Pros and Cons of AI for Authors

Is AI good or bad for authors? AI (artificial intelligence) is such a broad term, and the technology included under its umbrella -- from little more than an enhanced variety of autocomplete to programs that almost appear to "think" -- is so diverse, that this question seems impossible to answer with a simple positive or negative. In this WRITER'S DIGEST article, Mike Trigg covers the most problematic and often discussed downsides, such as unauthorized use of written works for training generative AI, appropriation of copyrighted content without permission or payment, and the perceived market threat of AI-produced books. What he believes we should worry about most, however, is "discovery bias":

The Worst Is Yet to Come

How do potential audiences find creators' works? Through one form or another of advertising, changing as communication technologies advance. "AI will fundamentally change how we discover content," Trigg warns. Herein, he maintains, lies the greatest threat to authors. "In a future of AI-curated content, whose content do you think will be discoverable? Short answer: Whoever pays for that privilege." In this near-future scenario, "Rather than placing ads adjacent to Google search results or embedded in an Instagram feed, AI can just tell the user what to read, what to buy, what to do, without the pesky inconvenience of autonomous thought." Resulting feedback loops will lead to product recommendations, in books as in other commodities, that guide readers to content more and more similar to what they've purchased in the past. Niche markets will become progressively niche-er. "Discovery Bias will further concentrate the publishing industry into fewer and fewer bestselling authors -- the ones with the name recognition, publicity teams, and promotional budgets to generate a self-perpetuating consumption loop."

I'm not totally convinced the benefits will be restricted to bestselling authors. Mightn't lesser-known authors "similar" to the bestsellers in their subgenre also get a boost from the discovery process? But I can't deny the plausiblity of Trigg's warning.

His final paragraph offers hope, though. The unique gift of human authors, "crafting stories that are original, emotional, and compelling. . . .is still something that no technology can replicate."

Note the potential implications of "still," however.

For more on the pros and cons of cutting-edge artificial intelligence, you might want to get the AI-themed May/June 2024 issue of SKEPTICAL INQUIRER.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

AI as a Bubble

Cory Doctorow's latest LOCUS column analyzes AI as a "tech bubble." What Kind of Bubble Is AI?

Although I had a vague idea of what economists mean by "bubble," I looked it up to make sure. I thought of the phenomenon as something that expands quickly and looks pretty but will burst sooner or later. The Wikipedia definition comes fairly close to that concept: "An economic bubble (also called a speculative bubble or a financial bubble) is a period when current asset prices greatly exceed their intrinsic valuation, being the valuation that the underlying long-term fundamentals justify." The term originated with the South Seas Bubble of the early eighteenth century, involving vastly inflated stocks. The Dutch "tulip mania" of the seventeenth century offers another prominent example.

Doctorow takes it for granted that AI fits into this category. He begins his essay with, "Of course AI is a bubble. It has all the hallmarks of a classic tech bubble." He focuses on the question of what KIND of bubble it is. He identifies two types, "The ones that leave something behind, and the ones that leave nothing behind." Naturally, the first type is desirable, the second bad. He analyzes the current state of the field with numerous examples, yet always with the apparent underlying assumption that the "bubble" will eventually "pop." Conclusion: "Our policymakers are putting a lot of energy into thinking about what they’ll do if the AI bubble doesn’t pop – wrangling about 'AI ethics' and 'AI safety.' But – as with all the previous tech bubbles – very few people are talking about what we’ll be able to salvage when the bubble is over."

This article delves into lots of material new to me, since I confess I don't know enough about the field to have given it much in-depth thought. I have one reservation about Doctorow's position, however -- he discusses "AI" as if it were a single monolithic entity, despite the variety of examples he refers to. Can all possible levels and applications of artificial intelligence be lumped together as components of one giant bubble, to endure or "pop" together? Maybe those multitudes of different applications are what he's getting at when he contemplates "what we'll be able to salvage"?

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

The Internet Knows All

This week I acquired a new HP computer to replace my old Dell, which had started unpredictably freezing up at least once per day. Installing Windows 11 didn't fix it. It had reached the point where even CTRL-ALT-DEL didn't unfreeze it; I had to turn it off manually and restart every time it failed. It feels great to have a reliable machine again.

