https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai Short URL: https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai en-us 2023-04-10 21:50:49 UTC 2025-09-25 21:06:04 UTC hello@padlet.com https://padlet.net/icons/png/1f916.png laurakgibbs https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2549278352 So, I'm Laura from 3J. I moved in about a year ago; my parents, Jack and Sylvia, lived here for about 30 years before me. You can find me at Twitter @OnlineCrsLady, or laurakgibbs@gmail.com. Over the past few years I've published a series of 100-word folktale books, all free as epub, PDF, etc. You'll find them here: 100Words.LauraGibbs.net ... and I've brought some to the talk too: please take one if you are interested! I self-publish exactly so that I can give books away :-)
(I used one of those 100-word stories, chosen literally at random, as raw material for Sudowrite to transform; you'll find that later here in the presentation.)]]> 2023-04-10 22:04:58 UTC https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2549278352 laurakgibbs https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2549282350 This QR code should take you to the Padlet if you want to follow along on your phone, or you can type this short URL:
https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai
I'm using a Padlet to do this presentation instead of Powerpoint (or similar) because Padlet makes it easy for people to leave COMMENTS on any post with questions, ideas, etc. So, please comment anytime (before, during, after the presentation: it's all good), and I will reply here at the Padlet.
You can also view this Padlet as a slideshow using the back-forward navigation buttons to move from one post to another.
Plus there's a PDF version of the Padlet's content also.]]> 2023-04-10 22:13:33 UTC https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2549282350 laurakgibbs https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2549285139 Yes, there are new articles everywhere every day about AI, but my advice about anything is just to read more books. And there are so many great books to read on this topic, putting the ChatGPT hype into a bigger context. I've limited myself to just 7 recommendations here. :-)]]> 2023-04-10 22:19:57 UTC https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2549285139 laurakgibbs https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2549287198 To understand what is going on with AI and Natural Language Processing (NLP), it definitely helps to know something about human language, and this book by Terrence Deacon is what I recommend as a starting point: The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain, available at both Austin Public Library and UT Library.]]> 2023-04-10 22:24:57 UTC https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2549287198 laurakgibbs https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2549290385 The only technological innovation that really rivals the use of AI right now is the advent of writing itself, and I think it helps to understand how writing is also a technology... a technology that completely changed the course of human culture. Walter Ong is my favorite writer on this topic. His book Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word is an excellent overview of this topic. Available at the UT Library but sadly not at Austin Public Library.
(Does everybody know that any Texas resident can get borrowing privileges at the UT Library for just $50/year? THANK YOU, Fran Cushing, for telling me about that!)]]> 2023-04-10 22:32:00 UTC https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2549290385 laurakgibbs https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2549292584 This brilliant book by Kate Crawford is a must-read for AI. If you are only going to read just one of the books that I'm recommending here, READ THIS BOOK. More information at the author's website: Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence. Available at both UT Library and Austin Public Library.]]> 2023-04-10 22:36:39 UTC https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2549292584 laurakgibbs https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2549294461 To understood how we got here (i.e. how Google and all the rest got all this data to train their machines), then read Shoshana Zuboff's book. It is AMAZING. I've now read it three times, and I learn something new every time I read it: The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. Available at both the UT Library and at Austin Public Library.]]> 2023-04-10 22:40:44 UTC https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2549294461 laurakgibbs https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2549296771 And for a very specific take on what data and platforms mean for creative artists (writers, musicians, etc.), this new book by Cory Doctorow and Rebecca Giblin is really helpful: Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We'll Win Them Back. Not yet available at an Austin library, but there are lots of purchase options at the book's website: ChokepointCapitalism.com.]]> 2023-04-10 22:45:50 UTC https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2549296771 laurakgibbs https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2549366293 So, consciously or unconsciously, we humans seem to want for the machine to be intelligent, and we want to communicate with that artificial intelligence as if it could understand us. As if it could be us.
But here's the thing: the artificial intelligence is itself absolutely dependent on human beings. We are the ones who create the data on which it "feeds" during its training, and human labor is often required for the AI to complete its tasks successfully.
The metaphor of the Mechanical Turk is often used for this paradoxical situation: you think the action is automated, but it's really a human at work.]]> 2023-04-11 00:27:08 UTC https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2549366293 laurakgibbs https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2549366887 Even though it's called "natural" language processing, what machines do when processing human language is not natural. It's all based on statistical probabilities. You can read at Wikipedia about how the advent of massive computational power transformed natural language processing by machines with new statistical methods in the 1990s and then the application of those statistical methods to neural networks starting about 10 years ago. That is what produced GPT (Generative Pretrained Transformer) version 3 in the year 2020, followed by GPT4 in March of this year.]]> 2023-04-11 00:27:36 UTC https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2549366887 laurakgibbs https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2549367069 Back in the day, the spellchecker would not prompt you to correct "Prince of Whales" because all those words are spelled correctly. Now, though, the spellchecker is not just looking up words in a dictionary or applying grammar rules. Instead, it's looking at probabilities based on billions and billions and billions of words that it has read. You could be writing about the Prince of Whales, but now the spellchecker is going to prompt you to change that to Prince of Wales.
Meanwhile, an AI program that generates art is very happy to give you the Prince of Whales (although the whales are a bit... strange).]]> 2023-04-11 00:27:45 UTC https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2549367069 laurakgibbs https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2549367219 When the spellchecker prompts you to change "Prince of Whales" to "Prince of Wales," it might seem like it knows what you wanted to write, as if it could see into your mind. That is not the case (all it knows are statistical probabilities), but especially with the chat-based interface of ChatGPT and similar applications, it really can feel like the computer hears you and answers you.
