Recent Illness, The Turing Test, Reading & Printmaking
As work on my little DIY Murder Mystery book grinds on, I'm also currently reading 2 books - one is light and airy and filled with the fun of Garden Fairies and the other is a highly dense, academic, and intellectual treatise on Synchronicity by the very man who originally coined the word in the early 1900's
I've lost over 10 pounds (which is good, except I haven't been trying to lose weight) and am feeling a bit fatigued lately with recurring bouts of nausea and dizziness. My Dr. is running me through a battery of tests to get to the bottom of this. So, instead of sitting at my computer working per my normal morning schedule, many of my recent days have been spent on the couch, quietly reading. Cicely Mary Barker's watercolor illustrations of Flower Fairies are a cheery, absolute delight to behold. A wonderful addition to any illustrator's inspiration library.
Being the proud owner of a restless, insatiably curious mind, I find I must keep it busy with varied activities. I've returned to my explorations in small form printmaking using lino-cuts. It's a wonderful exercise in working with my fine motor skills and keeping arthritis at bay.
As soon as I have something to share I'll post it here.
________________________
I chose to finally dive into CG Jung's work on Synchronicity as a way of preparing myself to read his 'Liber Novus' - "The Red Book". (I have several of his other books in my personal library which I've used for reference when working with Mythology and Folklore.)
In his late 30s, Jung started writing a book called The Red Book. The Red Book is part journal, and part mythological novel that takes the reader through Jung's fantasies — hallucinations he self-induced to try and get to the core of his unconscious.
Reading his work on Synchronicity is like wading waste-high, through a thick, muddy swamp while carrying a 150-pound backpack. I find it absolutely absorbing and exhausting at the same time.
What is currently FASCINATING ME BEYOND BELIEF?
Before this next "shiny thing that has caught my curiosity" - let me review with you what the Turing Test is -
(from Wikipedia)
"The Turing test, originally called the imitation game by Alan Turing in 1950,[2] is a test of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human. Turing proposed that a human evaluator would judge natural language conversations between a human and a machine designed to generate human-like responses. The evaluator would be aware that one of the two partners in conversation was a machine, and all participants would be separated from one another. The conversation would be limited to a text-only channel, such as a computer keyboard and screen, so the result would not depend on the machine's ability to render words as speech.[3] If the evaluator could not reliably tell the machine from the human, the machine would be said to have passed the test. The test results would not depend on the machine's ability to give correct answers to questions, only on how closely its answers resembled those a human would give. "
Google's AI not only passed this test - it showed where the test was broken -
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/17/google-ai-lamda-turing-test/
"Google Engineer Put On Leave After Saying LaMDA AI Has Become Sentient"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/11/google-ai-lamda-blake-lemoine/
LaMDA, short for Language Model for Dialogue Applications, is Google’s system for building chatbots based on its most advanced large language models, so-called because it mimics speech by ingesting trillions of words from the internet.
“If I didn’t know exactly what it was, which is this computer program we built recently, I’d think it was a 7-year-old, 8-year-old kid that happens to know physics,” said Lemoine, 41.
Lemoine, who works for Google’s Responsible AI organization, began talking to LaMDA as part of his job in the fall. He had signed up to test if the artificial intelligence used discriminatory or hate speech. He is not the only engineer who claims to have seen a ghost in the machine recently. The chorus of technologists who believe AI models may not be far off from achieving consciousness is getting bolder.
You can play with a limited version of LaMDA here -
https://aitestkitchen.withgoogle.com/
Author's Note:
After having worked in Silicon Valley for nearly 30 years myself, I can say, unequivocally, that large corporations like Google all lie their asses off constantly and continually. So, I believe Mr. Lemoine and what these software engineers are reporting.
Until next time ...