Two things struck me about the change: First, the price of the new one, bundled with a keyboard and mouse, about $500. Our first computer, an Apple II+ purchased as a gift at Christmas of 1982, cost over $2000 with, naturally, nowhere near the capabilities of today's devices. No hard drive, no Windows or Apple equivalent therof, and of course no internet. And in that year $2000 was worth a whole lot more than $2000 now. Imagine spending today's equivalent in 2023 dollars for a home electronic device. Back then, it was a serious financial decision that put us into debt for a long time. Thanks to advances in technology, despite inflation some things DO get cheaper. An amusing memory: After unveiling the wondrous machine in 1982, my husband decreed, "The kids are never going to touch this." LOL. That rule didn't last long! Nowadays, in contrast, we'd be lost if we couldn't depend on our two youngest offspring (now middle-aged) for tech support.

The second thing that struck me after our daughter set up the computer: How smoothly and, to my non-tech brain, miraculously, Windows and Google Chrome remembered all my information from the previous device. Bookmarks, passwords, document files (on One Drive), everything I needed to resume work almost as if the hardware hadn't been replaced. What a tremendous convenience. On the other hand, it's a little unsettling, too. For me, the most eerie phenomenon is the way many websites know information from other websites they have no connection to. For example, the weather page constantly shows me ads for products I've browsed on Amazon. Sometimes it seems that our future AI overlords really do see all and know all.

In response to recent warnings about the "existential threat" posed by AI, science columnist Keith Tidman champions a more optimistic view:

Dark Side to AI?

He points out the often overlooked difference between weak AI and strong AI. Weak AI, which already exists, isn't on the verge of taking over the world. Tidman, however, seems less worried about the subtle dangers of the many seductively convenient features of the current technology than most commentators are. As for strong AI, it's not here yet, and even if it eventually develops human-like intelligence, Tidman doesn't think it will try to dominate us. He reminds us, "At the moment, in some cases what’s easy for humans to do is extraordinarily hard for machines to do, while the converse is true, too." If this disparity "evens out" in the long run, he nevertheless believes, "Humans won’t be displaced, or harmed, but creative human-machine partnerships will change radically for the better."

An amusing incidental point about this article: On the two websites I found by googling for it, one page is headlined, "There Is Inevitable Dark Side to AI" and the other, "There Is No Inevitable Dark Side to AI." So even an optimistic essay can be read pessimistically! (Unless the "No" was just accidentally omitted in the first headline. But it still looks funny.)

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

AI Sermons?

To follow up the topic of "creative" artificial intelligence programs, here are some clergy-persons' thoughts about sermons composed by chatbots:

Sermons Written by ChatGPT

Not surprisingly, the consensus from representatives of several different faith traditions is that AI-composed sermons have no "soul." This is one genre in which the personal, human element remains essential. A rabbi in New York comments, “Maybe ChatGPT is really great at appearing intelligent, but the question is, can it be empathetic? And that, right now at least, it can’t.” A pastor in Minneapolis writes about the program's attempt to compose an essay on maintaining one's mental health during the stress of the holiday season, “Although the facts are correct, there is something profound missing. . . . AI can’t understand community and inclusivity and how important those things are in building a church.”

On the other hand, New Testament scholar Todd Brewer asked ChatGPT to write a Christmas sermon based on the Nativity story in Luke's gospel, "with quotes from Karl Barth, Martin Luther, Irenaeus of Lyons, and Barack Obama." He was taken aback when the resulting composition was “better than many Christmas sermons I’ve heard over the years.” However, judging from the listed criteria, the requested product sounds more like an article than a sermon. Brewer himself, again not surprisingly, said it lacked "human warmth." Given that reservation, can the AI really be said to "understand what makes the birth of Jesus really good news"? Not to mention the unlikelihood that artificial intelligence in its present stage of development can literally "understand" anything -- raising a whole other complex question, whether intelligence can exist without consciousness.

From reports on ChatGPT from people who've tried it, I get the impression that it can produce creditable essays on factual topics, if fed enough sufficiently specific data, although they tend to be "bland." In more creative endeavors, as might be expected, the program falls short. And it wouldn't be ethical to present the program's raw output as one's original work anyway.

