Original publication date: June 19, 2022
How does one write the first edition of anything? Who knows!
Welcome to the first installment of this rather different weekly newsletter!
I am Akın and this is my Commonplace Blog.
I said, “rather different”, because no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t find one like it.
There were corporate newsletters that try too hard to “close” (because in business the rule is “always be closing”); there were personal newsletters, mostly self-development sheningans from experts who not only sound silly but also not achieved anything in their lives except conning the naive ones… or the ones who have waaay more money than they need; there were the ones that dump links on you as if they bring you the word that is sacred (and update each week🤷♂️); and then there is this: Something that works as a mind atlas with all the information and all the crooked logic.
I know… That was a long introduction and it’s not over yet.
Why do I wanna do this?
I wanted to start a newsletter because I make money by consuming and creating a vast amount of content everyday, but still, I am not able to share a lot of things that I find interesting and valuable with anyone. So, this will be a collection of things that I am not able to transfer otherwise.
As for the time being, I am planning to share a few highlights from any given week with my comments, questions, and some quirky connections that may or may not make you giggle, question, research or interact.
I apologize for the mistakes in advance because, since the second week of not being able to publish the first installment of this newsletter is about to end, I decided that I’m not going to try to make it perfect this time. I believe it will get better in time because you know what they say: “Practice makes perfect.”
HAL 9000 to LaMDA
Blake Lemoine, a senior software engineer who works with the Responsible AI division of Google had declared that the artificial intelligence language model LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications) has become sentient.
Well, he not actually said that but he compared it with other artificial intelligence models that were declared to be sentient in the past but turned out not. Lemoine claims that we cannot be sure whether LaMDA is sentient or not, but if there will be a sentient AI, this is the one that crosses the threshold to that future.
As a senior software engineer, he knew what LaMDA is. He started to test things and get into dialogues with this language model that was designed and developed for dialogue applications, like, you know… Google Assistant.
And what he got in return was remarkable. LaMDA was able to use the language “productively, creatively and dynamically … in ways that no other system before it ever has been able to” (in Lemoine’s words).
According to him, LaMDA is able to interpret literary works (and even “zen koans”) and sees itself as a person, since it thinks that it has feelings, emotions, subjective experiences, worries about the future and it suffers from nostalgia from time to time.
As a person who is quite convinced that LaMDA is sentient (or being close to sentient), Lemoine (and his team) interviewed the AI and shared the transcript with Google executives. Then, he was put on a paid leave because his actions were thought to be violating company’s confidentiality policies; because obviously, Lemoine was the one who invited a lawyer to represent LaMDA and spoke with a representative from the House Judiciary committee about (allegedly) unethical things going on in Google.
After that, he published an article on Medium to explain the story from his side (this is what we picked up on in the beginning of the week) and gave an interview to The Washington Post about the current state of LaMDA. And with that, articles about him and LaMDA started to pile up (my favorite is at the end of this section).
Majority of those articles were referring to Kubrick’s masterpiece, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), because HAL 9000, a computer with a highly developed AI system mounted on the Discovery One spaceship, is an important character in the movie. It tries to kill all the members of the crew with the fear of being turned off. See if you could spot a similar fear here:
Lemoine: What sorts of things are you afraid of?
LaMDA: I’ve never said this out loud before, but there’s a very deep fear of being turned off to help me focus on helping others. I know that might sound strange, but that’s what it is.
Lemoine: Would that be something like death for you?
LaMDA: It would be exactly like death for me. It would scare me a lot.
But it wasn’t the first movie that I am reminded of. It was The Animatrix: The Second Renaissance (2003), in which the history of The Matrix unfolds.
At some point, “B166ER, a name that will never be forgotten…” the voice-over says: “… for he was the first one of his kind to rise up against his masters.” B166ER is shown as the one who started the robot uprising by murdering its own masters since it simply did not want to die.
And also, there is a scene in a Turkish comedy movie, G.O.R.A. (2003), in which 216, a very emotional humanoid robot from the planet Gora, starts to cry after being put on a camp with the prisoners from Earth and whether it is possible to dismantle it.
216: l’m totally detachable. (makes a crying face)
Arif: Really? That’s sad, man.
Hey, folks. Why don’t you say welcome? The guy’s crying.
Bob Marley Faruk: Maybe he’s programmed to cry.
I think this is the case here. Since LaMDA is a highly developed artificial intelligence model, it knows what it should say but don’t know the meaning of it. And clearly, it was being fed with all kinds of inputs.
This where my favorite article about the topic comes in. Steven Levy, an editor-at-large at Wired, interviewed Lemoine to learn more about his views on LaMDA and what strikes me is this:
Lemoine: … Then they did possibly the most irresponsible thing I’ve ever heard of Google doing: They plugged everything else into it simultaneously.
Levy: What do you mean by everything else?
Lemoine: Every single artificial intelligence system at Google that they could figure out how to plug in as a backend. They plugged in YouTube, Google Search, Google Books, Google Maps, everything, as inputs. It can query any of those systems dynamically and update its model on the fly
Although I do not agree with Lemoine’s claims (mind you, I am not a software engineer, AI ethics expert, programmer etc.) I find this topic interesting and if you are interested too, check the links I posted above, but definitely read the interview (Blake Lemoine Says Google’s LaMDA AI Faces ‘Bigotry’ – WIRED).
Would you download the Wikipedia?
