Tag: Sam Altman

Change Is Hard

Why hasn’t AI figured this out yet?

Change may be inevitable but change is hard. Change becomes harder when those making the change, for whatever reasons, don’t remember change is hard. The only thing that doesn’t change is how easily we forget that change is hard.

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OpenAI met with some real friction after announcing its big changes last week. Apple is going to meet some when it doles out its new operating systems with Liquid Glass next month. HBO changes its name so often it can’t even get it right in press releases. The list is as long as history. Every company faces this. Some do it well. Others not so.

As  M.G. Siegler points out in this column if you’ve been around long enough you learn to recognize the patterns. You have to be willfully blind or consumed by ego not to. In fact, the problems with instituting change are so predictable it makes one wonder why these AI engines, endlessly regurgitating whatever human wisdom they can scrape and scrounge, don’t caution against it. I’m sure somewhere in all the words and wisdom created by humans “change is hard” has been said before.

If we’re marching towards an advanced AGI with PhD level knowledge that can reason better than humans, I think the masters of the AI universe need to solve that problem before anyone can make a claim that we might someday get there.

Call me when that happens.

It’s like watching a new edition to the Alien franchise hoping one actually turns out to be more than a repeat. Or watching an American football team with a bad offensive line try to run the ball up the middle over and over again. Or thinking that once inflation retreats that prices will come down. Or thinking humans will one day be smart enough not to fall for obvious con games.

The unsolvable riddle about change involves the variables and vagaries of human nature. That’s a constant that will never change.

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above. 

(Image from Linus Nylund on Unsplash)

Artificial Intelligence is No Match for Human Goofiness

Everyone’s intelligence is being challenged given the decidely human drama going on over OpenAI’s adventures in whatever it is adventuring in. The story’s not over by any stretch of the imagination (or hallucinating) but from what we know it only proves that anything humans touch, humans can screw up.

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Here’s a link to a story on TechCrunch about what, at the time of its publishing, was the latest news that Microsoft. CEO Satya Nadella,  exercising the muscles Microsoft built up with its 10 billion dollar investment in the company, hired Altman and the company president Greg Brockman after a weekend of boards, CEOs, directors, and investors doing what they typically do. Employees of OpenAI have signed a letter saying they’ll leave unless Altman is brought back. Even the guy who suggested outing Altman has signed on to do so. Goofy? You bet.

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But I’m thinking all the horses are out of the barn into more Azure pastures.

All of this is about AI, a powerful and world changing technology, fraught with possibly as much potential harm as promise. That genie is out of the bottle, never to be put back in with a future no human or AI model can really predict. This story will continue to unfold, as will the technology. What won’t change is what I said in the opening paragraph: Anything humans touch, humans can screw up.

Sunday Morning Reading

Chili was on the menu last night and it’s a chlly Autumn Sunday morning. So it’s time to share some Sunday Morning Reading featuring a little poetry, some politics, some not so intelligent moves in the Artificial Intelligence world (is it a world?) and just some damn good writing worth your time.

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Let’s start with the poetry. One of my favorite new writing discoveries is NatashaMH on Medium. She popped out a piece of poetry, Pereginations, the other day on Ellemeno and this morning she’s got a terrific piece called The Day I Learned Poetry. Good stuff. Good times. Good fun. Nothing artifcial about the intelligence happening there.

Speaking of AI, it was and still is quite a weekend on that front. OpenAI’s board surprisingly fired poster boy CEO Sam Altman, now he may come back after lots of hueing and crying.  Or he may not. Who knows. Om Malik has a great piece called Foundational Risks of OpenAI looking at the story but rightly hitting the bullseye that this is more than about corporate chaos and investment returns. I’m not sure AI, or its champions, is built for looking back with a long view.

Our politics here in the U.S is still a mess with no foreseable correction in the cards. Dan Balz, Clara Ence Morse and Nick Mourtoupalas take a look at some of the foundational biases in the U.S. Senate that, in my belief, need to change before any next card can be revealed. Check out The Hidden Biases at Play in the U.S. Senate.

Sometimes an outside view is needed for perspective. In this case not so much. Even so, The Economist weighing in with Donald Trump Poses The Biggest Danger to the World in 2024 offers good context in its global round up.

Like it or not, much of our life on the Internet is changing. Social Media is a crazy free-for-all and so is the world of entertainment. In How Social Media Is Turning Into Old-Fashioned Broadcast Media, Christopher Mims takes a look at the stew that’s stewing.

And where would we be without critics? Probably better off, but that’s not necessarily the point of Siskel, Ebert, and the Secret of Criticism by Richard Brody. Here’s a quote:

Criticism is a fraught profession because it’s parasitical. It depends on the work of artists, without which criticism couldn’t exist. A critic who acknowledges and accepts the fact of this dependence is trying to salvage the dignity of the activity; critics who don’t are just trying to salvage their own dignity.

David Todd McCarty is starting a daily column entitled A Bit Dodgy. I recommend subscribing, following, but most of all reading. I’m sure it will be quite a ride.

And in case you’re wondering, worried, or concerned about all of the insanity happening in the world that makes it feel like we’re approaching the End Times, Jeannie Ortega Law tells us that Left Behind author, Jerry Jenkins thinks that all of those End Times prophecies have been fulfilled. So check that off your list.

If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here.