12 Comments

I loved this, Dan. It is one of the goals of my life to encourage people to embrace celebration over cynicism, and gratitude over grumpiness. The technological achievements in the past few years (very much including those miraculous vaccines--including the one against malaria--malaria!) ought to have us all jumping for joy. I’m not even worried about ChatGPT, even though as a teacher and writer I should be terrified, according to the internet. ChatGPT is going to wind up being like PowerPoint and design software--a tool to help us deal with tedious tasks. And while we figure out how to work it into our lives, we can enjoy the wild and playfully creative prompts people are giving the bot--an ode to corgi butts, or the Iliad but with the characters replaced by brands of toothpaste, for example.

Incidentally, my favorite celebration song is The News, by Carbon Silicon (Mick Jones from the Clash and Tony James): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Lbu4Of75CAw

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The Webb telescope has been forgotten in the murk, but it is something to celebrate. Thank you!

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Nice piece! For some of these things, the optimism is perhaps a decades-long thesis... and if current hiccups don't touch the pillars of that thesis, it makes sense to keep the optimism... this seems to apply to crypto this year -- the drop largely doesn't relate to most arguments of optimists.

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Refreshing piece! Even if I am late to it. You help to keep me honest too, in my deeply tech-sceptical normal frame of mind, uneasy about our machine future.

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Dec 29, 2022·edited Dec 29, 2022Liked by Daniel T

“here’s Neil deGrasse Tyson on Fox explaining how important this is to former MTV VJ, Kennedy” sounds like something ChatGPT would write. Last week my friend lost an entire day of work feeding movie pitches into it. My favorite was “a superhero movie about a man named Nacho.” AI gave him a sidekick of a talking chihuahua named Taco and a nemesis called The Guacamole Golem.

I’m with you on all the positives. Also it was very sweet of you to consider me the most tech savvy guy you know. (you were talking about me right? Or am I just stealing valor?)

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I am newish to your publication and hope that optimism is central. It is certainly my thesis. I think pessimism is rooted mostly in where we choose to focus rather than what might be objectively significant. ChatGPT, a toy I admittedly played with is fun. Portraying its accomplishments much beyond that seems silly. My nominee for significant AI breakthroughs is AlphaFold from the Google moonshot Deepmind.

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Observing ChatGPT has limitations and is like conversing with your dog, is like commenting that the Wright brothers flying machine doesn't have a bathroom.

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I’m late to this but thank you. Sets the perfect tone for the new year!

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