Shmintelligence – Opinions on AI

A friend of mine seems to use ChatGPT to write every message he sends out. It’s still pretty easy to spot when he has used it, and it still leaves a strange taste in my mouth. Why is a robot texting me in his place?

That strange taste is the overarching effect of AI on myself, and I don’t think anybody knows quite what to do with the feeling left over after interacting with a bot where we used to interact with a human. Especially when we know the bots are not 100% trustworthy. Not even close.

Strange feelings aside, it’s clear that AI is not going away, and the interactions with robots will accelerate because convenience overrides quality. Just like streaming overtook the CDs and LPs of the world, and we were forced to choose Spotify or A.N. Other – The net result is that I need to choose an AI platform. I need my own opinions on various options I have used, and below is the lay of the land as I see it:

ChatGPT – All powerful and popular, but not appealing because of the origin stories and the boardroom dramas, and because of all the lawsuits. Elon Musk teamed up with Sam Altman and that resulted in a greedy scraping Robot, and I just don’t want to use it. It just hit a billion dollars revenue a month but it is burning as much in energy and costs. Extraordinary.
Grok – seemingly more extreme and outlandish in its utterances, and more links with Elon with all his lawsuits and wildness. Not an X user. Not particularly interested.
Claude – appealing for its supposed focus on safety and transparency. I like the free version as much as I like any talking robot prompt, but commitment is expensive at USD 17 a month.
Gemini – already part of my Google One account subscription and works much the same way as the others for me. Appealing for me as I think Google’s lead in search and deep history in creating AI will give it advantages long into the future. I am going to choose this one not because of any difference in quality that I have had with interactions, but because of the bundle.

My point about bundles above suggests to me that the tech is a commodity already. Sure, there are benchmarks to measure performance, but do we really see those differences in our daily use? I certainly can’t tell. But hey what do I know? I still write my own blog posts. It feels good to have come up with an opinion on the tools I have used so far, even if they have been foisted upon me without much of a say on my part. What a strange world it is.

Happy Thursday Chimps.

Finishing

I am excited by new things and new projects. I think our popular culture encourages the new, the clean, and the shiny. This is particularly true of the tech industry, as well as fashion and media – but it also applies to any new endeavour.

I have started this blog up about a million times. I have started writing a book. I have started a podcast and a career in consulting. I have started all sorts of things. But once I start something, 2 questions quickly pop up:

how do I want to keep them going? and,
how do I want to finish them all?

Keeping them going is very tricky and smells something like hard work. There is always resistance to keeping something going. Always a need to be whipped or carroted into it. Formulating your own practice and habit and process is likely the answer. But this is easier said than done.

A less frequently discussed problem is that of finishing something well. We don’t learn often about how to best finish things off, how to put something to rest, or how to sell out or walk away for good. How to let something die.

I have finished a few relationships, a few jobs and a few sports careers successfully in my life to date. But for the really important stuff, entropy requires us to prepare for potential disorder and chaos. In practice this probably looks like a clear plan to move past the practice/habit stage and to enter the “finishing” stage. A plan with fallbacks and contingencies along the way. My finishes have been more ad hoc and improvised to date. I’d like to change that, though.

The channels of the knowledge

Cape Town in February can be stifling. Now we have tipped into March and today there is a welcome drizzle to cool us all down. I chose today to wash my car which i saw as some sort of celebration of the falling rain. I don´t know why so don´t ask 🙂

While I waited for the car to be washed, I put on my headphones. Podcasts, music and news all set to feed into my ears at 1.75 times the normal speed. It struck me how different this is from two other channels of knowledge – reading or a discussion. Is it better to read, to listen or to talk in dialogue?

Reading for me is a battle. I am torn between Kindles, books, classics, modern trash, websites, magazines, social media. It all scraps for my attention.

