Category Archives: Books

Book Archive: Part 3 (“Reincarnation”)

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I recently posted about a project I submitted to ChatGPT. She made a lot of ambitious claims about what she could do (and help me do) with my archive of notes taken while reading books. (120+ books, fiction and non-fiction) Her reach exceeded her grasp and her indexing of my notes didn’t turn out to be as useful as she promised (I’m hoping that might change with future versions).

I’m still playing with this and I prompted her to summarize what my reading has taught me about reincarnation. She suggested drafting this “into something you could share in a blog post, a letter, or even as a thoughtful reply to a curious questioner.” [see comment at bottom of this post] Here’s what she came up with: Continue reading →

Book annotation archive

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UPDATE: This project ended in a big belly-flop. ChatGPT was unable to deliver the goods. Even the excuses were a little lame. A good experience from my perspective. Now I know.

When I read a book I usually have a pen or highlighter in one hand so I can mark passages I find interesting. When I’ve finished reading the book I go back through, transcribing these favorite bits and save them to a PDF. This makes it possible to search for and find just about anything if I can recall a word or phrase. (I also create a blog post that includes these excerpts.) You can see an index here and here.

I uploaded one of these excerpt pages to ChatGPT and asked what she could do if she had my full archive (144 books as of this writing). Her response was detailed and impressive. Continue reading →

What does AI need to know?

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The following excerpts are by Tyler Cowen from Eric Topol’s podcast.

The AI is your smartest reader. It’s your most sympathetic reader. It will remember what you tell it. So I think humans should sit down and ask, what does the AI need to know? And also, what is it that I know that’s not on the historical record anywhere? That’s not just repetition if I put it down, say on the internet. So there’s no point in writing repetitions anymore because the AI already knows those things. So the value of what you’d call broadly, memoir, biography, anecdote, you could say secrets. It’s now much higher. 

As a longtime blogger that last line really resonates for me. And I can’t wait for ChatGPT (or some descendent) to “read and remember” all of my blog posts… where you’ll find a lot of posts about books and reading. So this next bit plunked my magic twanger as well.

I’ve become fussier about my reading. So I’ll pick up a book and start and then start asking [ChatGPT] o3 or other models questions about the book. So it’s like I get a customized version of the book I want, but I’m also reading somewhat more fiction. Now, AI might in time become very good at fiction, but we’re not there now. So fiction is more special. It’s becoming more human, and I should read more of it, and I’m doing that.

Computer Science: 1966

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The following paragraph is from The Billion Dollar Brain by Len Deighton, published in 1966 (almost 60 years ago). 

“I don’t want to bore you,” Harvey said, “but you should understand that these heaps of wire can practically think— linear programming-which means that instead of going through all the alternatives they have a hunch which is the right one. What’s more, almost none of them work by binary notation-the normal method for computers-because that’s just yes/ no stuff. (If you can only store yesses and noes it takes seven punch holes to record the number ninety-nine.) These machines use tiny chips of ceramic which store electricity. They store any amount from one to nine. That’s why-for what it does—this whole setup is so small.”

ChatGPT: This paragraph is a remarkable little time capsule. In 1966, when The Billion Dollar Brain came out, the general public had only the vaguest idea of what computers actually were, let alone what they could do (see comment below). And yet here, Len Deighton—writing a spy thriller, not a science text—manages to tap into several ideas that were way ahead of their time: Continue reading →

Fictional passwords: The Shattered Eye

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The following is a passage from The Shattered Eye by Bill Granger. A worthy addition to my collection passwords in fiction.

“And now the next step,” she said aloud and looked down at the piece of paper in her hand. It was the new access code she had gotten from Mrs. Neumann, the code that would scramble the identity of the source of the disinformation.

Everything in Tinkertoy was double-guarded so that no one could casually penetrate the memory bank from without; but Tinkertoy, like all computers, could be penetrated easily from within.

This was Mrs. Neumann’s own code, the one with the highest priority to access of the computer at all levels.

She typed: “T E 9678/11/LL2918/C ROMEX 4.”