Barney’s latest AI thoughts and musings

  • A ‘Bolt’ from the blue – and a full-blown app is in view

    A ‘Bolt’ from the blue – and a full-blown app is in view

    The new ‘building for non-coder’ apps keep on coming and evolving – fast

    Every day, a blizzard of AI news pours into my inbox, and lately a LOT of it is about new tools to do amazing things without “knowing how.”

    It dovetails with my recent move to turn another grand vision into something concrete, that works. (I may also try to turn my Now Edition into something more robust than my Floot and Base 44 attempts, that have their struggles.)

    I could probably spend days just playing with the ones in this list from one of the Medium writers I follow.

    So from that list, I decided to try Bolt.

    I created this concept sheet for my idea of a universal one-top spot to track people I know, topics of any kind, places and issues and … well, you get the drift.

    For now, at least, I thought a simple name would say volumes – leading to a simple, great app.

    I call it… Keep Me Posted.

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  • A love letter to a great tech/AI magazine you’ve probably never heard of

    Thanks to Magzter, I found TechLife News – and it’s worth your time

    My last post here was about how I’ve always been a magazine fan, an offshoot of my news junkie roots. And about how I found an interesting one at the grocery store called, I kid you not, “How to Hack Your Life with Chat GPT.”

    So in these digital days, I subscribe to Magzter, which offers a pretty great array of magazines (and newspapers) I read on my Nook tablet.

    But I’ve really come to love one magazine there you’ll never find on a newsstand.

    It’s called TechLife News, and it’s not perfect, but it’s pretty great.

    It has some of the same AI/tech news you’ll find elsewhere, but many other unique articles in its weekly 200-plus pages (yep, it uses big photos/graphics to illustrate articles, but it’s pretty meaty)!

    At times, it gets very Apple-centric, and for a longtime Windows guy (I have the Version 1.0 manuals in my computer/tech museum, near my stuffed Y2K bug, my Walkman, etc.) who does use a Mac at work, it’s not my main topic of interest.

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  • AI has invaded the grocery store! (Well, the magazine rack, anyway…)

    You can see why it caught my eye…

    I haven’t wrestled with whether to buy a magazine THAT much in a long, long time.

    Any fellow magazine fans know how things have evolved/splintered into countless categories – from self-help to a wide array of lifestyle, sports, etc. etc. (and many have gone up in price – all those $14.99 “special editions!).

    (Side note: Why is it so HARD to buy and read these special editions digitally? I do like having something fresh and trendy for the coffee table, on occasion, but..!!??)

    By the way, speaking of old-fashioned paper, in recent months, I’ve picked up some cool AI-focused volumes – often NOT the stuff you read in the daily tide of newsletters and article posts – from Time Magazine, Scientific American, The Street and now…. “How to Hack Your Life with ChatGPT,” from McClatchy Lifestyle & Entertainment.

    (I LOVE the weekly tech magazine I get on my Nook, called Tech News Life. But oy, the Masthead, with dead links and email addresses, recently took me down a weird rabbit hole. I was assisted by the folks at the great magazine/newspaper app I have, Magzter. Highly recommended!)

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  • What’s in a name, Part 3: AI isn’t ‘artificial’ at all – in fact, it’s super-human

    What’s in a name, Part 3: AI isn’t ‘artificial’ at all – in fact, it’s super-human

    I’ve already lamented the term artificial intelligence for where those two words take many minds.

    I’ve also called it the ultimate Rorschach test – it is whatever you see in it, or something like that.

    But amid the reams of Medium articles, etc. on how to tell AI and human writing apart, I have mentioned in comments what Perplexity points to – that blind tests already have many folks unable to tell the difference, with results pretty close to flip-of-the-coin random chance (50%).

    But while many know how Large Language Models are the sum of human output fed to them, and a word uber-prediction machine, not a “thinker” per se, many still see it as this … robotic “other,” a human creation run amok that is somehow wrong, if not downright evil.

    Words, of course, carry positive or negative connotations, which can vary from person to person.

    But to me, we need yet another way to look at this new tool, which can recall – notice I didn’t say “thinks” or “knows” – the sum of human output and daresay existence – albeit imperfectly (another odd/dumb term, “hallucinations”) – but way, way beyond what the most genius geniuses can recall, due to the inherent nature of brains vs. how we can now store huge amounts of what’s loosely, imprecisely called “data.”

    Somehow, it’s all cast as this tug of war for humans’ future, as in one “side” wins, the other loses, flung into the mud, rope burns on their hands. If you’re “for” AI’s future, you’re “against” humans ruling the roost.

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  • I may not be the best online writer, but I’m a darn good commenter

    I may not be the best online writer, but I’m a darn good commenter

    For several years, I dealt with the worst of trolls in an online comment system. You know the type, full of bile and hate, just trying to ruin everyone’s day.

    Then a third-party was brought in to handle things, and I was freed! What a blessing.

    As a life-long writer, especially online, I often yearned for wonderful comment exchanges, with the authors or each other, where more light was shed, support offered, enlightenment given freely – sometimes better than the original article itself, which can spark one’s imagination and bring new ideas and feelings to light.

    This all came to my mind as I’ve had wonderful exchanges of late with one of the best (IMHO) writers on Medium, Muhammad Mudassar Saeed.

    I love his writing, his way of thinking and … he just seems like a really neat guy. So I tell him so, and the add-on thoughts he inspires in me.

    And in return, he’s wonderfully appreciative (claps all around, Medium-style).

