Links 45
Mark Antony’s funeral oration in a Southern (American) accent
Ethan Mollick: “The most astonishing feats of AI seem to rely on their ability to be creative through ‘hallucination.’ This tendency of AI to make up facts is troubling in some cases, but it also allows them to provide unique and original replies by connecting unlikely sources of inspiration and finding surprising linkages.”
Claire Berlinski: “We’re now living, for the first time, in an era where everyone in Europe — from politicians to cab drivers — can understand one another. It’s true that previously, diplomats could communicate through translators and, typically, in English. Now, ordinary Europeans can understand one another, instantly and accurately, and because of the compulsive lure of social media — and Twitter’s decision to automatically translate every tweet — Europeans can and do talk to each other all day long.”
Scott Alexander: “A world where we try ten things like nuclear power, each of which has a 50-50 chance of going well vs. badly, is probably a world where a handful of people have died in freak accidents but everyone else lives in safety and abundance. A world where we try ten things like AI, same odds, has a 1/1024 chance of living in so much abundance we can’t possibly conceive of it - and a 1023/1024 chance we’re all dead.”
