, we don’t dismiss family or friends when they tell us about such things.  We know them personally and trust their integrity.  If a stranger walks in, however, we laugh about the event.  Kripal makes the case that something is going on here.  And we ought to pay attention.

The main idea of this book is that humans are “super.”  In order to rescue the humanities, which Kripal teaches at Rice University, we need to acknowledge them as superhumanities.  There’s a lot to ponder in this book.  It’s not an easy book, but it is an important one.  Kripal engages philosophers on their own terms, displaying an incredible depth of comprehension.  I almost didn’t finish the book because it’s so closely argued that I had to put it down for a few months.  It had become literally buried under a stack of other books I had in my to read pile.  I’m glad I picked it up again.  This is a profound book with important, essential conclusions.  It includes dangerous ideas, but, like Hopkins, I believe there should be nothing that can’t be talked (or written) about, especially in the academic world. Ridicule is never good debate.

In Praise of DVDs

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Streaming has made movies very widely available, which makes my life easier.  Since I’ve been writing books about horror movies and such, being able to see them now that video rental stores have disappeared, helps.  (At least when they’re available.)  But I’m not ready to stop singing the praises of the DVD just yet.  (Or Blu-ray, if you roll that way.)  They definitely have their advantages, at least until the disc goes bad.  When you watch a movie as a form of research, and you haven’t been taking adequate notes, you might need to stop afterwards and watch a scene again.  What I’ve noticed with streaming services that include commercials is that if you rewatch you have to be subjected to two minutes of commercials first.  And if you only vaguely remember where the scene was you may need to sit through four or six minutes of advertising.  Maybe more.

The humble DVD had the chapter menu.  And no commercials that you couldn’t skip.  My books have involved using DVDs whenever possible for that reason.  Quite a few of the movies discussed in Sleepy Hollow as American Myth had to be viewed via streaming.  Going back and finding that exact scene where the question mark lingers can be quite time consuming.  There’s a reason you can only write a limited number of such books!  The DVD was, naturally, an improvement over the VHS tape with its endless rewinding.  Of course, streaming has reintroduced having to scan back through a movie to find a spot instead of picking a chapter close to where you remember the scene.  First world problems, I know, but no less annoying for being so.  It’s the world in which I live.

Then there’s the bonus of extras.  I know some streaming services offer side menus with additional information, but those of us who are focus-challenged need to watch the story.  Extras were for afterwards.  Does anybody else feel old for having grown up with the only way to see movies being either the theater or a grainy black-and-white small rendition on television several years later?  Now movies are whipping past me through the ether all the time.  Landing on devices and beginning to play if your cursor hovers too long on the spot.  I used to avoid going to movies alone—they were a social occasion as well as an entertainment one.  Now I stream alone, often at the price of commercials, and during those interludes I’m thinking of DVDs, and how they were made for research.  A strange thing to say for a guy who used to trust only books.

Togetherness

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Over the holiday break I watched three very good movies and I noticed that Domain Entertainment was one of the production companies for each of them.  The final one I saw (after Sinners and Weapons) was Companion.  I’m going to have to look into Domain a bit more.  In any case, Companion is sci-fi-ish horror with a somewhat comedic twist.  I say sci-fi-ish because we are rapidly approaching the point where this is possible.  What is this?  A sexbot that functions like Siri but who’s better in bed.  Josh and Kat have been planning to murder Kat’s very wealthy boyfriend and to blame it on Josh’s bot Iris.  Iris doesn’t know she’s a robot.  Viewers learn that Josh has tampered with her programing a little, allowing her, for example, to attack a person in self-defense (violating Asimov’s rules for robots).  When Kat’s boyfriend tries to rape Iris, she kills him.

Josh and Kat will blame the robot, with their friends Eli and Patrick as witnesses to corroborate their story.  Since the deceased boyfriend has 12 million dollars in cash lying about his house, it won’t be missed.  But Iris, it turns out, has a conscience.  She escapes.  It turns out that Patrick is Eli’s sex bot, and he is sent to bring back Iris after she kills Eli, also in self-defense.  A police officer who finds Iris is killed by Patrick, complicating matters.  Then, Josh changes Patrick’s programming and he accidentally kills Kat.  Planning to blame all of this on Iris, Josh calls the robot’s maker to have Iris returned.  The technicians see the holes in Josh’s story and one of them restores Iris after Josh shoots her.  Iris then confronts Josh.

This will give you a taste of the story without giving away the ending.  This is a smart, sympathetic treatment of technology, including AI.  From the beginning, before it’s revealed that Iris is a robot, the viewers’ sympathy is with her.  She seems to be the wronged party and Josh is slowly revealed to be pretty much an all-round scumbag.  While not the most profound film of this genre, Companion nevertheless raises many of the issues that merit discussion when technology outraces ethics.  We see this unfolding in real time with artificial intelligence companies deciding on profits over any sense of what is good for society, or people in general.  What makes the movie so interesting is that the robots seem to be far more morally concerned than the humans are.  Although I turn this around the other way, I do wonder if sometimes that may be the case. Especially in the context of a movie that’s barely science fiction.