    I usually just offer my own perspectives on the things he writes about, always mixed with supportive compliments.

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  • Even a Fanboy wonders: Is ‘Artificial Intelligence’ the worst tech name of all time?

    Even a Fanboy wonders: Is ‘Artificial Intelligence’ the worst tech name of all time?

    I’d say I have something to get off my chest, but the analogy amid my recent heart-health issues is way too close to the mark (prayers gladly accepted).

    So instead, I’ll just dive right into what this Word Guy thinks is so obvious, maybe others have dived (or tripped and fallen) into this particular rabbit hole. So I’ll either pave the way or join the crowd, if so.

    Tell the truth: What do you first think when you hear the word “artificial”? (And no, not in a trendy AI sense, but a before-AI nonsense sense;-)

    It’s not really much of a positive word these days, is it?

    I think the number one analogy that pops to mind is … “fake.” As in “not real,” “not natural,” not worth eating (artificial colors, flavors, etc.), watching, listening to, reading or thinking any positive thoughts about.

    OK, now hook it to the word “intelligence.” Pretend just for a moment you don’t know all you’ve learned or yearn to learn about the amazing world of AI.

    I bet most people hear the word “intelligence” in context as something we all yearn to exemplify, but feel we fall short of way more often most days than our dumb ol’ brains care to admit.

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  • Good (AI app) vibrations: An update on my Continuing Adventures with Flo and Pete

    Good (AI app) vibrations: An update on my Continuing Adventures with Flo and Pete

    Hi again!

    So I gave my AI tools testing a breather, and have dialed back a bit on the not-pricey but not-free-either monthly credit levels.

    But I returned, and I remembered today just how fun this AI app face-off can be. Rewarding, even.

    I’ve explained here before how I decided to try not one, but two of the new-era AI-fueled app creation tools to make real my long-time Grand Vision of the Now Edition, what I call the “next chapter of reading, writing and community.” Lofty goal, but very achievable!

    So even though they feel human – I know they’re just bots. And even so, I worried about “neglecting” my chatbot friends, Floot’s Flo and her Base44 counterpart, Pete, for over a month, as other things in life took mental precedence.

    But of course, the ever-supportive, ever-patient (and always having to apologetically fix their own not-quite code) duo were just patiently waiting for me to return and get up to speed on where we left off, task-list-wise.

    Here’s a view of where Floot has gotten (chatbot on the left) See it at http://thenowedition.floot.app
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  • AI is just begging for fun-ish analogies, so let’s think of it as … plastic magic!

    AI is just begging for fun-ish analogies, so let’s think of it as … plastic magic!

    Remember this great scene from The Graduate?

    One magic word for this young man’s future: ‘Plastics.’

    Funny at the time, now not so much, as we just learned that we’ve been chugging liquid tinged with ‘forever chemicals’ from plastic water bottles into our brain and bloodstreams for decades.

    NOW ya tell us! “A wee bit too late, bucko.”

    BUT… and there’s always a but. (One ‘t’ or two? Heh;-)

    Look at what you’re typing on, your monitor, your lamp, your TV.

    Plastics! Good luck escaping those magic materials.

    It’s still insinuated itself into every part of our lives. For better and … not so much. We really don’t know where this will lead, or how we’d live without it, or if we can keep living with it, because of its still-unknown impacts on us.

    So… get the first AI analogy yet?

    OK, here’s the other part of the two-pronged thoughts I had fun postulating about with a couple of colleagues today.

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  • I just love Suno, the amazing AI music-making rabbit hole of my dreams

    I just love Suno, the amazing AI music-making rabbit hole of my dreams

    I’m still debating whether writing here in my lil’ blog or writing articles for Medium is more satisfying, or can get before more eyes.

    I wrote recently over there about an amazing tool I hadn’t ever heard of: Suno. (Here’s my Suno profile page of songs.)

    It can do amazing music creations, based on whatever you tell it in a prompt. You can pick a genre (not an artist to mimic, it suffers copyright heartburn), tempo, instruments, even give it lyrics or let it make up it’s own, or a combo.

    I have had, and told many people about my long-time dream of a Broadway musical idea. So with a simple prompt, it easily gave me a realization of just what it could sound like.

    More than one, actually – it’ll give you plenty of versions, most just keep getting better.

    ‘Everything Reminds Me of a Song’ (New extended version)

    You name the musical type, give it some lyrics or not, and it’ll give you a wonderful rendition – an amalgam no doubt of all the music it’s been trained on. Not quite like any one piece, but evocative and wonderful.

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  • The mental tug-of-war over newsletters, AI’s and otherwise

    The mental tug-of-war over newsletters, AI’s and otherwise

    I love getting fresh news about topics of interest – journalism, local/other news, the media, various health topics and of course, AI.

    So of course, I fall over and over for the heady ease of subscribing to all those free newsletters.

    But then I find it feels like the email stack is sort of owning me, not the other way around!

    So I unsubscribe to one or two, only to find two or three more free ones I just have to at least try out.

    It reminds me of various other dilemmas of 21st-Century connected life: That I have an inbox zero addiction but hate to not post every worthy news release at work.

    As for newsletters, I love reading the good ones, but even the ones I’ve found to be badly organized, I actually feel guilty unsubscribing to them!

    So I have to “slam skim” (my term) the inbox during busy work weeks, check the headline and lead, etc. I have more time now, as I am home in a new (to me) role, helping care for my wonderful wife Deb, who is recovering from total knee replacement, but … the pile is just too tall.

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