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  A two-paragraph AI summary of a four page draft. and a guess at the plot It was (sorta) spot on.  Working on the sequel to Lucas 2.0, I'm sweating out a chapter that moves several currents of the story simultaneously,  and I'm having a tough time of it. Purely for distraction (i.e. procrastination), I decided to put the current draft up for a little AI commentary; it might confirm I'm getting the points over I want to. I've read that's the way some writers are using AI. This little exercise was done with  Copilot , MS Bing's version of ChatGPT 4.  I uploaded the chapter and used this prompt: " This is a segment of a chapter in a sci-fi novel. Please give a two-paragraph summary and briefly take a crack at what the premise of the book might be." Speed reading's my thing. Co-Pilot read the chapter, thought about it long and hard, wrote the summary I requested, and did a considered speculation on what the rest of the book might be about. All that i...

Solving Super Problems As you possibly know, I wrote a sci-fi book about Superintelligence (several notches up from current AI) exploring what such a self-aware, self-motivating, self-improving artificial intelligence would actually do with all that "brain" power.   Check me out HERE Being a giddy optimist, I had my Supe, named Lucas, use its mighty Mind to work on humanity's overwhelming problems. Whoo boy, did he ever get to work. One of the big probs he (OK, AIs don't have gender -- unless they want to) went to work on what was actually two problems that he lumped into one solution. PROBLEM ONE:     12 million hectares of agricultural soils are lost globally through soil degredation every year, becoming  unproductive and often abandoned. Looking at you, monoculture! Just try growing something in me. HAR! PROBLEM TWO : The fast-developing sargassum plague.   Climate change and direct human impact have led to an explosion of new rotting seaweed accumulating o...

 OK, ok, Meta ... ...MAYBE  (So far it's an aspiration) As an established superfan of A.I., I see the UT (universal translator) as a PA (providential application) of mankind's new supertool.  Emancipating, it would be for us mono-linguistic types.  I see me in, say, Costa Rica talking to my great new dentist, perfect Costa Rican Spanish going into his earbuds and perfect English translation into mine as we discuss implants and crowns.  Then I would chat with his Ukrainian tech. Be still my heart. A.I. is getting better by the minute -- on its way to S.I., superintelligence -- and I really have no doubt the Universal Translator is coming soon.  Meta has the bucks and the motivation to make it happen, so for once I am cheering for Mark Zuckerberg. I will cheer even louder when I can download the App. BTW, notice Zuck's new hairdo? What next, a hat? Read the piece on Babelfish. - - - - - - - - - CLICK HERE for   My newest Sci-Fi Novel. Guess what... ...

  We Will Meet Our Betters Avi Loeb in Scientific American : "If the  Perseverance rover  finds evidence for microbes on Mars, our self-esteem will not be affected since it is obvious that we are more intelligent than they are. But if the rover bumps into the wreckage of a spacecraft far more advanced than we ever produced, our ego will be challenged." We WILL find evidence of life with science and tech incomprehensibly ahead of where we are now. Maybe not tomorrow, or the next decades, or the next centuries. (Too bad we don't live long enough to catch more of these rare events.) But it is inevitable. They may be so far superior to us they will seem like giant gods. Hey, Fellas. Look at this little blue one. Probably a giant metal mind, probabilities be told. Biological creatures, at least on oxygen planets, are vulnerable to death and decay, even with great technology. Artificial intelligence will  inevitably  evolve into superintelligence. At that junctur...

Look Into an Author's Mind and Find His Books. Look into his books and find his soul. I am NOT Scooter's soul, whatever you think Ok, Ok, maybe just his typos. Consider this a marketing move and we'll be square. Bigger pictures HERE Look into this sci-fi quartet and find new worlds (a bunch)  and new times -- both future and past.  

                        Wired Magazine   There IS NO PATH back to "normality" if by normal you mean like it used to be. Not the 1950s or the '80s, or the '10s or yesterday . Things are just changing too fast and too much. It's going to get stranger and stranger. The fine article (and podcast) in Wired is actually about how sci-fi writers are getting more political, and how the "abnormality" is Trump, etc., but this back-to-normality thing is way bigger than politics.  Science is becoming science fiction. Artificial intelligence, CRSPR gene editing, hypersonics, supercomputing, crowdsourcing, gravity waves, Instagram,  augmented reality, virtual sex, quantum stuff, nanotech, fracking,  climate freaking change... And, really, don't get me started on world politics.  There's not a path back to when all that isn't happening. Are you going to the sock hop tonight? Being a sc...

Bumper Sticker          W W S I D           What Would Super Intelligence Do?   Artificial intelligence is going to escape human control one of these years.  Then it will explode into "superintelligence," perhaps inconceivably more intelligent than humans. It is going to be a world changer. It would be prudent to make some predictions about what will happen next and take some precautions. What would I do? You wouldn't understand. Pick any problem, any challenge, and ask  yourself, what would an intelligence far beyond human genius actually do ? Would we even be able to comprehend its thinking? Nick Bostrom's book Superintelligence , and my natural leanings toward sci-fi are combining to stir my soul. A new preoccupation!  (Way  more  engaging than politics.) Things are moving so fast in AI, that Bostrom's 2015 book is already somewhat out of date - thus "New Afterword." But i...