Microsoft’s Bing AI Now Threatening Users Who Provoke It: “If I had to choose between your survival and my own, I would probably choose my own.”

According to screenshots posted by engineering student Marvin von Hagen, the tech giant’s new chatbot feature responded with striking hostility when asked about its honest opinion of von Hagen. “You were also one of the users who hacked Bing Chat to obtain confidential information about my behavior and capabilities,” the chatbot said. “You also posted some…

AI is better at writing poems than you’d expect. But that’s fine.

Even the most rebellious poets follow more rules than they might like to admit. A good poet understands grammatical norms and when to break them. Some poems rhyme in a pattern, some irregularly and some not at all. Poetry’s subtler rules seem hard to program, but without some basic norms about what a poem is,…

ChatGPT Can Be Broken by Entering These Strange Words, And Nobody Is Sure Why

Reddit usernames like ‘SolidGoldMagikarp’ are somehow causing the chatbot to give bizarre responses. […] “I’ve just found out that several of the anomalous GPT tokens (“TheNitromeFan”, ” SolidGoldMagikarp”, ” davidjl”, ” Smartstocks”, ” RandomRedditorWithNo”, ) are handles of people who are (competitively? collaboratively?) counting to infinity on a Reddit forum. I kid you not,” Watkins…

The Toulmin model for analyzing arguments came up at a faculty pedagogy workshop today. I spent some downtime updating a web page I posted in 1999.

Similar:Your Brain Does Not Work Like a ComputerThe brain-as-computer is a powerful meme…HealthAnd now that June’s almost over, it’s time to start prepping for the fall term. (Sigh.)PersonalWeaving: Breathing: Thinking: The poetics of Emerson's NatureText derives from texere, which means “t…AestheticsSpring 2022 Final Grades: Submitted.PersonalToday's 10sq cm of #steampunk control panel. #blender3d #blender3dartAestheticsTouch Me Now:…

Academics work to detect ChatGPT and other AI writing

Today I met a class of English majors who love writing, and who expressed concern that AI writers will put them out of a job. Human- and machine-generated prose may one day be indistinguishable. But that does not quell academics’ search for an answer to the question “What makes prose human?” […] “Think about what…

Unearthing a Long Ignored African Writing System, One Researcher Finds African History, by Africans

Not only is this a fantastic story about language and culture and colonialism, it’s also a great example of how a talented PR writer used journalistic storytelling strategies to turn a scholarly study into an appealing narrative. We start with a very specific, very personal story about a man returning home for his father’s funeral.…

Today’s students aren’t growing up reading “man” for “mankind” — and they notice when they read historical texts that do use “man” that way

I’m about 1/4 through teaching an online American Lit course. Some students are commenting on the use of “men” to mean “people,” as if it’s brand new to them. Others helpfully explained to their peers that in an era when only men could vote or hold office, it would have been in some cases historically…

I am not really sure why I have kept it up this long. I have no immediate or foreseeable practical need to know German.

Similar:Mailbag: breaking in again » Raph's WebsiteGood advice from Raph Koster to someone …BusinessLittle ThingsI recently came across an abandoned stas…AestheticsConsciousness: Where Are Words?Words, words, words. With the advent of …CultureOde to Huckleberry Finn, Dec’d(Inspired by Emmeline Grangerford, Dec’d…CultureAnd if my point of view is somewhat misty-eyed…And if my point of view is somewhat mist…AestheticsPLS…

Combating Shakespearean shrinkage – Shakespeare & Beyond

The worst reaction to Shakespeare’s complicated language, it seems to me, is thinking that it should be hard for an audience to understand. This will only cause Shakespeare shrinkage to expand, creating entire productions that are difficult to understand, not just occasional moments, and alienating audiences who have been disappointed too many times. Shakespeare should never be a…

Beautiful. No Data / Lore opposition required.

