simple and/or natural
I am a little tired, but I am pushing myself to write.
It’s a way to keep track of my days, maybe my emotions. Most importantly: it’s a practice.
It’s been a little more than one month working with AI, and I keep thinking about what Professor Granata said: the more we interact with the machine, the more our human features are highlighted. I spend hours and hours evaluating things a model creates. I write justifications in text, text after text, after text, explaining how and why some of the things it generates don’t make sense or make sense. I can’t simply say, “Oh well, it doesn’t make sense.” I need to explain how and why.
It’s only natural that I observe myself, the people, and all the scenarios around me with a tuned eye (or would it be a different Aiiii? haaa!).
When I went to the supermarket today, I was surprised. I passed by shelves noticing that some objects are placed, or even misplaced—in ways that are related to the human body and our cognitive mind. I spend hours and hours evaluating things a model creates.
For example, because we have hands and fingers, we can carry things (some things only) and place them on shelves. If we did not have hands and fingers, the very qualities of objects would probably have different shapes or weights.
Does this make sense, or is it too crazeee?
Our cognitive mind also learns how to place things on shelves in a way that reflects a logical, and cognitive process. (There are also capitalism and cultural aspects involved, such as organizing shelves according to profit or in accordance with a dominant ethnicity etc.)
But when I walk through the supermarket, I find myself surprised by our own human features. I see some boxes disorganized, but they are all disorganized in a natural, human logic. The model, for instance, sometimes hallucinates because it does not have hands, fingers, or a human cognitive mind, it has tokens! - so it can disorganize things in ways that we call AI-ness.
I went to McDonald’s, and something new came up as I looked at that fast-food dining room packed with families, and others alone with their phones in hand (like me!). I found it all very unnatural —a reverse AI-ness. We were all humans eating burgers, holding our phones, using coupons, and escaping from the cold weather. I just wondered if this is what we are meant to do. Is this the human experience?!!!!! oh, oh!
That thought crossed my mind, but I didn’t dwell on it. I do love my Big Mac. I listened to the accents around me, feeling quite happy. I could even understand the Spanish spoken beside me. Hablo pero no mucho!
It all felt good, though I wasn’t sure what exactly was good or strange,the Diet Coke, the walls marked with an F for fries, the woman in front of me who offered me a seat because the restaurant was crowded, eating grapes and drinking coffee.
Everything around me felt a little unnatural and still natural at the same time, and that feeling of weirdness felt good too. I was content and ate and left. The woman wished me a very happy New Year, and I did the same. The man who spoke Spanish waved at me. I waved back.
Yes, maybe all looked very unnatural, and still very human.
(I wrote the word natural so many times.)
I’m sharing two images. One photo was taken by me in 2017. The other one was generated using a prompt I wrote :)
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