The Time-Delay Life
I love watching football. It is by far my favorite game on TV. The display of athleticism and skill, the sophistication of the plays, and the strategic battle between opposing coaches all captivate me. Thanks to modern technology, my wristwatch will even prompt me with scoring updates from my favorite teams when I am unable […]
Introducing ChatGPT
The first chatbot was ELIZA, created in 1966 by computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum at MIT. ELIZA was designed to simulate a psychotherapist in natural language conversations and was based on pattern matching and substitution methods. ELIZA was designed to simulate a psychotherapist as a way to demonstrate the power of computer language processing. Joseph Weizenbaum […]
The Woo-Woo Engineers
While the burden of proof in our legal system rests on the accuser, an opposite of sorts is in play for new ideas – even a modicum of credibility is often enough to give wings to a novel suggestion. This worldview is exemplified by a quote from John Lennon – “I believe in everything until […]
It’s Just a Game
I have never been much of a gamer, at least not since PacMan and Space Invaders disappeared from the arcades (shortly before the arcades disappeared from shopping malls, which was not long before shopping malls went out of favor). I have played Call of Duty a few times, but without my son’s Med Kit to […]
Sentient Stuff
Those of us who have worked in the data storage industry often wonder how our computers match up to the processor we carry around in our own heads. Comparisons are difficult to come by – we can estimate the average number of neurons in a human brain (~ 86 billion), but they are quite different […]
The Mother of Invention
I once sat on a plane at Phoenix airport waiting to return home at the end of a business trip. The pilot announced that our flight was delayed due to a problem with the flaps, a detail which qualified as TMI (i.e., “too much information”) judging from the anxiety it caused among the passengers. Those […]
A Random Walk with AI
My wife and I recently joined some of the last homeowners to contribute to the $11 billion robot vacuum industry. Since I am usually the one who does the vacuuming, I liked the idea of completing this chore with the simple push of a button. It was an exciting day when I took our new […]
