Dozen Basic AI FAQs

Last update: Friday 1/12/24 

This page contains links to responses by Google's Bard chatbot to 12 questions that should be asked more frequently, but aren't. As consequence, too many readily understood AI terms have become meaningless buzzwords in the media. 

The questions on this page are ordered by increasing specificity, so they should be read in numerical order. Most readers are less likely to understand Bard's answers to later questions if they haven't read its answers to questions that appear earlier in the list.

Read more ➡ HERE

The surprising power of Small Language Models (SLMs) ... TL;DR and podcast 21Dec23

Last update: Thursday 12/21/23 

Welcome to our 21Dec23 TL;DR summary + podcast about the past week's top AI story on our "Useful AI News" page ➡ Microsoft's newest small language model (SLM) and its benchmarks 

Click the "start" button in the audio control (below) to hear the podcast ...  If audio fails to start, or gets stuck, try reloading the page.

 

TL;DR link ➡ HERE

First came the AI Big Bang; now comes the aftershocks and tremors... TL;DR and podcast 10Dec23

Last update: Sunday 12/10/23 

Welcome to our 12Dec23 TL;DR + podcast about the past week's top 3 AI stories on our "Useful AI News" page 1) The biggest aftershock: Google's Gemini, (2) Tremor: Meta and IBM lead an alliance, and (3) Another tremor: Apple’s new framework 

Demis Hassabis, PhD -- CEO, Google DeepMind

Click the "start" button in the audio control (below) to hear the podcast ...  If audio fails to start or gets stuck, try reloading the page. 

TL;DR link ➡ HERE

Amazon's re:Invent, DeepMind's breakthrough, and Microsoft as OpenAI's partner ...TL;DR and Podcast 3Dec23

Last update: Monday 12/4/23 

Welcome to our TL;DR summary and podcast about the past week's top 3 AI stories on our "Useful AI News" page ➡ 1) Amazon's "re;Invent 2023" customer conference, (2) Google DeepMind's latest scientific breakthrough, and (3) A closer look at Microsoft's side of its partnership with OpenAI.

... Click the "start" button in the audio control (below) to hear the podcast. If audio fails to start, or gets stuck, try reloading the page.

 

TL;DR link ➡ HERE

"The AI Big Bang" a/k/a The fall and rise of Sam Altman ... 26Nov23 TL;DR and podcast

 Last update: Sunday 11/26/23 

Welcome to our TL;DR summary of and podcast about the past week's top two AI stories on our "Useful AI News" page ...

(1) What happened? (2) Why did it happen?

... Click the "start" button in the audio control (below) to hear the podcast. 

 

TL;DR link ➡ HERE

Microsoft's dev con, Google's GraphCast, and Sam Altman's farewell ... TL;DR + Podcast 19Nov23

Last update: Monday 11/20/23 

Welcome to our 19Nov23 TL;DR summary + podcast about the past week's top 3 AI stories on our "Useful AI News" page:
1) Microsoft's conference for developers and IT professionals, (2) Google Deep Mind's awesome AI weather forecasts, and (3) the sudden seismic firing of Sam Altman by OpenAI's board ... Click the "start" button in the audio control (below) to hear the podcast.

 

TL;DR link ➡ HERE

OpenAI's Dev Con, Elon's Grok, and Humane's AI pin ... TL;DR + Podcast 12Nov23

Last update: 11/13/23 

Welcome to our TL;DR summary + podcast about the past week's top AI stories on our "Useful AI News" page: 1) Open AI's first-ever developers conference, (2) "Grok" (Elon Musk's sardonic chatbot), and (3) Humane's new AI pin.
... Click the "start" button in the audio control (below) to hear the podcast.

 

TL;DR link ➡ HERE

A podcast about our podcasts ... Coming soon!!!

Last update: 11/9/23 

Welcome to a short podcast about our forthcoming weekly podcasts ...

 

Read more ➡ HERE

Civil war in the AI community ➡ Open vs. closed AI platforms ... Top AI stories TL;DR 3Nov23

Last update: 11/3/23 

This week's top stories covered two related developments. The first played out onstage in three of the grandest global venues; whereas the second unfolded backstage ... Note: The current edition of "Useful AI News" can be found ➡ HERE

Google vs. Microsoft... Top AI stories TL;DR 27OCT23

Last update: 10/27/23

Consider the image for this blog note. Question: Why is that man smiling? Answer: He is smiling because he is Satya Nadella, the very well paid CEO of Microsoft. As described in the articles reporting our first top story, Nadella's huge investment bets in AI have yielded substantial quarterly earnings, earnings that have convinced Wall Street that AI will soon become a highly productive and highly profitable money maker for Microsoft. Microsoft’s growth in the most recent quarter stemmed from the business unit the company labels “Azure and other cloud services,” which houses its investments in AI ... Note: The current edition of "Useful AI News" can be found ➡ HERE
 

