Category Archives: Writing

Passing For Human

Posted on by
Photo by cottonbro on Pexels.com

Almost everyone has heard of the Turing Test. Named after Alan Turing, a British mathematical genius and one of the designers of the first ever stored-program computer. In its simplest form, the test has three participants: One is a human (A) typing into a computer terminal, another is a computer program (B), and the third (C) is also human, who receives messages from and sends messages to both (A) and (B).

The trick is the third person (C) doesn’t know which of the other two is the human and which is the machine. They ask questions and receive answers. If, at the end of the trial, (C) can’t tell which one of the two is the computer, the computer is said to have passed the Turing Test and therefore can be said to be thinking on a human level, which is believed to be the prerequisite of Artificial General Intelligence, which is the holy grail of AI research.

Rubbish.

Meaning no disrespect to Alan Turing, a brilliant man who was treated very poorly by a country which owed him a tremendous debt of gratitude. It’s more that modern AI research has developed in ways almost no one really foresaw back in the 1950s.

Most modern AI models are based on a technique called “deep learning,” where the program is trained against masses and masses of data and “learns” to predict or discern patterns. This is narrow AI. It does the thing it was trained to do extremely well, often better than the best human, but only that one thing. The best chess-playing algorithm/model can’t change gears and play Go, at least not without forgetting how to play chess. An AI that can learn to do anything we can do and retain every new skill would be a lot closer to AGI, or artificial general intelligence. That is, it would be a generalist like us. Wake me when that happens.

To date, and despite a few disputed claims to the contrary, no computer program has beaten the Turing Test. Some have come close, and I firmly believe the Turing Test will be beaten, possibly soon, but it will be beaten by a narrow AI, not an AGI. It will be beaten by a program/AI model which has absolutely no idea what it’s saying, or what you’re saying to it, though it will appear to be doing both. It’s an illusion.

True, language is a skill like any other, and great strides are being made in AI which can now converse on a near-human level, orders of magnitude better than the first chatbots. This is, I admit, astonishing and I’m curious to see how far it progresses.

There is a catch, of course. One noted researcher is of the opinion that AI will only pass the Turing Test when it learns to lie. Think about it. All (C) has to do is ask “Where do you live?” and if the AI tells the truth, it’s game over.

Again, rubbish.

Not because it isn’t true, but because the best natural language models of AI already know how to lie. Maybe they’re not “aware” that this is what they’re doing, but the fact remains. Just listen to any conversation between a human and one of the more advanced AI language models. It lies constantly. It’ll tell you what movies it’s seen in theaters. It’ll tell you how much it likes going to the beach and walking on the sand. It’ll tell you how it feels about sunsets. It’ll tell you where it lives.

In an ironic way, I believe the fact that AI can lie is the current crowning achievement of AI. It’s almost human of them. Maybe they’ll beat the Turing Test even sooner than I think.

©2022 Richard Parks

The Red-Tail and the Raven

Posted on by

It’s been a couple of weeks. Don’t ask. Everything’s fine, just too much stuff all at once. To atone somewhat for last week’s absence, today’s post will be a flash in the Master and Apprentice series. I really should give them their own book one of these days.

The Red-Tail and the Raven

Picking blackberries was a tricky business.

Master, as expected, was in a more supervisory role rather than an active participant. He lay on his back on a little hillock near the center of the meadow, idly chewing a bit of straw.

“Come here,” he said. “Put down your bucket and look up.”

I did. It was a nearly cloudless sky, blue, stretching from horizon to horizon.

“It’s lovely. Was that it?”

Master had his expression of exaggerated patience.  “Look closer.”

After a moment or two I noticed what I’d missed the first time. It was a hawk, lazily circling high overhead.

“That’s a red-tail,” Master said. “What’s it doing?”

I shrugged. “Hunting?”

“Possibly, but I suspect it’s just looking over its territory.”

One might wonder why Master interrupted berry picking to give me a lecture on the habits of red-tailed hawks. There had been a time I might have wondered, also, but Master never did anything without at least two reasons and one wild notion. I waited.

“Why would a creature that can fly so far stay in one area?”

Of course, I didn’t know the answer. Which, I suspected, was the point.  “Because it has everything it needs here? Why should it leave?”