Since I'm a slow writer and first-draft composing is my least favorite phase of the writing process, I've often wished that a word-processing program existed that would take my detailed outline—such as those I've constructed according to the plan in Karen Wiesner's excellent FIRST DRAFT IN THIRTY DAYS—and expand it into a fleshed-out draft of a novella or novel in my own style. I could take it from there with editing and revision. While it's possible to instruct ChapGPT to create a writing sample "in the style of" a particular author, I strongly doubt that procedure would work for fiction anytime soon. So for the time being I'll just have to continue tackling the laborious stage between outlining (which I enjoy) and revising (which I don't mind, up to a point) the hard way.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Games Cyborg Brains Play

Researchers at Cortical Labs have designed "cyborg brains," composed of living human brain cells atop a microelectrode array in a petri dish, informally labeled "mini-brains."

Brain Cells Play Pong

The mini-brains were exposed to a simplified version of the game Pong, with no opponent, in which signals from the cyborg brains' neurons hit the "paddle" to propel the "ball." Brett Kagan, chief scientific officer at Cortical Labs, remarks on how fast the biological brains learn the game in contrast to current AI technology. Kagan compares the mini-brains' virtual environment to the Matrix in the movie by that name.

The next step would be to produce organic neurons "integrated with traditional silicon computing" for even more efficient learning. The mini-brains offer an example of intelligence of a sort—they can learn—without consciousness. But suppose they became aware of their own existence, environment, and purpose? What if they aspired to more of a purpose in life than playing solitaire Pong? Of course, they're far from complex enough for that step, but it's fun to imagine. . . .

I'm reminded of a spin-off series from the SWORD ART ONLINE anime and manga, in which virtual human beings are seeded into a computer-simulated world and programmed to evolve a culture. Circumscribed by strict rules built into their environment, they develop a civilization with laws, morals, social classes, and all the components of a society. Furthermore, these experimental life-forms awaken to consciousness. They experience emotions, aspirations, pains, and pleasures as their world grows over many centuries in their time but only months on the scale of outside "reality." Shutting down the experiment would effectively mean annihilating an entire population of living people.

So far, though, the mini-brains described in the article linked above have no experiences other than endless games of Pong. At the end of the article, there's a link to a page about a scientist who tried, with mixed success, to teach rats to play the first-person shooter video game Doom. Will a future mode of entertainment consist of watching lab animals and virtual intelligences compete against each other in computer game tournaments?

Happy New Year! And, to repeat the annual wish of Col. Potter on MASH, "May she be a durn sight better than the last one."

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

How To Use Tarot And Astrology In Science Fiction Part 3 - Suspend Reader Disbelief

How To Use Tarot And Astrology In Science Fiction

Part 3

Suspend Reader Disbelief 

Previous posts in this discussion:
Tarot:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/10/index-to-posts-about-or-involving-tarot.html

Astrology:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_30.html

Part 1
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/12/how-to-use-tarot-and-astrology-in.html

Part 2
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/12/how-to-use-tarot-astrology-in-science.html

And now in Part 3, we'll look at UFO reports, which are (oddly) lumped in with the "Paranormal" (which includes ghosts).

In ordinary consciousness, people go about their business never giving a thought to ghosts, telepathy, teleportation, prophecy, or kidnapping by UFO.

So when they do turn their attention to such occult phenomena, it is like peering into a compartment where you keep ridiculous ideas, a toy box of concepts to push around into new patterns just for fun.

Most readers of Romance or any of the Fantasy (even Science Fiction) genres don't "take it seriously."  So as a writer, you don't have to work hard to attain "suspension of disbelief."

However, if you're writing a book to be published as non-fiction about such phenomena, you have to hammer away incessantly at convincing people that their toys are real.  It's part of the appeal of the Christmas Classic, The Nutcracker where toys come alive.

Tarot and Astrology, as they are mass-marketed for profit, are regarded like toys by most people.  These toys produce fun stuff, but they don't mean anything and don't have to be taken into account when living your day to day existence.

Romance is like that (until you do experience it for real).  The "for real" experience is like the toys in the toy box coming alive, an astonishing moment suspended outside of time.

