Writing about nothing
or "What is AI talking about?"
"You eat like a bird!" - I remember to hear when I was five. But it didn't bother me at all. I could be young, but I certainly knew that birds eat way less than me.
As we grow up, it becomes easier to realize that our language is made of references, ambiguities, and puns - sets of letters that build and describe our reality. For us, humans, this common knowledge is something we acquire as we experience the world. For artificial intelligence systems, it's not that easy.
There are already language models that, without human supervision, manage to create entire paragraphs of coherent and grammatically correct texts. They learn by reproducing the form, style, and vocabulary of more than 8 million articles. But in a world of zeros and ones, some things get lost in translations, like context and truth.
When we communicate through language, we use our empirical knowledge as a compass, weight, and measure. We know how the wind feels, that candy is sweet, and oranges are orange. It's naive, but artificial intelligence struggles to understand that our language is a mix of feelings and emotions that mimic our reality.
My next newsletter could be written entirely by an AI system. Probably it won't make sense, but as Patti Smith said: "It is not that easy to write about nothing". And for these smart machines, almost everything is nothing.
💾 Memory lane
“Nostalgia is essentially history without guilt” - Michael Kammen
In 1982, when Times magazine announced the computer as Person of the Year, Prince released the album "1999" - a mix of synthesizers and robotic voices that took us directly into the future. What I didn't know was that Prince's fascination with technology exceeded the mechanical beats of his music. Listening to Anil Dash's "Function" podcast, I discovered that Prince was one of the first artists to make music available for download and streaming, to create online communities and to fund an album through crowdfunding - a decade before Kickstarter was invented. In the 1980s, when computers were only in the beginning, Prince was already in 2020 - his 1999.
💻 Present tense
“I thought the attractions of being an astronaut were actually, not so much the Moon, but flying in a completely new medium. " - Neil Armstrong
When it comes to the internet, we have been cautious explorers. We no longer jump to the last Google search page, nor do we let curiosity go beyond what the algorithm chooses for us. To contradict our lazy habits, astronaut.io presents us with a selection of videos with almost zero views. Five minutes on the site is enough to realize that our Youtube feed is a closed circuit of popularity. To understand more deeply what the internet has to offer, we have to think like an astronaut.
“Today, you are an Astronaut. You are floating in inner space 100 miles above the surface of Earth. You peer through your window and this is what you see. You are people watching. These are fleeting moments.
These videos come from YouTube. They were uploaded in the last week and have titles like
DSC 1234andIMG 4321. They have almost zero previous views. They are unnamed, unedited, and unseen (by anyone but you).”
🔍 Time will tell
“I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.” - Albert Einstein
SPACE10, IKEA's research lab, does the opposite. It's always thinking about the future because it comes soon enough. In their most recent project, they created a digital platform where anyone can design, personalize, and download a bee home — they aim to inspire more people to protect local pollinators. Next Tuesday, June 2nd, you can hear more about how you can support the global bee population from the team behind the project.
And today's question is?
🤔 “Which online projects have caught your attention lately?”
Let’s share ideas, recommendations, and thoughts!
Até já!
Inês 🌿