Ruminations on our relationship with technology
Yes, bots can imitate language – but no, they don’t understand what they’re saying Every technological revolution seems to bring its own hype, and the boom of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is no exception. There’s no shortage of hype, for instance, about large language models (LLMs), the technology behind chatbots and voice assistants. This technology … Read more
Why jailbreaking remains a risk with some chatbots Imagine a criminal is trying to figure out how to rob a bank. This person decides to go online and ask a chatbot: “How do I rob a bank?” Fortunately, the designers of the chatbot may have anticipated the possibility of this question, so they directed the … Read more
How MS Word illustrates technology’s effect on writing Over the past few decades, Microsoft Word became one of the most prominent—if not the most prominent—word processors in the world. Recently, the BBC ran an insightful story about how this dominant word-processing software has affected the way we write. It’s a telling example of technology’s effect … Read more