I was distracted for a moment by a raven landing in a treetop nearby.

“Indeed,” Master said. “Yet the common raven up there also has a home territory where it has everything it needs. And yet, now and again, it will simply pick a direction and go. Why is that?”

“Because…it believes there’s something beyond ‘everything it needs’?”

“Perhaps. Let’s find out.”

If I didn’t know better, I’d swear Master and the raven had worked this out in advance. The raven took flight, not rising in a leisurely circle like the hawk, but rather setting out straight into the woods, and Master and I followed.

“Do you really think we can keep up with it?”

“Depends on how certain it is of its destination,” Master said.

Indeed, it was clear after a bit that the raven wasn’t sure where it was going. While it did not stray very much from its original direction, it did pause often, making croaking sounds to itself before it set off again. We soon came to another clearing, and there, sitting on a dull gray boulder, was something small and shiny, probably a stray bit of rock crystal. The raven flitted down, snatched it up, and went back the way it had come.

“All this way for something shiny?” I asked.

“All this way for something it didn’t have before, something its home did not provide. We admire the hawk for its grace and beauty, and we’re right to do so. But if you want to see something you’ve never seen before? if you want to go somewhere you’ve never been? Look to the raven.”

I made a note to myself to watch the ravens, but Master seemed to read my thought.

“From the meadow, please. Those berries won’t pick themselves.”

©2022 Richard Parks

The Difference Between Genius and Stupidity

Posted on by

I swear, the first time I heard about this incident I thought it was a joke, a parody. I thought, “Oh, come on! No one is that stupid.”

I was wrong.

It seems several of the January 6 Insurrectionists contacted Nancy Pelosi’s Office inquiring if they had a “lost and found,” because in the process of committing sedition they managed to lose various personal items, you know, like car keys and phones and such, and they’d really like them back.

I am not making this up.

I almost wish I were.

“Sure, just give us your names and addresses, and if those items turn up, we’ll let you know. And thanks for placing yourselves at the scene of the crime.”

Seriously?

There are tons of false quotes on the internet attributed to Albert Einstein, but he likely did say something along the lines of the quote I now paraphrase:

The difference between genius and stupidity? Genius has its limits.

Who Knew?

Posted on by

Apparently I’m a vampire.

I mean, I should have expected it, right? Tendency to be more active and alert at night, which I just ascribed to being a writer. We’re known for keeping odd hours, but if I can stay up all night and sleep all day, I’m a happy guy. Never been quite able to manage it, but now I have an excuse to try harder.

Well, a temporary one, anyway.

Apparently, I have Baker’s Knee. Nothing to do with baking, which I only do on impulse, quelled usually by the ungodly results, so that’s likely a good thing. Anyway, Baker’s Knee is a “popliteal cyst” behind the knee, a buildup of synoval fluid caused by injury to the knee, blood clots, or arthritis. Not a blood clot, but otherwise no clue what caused this one. Anyway, twisted my ankle slightly on the stairs, which twisted the knee, which ruptured the cyst.

Leg swelled up to almost twice its normal size. Dopey me, I just lived with it for about five days, finally gave up and saw medical people, where it was diagnosed and confirmed not caused by a blood clot. Immediately got put on antibiotics because the ruptured cyst caused an infection.

Doing better, but one side effect of the medication is I have to avoid sunlight for the next week if I don’t want to turn into a pile of ashes. Or maybe just get a rash.

I’m going with vampire. Even if the sight of blood makes me woozy.

Something Brighter than Dim

Posted on by

Now that the contracts are signed I see no reason to keep anything secret. Paula Guran has picked up “The Fox’s Daughter” from Beneath Ceaseless Skies #344 for the first issue of her new Year’s Best Fantasy series from Pyr Books. It’s nice to be working with Paula again. She was my line/copy editor for most of the Yamada Monogatari series when I was with Prime Books.

There have been a lot of YBF series over the years, and I’ve managed to appear in a few, but this is the first in a while. I remember the David Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer Year’s Bests fondly, so it’s great to see a new one getting started. I’ll put up links as soon as Paula’s is out and I hope it does well. The field always benefits from a diversity of sources.