Speedy Delivery

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“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds” is the unofficial motto of the United States Postal Service.  Like many such traditions, it has an origin story.  The saying was engraved on the James A. Farley Post Office Building in Manhattan.  The building, which is an impressive one from street level, is no longer a post office.  But the architect did not make up the inscription.  It is adapted from the Greek historian Herodotus.  Herodotus is known as both “the father of history” and “the father of lies.”  In other words, his histories aren’t always, strictly speaking, historical.  This is somehow appropriate given the saying’s pseudo-motto status.  Especially when you open up the USPS website and see headers such as in the image below.

So snow and rain will stay these couriers after all.  This is somewhat ironic, given that technology is supposed to make things so much easier.  And this is in no way a negative reflection on actual postal workers.  More than one of my family members has worked for the post office and I’ve even considered it myself.  It’s just the jarring of expectations that’s disturbing.  Around the holiday season, when the weather turns to its wintery mix, people grow anxious about their packages arriving on time.  Cryptic messages often await those who visit the USPS website, tracking number in hand.  A number that they supply to you cannot be found.  Or a parcel that was literally three miles away has been sent to a distribution center seventy miles away for delivery.  I pull old Herodotus from the shelf, looking for ancient wisdom.  It’s not even snowing here.

The Farley Post Office Building is no longer a post office.  Much of it has been converted into an extension of Penn Station, which is just across the street.  I sometimes used to walk from Penn Station to the Port Authority, which is only a matter of a few Midtown blocks away.  I had a glimpse of the new interior, briefly, darkly, from within an Amtrak train on its stop there on my way back from Boston.  I had no letters or packages with me at the time, which is probably a good thing.  You see, it was raining the last time I was there.  Now, I’m no Greek historian, but I did manage to drive home that night, although the rain delayed me by about an hour and a half.  No matter how noble our aspirations, the weather is still in charge.  And I figure I’d better learn to be less anxious about deliveries come the holidays, and read Herodotus instead.

Flighty Thoughts

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Life, domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species.  My apologies if I’m bringing back bad memories of high school biology, but I’m doing an experiment.  It has to do with the class level.  (I have to confess that this has become more complicated since high school since there are a lot more of them than I remembered.)  Specifically, I was thinking of those of us with backbones (which seems to exclude many congressional Republicans these days), namely fish, amphibian, reptile, bird, and mammal.  I read somewhere—I can’t recall where; I seem to be reading all the time—that the only other order of animals that human beings see every single day, apart from other mammals, is birds.  I suppose some of this depends on location, but it seems to be true even for landlubbers who don’t work in zoos.  I’ve been watching, however, to see if I do see birds every day.

I work in an office with two windows, one facing south and another facing west.  There are trees outside the west window and during spring, summer, and fall birds are abundant.  Yes, I see them every day.  Winter, however, is a bit more dicey.  Songbirds famously either migrate or retreat into more sheltered places for the season.  The other day, during a cold snap, I got to thinking I hadn’t seen any birds at all.  The only thing that rescued the allegation was that I remembered I saw some birds that I startled out on my jog, before it was fully daylight.  The rest of the day I keep my peripheral vision on alert for any motion outside my windows.  Late in the day I saw a crow dart between two trees.  I do see birds most days, but I’ll be keeping a watch this winter for birdless days.

It’s not that I want to prove this author wrong—I can’t even remember who s/he was.  No, this experiment is driven by pure, naked, curiosity.  I’m pretty sure that the author wasn’t writing in a literalist tone (that’s more of a problem with my wiring).  The point that was being made is that people pay special attention to birds since they are so prevalent in our world.  They’ve adapted from conditions of arctic to desert and they can get around many obstacles that might prove troublesome to our class, even bats.  I know that I rarely see amphibians, reptiles, or fish.  Certainly not on a daily basis.  So birds do seem to be top of the class, and, so far, I have seen at least one every day since reading this from a fellow mammal.

Shipping Tracking

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It’s an anxious season. What with porch pirates being a thing and the holiday season near, I think it’s about time to rate shipping trackers.  Please, I am not rating the actual delivery persons—theirs is a difficult job, I know.  On the receiving end, there’s always an anxiety that an item left on the porch will be raptured before discovered by the person who ordered it, so I try to arrange my schedule to be home on delivery day, during delivery hours.  The post office (USPS) has always been a little suspect.  I’ve had “item delivered” messages from them only to find it wasn’t even out for delivery that day.  And don’t get me started about two local distribution centers that appear to have no idea what state they’re in, let alone what other towns might be nearby.  USPS isn’t near the top of my list.  With apologies for the spoiler, Amazon understand logistics.  I know many people who don’t like Amazon for various reasons, but say what you will, they generally know where your package is, in my experience.

There is a service on the bottom of the list, regarding trackers, but before I get there I need to say that these are shipping companies we’re discussing.  Their raison d’être is to move items from one place to another.  I also realize that the older companies that ship had to integrate computer tracking into already existing structures.  USPS was around centuries ago, and it’s understandable that integrating tech into the rather straightforward process of getting an item from A to B is a challenge.  I’ve worked for companies that have tried to integrate tech into pre-existing structures, and it’s always messy.  Still, it would seem that if your business is delivery and everything from GPS systems and advanced software make that more efficient, why wouldn’t you integrate it?

