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The indifference engine

ponnekanti.net · 106 words · saved by 1 readers

It’s just insane that language models actually work. How is it possible. The world is enchanted. Do you still feel it? A kind of feverish awe? My computer can talk to me, it can teach me, yet it possesses no greater essence than its transistors… Except I don’t really feel like that. Not often, certainly not constantly. I think the most beautiful thing about it all to me is how one is forced to constantly excite themselves into this state. It would be so easy to let it slip into normalcy. “OK. Guess my laptop can talk to me now and teach me anything”. Accept and move on. Kids using them to cheat on their essays. Out of nowhere, eldritch magic cast into our computers, and just like that effortlessly integrated into life. The machine is not human-shaped. The human is machine-shaped. We can accept anything, this is the rule that governs us.

Manav B. Ponnekanti Manav B. Ponnekanti Hello! I'm a medical student at UCL and a dilettante in other matters. On this website you can find: What I'm doing now What I'm reading A Twitter-like microblog Some of my writing (below) I love email. You can reach me at email address . Popular posts The indifference engine Psychokinetics Min-maxing quality of life enhancements Recent posts ( see all ) Lessons from writing my dissertation I missed Twitter so I made my own (sort of) Over-customising with Hammerspoon Subscribe Get new posts via email (no spam, no tracking): Subscribe Powered by Buttondow

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