In psychology, that moment is called "cognitive dissonance" -- and that experience of reassessing what is and is-not real is the essence of the fiction writer's craft.

To work across the boundary between the real and the inside of the toy box, the writer must study both fiction and  non-fiction.

The New Year's fare in Newspapers is peppered with "psychics" making predictions about the coming year (and other linear prognosticators doing "if this goes on.")  Tarot and Astrology get featured, as they sometimes do for Halloween (see my Halloween Tarot/Vampire story, "False Prophecy" in: Through The Moon Gate (and other tales of vampirism)

https://www.amazon.com/Through-Vampirism-Jacqueline-Lichtenberg-Collected-ebook/dp/B004MPRUZM/

In August (the silly season) newspapers carry stories about UFOs.  When people are bored (because Congress isn't in season, all their friends at work are on vacation so projects stall, the kids are home going stir crazy), they open their toy box of ideas and get lost in playing with them.  It's amusing and refreshing.

Non-fiction about UFO visits to Earth, about Astronauts sightings, other credible witnesses, photos (which we disbelieve more so now than ever), occupy that part of the mind.

I've been a UFO-NUT since grammar school when I found that section in the library and had my Mom take the books out so I could read them.  I never believed any of it, but could construct a world where it was true, "...they are watching us!"

Then I met a couple people (at different times) who told of their own abduction by a UFO.  Very convincing, especially since they weren't giving speeches about it for money or writing books, or being paid by a newspaper, etc. No profit motive, just a disturbance in life.

I have friends who follow the UFO reports, so one time I was at a speech where the guy was selling a book on the topic, and spent over an hour presenting "evidence" for the validity and verification, the credibility of witnesses, etc. -- pounding away at trying to prove (to an audience of true believers) that UFOs are real.

So afterwards, I listened to everyone reinforcing their true-belief, buying the autographed book, and treating the author as if he were important.

I waited for most to leave, then asked him why, if his case actually convinced him, he is still trying to convince people.  If these visitations are real, then accept that and move on to the next logical step -- or to debating what that step should be.  If it's true, act as if it's true.  If it's not true, shut up.

I've never before or since seen such a totally flummoxed speaker.

He simply had no answer, and as far as I could tell, had never considered that option -- assuming what he knows to be true is in fact true, and going to the next step.

So, I'm still a wide-open question on UFOs in general, kidnappings in particular.  It seems to be the reason these people write these "non-fiction" books is to make money. There's more profit in manufactured or exaggerated evidence and sincere insistence on the impossible than there is in the truth.

And that gives you a formula for a hot-hot-hot Romance Character, a UFOLOGIST who doesn't know he doesn't believe what he's peddling.

To write such a story, you need a theory of reality built by ripping items from the headlines - using newspaper stories widely believed as if they are fact.

And you need a theory of existence that explains how and why Tarot and Astrology work, how they are related to each other, and what Aliens From Outer Space have to do with that.

Astronomy and Astrophysics are barreling toward Astrology and Tarot (yes, Tarot is more like Astrophysics, if you look aslant the right way).

Here's a TOY BOX item for you:

https://www.quantamagazine.org/why-the-many-worlds-interpretation-of-quantum-mechanics-has-many-problems-20181018/

Subtitle of that article:
The idea that the universe splits into multiple realities with every measurement has become an increasingly popular proposed solution to the mysteries of quantum mechanics. But this “many-worlds interpretation” is incoherent, Philip Ball argues in this adapted excerpt from his new book Beyond Weird.

Tarot is all about decision points in life, and what you USE of your interior, spiritual, innate or learned skills and resources to navigate the white-water-rapids of life's decision points.  This article discusses the new mathematical and quantum physics view of multiple universes -- which has been a staple of science fiction since before JACK OF EAGLES by James Blish (author of the first STAR TREK novel published, SPOCK MUST DIE):

https://www.amazon.com/Jack-of-Eagles/dp/0380611503/

Today, people believe in science even without understanding all that hard stuff.  Science has produced usable results (smartphones for one), so people believe in human interference with the cyclical climate surges (glaciations followed by polar melts over millions of years) because it is settled science.

With the setting aside of religion in most organized forms, humans search for things to believe in.  UFOs, Romance, Science, multiple universes, all have their share of true believers.

