Anecdotal Incompetence

Friends,

There’s something unsettling about artificial intelligence. As writers, programmers and graphic artists lean on this new crutch, it’s tempting to see the tool as a self-aware peer. Such articulate paragraphs, seamless code and creative drawings must surely come from one such as us. Right? And yet, as we peek beneath the human veneer masking generative AI, there’s an uncanny valley that separates it from us. Does remixing and mashing-up large bodies of human knowledge whilst concealing your sources add up to originality? Perhaps. After all, isn’t that how human creativity works? We apply knowledge from one domain to another, borrow an experience here, a learning there and boom… eureka! Yet, something feels off. I grab my last donut of the year and ponder whether machines will soon pass the Turing Test. Then I continue working on my año viejo effigy (you should have no problem guessing the theme). I think 2023 will go down as the year the line between man and machine got a little blurrier.

Happy Friday!

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Friday Donuts

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