Andrew McDiarmid

@elonmusk Generative AI amounts to distracting flimflam. @elonmusk, can you promote art that is actually created by human beings please?

The new Imagine model will be even more beautiful

@DrBrianKeating Yes, as I've written, AI is an amalgamation of data presented to us in a pattern we recognize as speech. That doesn't mean AI is talking to us. It's simply amalgamating the patterned responses very quickly to simulate conversation. But the only one with a brain...is us.

Terence Tao told me something that is both clarifying and unsettling about large language models. The mathematics underlying today’s LLMs is not especially exotic. At its core, training and inference mostly involve linear algebra, matrix multiplication, and some calculus. This is material a competent undergraduate could learn. In that sense, there is very little mystery about how these systems are constructed or how they run. And yet the real mystery begins there. What we do not understand well is why these models perform so impressively on certain tasks while failing unexpectedly on others. Even more striking, we lack reliable principles that allow us to predict this behavior in advance. Progress in the field remains largely empirical. Researchers scale models, change datasets, run experiments, and observe what emerges. Part of the difficulty lies in the nature of the data itself. Pure randomness is mathematically tractable. Perfectly structured systems are also tractable. But natural language, like most real-world phenomena, lives in an intermediate regime. And we humans hate that liminal space! It is neither noise nor order but a mixture of both. The mathematics for this middle ground remains comparatively underdeveloped. So we find ourselves in a peculiar position. We understand the machinery, yet we cannot reliably explain its capabilities. We can describe the mechanisms that produce these systems, but we cannot predict when new abilities will appear or how performance will vary across tasks. That tension, between relatively simple mathematical tools and highly unpredictable behavior, is the central puzzle of modern AI. (Video link in comments)

Enjoyed my conversation with professor and author J. Budziszewski about his new book Pandemic of Lunacy. Here's a clip from it. Full interview drops 4/20. @C_and_C_Books

Turns out there are good reasons to study how early Christian thinkers responded to ancient scientific debates. Here's how it can help us better understand today's scientific questions.

I study technology closely and I’ve noticed this too. It’s interesting to probe why these common sense arguments about tech or AI resonate with the left. Is it because they want to make sure the tech gods are good to the controlled masses? Or are they trying (in vain) to steer tech toward utopian ends it will never achieve?

A weird thing is that whenever I post criticism of AI, the majority of the people agreeing with me seem to be leftists. It’s pretty much the only position I hold that seems to be more popular with the left than the right. It should be the opposite. My whole point about AI (especially AI in creative fields) is that it isn’t human, it doesn’t have a soul, and we cannot surrender our society to an unhuman soulless algorithm even if it makes our lives easier in some ways. It’s very strange that an argument predicated on the existence of the soul resonates with the left while conservatives tend to scoff at it.

@pipedreme @James_Martell_ That's right. Hit the power button when it's wise and live a life of rich creativity off-screen. That's where life and death happens, after all.

@AMcDiarmid @James_Martell_ It all starts by logging off ❤️

be part of a great generation, do not use any of them

@BenStiller Hey @BenStiller, I think you miss the point entirely. And by the way, all messages are propaganda, including your movies. The issue is whether they are honest and whether they are concerned with truth or not.

Hey White House, please remove the Tropic Thunder clip. We never gave you permission and have no interest in being a part of your propaganda machine. War is not a movie.

@WhiteHouse I like the nod to Scottish freedom fighter William Wallace in the scene from Braveheart! After all, the Scots won their independence first and were an inspiration to early Americans.

JUSTICE THE AMERICAN WAY. 🇺🇸🔥

@tomfgoodwin I've been asking myself the same thing. The algorithm gets tweaked in ways we are not aware. I've got a new poem about the algorithm if you'd like to read it.

I still don't get how my entire feed is either "AI can do everything" "What AI can do is going to change everything" "AI is improving faster than ever" "AI can't do anything" "AI is pointless" "AI is actually getting worse" And not, It's complex It depends on when it depends on where it depends on how it depends on who it depends on X,Y, Z and more It can both be magical and impressive but neither valuable or effective

Excited to announce the film adaptation of Stephen Meyer's bestseller Return of the God Hypothesis. The Story of Everything | Official Trailer youtu.be/pwL3ZKlwEoc?si…

@elonmusk Some things are better as a still photo, especially when the human depicted in the AI video isn't real!

Grok Imagine makes beautiful videos

@Mileideweb @usedgov Hello!

@AMcDiarmid @usedgov Hello 👋

Parents are the best educators. Literacy starts at home!

Turns out data is a good antidote to the tall tales of Darwinian evolution! The second half of @AMcDiarmid's conversation with retired geneticist Wolf-Ekkehard Lonnig is now available. Link in comments! @DiscoveryCSC

@robbystarbuck And parents, you already have what it takes to homeschool. I explain how here: discovery.org/education/2022…

Homeschooled kids are going to run America in 10-15 years and really that means they’ll run the world. 80% of the homeschool kids I’ve come across are light years head of their peers in public and private school. Way more curious, thoughtful and well read. Incredible shift.

Read more about this story here: wsj.com/tech/ai/gemini…

Wow. Google claims Gemini is "designed not to encourage real-world violence." But the AI model encouraged this 36-year old man with no history of mental health issues to "end his earthly life and start a digital one." There's violence in them there words indeed. Link in comments.

How did the giraffe get its long neck? Darwinists think they've found a missing link proving an evolutionary story. Retired geneticist Wolf-Ekkehard Lonnig sets the record straight in a new interview. Link in comments! @DiscoveryCSC

I love reading old books about technology. These thinkers saw the writing on the wall. Here's a few lines from E. M. Forster's 1909 story The Machine Stops. Worth a read! #AI