Yesterday evening we attended a talk on AI at the Frost Science Museum in Miami. The three speakers were all from the University of Pennsylvania, which sponsored the event, and two spoke about the aspects of AI that I am most intrigued by: its application to medicine and to writing. I am all for the first and dubious about the second.
The woman who spoke about medicine only reinforced my belief in AI as a force for good, while not ignoring its (current) limitations. But the ability to access vast quantities of information in a short period of time in order to make a correct diagnosis is something that is going to help doctors, and patients, immeasurably.
The man who spoke about writing referred to a study in which students wrote a story by themselves and then one using AI. In the first instance, most of the stories were young adult stories, as those reflected the students’ experiences. When they used AI, there was much more variety: science fiction, fantasy, etc. This was seen as a good thing.
OK, but isn’t that cheating? To me, a writer using AI is like an athlete using steroids. I can envision, in the future, a writer being stripped of her Pulitzer after it’s discovered she wrote her winning novel using AI.
But could an AI-enhanced novel win a Pulitzer? Writing is personal, or at least it should be, and AI is not, at least not yet. And if it ever becomes so, we will have a problem. When I was a travel editor, rejecting lots of freelance stories, I noticed flaws that appeared again and again. And the most common, and frustrating, flaw was the absence of a distinctive voice. In fact, I used to joke that there was a machine somewhere in the country that was mass producing travel stories that all sounded pretty much the same.
And now there is – or at least there can be.
Neil deGrasse Tyson lost last night on Celebrity Jeopardy! Granted, the questions skewed toward pop culture – the Final Jeopardy answer was about the Muppets – but he failed to buzz in on one rare science question (and got good-natured ribbing from his fellow contestants for that). Later, he didn’t seem to know that Mt. Etna is in Sicily. And when shown a picture of President Grant, and told that his first name was the same as the title of a novel by James Joyce, all of which takes place in a single day, he – like the two actors on either side of him – stood clueless. This seemed especially embarrassing, for all of them, as it illuminated an ignorance not just of literature but of history. True, we weren’t all English majors, but we all studied American presidents. And who can forget Ulysses S. Grant?
Two actors and an astrophysicist can.
This week Trump claimed that Ukraine started the war. It was an outrageous statement – like blaming Poland for World War II – and extremely worrisome for Ukraine, and all of Europe.
But it was not surprising. Trump is a man who adores the big and powerful – whether they be countries or people – and he despises the small and vulnerable. This has been clear from his domestic policies – his heartlessness toward immigrants – and now it’s manifest in his foreign policy.
In the evening, we usually stream something on Netflix or Prime because there’s nothing of interest on network TV. Yet Sunday night there were three things we wanted to watch: Saturday Night Live’s 50th anniversary special on NBC, PBS’s All Creatures Great and Small, and the first episode of the new series of The White Lotus on HBO. We watched SNL, knowing we could stream the other two later in the week. Last night we watched All Creatures Great and Small, which quoted lines from Lewis Carroll and Hughes Mearns (“I met a man who wasn’t there.”) You don’t get nonsense poetry from The White Lotus.
The New Yorker is observing its 100th birthday at the same time that “Saturday Night Live” is celebrating its 50th. The former institution has paid tribute to the latter – with a long profile of Lorne Michaels – while the latter has not reciprocated. Though, according to Maureen Dowd in yesterday’s New York Times, Michaels offered an office to William Shawn in 1987 when he was ousted from the magazine after 35 years as editor.
People don’t come here for politics (for the most part people don’t come here, period), but in observing our president’s actions I have moved from shock to revulsion. Not all USAID programs were worthwhile, but providing medicines in poorer countries is not only a humanitarian act, it’s one that builds good feeling for the United States around the world.
This week, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. – a man with no scientific training, and some dangerously outlandish views – was confirmed as Secretary of Health and Human Services. In a similar disregard for qualifications, Trump put himself in charge of the Kennedy Center. Then he spoke with Putin – a dictator and war criminal who is personally responsible for the deaths of thousands – about the war in Ukraine, suggesting in his comments that ‘there are good people on both sides.’
A nation’s health, its culture, the stability of the world are all at risk because of a man who is in way over his head.