Without question a good number of you reading these words right now have interacted with at least one network platform today. A futurist who was trying to predict the rise or fall of network platforms would probably side with a foreseen expansion and increased clustering of network platforms going forward. Facebook (Meta), Twitter, Slack, and other places where a technology driven platform brings a community together by hosting and maintaining a network are going to end up being categorized as network platforms. Even this very Substack post that you are reading right happens to have been distributed by a network platform of a much smaller scale than the previously mentioned ones.
Adding an element of artificial intelligence as the base of a network platform is an interesting proposition. First you have to assume that an artificial intelligence could be created that is capable of being the foundation of a network platform. Second, artificial intelligence would have to be interesting enough to maintain or sustain the network platform without destroying the hosted community. That very well could be a case of destruction through stability or interaction. You have to remember that an artificial intelligence would be able to create an asymmetric amount of content compared to the user community. Orders of magnitude would be required as a measure to describe the potential flooding that could very well occur without some degree of regulated order and consistency. For the most part all of that could be done without the general artificial intelligence being aware. It could be an AI network platform capable of a multitude of tasking, but not directly aware of what the culmination of that tasking really involves.
Last week while we were digging into what you get with a general artificial intelligence more time should have been spent on the concept of awareness and what that means. A lot of science fiction works have referred to computers, homes, or ships that have built in general artificial intelligence (GAI). That amazingly advanced GAI will handle requests and complete tasks both requested and simply needed. All of that could end up getting transferred to the needs of future AI network platforms, but we are pretty far away from getting to that point based on what we have right now. Voice assistants on phones are just barely branching into completing more than a few tasks. They are making progress for sure and we are getting closer to being able to ask the computer to complete a task with the advent of models like GPT-3 and how it is being extended to create things.
I’m working through the process of incorporating my links and top 5 tweets of the week into the main podcast recording each week. Getting to that point will require providing coverage of the content in a written format within the newsletter that can be read which would facilitate inclusion in the podcast. Early issues of The Lindahl Letter did include more commentary with the links and Tweets, but over time I shifted over to a method of just including 7-10 pieces of content that caught my attention that week and ended up becoming curated content. Providing clear voice overs for why a YouTube video was included will require more effort than the simple act of embedding the link as a curator of content. For this penultimate episode which essentially is an homage to Marvin the android who Douglas Adams brought to life in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, I’m going to give integrating the content a try.
Links and thoughts:
1. Some of you are aware that I keep recordings of classic political speeches on my phone and listen to and break them apart for fun. That interest in politics has existed for decades. From being captain of a high school debate team to just loving deep political trivia this podcast episode from actor Rob Lowe with White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was an excellent conversation. Rob did an amazing job of bringing trivia to life during the episode, “Jen Psaki: The Go-To Person.”
2. This week Linus and Luke are super excited about the launch of the Steam Deck handheld gaming experience. They shared an episode of the WAN show called, “Steam Deck Review: PC Gaming in Your Palm, at Long Last.” Linus indicated this week that drama was off the table, but that never really happens on the WAN show.
3. You might be wondering why this episode was included based on just seeing the thumbnail alone. AJ and the team over at DFB shared an episode titled, “The Truth About Disney's Star Wars Hotel -- Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser.” It really is a video with 25 minutes of commentary and thoughts on a really expensive Disney experience. I found it fascinating and included it this week.
In order to facilitate the process of reading the commentary some numbering has been added above to help signpost the change in what link is being discussed. Including this content could end up pushing the recording length from the 5 minute range to somewhere near 10 minutes. Overall the recording and editing experience will be the same and should produce the same type of output each week. It will just produce more of it providing a more complete experience to people who are just listening to the content from just the regular RSS link, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or Pocket Casts.
Footnotes:
What’s next for The Lindahl Letter?
Week 62: Touching the singularity
Week 63: Sentiment and consensus analysis
Week 64: Language models revisited
Week 65: Ethics in machine learning
Week 66: Does a digital divide in machine learning exist?
I’ll try to keep the what’s next list for The Lindahl Letter forward looking with at least five weeks of posts in planning or review. If you enjoyed this content, then please take a moment and share it with a friend. Thank you and enjoy the week ahead.
AI network platforms