Alex Dobrenko

The more I use language models, the more monstrous they seem to me. I don’t mean that in a partic­u­larly negative sense. Frankenstein’s monster is sad, but also amazing. Godzilla is a monster, and Godzilla rules.

What are you like when you’re with yourself? I feel like when we write or teach or do public talks, a part of us lights up that’s perhaps more open and alive and positive than we otherwise are. You in particular seem to really ignite in the public sphere. When you're alone, is that energy still ignited in you? If not, how does it manifest?

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“No one can play a game alone. One cannot be human by oneself. There is no selfhood where there is no community. We do not relate to others as the persons we are; we are who we are in relating to others. Simultaneously the others with whom we are in relation are themselves in relation. We cannot relate to anyone who is not also relating to us. Our... See more

as science writer Corinne Purtill states in regard to the hurdles encountered by AI engineers, “To understand a person’s humor is to know what they like, how they think and how they see the world.” An artificial intelligence with humor would have to know us better, in a sense, than we know ourselves.

What I discovered by casting a wide net was that I have very little ability to predict how useful a call will be in advance. Relevance is easier to predict, but it’s not a very good proxy for usefulness, which is a product of lots of other things including the other person’s enthusiasm and the breadth of their interests. To some extent, the more... See more