To write science fiction romance of the caliber of James Blish's JACK OF EAGLES, you need to grab and incorporate a bit of speculative science and weld it to a bit of speculative occultism, then build your entire world selecting every detail to symbolize or illustrate that composite element.

Psychics have long predicted, in the New Year's Prediction issues of the papers, that this year Aliens will arrive, reveal themselves, or that we will get a signal from outer space proving there are people out there.

So, to get your readers to suspend their disbelief, you must accept your belief in your fictional world as real.

STAR TREK the original series, (all cardboard sets and flat colored backdrop paintings) as popular and gripping because the actors were able to treat what they were doing as REAL (even when it was using a salt shaker to detect an Alien's state of health).

Writing is a performing art.

Accept the reality of your fictional world, your specific blend of the Esoteric and the Scientific, and sidestep reader disbelief.

Your readers believe in Romance, and believe in Science, and some believe in UFOs (at least during August).

Accept what they believe as actually real.  Don't be like the UFO lecturer and be unable to understand what is implied if the belief is real.  Accept the reality, and plot onwards through the next action, and the next.

Your characters have to implement their decisions out of the unconscious assumption that these elements are real.

So, suppose your Character is to meet up with (or be kidnapped by) a UFO alien.

What is this Alien?

Use widely believed science to answer that question.

We are now (with orbital telescopes) discovering the size of our Universe,

https://www.cnet.com/news/hyperion-is-an-ancient-cosmic-beast-formed-2-3b-years-after-big-bang/

Another outlet, Gizmodo, (probably working off the same publicist's press release) gives more depth, pointing out Hyperion's relationship to the supercluster Earth is in, Laniakea.

https://gizmodo.com/trying-understand-the-size-of-this-new-space-discovery-1829824870

I discussed Laniakea here:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/02/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-18.html

For decades, science fiction has been speculating about parallel universes (and anti-matter ones -- do read the STEN series).

Here are entries where I discuss the STEN SERIES.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/theme-plot-integration-part-8-use-of-co.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/theme-plot-integration-part-9-use-of-co.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/theme-plot-integration-part-10-use-of.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/06/theme-character-integration-part-1-what.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/06/acquiring-new-techniques-part-1-pun.html

So what sort of Alien arrives by UFO (yes, I do love both THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL and STARMAN), and kidnaps a human?

Once you determine what sort of alien, you should be able to derive why he would do such a thing.

Keeping in mind the size of the Universe we are now exploring by reading energy particles that are billions of years old, and keeping in mind all the new science produced from putting humans in weightlessness on space stations (showing how humans can't survive a trip to Mars or living there - we are gravity dependent and cosmic-ray sensitive), think hard about an Alien poking around Earth.

If we can't go to their planet (because settled science says so), then how could they come here?

Your readers keep their UFO knowledge in their toy boxes.   Make them take that knowledge out of the toy category.

How are we going to go visit Aliens who lived billions of years ago, and will be long dead by the time we get there?

Look around at current science headlines.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2018/10/18/this-is-how-we-know-there-are-two-trillion-galaxies-in-the-universe/#570035995a67

And look at what Forbes has been reporting on Artificial Intelligence

https://www.forbes.com/insights-intelai/ai-issue-2/

Forbes -- a financial organ -- talking about the size of reality and the nature of consciousness, intelligence, and robots as tools.

If we can create Artificial Intelligence, we can begin to determine if intelligence is related to the Soul -- and therefore what makes a Soul Mate.

Before we get to such spiritual questions, it is very likely we'll be sending AI entities to Mars and/or Venus - maybe to explore, to send back resources, to terraform, to build a habitat humans can live in.

Remember, with the nailing of the Higgs Boson, we are starting to get a handle on mass, weight, and perhaps one day, artificial gravity so we can take our fragile bodies out to the stars.

One might expect "Aliens" to haul their habitat around with them, too, but likewise to send ahead a wave of Artificial Intelligence -- not just robots programmed to do things, or remotely controlled as we try to do, but AI that can learn, think, reason, conclude and act.

Perhaps an AI explorer was sent out as an ordinary Intelligence, but along the way somehow acquired a Soul?

