Thursday, June 29, 2023

Text is already technology

Generative AI models like chatbots learn the patterns and structure of their input training data, and then generate output inspired by its inherent patterns. The training data is a corpus. The corpora of Large Language Models are nothing more, though certainly nothing less, than unstructured libraries; books stacked at random in boxes, but read thoroughly as they are being unpacked. 

Thus, what this latest artificial intelligence advance is presenting us with is not a step change or discontinuity but rather another rung, one further up the ladder. A ladder footed by Plato's Socrates in the Phaedrus, that Derrida has been wobbling, up till now, on the top of; not because his technique was poor but because he had climbed further than anyone else and was on his tip toes.

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