Perhaps the first two channels (reading and listening) are necessary foundations to really engage in the third channel (dialogue) in any meaningful way. Famously Plato used the Socratic method where ideas are shaped through dialogue. The questions and interactions were supposed to uncover knowledge. My children are taught how to listen and how to read at school, but I am not certain they are taught what a meaningful dialogue looks like, nor are they taught what the preconditions are for dialogue to occur.

Socratic dialogue is not something that is easy or convenient to create in the busy-ness of everyday life. My wife is not interested in longform investigations into abstract ideas. But, listening to a podcast might be the best option to incorporate dialogue into your life – to hear it done well by others. Of course it depends on the podcast you choose, but I believe this is one of the biggest strengths of the format – it allows for longform, uncensored dialogue to occur.

Happy Tuesday, Chimps.

100 Poets

How many poems have you read in your life? If you’re like me, the number is fewer than you’d like. The mental effort required to open a book of poetry with no guidance or context is significant. Enter “100 Poets” by John Carey.

This anthology lets you skim over famous poets and absorb some of their best work, providing context and knowledge at the same time. It still requires effort to dive in, but it’s a much friendlier approach than a cold, hard book of poetry with nobody to introduce you or explain what’s going on.

I started sending portions of the book to my family via voice messages. I would read out sections with poetry as a way of forcing myself to read and engage. Then I stopped for a while, but I plan to pick it back up because it was such a great way to engage with poetry – out loud.

Obviously, I would prefer to be a literature student again and dive into the words for hours on end. But I don’t have hours on end, I have minutes on end, so this book is the next best thing.

Visitors

Friends came over for coffee today. Great family friends of my parents, they have known me since I was a child. I grew up with their children. They come from Kenya and after some text messages to arrange things, they suddenly appear at my house. Appearing not only out of a taxi, but out of my past, out of my memories. They make me smile as soon as I see them.

Nostalgia runs deep with visits like this. Talking with them of family, Kenya, the way things are versus the way they used to be – it’s a little like watching a beloved film for the umpteenth time. I often feel that I know what we are going to say before we say it. I am comforted by the familiarity of everything – their accents, their faces, their memories.

Pride sweeps through me too. I show them my new house, I introduce my children. I give them coffee and pastries. I describe my life to them. I hope they see progress even in the face of Africa, the pandemic, gruelling life. Their compliments are kind. I am most proud of my family.

Fear hits me when they leave. I feel it – a jolt in my stomach and at the base of my skull – and I hope I can see them again soon. I am so far away from the people of my childhood. Age is catching us all.

Thank God for my chaotic family. After a beautiful visit is over, my children and my wife bring me right back to the present. I have so many things to do. Til we meet again.

Happy Thursday, chimps.

Trips to Kenya

I just returned from a trip to Kenya. It was beautiful. The weather was warm, my family there was happy and healthy, and I was by myself in the town of my childhood for a while. I visited friends, stayed up late and generally did what I wanted. However, I always come away from these trips a little conflicted. Let me try to explain.

Depending on who I am talking to, trips to Nairobi can be called “a trip home”, “a trip to see my parents”, or simply “a trip to Kenya”. Somehow I am unable to find a label that sticks. It seems to reflect poorly on me to call it “home” in front of my wife, for example. Whereas calling it the same thing in front of an old Kenyan friend seems right. This is strange. The place does not change. Simply my label for it.

Since I went to boarding school overseas (sunny England) aged 15 I have been returning to Kenya, to the exact same house I grew up in. I tend to revert to a sort of adolescence and a role in the Kenya house. This is the case even though I have a very happy home and family of my own in South Africa. I heard the experience described as a “dance” we have with our original family members. A choreographed sequence of interactions and emotions. Over the years I have simultaneously missed the old dance (homesickness) and realised the need to escape from it and create a new dance with my new family (growing up).

Back in boarding school the homesickness was paralysing. I would miss Kenya so much, ticking the days off my calendar. When I eventually got back for a holiday I would wallow and bathe in the place, saturating myself with familiarity like I was in a warm bath. In the worst case scenario, we never leave our childhood homes. Either physically or psychologically. We are never allowed to grow up and create our own “dance”. We fail to launch. Nowadays of course I miss my parents being overseas, but the “dance” and the power of our old home only hits me once I have arrived in Kenya.