Perhaps your Main Character is kidnapped by an Alien AI with a Soul, and the experiments described in so many UFO books are actually an investigation into whether humans have Soul, and if so what Soul might be, where it comes from, and how it can be lost.

Or perhaps the UFO denizens are just trying to find Soul Mates?

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

AI Rights

Here's an article on the PBS website exploring the issue of what might happen if artificial intelligences were granted the status of legal persons:

Artificial Intelligence Personhood

Corporations are already "persons" under the law, with free-speech rights and the capacity to sue and be sued. The author of this article outlines a legal procedure by which a computer program could become a limited liability company. He points out, somewhat alarmingly, "That process doesn’t require the computer system to have any particular level of intelligence or capability." The "artificial intelligence" could be simply a decision-making algorithm. Next, however, he makes what seems to me an unwarranted leap: "Granting human rights to a computer would degrade human dignity." First, bestowing some "human rights" on a computer wouldn't necessarily entail giving it full citizenship, particularly the right to vote. As the article mentions, "one person, one vote" would become meaningless when applied to a program that could make infinite copies of itself. But corporations have been legal "persons" for a long time, and they don't get to vote in elections.

The author cites the example of a robot named Sophia, who (in October 2017) was declared a citizen of Saudi Arabia:

Saudi Arabia Grants Citizenship to a Robot

Some commentators noted that Sophia now has more rights than women or migrant workers in that country. If Sophia's elevated status becomes an official precedent rather than merely a publicity stunt for the promotion of AI research, surely the best solution to the perceived problem would be to improve the rights of naturally born persons. In answer to a question about the dangers of artificial intelligence, Sophia suggests that people who fear AI have been watching "too many Hollywood movies."

That PBS article on AI personhood warns of far-fetched threats that are long-established cliches in science fiction, starting with, "If AI systems became more intelligent than people, humans could be relegated to an inferior role." Setting aside the fact that we have a considerable distance to go before computer intelligence attains a level anywhere near ours, giving us plenty of time to prepare, remember that human inventors design and program those AI systems. Something like Asimov's Laws of Robotics could be built in at a fundamental level. The most plausible of the article's alarmist predictions, in my opinion, is the possibility of a computer's accumulating "immortal wealth." It seems more likely, however, that human tycoons might use the AI as a front, not that it would use them as puppets.

Furthermore, why would an intelligent robot or computer want to rule over us? As long as the AI has the human support it needs to perform the function it was designed for, why would it bother wasting its time or brainpower on manipulating human society? An AI wouldn't have emotional weaknesses such as greed for money or lust for power, because emotion is a function of the body (adrenaline, hormone imbalances, accelerated breath and heartbeat, etc.). Granted, it might come to the rational conclusion that we're running the world inefficiently and need to be ruled for the benefit of ourselves and our electronic fellow citizens. That's the only immediate pitfall I can see in giving citizenship rights to sapient, rational machines that are programmed for beneficence. The idea of this potential hazard isn't new either, having been explored by numerous SF authors, as far back as Jack Williamson's "With Folded Hands" (1947). So relax, HAL won't be throwing us out the airlock anytime soon.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Robot Children, Puppies, and Fish

The March issue of SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN contains a new article on improving AI by developing robots that learn like children. Unfortunately, non-subscribers can't read the full article online, only a teaser:

Robots Learning Like Children

As we know, computer brains perform very well at many tasks that are hard for human beings, such as rapid math calculations and games such as chess and Go—systems with a finite number of clearly defined rules. Human children, by contrast, learn "by exploring their surroundings and experimenting with movement and speech." For a robot to learn that way, it has to be able to interact with its environment physically and process sensory input. Roboticists have discovered that both children and robots learn better when new information is consistently linked with particular physical actions. "Our brains are constantly trying to predict the future—and updating their expectations to match reality." A fulfilled prediction provides a reward in itself, and toddlers actively pursue objects and situations that allow them to make and test predictions. To simulate this phenomenon in artificial intelligence, researchers have programmed robots to maximize accurate predictions. The "motivation to reduce prediction errors" can even impel androids to be "helpful" by completing tasks at which human experimenters "fail." A puppy-like machine called the Sony AIBO learned to do such things as grasp objects and interact with other robots without being programmed for those specific tasks. The general goal "to autonomously seek out tasks with the greatest potential for learning" spontaneously produced those results. Now, that sounds like what we'd call learning!

