Five Bits of Robot Stuff
For the Week of Nov 27
Sorry I’ve missed some weeks here. A consequence of the holiday and work on a couple of journalistic pieces touching on robots and AI. Please bear with us (actually, me) here as we (actually, I) get some new features ready for this blog — features that should lead to more frequent and varied posts. For now, here are some interesting things about robots and AI for this week.
Insights from Philosophers About Bullshit
It's often said that Large Language Models like ChatGPT, Bard and souped-up Bing are indifferent to reality. They just make plausible sounding texts, without knowing or caring if the words are true. IOW, they're bullshitters.
As it happens there is a growing literature on the philosophy of bullshit. It was launched by Harry Frankfurt in the 1980s, when he pointed out that B.S. (true or false, don't care) is different from lying (I need to know what is true, so I can be …