Artificial General Intelligence (human-like intelligence across all fields) and artificial sentience seemed just around the corner. I heard one commentator say just because AI is silicone based and humans are carbon based doesn’t mean it can’t achieve sentience. 

It is a remarkable step and it seems likely to have far reaching consequences but sentience? These LLM’s are predictive text extruders like the one on your phone’s keyboard guessing what word you’re trying to type. LLM’s have been fine tuned to produce text that is pleasing and useful to humans (keep that thought too). They consume enormous amounts of energy being trained on data and running the compute to generate text, while the human brain uses about the same amount of energy as a standard LED light bulb. According to Emily Blender, a professor of linguistics at the University of Washington, we humans learn languages by paring form with meaning. LLM’s are great at syntax and grammar but have zero understanding of meaning. There is no internal thought process and we should be sceptical of claims they can reason (LLM’s may have been trained on text that solves the problem). But because it is such a big leap forward and it is astonishing, we are at risk of anthropomorphising LLM’s. They’re awful at maths, physics and Sudoku. There are fundamental deficiencies in LLM’s that may limit their capabilities and I’m no longer concerned that we may one day soon be up against a sentient silicone intelligence……..but just like nuclear physics, LLM’s have both good and harmful applications.

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Thank you Josef and team for creating 52 Frames. Thank you all for your generous feedback, comments and encouragement - I’ve absolutely loved sharing the journey through 2023 with you. Thank you 52 Framer Kathy Chapman who helped me bring many of my images to life xx.  

BTS. I converted the words “the future is near” into binary and multiplied it many times and then screenshot it so I could display it on Kathy’s and my mobile phones. Then reflected them in my glasses just outside the crop. A desk lamp was used in butterfly lighting position. I used a hotel TV screen as a backdrop. There is a fascinating podcast by the Financial Times on LLM capabilities here if you’re interested https://www.ft.com/content/36af32cf-fa29-466d-bcff-8a8a898829d2

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Such a cool self portrait. Where can I get those smart glasses? I need a new pair as I couldn't even read the questions of a surprisingly good pub quiz board game that my nephew found in the supermarket. My niece laughed when I suggested that I be the quizmaster as I needed to use my phone as a makeshift magnify glass?

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I've missed a lot of images throughout the year due to being so damned busy, but your images are always among my favourites. This is really cool. I love the effect in the glasses. Happy New Year.

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