So, it seems like the future is here and rapidly unfolding! Ironically I've been struggling to even mention anything about recent machine learning events, here on this blog. Despite AI being such a big feature of its theme on exponential tech changes...

New Scientist style chatbot illustration generated using StableDiffusion

5 days to 1M users! The fastest growing web   service, ever. From Twitter via YouTube.

To recap: from the middle of 2022, there was simmering online interest in the spectacle of AI generated art via text prompts: DALL-E vs Stable Diffusion.

Also, Google's firing of a senior software engineer who was claiming sentience and personhood for their LaMDA chatbot (e.g. Guardian). Which kicked off nervous discussion.

Then, at the end of the year, OpenAI unleashed ChatGPT-3 to the public, making a huge splash in the process! Machine learning has sustained main stream awareness through 2023, so far, with news hype hitting fever pitch in tech circles, over the last week of announcements. E.g. on YouTube LTT wan show from here and Matt Wolfe.

As talked about in many sources, machine learning has been advancing up a much steeper exponential curve than Moore's law, both GPU hardware advancing faster and ever bigger datasets being trained on.

Of course, the main reason I've struggled to keep fully abreast of these exciting developments: I'm still struggling with the ME/CFS. As I've lamented on Twitter, this blocked my desired career path into academic AI/robotics. Being forced to give up on 3rd year studies just over 15 short years ago. And in my small amounts of productive time, during the last year, I've been working on informational resources (e.g. Steam guides) and other things in the Core Keeper community. Which is sometimes within my cognitively impaired abstraction limit.

Anyway, I'm aiming for this post to be ongoing, like the previous Covid posts. Updated with my thoughts and new events as they unfold. Because I don't have the executive function to write a big piece with an overarching narrative. If I've ever really achieved that here before, heh.

I've no hope of capturing any of the soap opera of corporate and big-player drama, or even most of the notable offerings. Let alone the technical details of how the systems opera. So really, this is largely an exercise (as always) in showing that I was here and I maybe understood some fraction of what was going on. Maybe an aide memoire for me, like taking notes in class. 

I'm also explicitly aware that the ever-growing LLM training data with likely include this text at some point, too! Which is very meta and a little thrilling to see happening already.

I'll start by catching up on some backdated bits and pieces...

SARS-COV-2 - lipid bilayer with ACE2 binding s protein spikes.

... Continuing on from my previous mega-post: "Covid-19: a deadly wake-up call to exponential growth?".

It seems the future is currently flying at us on a daily basis, so I'm still finding it hard not to hyper-focus on events and feel I may as well use this blog for catharsis.

I've ended up spending quite a lot of time talking about the antics of politicians, which I'd normal tell others to ignore, but in this instance the situation is so heavily dependant upon exactly what measures are announced, when and how the public reacts.

2020-04-08 Wed - Unintended Consequences (Advertising apocalypse, BoJo in ICU, etc)
2020-04-10 Fri - Unequal impact (racial, economic and geographic inequities)
2020-04-12 Sat - Dissecting government decision making, cats & dogs and creativity


► 2020-03-29 - Pointing Fingers:

• The domestic coronavirus outbreak seems to have given Boris Johnson (and other incumbent leaders around the world) political invincibility. The 'rally around the flag' effect has him up at a 73% approval rating, the highest for any conservative government since such metric began in 1943 [Bloomberg].

Which makes sense during a crisis or war, generally. This certainly fits with the vibe I get when talking to most of my friends (those who aren't politically polarised already). Although I saw one post hinting that there may also have been some astroturfing, with copy-pasted supportive sentiments on social media [Twitter]. (Probably insignificant in this context.)


• That record polling was even unaffected by the announcement of his infection (and both health secretaries, etc). Which The Daily Mail has attempted to pin on the EU, via chief negotiator Michel Barnier, who was also diagnosed a while before [The New European]:


It's laughably implausible, given Barnier's not even been to the UK recently, so it would have to have passed via an intermediary politician. Prince Charles or Nadine Dorries far more likely. The very risibility of this nonsense claim is probably the reason I saw it plastered all over my Twitter time-line. Again, right wing intimations going viral, for free spread of their repulsive rhetoric. Including me posting it here, to illustrate the point...