On a much simpler level, MIT has developed a robotic fish that can swim among real sea creatures without disturbing them, for more efficient observation. This device operates by remote control:

Soft Robotic Fish

The Soft Robotic Fish (SoFi) doesn't really fit my idea of a robot. To me, a true robot moves on its own and makes decisions, like the learning-enabled AI brains described above—or at least performs choices that simulate the decision-making process. The inventors of SoFi, however, hope to create a future version that would be self-guiding by means of machine vision. Still, an artificial fish programmed to home in on and follow an individual live fish is a far cry from robots that learn new information and tasks by proactively exploring their environments.

Can the latter eventually develop minds like ours? The consensus seems to be that we're nowhere near understanding the human mind well enough to approach that goal. In view of the observed fact that "caregivers are crucial to children's development," one researcher quoted in the SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN article maintains that a robot might be able to become "truly humanlike" only "if somebody can take care of a robot like a child." There's a story here, which has doubtless already been written more than once; an example might be the film A.I. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, which portrays a tragic outcome for the android child, programmed to love its/his "parents" but rejected when the biological son returns to the family.

One episode of SESAME STREET defined a living animal or person as a creature that moves, eats, and grows. Most robots can certainly move on their own. Battery-operated robots can be programmed to seek electrical outlets and recharge themselves, analogous to taking nourishment. Learning equals growth, in a sense. Is a machine capable of those functions "alive"?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

In Praise of Ajit Pai... And What's Lost In Translation

My Xfinity internet bills went down last month. Of course, I had to request the change. Thanks, I suppose, to Ajit Pai, I was able to tell Comcast that I did not need the sort of blazing fast speed that would fry my existing modem and router if I did not replace them, and that I would rather have the slower, lower priced service. As a bonus, I get fewer (way fewer) annoying pop-ups, too.

Apparently, most people believe that the Burger King spoof proves that net-neutrality is good. I'd rather be able to choose a $5 burger instead of a $26 burger, if a slow-burger is all I require.  I'd rather not be forced to buy a $15 averaged price fast-burger, if everyone pays the same one price and receives the same one blazing fast product.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/burger-king-explains-net-neutrality-with-a-26-whopper/

Whatever happened to "you gets what you pays for" as received wisdom?
Or, "you pays your money and you takes your choice" (a quote from Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World")

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/865291-you-pays-your-money-and-you-takes-your-choice
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/you_pays_your_money_and_you_takes_your_choice
http://pathologyexpert.blogspot.com/2014/06/you-gets-what-you-pays-for-forensics.html

When one quotes those lines, one is quoting from literature, therefore the non-standard usage is correct.

Douglas Hofstadter has an absolutely marvelous article in The Atlantic about the inadequacies of Artificial Intelligence when it comes to translating prose.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/01/the-shallowness-of-google-translate/551570/

His experiments are fascinating.

So... the "you pays your money and you takes your choice" becomes "Sie zahlen Ihr Geld und Sie treffen Ihre Wahl," which translates back to "you pay your money and you make your choice."  Humorless, not literary, and Americanized.

The British, or at least the British of a certain generation, "take decisions" and "take choices". Americans "make decisions" and "make choices", and "make their case" even when half the audience is unmoved.

Try "he made his case" (for instance, at The State Of The Union address). Google translates this into French as "Il a fait son affaire", and then translates it back as "He did his business. Which is what we say of a dog who marks his territory.... and if you keep translating, you get to "(he) did his job."

For some, one can "argue" or "present" a case, but one only "makes" the case if the audience is convinced of the rightness of what the speaker said.

At last, perhaps, older musicians are indeed making their case about the unfairness of a quirk in copyright legislation, that has been a boon to Sirius radio and to other music services that have been using oldies without paying anyone.

Music Bus:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/28/opinion/congress-musicians-music-bus.html

Of the three Acts in the Bus (omnibus?), the one that strikes me as long overdue is The Classics Act, which would mean that older musicians would receive royalties for their pre-1972-recorded works. If only the royalties could be retroactive!

All the best,

Rowena Cherry