WPLongform – The Philosophy of Contemporary Song

AI in the Classroom

I’ve long been an early technology adapter. I started building webpages/websites in the 90s, used turnitin.com not just for plagiarism checking but for providing rich feedback on student papers in the very early 2000s, and around that time had students write live blogs on a course website as part of their writing requirements. I didn’tContinue reading “AI in the Classroom”

Rate this:

AI and Talking Heads, Part III: Why Sentient Machines Will Never Exist

In my previous post, I made a distinction between “Strong” AI and “Weak” AI and then went on to describe how Weak AI works. I explained that Large Language Models such as ChatGPT convert words to numbers and then calculate the statistically most probable words and sentences that will follow any given words and sentences.Continue reading “AI and Talking Heads, Part III: Why Sentient Machines Will Never Exist”

Rate this:

AI and Talking Heads, Part II: Why Machines Can’t Read

I’d like to talk about a distinction between two kinds of artificial intelligence (AI): “Strong” AI and “Weak” AI. StrongAI is AI that has attained artificial consciousness — the machine has become sentient and thinks for itself in a way comparable to a human being. Strong AI has been the subject of numerous films and works of fictionContinue reading “AI and Talking Heads, Part II: Why Machines Can’t Read”

Rate this:

High Fidelity, Then and Now

High Fidelity then starred John Cusack as an immature, self-absorbed record store owner who, because of a recent, painful breakup with his girlfriend Laura (perf. Iben Hjejle), went on a tour of self-discovery through conversations with all of his ex girlfriends. He handles his breakup, which is the opening scene of the film, with theContinue reading “High Fidelity, Then and Now”

Rate this:

The Shape of Beckett’s Waiting

I recently recovered a first-semester graduate paper of mine about Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot. I believe I wrote it as a final paper for a graduate class on Irish literature taught by Dr. John Warner. He advocated for my admission to the program on the basis of my senior undergraduate honor’s thesis onContinue reading “The Shape of Beckett’s Waiting”