Datafication, Phantasmagoria of the 21st Century

Month: February 2025

Schneier on AI mistakes

Bruce Schneier is a fellow and lecturer and Harvard Kennedy School, sit on the boeard of the EFF and is generally recognised as an expert on digitsl security (see his bio here). His blog, “Schneier on Security” is a must go to learn about and keep abreast of tech security.

He recently published a post on a topic that is largely unexplored yet, but of growing importance. AI (let’s call it “AI” for now even though the word covers a wide range of different realities) makes mistakes. Despite the hype and the corporate narrative, anyone who has ever used ChatGPT or other LLMs will have been faced with this stark fact. However, a question that begs to be asked is: how does it make mistakes, and how is this mistake-making process similar or different from the human mistake-making process?

Well, that’s exactly the question Schneier asks in this post. The comments are worth reading as well.

A Powerful Metaphor For Life

A friend sent this to me.

“Yoann Bourgeois Captivates Audience with Powerful Performance About Life”

Many people seem to have seen it. It first appeared on TikTok apparently.

In any case, it’s a beautiful metaphor for life. Of course, falling and bouncing back up. That’s the obvious.

But it’s not only that. It’s the grace. The grace with which he falls and bounces back. As if falling and bouncing back was just the natural flow of life. The NATURAL flow of life.

To say “fall and bounce back” is a way to arrange reality by emphasising specific points in the flow of life: the point when we fall and the point when we bounce back. It’s giving a shape to a reality that could take a completely different shape if the narrative was different.

Emptiness is form, form is emptiness.

Something to meditate upon.