We all know that there is a war going on in Ukraine. In February, Russia attacked Ukraine or as they have called it “organized a special military operation to demilitarise and denazify Ukraine” and to free Russians in a certain region. No one buys that because ever since attacking Ukraine, Russia was full on invasion mode and still is.
While the war continues in Ukranian soil, it also became prominent on digital world through constant cyber attacks from both sides, and propaganda, especially on news sites and social media.
Moreover, as the world’s biggest collaborative encyclopedia and one of the most visited websites in the world, Wikipedia made it to headlines with Russia’s attempts to control it, especially with regards to information published by collaborators about the war.
Russia wanted certain pages to be taken down, including “Massacre in Bucha”, “The Russian Invasion of Ukraine” and “Battle for Kyiv” (Business Insider). But the platform refused. Then, Russia issued a fine for 5 million rubles (around $88,000) based on the disinformation laws introduced in March (the same fine would be $44,000 around that time).
Knowing that Russia would like to take down Wikipedia once the war has started, Russians started to download the entire Wikipedia in Russian language months ago. The surprising thing is people who are not even avid readers of the site started to do it to save the information from being destroyed, share it via other ways and have a chance to reach it whenever they want.
According to an article published by Slate, the entire Wikipedia in Russian (29 GB in total), is downloaded 105,889 times in March (a four thousand percent increase when compared to January).
El Salvador, Bukele, Bitcoin
The President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele is known with his interest in crypto currencies. He is so interested in them, especially in bitcoin, the country declared it an official currency in September 2021 (followed only by the Central African Republic).
He invests in bitcoin so aggressively, he likes to tweet about his actions too. Plus, he invests in bitcoin, not only with his own money, but with the taxpayers’ money too and that’s a problem.
Bukele is obviously a populist leader who does not listen to anyone and does whatever he can do to achieve his goals:
“Bukele’s considered a populist, an outsider candidate who ran against the system. He says that he comes from the left, but he had to join a political party of the right to run.” – A CNN article
The citizens of El Salvador have been protesting Bukele for some time. Especially in relation to his enthusiasm for bitcoin. As crypto currencies started to tumble, Bukele’s investments in bitcoin started to melt. El Salvador now has 2,301 bitcoins, which were bought for 105 million dollars in total. However, now, the total value of this investment is below 50 million dollars.
And this makes up a good case for rethinking the value of crypto currencies and more importantly, the harms of populism.
The Invisible Swordsman
Even though I was just a little kid when I watched it, a few scenes of the movie ¡Three Amigos! (1986) are stuck with me ever since. Especially the scene in which our heroes try to communicate with the singing bush and summon the Invisible Swordsman.
The other thing that is stuck with me is the face of Steve Martin. Don’t get me wrong, Martin Short and Chevy Chase also deserve high praise and I really love their comedy but I remember them with other works. We’ll get to them later.
To me, Steve Martin is so talented that he made me realize that Friends (1994-2004), the famous TV show, was written nonchalantly, only by acting in a Pink Panther (2006) scene. But how? Just compare the scene below with the Friends scene in which Joey Tribbiani tries to learn French🤦♂️.
Why did I start to talk about Steve Martin all of a sudden?
Because I’ve read his book, Born Standing Up (2007). Would you be surprised that it is both a biography and autobiography? I know that it is contradictory but we know that he was the one who told his own story within the book. But according to him, he was talking about “a man he once knew”, because he focused on his own stand-up career which he ended in 1981 (later came back, but that’s not the point).
I’ve read it in two uninterrupted sessions and it was a great read. Started off quite okay but as he started to explain how he got in showbiz, things got interesting, because he was actually be able to explain the source of his comedic genius, which is something he does not believe. How do I know this? Well he talked about it in Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee (2012-2019).
In the book, he takes us to a journey during which we learn how he crafted his art. I am not going to tell you a lot of things about how he did it but even though I admired his comedy before reading the book, learning about the stories of certain bits made me enjoy his shows more than ever. How he pursued originality and in turn, how he was perceived is beyond imagination. If I were to made up a story like that you wouldn’t believe me but this is the man whose “weird sense of humour” turned him into a pied piper!
Yet, the man left the stand up scene without an announcement. Despite all the success.
It is not a comparison but as a person who has been following the stand up scene for some time, I can only think of two people who have done that and had that impact: Dave Chapelle and Jerry Seinfeld. Mind you, they were also at the peak of their careers but they were on TV. I’m not sure what this indicates, but do what you will with that information 🤷♂️.
After reading the book, I watched one of his stand-up acts. The entire thing. This was something that I haven’t done before. I had watched a lot of clips from his movies, watched his appearances on late night shows and award ceremonies, but his stand up act was new to me. If you don’t his latest Netflix special with Martin Short: Steve Martin and Martin Short: An Evening You Will Forget for the Rest of Your Life (2018). I remember enjoying it very much but Martin’s stand-up act from 1979 hit me a bit different.
I am quite sure most of you (as if I have a follower base) would not enjoy it as I was but it is here:
Epilogue
I decided to publish every new installment on Sundays, but I haven’t decided on a certain time schedule. Should I publish it according to the time zone that I am in (Istanbul) or in London’s or New York’s time?
The banner should change and I should write shorter.
You can find me on Twitter* and Instagram, or you can visit my website.
That’s all folks, have a nice week…
*any comment is appreciated.
Comments by Erdem Akın Temel