I am grateful that the homesickness and the “family dance” of my childhood is getting further away all the time. It means I am happy with my life. At the same time I am so lucky to have such a place to go back to. Trips to Nairobi are now more like a quick holiday rather than an essential recovery or a fix for an ailment. I enjoy them more because of this.

Happy weekend, chimps.

Twitch – Streaming my writing

I am starting something new. Streaming on Twitch has traditionally been used for video games (as far as I am aware). I have learned today that there are many other users on Twitch – streaming all sorts of different activities.

Musicians, illustrators, artists, sculptors, all showing their practice to the world in real time. It’s a crazy thought. Why not join?

I have security concerns…how much can everyone see REALLY? But I am also interested and curious about the transparency and accountability something like this could bring.

This blog post will be my first stream. You can find me on Twitch with the username chimpwithcans. I hope there will be many more streams to come – to the point that I start a scheduled time slot to follow or write with me if you so wish. There is a lot to work out still! Maybe I will even talk to the camera some time, or play a video game 🙂

I want to get going again on the writing and this might help.

Happy Wednesday chimps.

Music plus tech

As a teenager I used to think I would listen to my walkman for the rest of my life. It was so essential to me – the cassette tapes I had painstakingly curated, the stock of fresh AA-size batteries, the headphones I found in an airport in England. The ritual of plugging it all in and pushing play. It just didn’t get any better.

One day in my early 20s I found my dad’s LP collection and an old hifi setup. I heard classics like Otis Redding and Springsteen in such clarity and power. Besides the fidelity, there was the long beautiful process of choosing the record, cleaning it, playing one side through and flipping it over, reading the liner notes, poring over the album covers, adjusting the needle and the audio settings. A new ritual was born. My life changed.

Now in my 30s I have my iPhone and an Apple watch. New tech, new ritual. I can call up any song I want no matter where I am. The digital liner notes are getting better every day and the sheer convenience of Bluetooth and music on the go is changing my life again. Don’t even get me started on Spotify’s daily mix and discover weekly playlists. That revolution in curation is a topic for another post.

Older forms of technology can all still be used of course. And often they retain their original power even though the convenience factor is low. Vinyl has made a come back. Audiophiles also tout the benefits of CDs and cassettes. For me this means I now have an arsenal of ways to access the Music drug. The music is the constant, Platonic form while the tech revolves and morphs around it in a clumsy, circular dance.

Perhaps one day the headphones will be nothing more than chips in our brains. A neuralink device Elon Musk sells for a fee. What might a music listening ritual look like for this scenario?

I get comfort from the fact that the music never changes. Taste and quality may vary, but a song is a song no matter what. The catalogue keeps on growing, but the essential form and function of a song is set. It is information in the form of a sound wave being received by the brain. Only the tech for delivery varies.

Impetus

It is often the big events which give new impetus to a project or a lagging goal.

I was busy before the pandemic and now I have a very busy life. So far COVID 19 related lockdown has been a blur of work, babysitting, house cleaning, logistics. I know I am not alone and many people have even more to do than me. I also know some people are going through this lockdown with no work and no children to worry over. I wonder what that’s like??…..But I digress.

Impetus itself is a mid 17th century word from Latin. It comes from impetere ‘assail’, from in- ‘towards’ + petere ‘seek’. This suggests a searching and overcoming of obstacles. Impetus is often an externally generated thing in my life. I wish it was more internally driven.

Start of a new streak. Here’s hoping I have the impetus to keep it going for at least 30 days.

Keep well and happy Monday chimps.

App hacks

I’m enjoying exploring ifttt.com and zapier.com. I’m also loving Evernote. One cool thing I have set up using ifttt.com is using Siri and Google Assistant to voice command a note in Evernote.

If you are curious about how your apps can all work together – check out the two sites I mention above.

Happy Wednesday chimps.