Adam Mastroianni is Relieved to discover AI is not taking his job

Infinite midwit

OR: if we were playing by Settlers of Catan rules, I’d be dead already

Experimental HistoryAdam Mastroianni

I don’t feel like I have access to an on-demand omnipotence. Instead, I can talk to an infinite midwit: a stooge who is always available and very knowledgeable, but smart? Well, yes and no, in weird ways.

Even as it has learned to count the number of “r”s in the word “strawberry”, even as it has stopped telling people to put glue on their pizza, there’s still a hole in the center of its capabilities that’s as big as it was in 2022, a hole that shows no signs of shrinking. I only know this because that hole is where I live.

I love to think, and Adam is one of my favorite "thinking bloggers." He makes a distinction between objective intelligence, such as a fact that can be verified and subjective intelligence. We can KNOW the temperature where water starts to boil. Can we know who was the greatest thinker of the 20th century?

I think that thinking and arguing about who was the greatest or the most important or the most revolutionary thinker of the 20th century is a wonderful activity. Sticking a pin in a particular person and declaring them the greatest is not just annoying... it's useless. We evolve by thinking these through tough and subjective issues, then being forced to defend our conclusion (or opinion).

Yes, AI could help you build a case by providing facts and references. It would even make up some phony references if you asked it to do so. But it wouldn't CARE. People care. Adam cares about thinking things through, and so do I.