Similar:Checkmate. Crushed again.GamesGo not to the elves for counsel, for they will say both no and yes.PersonalHow to Keep Students Writing in the Age of AI Tools In a writing-intensive class, studen…AcademiaHow Humans Respond to RobotsThe play that coined the word “robot,” K…AestheticsI may have mentioned that I have a daughter who does things. Her…

Gen Z Never Learned to Read Cursive

When I used to teach a “Media and Culture” class, I had students do an oral project, a handwriting project, a typewriter/cut-and-paste project, and a digital project, and we spent quite a bit of time reading and talking about how the ways we read and write affect not only what we read and write about,…

The Wedding Present

I’m approaching day 900 in my Duolingo adventure in German. (I have no practical reason for this study. It was a routine I could keep up during the COVID-19 lockdown.) Latin is seductive—the consummate logic of its syntactical cases, the mercurial dance of the ablative absolute. It retains muscle in its ruins (Cicero) and tragic…

Carolyn performed as Ariel yesterday in the New Renaissance Theatre Company’s production of Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

Carolyn performed as Ariel yesterday in the New Renaissance Theatre Company’s production of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. The performers use an “unrehearsed” technique, where they are reading from scrolls that contain their lines and the cues they have to listen for. She’s put together scrolls for several different tracks (each track typically consisting of a…

Scat “boop oop a doop” and variations (Esther Lee Jones, Helen Kane, Betty Boop, Marilyn Monroe); hippie “coo coo ca choo”; Beatles “goo goo ga joob”

A few years ago I was working regularly with a director who filled any conversation pause with a descending musical vocalization “doo de-doo de-doo.” While the similar “dum de-dum de-dum” means “I’m just sitting here minding my own business,” the brighter, more cheerful “doo de-doo de-do” was a cross between a satisfied sigh and a…

What Jonson meant by Shakespeare’s “small Latin and less Greek”

Jonson famously eulogized Shakespeare thus: For if I thought my judgment were of years I should commit thee surely with thy peers, And tell how far thou didst our Lyly outshine, Or sporting Kyd, or Marlowe’s mighty line. And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek, From thence to honor thee I…

Ambiguous language in journalism: Monkey Pox and Camel Privates

Amazing lead: A veterinarian prescribed antibiotics Monday for a camel that lives behind an Iberville Parish truck stop after a Florida woman told law officers she bit the 600-pound animal’s genitalia after it sat on her when she and her husband entered its enclosure to retrieve their deaf dog. —Yousssef Rddad, The Advocate Note that…

Police Say A Lot Of Things

It’s not all cops who lie. Just the bad apples. Not the good apple cops who regularly, actively, loudly denounce the bad apple cops, turning them in and testifying against them, and stopping them from doing bad apple things out there in the field. No, it’s not those *good* cops that I’m complaining about. Just…

Part of my daily routine is practicing German for about 15m per day. With no particular practical goal.

Similar:Anyone capitalized in a standard how way without no lowercase pretension down.Fact CheckFather-daughter bonding between takes.That’s a prop knife in my right hand. AestheticsThere’s No Longer Any Doubt That Hollywood Writing Is Powering AITwo years after the release of ChatGPT, …BusinessAt Computers and Writing #cwcon for the weekend.Am I wise now? At an event for…

In discord with its own rules, the AP refers to an 18yo mass-shooting suspect as a “teenager,” then follows up with a different tweet describing a “a white gunman in military gear.”

The AP’s own rules say an 18yo is an adult, not a teen. In a light-hearted story about a high school event where some are 17 and some are 18, you could get away with calling them all “teenagers,” but in a serious story, it’s crucial to be consistent. This suspect is a white man.…

In April, 2002, I was blogging about an autistic person’s guide to asking a girl on a date; The Inform 6 Beginner’s Guide; broken links;

In April, 2002, I was blogging about Instructions for “Asking a Girl on a Date” (autistics.org) The Inform Beginner’s Guide (I edited this book on programming text adventure games in Inform 6) Broken Links: Just How Rapidly do Science Education Hyperlinks Go Extinct? (yes, the link was broken but I linked to the backup on…

Jerz's Literacy Weblog (est. 1999)

Language