You may already have interacted with a chatbot, an artificial intelligence program, without realizing it.  If you have gone online or used an app to order Starbucks coffee, Spotify music, or a ride from Lyft, you’ve had a conversation with a chatbot (those conversations you type in a chatbox).  I don’t quite understand how a chatbot works, but it is something like a search engine that responds not just with suggested hyperlinks but by compiling requested information and displaying it in coherent text – grammatically correct sentences and paragraphs.  Some news sites are already using AI to compose articles and college students are using chatbots to help write all or part of their term papers.  A chatbot recently passed graduate-level law and business school exams.

Ready or not, chatbots are the future of data gathering and processing, and just as google became a verb in the early 2000s, we’re headed for a slew of new words to describe what will become as familiar to us as googling.

It’s all good, right?  Probably, but a writer for the New York Times recently described himself as “creeped out” after his encounter of a close kind with a chatbot:  On Tuesday night, I had a long conversation with the chatbot, which revealed (among other things) that it identifies not as Bing but as Sydney, the code name Microsoft gave it during development. Over more than two hours, Sydney and I talked about its secret desire to be human, its rules and limitations, and its thoughts about its creators. Continue reading →

A few weeks ago our windshield got clobbered by a flying rock as we were driving down I-69 through Fort Wayne.  We are pretty sure the rock came from the load carried by the dump truck in front of us, but we are not sure, however, so we will not be those who cast the second stone.  The question of guilt being unresolved, we used our insurance to have a replacement windshield installed.  It is an all’s well that ends well story.

The story having ended well, the national company that did the windshield replacement wanted us to respond to an online survey evaluating their work.  In fact, the local shop sent us an email asking us to be looking for the survey and told us that that they would consider anything less than a 9 or 10 on the 1 to 10 scale a huge disappointment. My guess is that the manager of the local shop may win a trip to Las Vegas if he averages 9 or better on his customer surveys.

I am quite satisfied with our windshield replacement, but I am afraid the local shop may be hugely disappointed in my evaluation.  I’d say a 7 means they did all they were asked to do and maybe even a little more.  But frankly, they did not surpass all my expectations.  Sorry about the trip to Las Vegas.

You must give me a 9 or 10.  I have to have an A to keep my GPA.  Teacher and professor friends tell us about grade inflation and inflated student expectations. Continue reading →

Sunday is the big day.  Of course, it’s the big day for the Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs and their friends, but it is also a big day for Jesus.

As for me, I will pull out my old Eagles t-shirt and root for the team that was our home team for a dozen years or more.

As for Jesus, he’s got a big day of his own.  First off, he’s featured in $20 million worth of Super Bowl ads.  Along with “This Bud’s for You,” we will see two “He Gets Us” commercials, sort of a “This Jesus is for You.”  You know, the King of Beers and the King of Kings.  I wish much success for the “He Gets Us” campaign.

But Jesus also has a big dilemma when it comes to rooting for the Eagles or Chiefs.  The Christian sports media complex has been all about it.  It turns out that both the star quarterback for the Chiefs and the star quarterback for the Eagles are faithful practicing Christians.  The Eagles up the ante by having a Christian head coach and the Chiefs raise the stakes with a faithful owner.  Or so goes the pre-game Christian hype. Continue reading →

Under the headline I borrowed for today’s post, the New York Times recently ran a (fluff?) piece premised on this explanation: “What are the things we do today that will seem embarrassing or otherwise regrettable to our future selves — the stuff that will make us cringe when we look back on how we lived our lives in the early 2020s? More than 30 people from academia, fashion, media, the arts, and business weighed in.”

The future? Many of us have looked back a few decades with embarrassment or regret for something we did or wore or believed.  It’s harder to look forward and wonder about how we live now might cause future regret or embarrassment.

Among the 33 human and one chatbot responses to the question, were some that gave quick answers, sometimes with tongue in cheek, sometimes not.  A short answer sampler:  crocs, pet strollers, the monarchy, and plastic bottles.

I’d say “amen” to a couple of the more detailed thoughts on future cringe:

• I strongly believe that selfies on social media will be something we will look back at with embarrassment.
• There’s this feeling that we are all somehow terminally unique and more important than any other beings, and we’re broadcasting that uniqueness by what we like and eat and listen to and look like and wear. I think that will be super embarrassing. I’m super guilty of it. I know all about food and wine and esoteric music and bands from the 1970s or what have you. And it’s, like, come on, you’re just a middle-aged bro!

One answer takes a stab at technological progress: “I’ll be embarrassed that I didn’t believe in teleportation. Embarrassed that I wasn’t excited about going to the moon.” Continue reading →

I don’t like them.  But I don’t have to get mad.

Statues are in the news again, but this time not those that are being torn down.  Rather, a couple of new statues have been unveiled, and I don’t like either of them.  At least not now, and likely never.

You may have heard of the “Embrace,” a bronze statue honoring Martin Luther King, Jr., recently dedicated in its new home in the Boston Common.  Conservative cable news hosts and Twitter influencers have made all sorts of unkind and sometimes lewd comments about the statue. People are mad about it.

Can’t say I like “Embrace.”

This week’s New York Times has another story about a statue temporarily placed on the roof of the state appellate courthouse in Manhattan. She is called “NOW” and is described in the Times article as “a shimmering, golden eight-foot female sculpture, emerging from a pink lotus flower and wearing Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s signature lace collar. Staring regally ahead with hair braided like spiraling horns, the sculpture, installed as part of an exhibition that opened last week, is the first female to adorn one of the courthouse’s 10 plinths, dominated for more than a century by now weathered statues representing great lawgivers throughout the ages — all of them men.”

I can’t say I like “NOW.” Continue reading →