Orchids
Quote of the Day
”Ten years ago, when your plane touched down in Dulles or DCA (Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport), you were coming home. Because we had been here for so long. And you would relax. Now I just tense up wherever I am coming in from. There is a menace, an edge to life. Not just in Washington, but in America, that just wasn’t there before. And the possibility of dark stuff. I guess what schoolkids must feel when they do shooting drills. You are suddenly aware of something.”
- FT columnist Edward Luce in an Irish Times interview 03/06/2025
Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news
Bob Dylan | Girl from the North Country
This was the lovely going-out music at the funeral of a wonderful woman on Monday. It was spot on for the person and the occasion.
Long Read of the Day
The Myth of Automated Learning
Lovely blog post by Nicholas Carr arguing that the real threat AI poses to education isn’t that it encourages cheating but that it discourages learning. Carr is a wise and perceptive thinker. And he goes right to the heart of the issue.
Because generative AI is a general-purpose technology that can be used to automate all sorts of tasks and jobs, we’re likely to see plenty of examples of each of the three skill scenarios in the years to come. But AI’s use by high-school and college students to complete written assignments, to ease or avoid the work of reading and writing, is a special case. It puts the process of deskilling at education’s core. To automate learning is to subvert learning.
Unlike carpentry or calculus, learning is not a skill that can be “mastered.” It’s true that the more research you do, the better you’ll get at doing research, and the more papers you write, the better you’ll get at writing papers, but the pedagogical value of a writing assignment doesn’t lie in the tangible product of the work — the paper that gets handed in at the assignment’s end. It lies in the work itself: the critical reading of source materials, the synthesis of evidence and ideas, the formulation of a thesis and an argument, and the expression of thought in a coherent piece of writing…
This is a great piece. Should be required reading for every parent — and teacher.
So many books, so little time
Screenshot
My son Brian, who has been experimenting productively for quite a while with Claude.ai has nudged into producing what he believes is the first novel completely written by an LLM. It’s available on Amazon.uk, and he’s documented on Github the whole process by which it was created.
It all stemmed from a simple question to Claude: “If YOU were to write a book, what would it be about?”
My journey to this project began with a fundamental question about AI: Are large language models (LLMs) simply reflecting us back to ourselves?
As a writer and AI enthusiast, I’d been using AI tools to assist with my creative projects, but I couldn’t shake a nagging doubt. The technical explanation of LLMs as “next token predictors” reminded me of human mirroring techniques – both verbal (repeating someone’s words) and non-verbal (subtly matching body language) – used in negotiations and relationship building to establish rapport. Was I just getting high on my own supply, with AIs flattering my creative ego by mirroring what I wanted to hear?
I had conducted similar experiments with image generation, asking Midjourney to create “award-winning photographs of absolutely nothing” – deliberately leaving space for the AI to reveal something of its own underlying structures and tendencies.
This time, I wanted to test something more ambitious: Could an AI conceptualise and execute an entire creative work if given complete freedom? Not as a co-author or assistant following human direction, but as the primary creative force?
I’ve been reading the book. It’s oddly competent, and also slightly unconvincing. ‘Uncanny valley’ stuff, I guess.
Brian’s rules for the experiment were:
- Claude would determine the novel’s concept, characters, plot and themes.
- My role would be purely technical — facilitating Claude’s access to tools and managing the process.
- I would provide zero creative input or direction.
- All decisions about the narrative would come from Claude.
Interesting ne c’est pas?
Linkblog
Something I noticed, while drinking from the Internet firehose.
- The David Lynch Collection Link
Almost 450 items from the personal archive of one of the masters of cinema, this special auction offers fans and collectors alike an intimate portal into the life and world of the man who brought us a vast body of work including: Twin Peaks, Mulholland Drive, Blue Velvet, Eraserhead, Lost Highway, Inland Empire, Wild at Heart, The Straight Story, The Elephant Man, Dune, and more.
This collection includes artifacts from all aspects of Lynch’s personal creative life, including the art supplies and tools from his home art studio and wood shop, a vast array of furniture that includes many pieces designed and built by Lynch himself, unique instruments and equipment from his home audio recording studio, memorabilia and ephemera relating to many of his filmed projects, and several coffee machines and mugs because he could never be more than 15 steps away from a damn good cup of coffee.
This Blog is also available as an email three days a week. If you think that might suit you better, why not subscribe? One email on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays delivered to your inbox at 5am UK time. It’s free, and you can always unsubscribe if you conclude your inbox is full enough already!
