Alberto

Image: Warner Bros.If you’re of a certain age, Michael Keaton’s Batman was one of the most formative characters in your nerd life. It’s a character we thought we’d never see again but, 30-plus years later, he finally returned in this year’s The Flash. And no matter what you think of the movie as a whole, if you loved Keaton’s Batman, it’s hard to deny how exciting it was to see that character again, hear his music, and feel that nostalgia. Unfortunately, Keaton’s return as Batman was short-lived, but he went out in style,…

In this book … Already, three words into my review, this most straightforward way of beginning seems inaccurate, ham-fisted. Is this a book? Verdant Inferno/A Scabby Black Brazilian is published by Urbanomic, whose stated aim is “to act as an advocate for philosophical thinking as a creative practice”. It is among the first titles in a new series, K-Pulp Switch, which borrows the format and the look of the popular Ace Doubles books, launched in 1952, in which two works would be published together, back-to-back and…

Good morning and welcome to the L.A. Times Book Club Newsletter (Sneak Peek Edition).This spring we celebrate freedom of expression, family, friendship and fighting to untangle yourself from the expectations of others.Here’s a glimpse of what we’re reading and talking about. Be sure to save these dates so you can join the conversation:On April 22 L.A. novelist and screenwriter Gabrielle Zevin joins book club readers at the Festival of Books to discuss “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow.” This is Zevin’s first L.A.…

Opinion2023 will be much more intense and overwhelming than 2022, so tighten your seatbeltsCredit: MidjourneyUntil ChatGPT stops being the most important news on AI I guess we’re stuck talking about it… Just kidding, I’ll make sure to interweave other topics, or else we may burn out.There’s still a lot to talk about ChatGPT’s immediate and long-term implications. I’ve written about what ChatGPT is and how to get the most out of it, about the challenge to identify its outputs, and the threat it poses to Google and…

OpinionIf Microsoft renames Bing I’d consider it…A battle of titans. Credit: MidjourneyRumors say Microsoft has started a project that promises to impact the tech landscape in the coming years. As The Verge’s Tom Warren writes, the software giant is “reportedly planning to launch a version of Bing that uses ChatGPT.” For the first time in twenty years, search is about to experience a revolution.The unsurprising news comes a month after Microsoft’s partner, OpenAI, released ChatGPT, a powerful language model (LM) optimized…

OpinionOn the impressive abilities of a new model — and what might happen if AI models became very good at hiding their own imperfectionsCredit: Author via MidjourneyOpenAI has released ChatGPT, a new dialogue language model (LM) based on the GPT-3.5 family series (trained on text and code) and similar to InstructGPT (aligned with reinforcement learning through human feedback). The company set up an online demo and people are losing their minds over it.In a nutshell, ChatGPT is a chatbot that can “answer followup…

OpinionBut that’s not what users wanted — are they right to be angry?Who sits now on the generative AI throne? Credit: Author via Midjourney (oh, the irony)I don’t usually cover model announcements. I do exceptions for transcendental downstream implications (like with Galactica and BLOOM) or high interestingness/usefulness.Today’s topic probably checks both: Stability.ai, the king of open-source generative AI, has announced Stable Diffusion 2.The new version of Stable Diffusion brings key improvements and updates. In a…

OpinionA cautionary tale on AI hypeThe Encyclopedia Galactica. Credit: Author via MidjourneyMeta announced this week a new large language model (LLM) for science. They named it Galactica — a nod to Isaac Asimov’s Encyclopedia Galactica.The website says it’s a “model that can store, combine and reason about scientific knowledge.”Elvis Saravia, a co-author of the paper, says it “is the first step toward our vision to organize science by converting information into useful knowledge.”Elvis Saravia’s TweetSo far so good. It…

Well, maybe not *everyone*, but I didn’t write this headline…Alina Constantin / Better Images of AI / Handmade A.I / CC-BY 4.0I’m an AI writer. As such, I have a unique dual perspective on the topic: My “I know AI” mind and my “I write” mind have strong conflicting opinions.My AI mind constantly repeats, “don’t worry, AI is dumb; it can’t reason or understand.” But then my writing mind says, “hey, I’ve had problems distinguishing GPT-3 from humans before.”Of course, those identities of mine care about what matters to each…

OpinionI have a feeling of shared excitement mixed with visceral haste to avoid missing out, and sheer information overwhelmThe Flash. Credit: Author via MidjourneyI suspect I’m not the only one who feels AI is going too fast.I’ve read so many comments on forums and social media about this that I’ve concluded the sensation is shared among insiders and witnesses alike: AI is apparently progressing so fast we can’t keep up — not even those of us who do this for a living.It’s not the first time this idea comes up (AI has…