Good Enough?

Two links today:

1) Good Enough: I don’t know who Manuel is, or how I found his site, I just know that whenever he posts something to his blog I’m delighted to see an item that isn’t from the ‘Media Firehose’ category in my RSS reader. In this entry he simply suggests that a personal blog is a conversation. It doesn’t need to be refined and polished, your thoughts are enough.

2) On Chat GPT - This article does a great job of explaining what chatbots are(n’t). And just in time after that goofy New York Times article. Written by a professor whose students are already turning in chatbot-generated essays, he also explains how and why an essay has value - as a container for your ideas.

ChatGPT… is like a friendly, if somewhat daft neighbor who noticed one day that every so often you get a box from Amazon and that you seem quite happy to get it and so decides to do you a favor by regularly ordering empty Amazon boxes to your house. 

I had fun a couple of months ago watching everyone go ‘oh, that’s weird, the chatbot is so smart, except when it comes to the one topic I know especially well’ but I have to admit I’m wearing out on seeing everyone slowly realize that it’s not very good at anything in particular, except by chance. Or, worse than that, seeing a set of people buying in deeper and deeper. It’s like watching people taken in by a psychic, unaware of how large of a role their own minds play in the performance. Like mentalism, chatbots can be fun to play around with, but it’s only a collection of tricks.