On the implications of an All Things to All People Device.
Blog
What is creativity, and can chatbots have it?
Creativity requires a new take on something. An original perspective. Something no one else has thought of. LLMs, by definition, produce the kinds of things they have already seen. The kinds of things that already exist. The kinds of things that reinforce the status quo, entrench bias, and emphasise the mundane.
Hallucinations all the way down
The thing is, it's not reasoning. It's not a reasoning machine. It's not even trying to give you correct answers. It's trying to give you statistically plausible text. The fact that the plausible text is occasionally correct is the surprise. The fact that regularly gets things wrong is exactly how these systems work.
Schrödinger’s AI
Pushing back against AI hype sometimes feels futile, but every person you reach matters. So how do we fight back?
Scaling scams
It's important, when you're making graphs, to think about the story you want to tell with the data, and what type of graph, and what features of the graph, will help you tell that story. Likewise, when you're looking at someone else's graph, we all need to apply that critical data literacy and look at the scale on the y axis, as well as checking the labels, finding out the origin of the data, and considering whether the graph is accurate, a valid way to display that data, and what story it might be trying to tell you.