And the fact is that human beings have, for thousands of years, chosen to put their trust in artificial answers, i.e. divination, oracles, lotteries, tarot, etc. The Wikipedia article on divination provides lots of examples and links to many other articles about specific forms of divination.
And are there AI-powered tarot applications...? Of course there are! I asked MagoLucas.com how my talk would go tonight. The cards are reassuring, ha ha.]]> 2023-04-11 00:27:52 UTC https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2549367219 laurakgibbs https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2549367984 Remember the Flash Mind Reader from back in the day? It was a perfect example of how easily we can be fooled into thinking that a computer is reading our mind. The old Flash Mind Reader doesn't work anymore now that Adobe Flash is defunct, but you can experience the same thing here: Mystical Mathematical Mind Reader.
My advice: play the game before you read any explanations of how this type of mind reader works. It's actually a very simple mathematical trick, but the illusion of mind-reading is powerful, in part because we want to believe that the machine knows what we are thinking.
(And kudos to the original mind-reader inventor, Andy Wolfe.)]]> 2023-04-11 00:28:31 UTC https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2549367984 laurakgibbs https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2555355463 If you are not up for Zuboff's admittedly very big book, there is a lot to learn from this short and very hard-hitting book by Cathy O'Neil: Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy, available at both the Austin Public Library and the UT Library. ]]> 2023-04-15 15:23:06 UTC https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2555355463 laurakgibbs https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2555358386 And for the really big question about AI and consciousness (and whether or not the "singularity" will coincide with consciousness), we need to start with human consciousness, about which we know surprisingly little. For a first take on this topic, I recommend David Lewis-Williams' beautiful book The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of Art, which is at both Austin Public Library and the UT Library.]]> 2023-04-15 15:30:17 UTC https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2555358386 laurakgibbs https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2555433692 Hence Amazon's own Mechanical Turk, where companies can hire fast, cheap human labor as required for their AI machine learning projects.
So, the next time you are using OpenAI's ChatGPT, take a moment to remember the exploitation of human workers who trained that particular chat machine: OpenAI Used Kenyan Workers on Less Than $2 Per Hour to Make ChatGPT Less Toxic. "AI often relies on hidden human labor in the Global South that can often be damaging and exploitative. These invisible workers remain on the margins even as their work contributes to billion-dollar industries."
For more about the massive exploitation of the Global South for both labor and raw materials, Kate Crawford's book Atlas of AI provides abundant and deeply disturbing details.]]> 2023-04-15 18:52:31 UTC https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2555433692 laurakgibbs https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2555987040 I chose the "sorcerer's apprentice" as the title for this presentation because it is one of my favorite folktales. Most people know it from the Disney version in Fantasia, but there are many versions of this story told all over the world, often with farm implements that get out of control; in Mickey's case, he loses control over the brooms he has enchanted to do the task of carrying buckets of water; I've embedded Part 3 of the Disney video in the next slide.
Fantasia: Sorcerer's Apprentice: Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3.]]> 2023-04-16 20:36:54 UTC https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2555987040 laurakgibbs https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2555987892 In Part 3 of the video, embedded here, you see what happens when Mickey loses control of the brooms.
You can find out more in the Wikipedia article about this folktale. Like many world folktales, it probably had its origin in India, and then spread from India west to Europe and to Africa, and also east to Asia.
For an Afro-Caribbean version from Jamaica, here's a 100-word story: Anansi and Tiger's Hoe.]]> 2023-04-16 20:38:47 UTC https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2555987892 laurakgibbs https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2556009083 I read a lot of books about science and technology, and making up this little list, I was wondering if people might be interested in a Science and Technology Book Club that would run in the alternating months when our Cambridge Book Club doesn't meet...?
If you're interested, fill out this form, which also asks for some book recommendations. And hey, even if we don't get an additional book club up and running, we could at least get a nice list of science and technology books that people recommend:
Science and Technology Book Club Form]]> 2023-04-16 21:26:36 UTC https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2556009083 laurakgibbs https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2556012557 You can find Sudowrite at Sudowrite.com. It's not free (I use the $10/month student-hobbyist subscription), but they do have a sandbox you can try before you have to try a subscription plan.
Sudowrite has so many features that I will not even try to list them all here; in the following slides I've linked to detailed information and examples about how writers are using Sudowrite.]]> 2023-04-16 21:36:32 UTC https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2556012557 laurakgibbs https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2556015153 Just as an example of how I've used Sudowrite for fun (and for me it is just a toy; I do fine writing on my own... I type fast, and I don't get writer's block) — I pasted in a 100-word story chosen at random and asked Sudowrite to expand it section by section. The resulting story is about 800 words long, and Sudowrite wrote about 90% of it. I added a few words here and there, while also deleting some of what Sudowrite suggested, but the story was almost entirely generated by Sudowrite. You can see the two versions, 100 words and Sudowrite's story, in the next slide.
In the screenshot, notice the feedback, which is one of the Sudowrite features that I find most fascinating. It's still in Beta; currently, it generates 3 different "robo-readers" who give you feedback on your writing.]]> 2023-04-16 21:43:44 UTC https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2556015153 laurakgibbs https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2556019477 So, here's the 100-word story that I pasted into Sudowrite to start with, and then the 800-word story that Sudowrite generated.
What's remarkable is that Sudowrite invented a plot twist I have never read in any version of this folktale: the hyena's skin actually does cure the lion! My guess is that Sudowrite did not fully understand that everything the jackal said was a lie: the jackal did not visit doctors; he just said he had visited doctors, but Sudowrite seems to have "thought" that the hyena's skin really was a cure for the lion's illness.
In some versions of the story, the lion's sickness is itself a sham to begin with... so, thanks to Sudowrite, I'm tempted to rewrite the story again starting with that premise, with the lion just pretending that the hyena's skin cured him!]]> 2023-04-16 21:55:28 UTC https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2556019477 laurakgibbs https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2556023028 This piece by Stephen Marche in the New Yorker is a great place to start learning more about Sudowrite: The Computers Are Getting Better at Writing.
This is actually from 2021 when Sudowrite was just getting started!
One of my favorite parts in this piece is how he has it finish Coleridge's poem "In Xanadu did Kubla Khan," and it's pretty amazing:

The old Moon shook her silver tresses
The new Moon bow’d her golden horns:
While all the stars that round her burn’d,
Bow’d to the ground and based their fires.

See the article for more faux-Coleridge.
I especially appreciated his comparison of Sudowrite to the mythological Muses invoked by the ancient composers.]]> 2023-04-16 22:04:55 UTC https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2556023028 laurakgibbs https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2556024357 If you like to learn from videos, here's a tutorial by Joanna Penn; you can find out more at her website:
TheCreativePenn.com.
She also did a really interesting podcast interview with Leanne Leeds (including a transcript), a novelist who uses Sudowrite. For more from Leeds, see the next slide.]]> 2023-04-16 22:07:59 UTC https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2556024357 laurakgibbs https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2556025483 Leanne Leeds (see previous slide) was one of the main sources for this piece in the Verge: The Great Fiction of AI. The strange world of high-speed semi-automated genre fiction.
There is also a follow-up with Leeds in this Verge article where she shares information about her ongoing use of Sudowrite along with the advent of ChatGPT: How Kindle novelists are using ChatGPT.]]> 2023-04-16 22:10:58 UTC https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2556025483 laurakgibbs https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2556028870 There are a number of very detailed reviews of Sudowrite which provide inventories of all its features with lots of screenshots and examples. Here are the most useful reviews that I found:

Sudowrite Review by Neil Chase

What Is Sudowrite? by Paul Jenkins

Sudowrite Review 2023 with 3 example stories by Nav

Plus you might enjoy this podcast interview with James Yu, one of the co-creators of Sudowrite (transcript included).]]> 2023-04-16 22:21:13 UTC https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2556028870 laurakgibbs https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2556032464 I am not a fan of ChatGPT, but authors who use Sudowrite turn to ChatGPT for blurbs and marketing copy, so I used it to generate a thank you, which is a kind of marcomm after all.
Meanwhile, from ME, in all sincerity: thank you! really!
I hope you found the talk useful, and please jump in here at the Padlet with questions and comments anytime, or contact me by email.
Or come by for a coffee in 3J. I make good coffee, and that's something OpenAI can't do. Not yet anyway. :-)]]> 2023-04-16 22:31:03 UTC https://padlet.com/laurakgibbs/ai/wish/2556032464