Bard vs. ChatGPT ... Top AI stories TL;DR 20Oct23

Last update: 10/20/23

When OpenAI introduced ChatGPT driven by a comprehensive LLM called "GPT-3.5" back in late 2022, it caught Google off-guard. Google was even more befuddled when OpenAI replaced GPT-3.5 with the more powerful model GPT-4 in early 2023; then OpenAI released an incessant stream of new capabilities for ChatGPT in the months that followed ... Note: The current edition of "Useful AI News" can be found ➡ HERE

Ezra Klein, "The Matrix", and Big Tech's current efforts to trivialize LLMs

Last update: 5/31/23 

Once again, the editor of this blog calls his readers' attention to some cogent observations about artificial intelligence (AI) from Ezra Klein, his favorite public intellectual. Mr. Klein's observations appeared in a recent NY Times op ed ==> "Beyond the ‘Matrix’ Theory of the Mind", Ezra Klein, NY Times, 5/28/23. As the editor suggested in a previous note on this blog, "Ezra Klein: the public intellectual as AI critic", Klein is brilliant and well informed; but he is not an AI expert, so his incisive comments illuminate the limits of what can be understood about large language models (LLMs) and other AI technologies by non-experts.

Developing reliable specialized large language models (LLMs) for the multi billion dollar online/hybrid education market

Last update: Friday 5/12/23 

Why did OpenAI release ChatGPT with the GPT-3.5 model, then with GPT-4, even though both models were prone to factual errors, bias, and "hallucinations". Open AI claimed that it did so, even at the risk of being banned in some countries (e.g., Italy temporarily), in order to learn from widespread user experience with the flawed models. 

Ezra Klein: the public intellectual as AI critic

Last update: Sunday 4/23/23

 

According to Wikipedia, "The term public intellectual "describes the intellectual participating in the public-affairs discourse of society, in addition to an academic career." The editor of this blog frequently cites Wikipedia definitions of important concepts, but he was surprised and disappointed by the narrow academic focus of its definition in this case. Ezra Klein is not a tenured professor in a university and does not have a PhD, the union card usually required for admission to tenure. But neither did Walter Lippmann, one of this nation's first and most eminent public intellectuals 

The Neoskeptics editor asked the GPT-4 Oracle: "What's the next big thing after Large Language Models (LLMs)?" -- DRAFT

Last update: Saturday 4/15/23 

Once again, the editor of this blog has asked the GPT-4 oracle to look into its crystal ball. Of course, an LLM can't analyze anything or predict anything; but it should be able to produce a plausible distillation of the consensus of opinions among the small community of experts who have published the most papers on the Internet that addressed the issues raised by his questions. Like millions of other "well informed" people, the editor had been surprised, nay flabbergasted by the sudden appearance of ChatGPT last fall running GPT-3.5, and again a few weeks ago when the new GPT-4 model was introduced. 

ChatGPT's response to our 3rd question: "What do I have to learn in order to become a competent user of applications based on large language models?"

Last update: Monday 4/10/23 

On 4/10/23 the editor of this blog posed the question in the title of this note to ChatGPT running its GPT-4 model.  In the editor's opinion, the chatbot's detailed response lays out a realistic learning program; it is not a "hallucination".

Note that this is the editor's second revision of a question he originally posed to ChatGPT on 4/8/23, revised yet again because this third version is a simpler, more effective "prompt" to ChatGPT to produce guidance for obtaining the knowledge and skills that most non-AI experts really want ... :-)

Our public health agencies will probably manage the next pandemic as ineffectively as they managed this one

Last update: Tuesday 2/28/23 

The editor of this blog earned a PhD in planning from one of the nation's leading universities. His studies alerted him to the benefits of strategic planning as well as to its inescapable limitations when there are fundamental disagreements within a society as to which goals are the most important to achieve.  In democratic societies, like the U.S.,  disagreements about fundamental goals are resolved by political compromises, with deference given to the goals of the leadership groups that gained the most votes in the most recent elections, deference but not blind acceptance. But in autocratic societies, like China and Russia, disagreements are resolved by strict adherence to the diktats of the elites currently in power; dissent is not tolerated.

Saving thousands of lives in red states; Governor Ron DeSantis, an imperfect messenger

Last update: Saturday 2/11/23

A previous note in this blog suggested that Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida was a ruthless, racist, culture warrior who was also a MAGA-hatted, Trump successor wannabe. 

Nevertheless, that note went on to present CDC data that showed that his management of the COVID pandemic in Florida attained the same low number of deaths per 100,000 members of his red state's vulnerable 65+ residents as did California, the bluest of blue states.

COVID misinformation from infectious disease experts

Last update: Saturday 2/4/23 

Now that the COVID pandemic has morphed into an endemic, neither the conservative MAGA media nor the liberal/progressive mainstream pays much attention to COVID developments. This only leaves U.S. infectious disease experts as a significant potential source of COVID misinformation.