(First in a series of four parts.) One thing that has become tiresome to me, dear reader, is the exclusive use of Adolf Hitler as the lazy, go-to epithet* when comparing an adversary to the most evil person who ever lived. I’m afraid this tactic is not going away
I never had much of an emotional connection with the Google Search engine. So it surprised me that many users are developing an affection for their AI programs. Yes, AI is thousands of magnitudes more advanced—in fact, a brand new species—but still, it’s a machine, right? Well,
UAPs
UFOs are back in the news, implying that non-humans have nothing better to do than zip about our skies. The idea is completely absurd, especially given our embarrassingly modest place in the universe. “Space is big, really big,” intones The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. With that in mind,
It occurred to me that Gemini must live in the general neighborhood where YouTube resides. After all, they are owned by the same company, Alphabet. They must know each other! At the very least, they must run into each other during virtual corporate picnics, or whatever our silicon friends do
There is now a wide assortment of AI flavors, but the differentiation isn't merely a result of marketing. Each company has trained its model in a unique way. While the basic "Transformer" algorithmic concept is the foundation, it has been further "transformed" by how
If the Transformer was invented in 2017, why did it take five years for the chatbots to appear in late 2022 and 2023? There were a number of reasons for this, but it wasn’t due to inactivity. Once the Transformer concept was in place, work did continue, but it
How is it that all these different AI flavors appeared at once? Usually, when there is a new technology that is so unexpected and counterintuitive (AI? That’s just a cheap, repackaged search engine), the pioneering company has about five years before competitors catch up. The iPod was introduced in
Zombie cells: we all have them. These senescent cells are cells that have stopped dividing due to damage but refuse to die. They linger in tissues, spewing a toxic cocktail of inflammatory chemicals known as the SASP (Senescence-Associated Secretory Phenotype—I know, it’s on the tip of your tongue)
The search for immortality reminds me of the centuries-old pursuit of alchemy. Instead of turning lead into gold, we aim to turn our mortal bodies, long insulted by nature, into gleaming, immortal beings. In the eyes of the medieval alchemist, lead was not a fixed element but simply "sick&
I read the Epic of Gilgamesh recently and was surprised that even the oldest surviving epic was about immortality, the same thing I’m writing about. Go figure. Even as writing was just beginning about 4,000 years ago, the specter of death dangled over the human consciousness. In the