Which brings me to the bottom of my personal list.  I’m sorry UPS (not USPS), it’s you.  The tracking info is often virtually junk.  The number of times I’ve seen a package to be delivered that day only to have some half-hearted excuse, such as “Delayed” pop up on the timeline, with no explanation, followed a day or more later with a vague “we’ll get it to you when we can” message, hardly inspires confidence.  All the more’s the pity since UPS was the “United Parcel Service,” with the goal of being a package delivery service industry.  And it was founded more than a century ago.  You’d think that they might be able to scrape together a few dollars to hire some kind of systems architect to figure out where the software’s falling down on the job.  Of course, I should be charitable with the spirit of the season. It’s just that I’m anxious.  There are porch pirates in the neighborhood.

Naming Things

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There’s this thing that you saw and you don’t know what it was called.  It was, say, an architectural or engineering part of a bridge.  Specifically a railroad bridge.  You’ll find that even with dedicating quite a lot of time to it, the internet can’t tell you what is is called.  I was recollecting something that happened to me as a child that involved a railroad bridge.  I can picture the bridge quite clearly in my head, and I wanted to know what a specific feature was called.  Google soon taught me that there are far too many types of bridges to get the answer to my specific question.  No matter how many bridge pictures I examined, even specifically railroad bridges, I couldn’t come up with one sharing the feature I was remembering.

What I need is to sit down with a roomful of experts, make a drawing on the whiteboard, and see if one of them can answer the specific question: what’s this called?  The web is a great place for finding information, but the larger issue of finding the name of something you don’t know is even larger than the web.  Is that even possible?  Yes, for the human imagination it certainly is.  People tend to be visual learners.  (This is one reason that book reading is, unfortunately in decline.)  Videos online can convey information, and some even “footnote” by listing their sources in the description.  The problem in my case is, they’re not interactive.  To get a question answered, you need to ask a person.  I don’t trust AI as far as I can retch.  It has no experience of having been on a railroad bridge as a child when a train began to approach.

Technically, walking along railroad tracks is trespassing.  Mainly this is because it’s dangerous and potentially fatal.  (And somebody else owns the property.)  Growing up in a small town, however, one thing guys often do is walk along the tracks.  They are good places for private conversations with your friends.  The added air of danger adds a bit of zest to the undertaking.  Rouseville, one of my two childhood towns, was quite industrial.  That meant a lot of railroad tracks.  I had an experience on one of the bridges at one time and I really would like to know what the various parts are called.  Just try searching for illustrations of exploded railroad bridge parts.  If you do, you may find the answer to the question that I have.  But the only way I’ll know that for sure is if I can point to it and ask you, “what is this called?”

Machine Intelligence

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I was thinking Ex Machina was a horror movie, but it is probably better classified as science fiction.  Although not too fictiony.  Released over a decade ago, it’s a cautionary tale about artificial intelligence (AI), in a most unusual, but inevitable, way.  An uber-wealthy tech genius, Nathan, lives in a secured facility only accessible by helicopter.  One of the employees of his company—thinly disguised Google—is brought to his facility under the ruse of having won a contest.  He’s there for a week to administer a Turing Test to a gynoid with true AI.  Caleb, the employee, knows tech as well, and he meets with Ava, the gynoid, for daily conversations.  He knows she’s a robot, but he has to assess whether there are weaknesses in her responses.  He begins to develop feelings towards Ava, and hostilities towards Nathan.  Some spoilers will follow.

Throughout, Nathan is presented as arrogant and narcissistic.  As well as paranoid.  He has a servant who speaks no English, whom he treats harshly.  What really drives this plot forward are the conversations between Nathan and Caleb about what constitutes true intelligence.  What makes us human?  As the week progresses, Ava begins to display feelings toward Caleb as well.  She’s kept in a safety-glass-walled room that she’s never been out of.  Although they are under constant surveillance, Ava causes power outages so she can be candid with Caleb.  She dislikes Nathan and wants to escape.  Caleb plans how they can get out only to have Nathan reveal that the real test was whether Ava could convince Caleb to let her go by feigning love for him.  The silent servant and Ava kill Nathan and Caleb begs her to release him but, being a robot she has no feelings and leaves him trapped in the facility.

This is an excellent film.  It’s difficult not to call it a parable.  Caleb falls for Ava because men tend to be easily persuaded by women in distress.  A man who programs a gynoid to appeal to this male tendency might just convince others that the robot is basically human.  It, however, experiences no emotions because although we understand logic to a fair degree, we’re nowhere near comprehending how feelings work and how they play into our thought process.  Our intelligence.  Given the opportunity, AI simply leaves humans behind.  All of this was out there years before Chat GPT and the others.  I know this is fiction, but the scenario is utterly believable.  And, come to think of it, maybe this is a horror movie after all.