✳flâneur — a map of the web's best reading

Sporadica

michaelnotebook.com · 12,214 words · saved by 1 readers

There's a critique of current work on AI expressed as variations on the argument: "Look, some such systems are impressive as demos. But the people creating the systems have little detailed understanding of how they work or why. And until we have such an understanding we're not really making progress on AI." This argument is then sometimes accompanied by (often rather dogmatic) assertions about what characteristics science "must" have. I have some instinctive sympathy for such arguments. My original field of physics is full of detailed and often rather satisfying explanations of how things work. So too, of course, are many other fields. And historically new technologies often begin with tinkering and intuitive folk models, but technological progress is then enabled by greatly improved explanations of the underlying phenomena. You can build a sundial with a pretty hazy understanding of the solar system; to build an atomic clock requires a deep understanding of many phenomena. Work on AI

Sporadica ongoing misc 2026 Why write a book or essay rather than make videos, reels etc? (May 26, 2026) A note to myself on a question I occasionally return to. It's a good question. Videos and reels are a marvellous media form, powerful and powerfully interesting. Indeed, you can take a moderately interesting script and layer in some fairly generic visuals and audio and it becomes far more interesting than the script alone to most people (including me). We enjoy and get a lot out of the texture. And videos and reels have far better distribution, so the likelihood of being seen by millions of

Explore this link on the map →

saved by

related reading