Without understanding much regarding the details of what “OpenAI” announced on Friday, I will nonetheless venture out on a limb and suggest that we have now reached Peak ASS (Artificially Sentient Slop). Therefore, I have chosen to interrupt my sort of “Reflections on Propaganda (as told by Edward Bernays)” to bring you a message from… Continue reading Peak ASS (Artificially Sentient Slop)
Tag: AI
AI = PR
Today, “propaganda” is closely associated with dictatorship. It is the boot stamping down on faces. Here in Germany I hear it mentioned time and again in messaging about historical facts together with historical footage — usually Adolf Hitler screaming into a microphone. Yet propaganda also has a more innocent-looking face, which is (perhaps) in fact… Continue reading AI = PR
The Irrational Frontier
One thing I haven’t talked about (perhaps even haven’t considered) enough is the “no man’s land” that separates rational media from irrational media. [1] This is nothing new. Shakespeare quite obviously invented “new” (and improved?) words. Strings like “Anthropic” and / or “Perplexity” might be meaningful to you (or not) primarily depending on which linguistic… Continue reading The Irrational Frontier
Waking Up to Basic Literacy Skills
A little over a week ago, I was yet again reminded of how poor the literacy skills of most people — even in some of the most “technologically advanced” countries on Earth — are. Indeed, this is perhaps best depicted in the movie “Idiocracy”, which I have often quoted on this blog already. [1] My… Continue reading Waking Up to Basic Literacy Skills
That’s Entertainment — But It’s Not Amusing!
I have a friend who keeps informing me about minute details from blockbuster movies — and I guess perhaps I also sometimes note some noteworthy piece of history in music. We are always attempting to trump each other’s facts about which morsel of information is more essential towards a well-balanced liberal arts education. Which brings… Continue reading That’s Entertainment — But It’s Not Amusing!
The End of Objectivity
I only apologize a little bit for using this ambiguous title. I think there are indeed (at least) two different interpretations that both seem valid, but oddly both interpretations also seem relevant. One interpretation is that there is a point where objectivity will stop — and that is the interpretation that actually motivated me to… Continue reading The End of Objectivity
On the Internet …
One thing that irritates me time and again is when someone tells me they saw something “on the Internet”. It’s an insult to humanity to have such a low degree of literacy. In order to begin to understand how absurd such a statement is, consider how you would feel if someone talked to you about… Continue reading On the Internet …
Spoken vs. Written Language
Writing this week’s blog post has been difficult, because I have experienced significant trauma related to the topic of this post. In graduate school, I wrote an essay on the differences between written and spoken languages in a course called “diachronic linguistics”, in which I came to the conclusion that it is impossible to study… Continue reading Spoken vs. Written Language
We need to figure out what’s going on
This is something a Silicon Valley celebrity said recently — and I’ve decided to “steal” it because the meaning is actually rather ambiguous and depends a lot on context. The person who said it, simply said it in passing and didn’t contextualize what was meant at all — I actually have a vague “gut feeling”… Continue reading We need to figure out what’s going on
Be the Change
When Jim Morrison sang “I’m a change-ling, see me change” … who knows what he was thinking about? As we may think, he might have been alluding to the Godfather of modern views about change: Non-Nobel Peace Prize winner Gandhi, who apparently advised us all to “be the change you want to see in the… Continue reading Be the Change
