Not quite a host, but…
Quote of the Day
”A machine learning algorithm walks into a bar. The bartender asks, ‘What’ll you have?’ The algorithm says, ‘What’s everyone else having?’ ”
- Chet Haase
This is a profound joke and it captures the essence of LLMs. In algorithmic culture, the right choice is always what the majority of other people have already chosen. So if you want the median view of what the Internet knows about anything, ask an LLM.
Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news
Mozart | Divertimento No. 15 in B-Flat Major, K. 287: II. Andante grazioso con variazioni | Conducted by dear old Thomas Beecham
Vintage recording, as you can tell from the audio quality. But lovely schmaltz all the same.
Long Read of the Day
Why are we mathematicians?
I’ve always thought that life is a Markov chain (or a random walk if you’re not a mathematician). I’ve never met anyone who had an interesting life that was planned — which is why I regard the term ‘planned career’ as an oxymoron.
Not surprisingly, then, I was much taken with this reflective essay by Keith Devlin, prompted in part by something I mentioned on March 24.
The fact is, life experiences can have a profound effect on our choice of career and how we pursue it, experiences that, on the face of it, have nothing to do with the work we choose to do and how we go about it. As instructors, we should be aware of the possible effects of the life-context that comes with every student we teach.
It was at Kings that I had an experience that completely changed my life and career as an academic mathematician; in particular, my approach to college-level mathematics teaching. But it was only when I was chasing down that philosophers and children puzzle that I became aware of that early influence. (That’s like a week ago!) In fact, it was more than “became aware”; it hit me like a thunderbolt.
What was that life-changing experience? I met a girl…
Do read it.
Books, etc.
A new novel is published amid a boom in dystopian fiction
Interesting review of The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami.
How do you concoct a plausible fictional near-future, in which people’s reliance on technology has gone too far? If you read “The Dream Hotel”, a gripping new novel, you can discern one recipe. First, take a big handful of “1984”, with Big Brother and the surveillance state reimagined with private-sector incentives. Sprinkle in the rational irrationality of Joseph Heller’s and Franz Kafka’s best works. Next mix in a dollop of “Minority Report” (2002), a film starring Tom Cruise in which law enforcement solves “pre-crimes” before people commit heinous acts.
So far, so Orwell. However, “The Dream Hotel” is intriguing and (mostly) satisfying, even if the ingredients feel familiar, for what the novel says about the creep of technology and the trade-offs people make for convenience.
Laila Lalami, a Moroccan-American novelist and former finalist for a Pulitzer prize and National Book Award, tells her dystopian tale by combining traditional storytelling with excerpts from a company’s terms of service, medical reports, meeting minutes and customer-service email chains from hell. The novel’s protagonist is Sara Hussein, an archivist at the Getty Museum who returns from a work trip to London and runs afoul of bureaucrats at immigration control, who say her “risk-assessment” score is too high and that she could pose a threat to her husband’s life. Sara becomes “Retainee M-7493002”, held at a facility for what is supposed to be 21 days of monitoring but stretches much longer.
What went so wrong? In retrospect it was a mistake to get the “Dreamsaver”, a small implant invented by a medical-tech firm in Silicon Valley that Sara agreed to have installed during a desperate period of sleep deprivation…
Brings Musk’s Neuralink to mind, does it not?
Linkblog
Something I noticed, while drinking from the Internet firehose.
- Buying sunglasses in Brazil. Lovely essay by Christopher Sandmann on learning to bargain, which reminded me of how much I hate countries where haggling is a way of life.
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