Designing Through Uncertainty: A.I., Disaster, and the Search for Transcendence

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Basic, Useful Definitions for Beginners

Artificial Intelligence

“Artificial intelligence (AI) is the theory and development of computer systems capable of performing tasks that historically required human intelligence, such as recognizing speech, making decisions, and identifying patterns. AI is an umbrella term that encompasses a wide variety of technologies, including machine learning, deep learning, and natural language processing (NLP).”

(Coursera)

Machine Learning

“Machine Learning, often abbreviated as ML, is a subset of artificial intelligence (AI) that focuses on the development of computer algorithms that improve automatically through experience and by the use of data. In simpler terms, machine learning enables computers to learn from data and make decisions or predictions without being explicitly programmed to do so.

At its core, machine learning is all about creating and implementing algorithms that facilitate these decisions and predictions. These algorithms are designed to improve their performance over time, becoming more accurate and effective as they process more data.

In traditional programming, a computer follows a set of predefined instructions to perform a task. However, in machine learning, the computer is given a set of examples (data) and a task to perform, but it's up to the computer to figure out how to accomplish the task based on the examples it's given.”

(Data Camp)

Deep Learning

Deep Learning is a subset of Machine Learning that uses neural networks for complex analytical tasks.

Neural Networks

Neural Networks are any machine learning model that’s modeled after how the human brain works, which allow them to identify phenomena, compare competing options and synthesize conclusions Here’s A Simple Five Minute Video on how Neural Networks actually work (IBM).

Here’s how they all fit together:

ChatGPT

ChatGPT is a Large Language Model created by the company OpenAI. In common usage, ChatGPT is a genericized trademark, meaning that it is a specific brand of a thing (in this case Large Language models) that has become synonymous with the general class of the things, the way we might say ‘Kleenex’ to refer to tissues, or ‘xerox’ to refer to copying. ChatGPT actually refers to a specific model of Large Language model produced by OpenAI - model 3.5, which was released in November of 2022. Open AI has subsequently released many more powerful models, including the most recent, GPT-4o. Currently, GPT-4o is their fastest, most advanced model, and is completely free, so you should sign up.

Large Language Models (LLM’s)

Large Language Models are a type of A.I. algorithm that uses massively large data sets to read, understand, contextualize, summarize, generate and predict new content. LLMs have actually been around since the 1960’s, but weren’t too useful until 2017 when researchers at Google published the landmark paper ‘Attention is All you Need,’ which detailed ways that algorithms could be made to ‘pay attention’ to the most important words in a sentence, or the most important sentences in a paragraph, or the most important paragraphs in a text, and so forth. This gave rise to the ‘transformer’ model, which kicked off the recent, massive growth in LLM technology. Currently, multiple tech giants are producing their own large language models to compete with OpenAI. This includes Gemini (Google), Claude (Anthropic), and Llama (Facebook). There are also a number of open-source models that are increasingly competitive with the tech-giant models in terms of their capability and speed. These are owned by no-one, and are free to use and develop, even for commercial use. Some of the more popular ones include OpenLlama, Mistral, and Grok-1.

Every model is constantly being updated, with new versions emerging frequently. And new models are being developed. Every model does basically the same thing, but each model definitely has its particular strengths and weaknesses. Lots of people (including myself) uses different models for different kinds of tasks.

Midjourney, DALL-E, and other Image Generators

Midjourney, DALL-E, and other AI image generators are probably the tools you’ve seen the most, and heard the most about. They find their roots in Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) which were only really theorized in 2016. They are very new. The idea for Midjourney, for instance, wasn’t really solidified until 2019, and between 2019 and its debut in 2022, the creators fed millions of curated images into the algorithm to the point where it could receive a text prompt and generate an accurate image.

Since then, other techniques have emerged like stable diffusion, deep dream, neural style transfer and others. While the underlying mathematics can be interestingly different, they all basically do the same thing - generate an image from text. Increasingly, image generation is being folded into to pre-existing LLMs to create multi-modal AI tools. For instance, you can now generate images directly inside of GPT 4o, because it incorporates DALL-E into its interface.

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Ideas from the Lecture

Five Factor Personality Model

Openness

Openness to experience is a general appreciation for art, emotion, adventure, unusual ideas, imagination, curiosity, and variety of experience. People who are open to experience are intellectually curious, open to emotion, sensitive to beauty, and willing to try new things.

Extraversion

Extraversion is characterized by breadth of activities (as opposed to depth), surgency from external activities/situations, and energy creation from external means. The trait is marked by pronounced engagement with the external world.

Emotional Range (Neuroticism)

Neuroticism is the tendency to have strong negative emotions, such as anger, anxiety, or depression. It is sometimes called emotional instability or is reversed and referred to as emotional stability.

Conscientiousness

Conscientiousness is a tendency to be self-disciplined, act dutifully, and strive for achievement against measures or outside expectations. It is related to people's level of impulse control, regulation, and direction. High conscientiousness is often perceived as being stubborn and focused.

Agreeableness

Agreeableness is the general concern for social harmony. Agreeable individuals value getting along with others. They are generally considerate, kind, generous, trusting and trustworthy, helpful, and willing to compromise their interests with others.