The Power and Boundary of Language Models Before going any further, we need to be honest about what large language models already are. They are extraordinary. It has become fashionable in some circles to dismiss them as “just autocomplete.” That phrase is technically useful in one narrow sense, but intellectually lazy in almost every other.…
The Yes-Man Problem We have all seen it happen. A great actor gets too powerful. A brilliant musician becomes untouchable. A famous director, founder, or creator becomes so successful that nobody around them wants to say the one thing they need to hear: “That’s not good.” Early in their career, they had friction. Editors challenged…
The First Technology Panic Long before anyone worried that artificial intelligence would make us lazy, fake, or less human, one of history’s greatest philosophers worried about something far more ordinary. Writing. In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates tells a story about the invention of writing. The concern was not mild. Writing, he warned, would damage memory. It…