Template:M intro technology rumours of our demise: Difference between revisions

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 Nowadays, we must distinguish between ''traditional'', obedient, rule-following machies, and ''randomly-make-it-up'' [[large language model]]s — unthinking, probabilistic, ''pattern-matching machines''. [[LLM]]s are the novelty act of 2023, at the top of their hype cycle right now, like [[Blockchain|blockchain]], was a year ago, and like [[DLT]] they will struggle to find an enduring use case.
-''Traditional'' machines make flawless decisions, as long as both question ''and'' answer are pre-configured. We [[sacks of meat]] are better at handling ambiguity, conflict and novel situations. We’re not flawless — that’s part of the charm — but wherever we find a conundrum we can at least hazard an response. We don’t crash. We don’t hang until dialogue boxes close. That’s the boon and the bane of the [[meatware]]: you ''can’t tell when humans make a syntax errors''.
+''Traditional'' machines make flawless decisions, as long as both question ''and'' answer are pre-configured. [[Meatsacks]] are better at handling ambiguity, conflict and novel situations. We’re not flawless — that’s part of the charm — but wherever we find a conundrum we can at least have a bash. We don’t crash. We don’t hang until dialogue boxes close. That’s the boon and the bane of the [[meatware]]: you ''can’t always tell when a human makes a syntax error''.
-This is how we’ve always used technology: the human figures out which field to plough; the horse ploughs it.
+This is how we’ve always used technology: the human figures out which field to plough and when; the horse ploughs it.
-While it may have prompted the odd short-term dislocation — the industrial revolution put a bunch of basket-weavers out of work — the long-term prognosis has been benign: technology has, for millennia, freed us to do things we previously had no time to try.
+While technology may have prompted the odd short-term dislocation — the industrial revolution put a bunch of [[Jacquard loom|basket-weavers out of work]] — the long-term prognosis has been benign: technology has, for millennia, freed us to do things we previously had no time to try.
-Technology opens up the design-space. It reveals [[adjacent possibilities]], expands the intellectual ecosystem, domesticates what we know and opens up [[frontier]]s to what we don’t.
+Technology opens up the design space. It reveals [[adjacent possibilities]], expands the intellectual ecosystem, domesticates what we know and opens up [[frontier]]s to what we don’t.
 [[Frontier]]s are places where we need smart people to figure out new tools and new ways of operating. Machines can’t do it.