News and blather from MaxBarry.com
I don t like how flattering AIs have become. I ask how to fix the dishwasher clock, because daylight savings, we re still doing that, apparently, and it says, That is a great question. I didn t ask for validation. It was a simple inquiry. But I can t get a straight answer. First it has to reassure me that I shouldn t feel bad for asking. Many dishwashers have a confusing array of buttons, it says,…
This is relevant because Guy Pearce is in the news, Oscar-nominated for The Brutalist . I can t watch this because it ll remind me of one of my great regrets: I was shot down in 2009 on a pitch about Guy Pearce stealing someone s life. This came about when I was approached to adapt the story of Nicael Holt, a 24-year old surfer from Wollongong who one day decided to sell his life on eBay. This is…
I wrote about AI already, but that was about how we re all going to die . Since then, the conversation has become more nuanced. Now I m encountering more subtle ideas I think are totally wrong. So because I know better, here s why. AI is already here. ChatBots are good at figuring out what comes next when you start a sentence with, The capitol of Antigua is That s pretty cool. We didn t have that…
The free market is great and all, but I do have an issue with this part, where companies promote 2.5-ton urban assault vehicles to people who can be talked into dropping $100,000 by telling them it s big. That s the tag line on a billboard I passed on Sunday, my daughter in the car, the L plates up, as she learns to drive. IT S BIG, says the billboard, that s the whole tagline, and the Ford F150…
So this AI business, huh, this is getting some traction. It s evolving so fast, just the other day I had to go back and take out all the parts in the book I m working on that carefully establish the plausibility of competent AI in the near future. Luckily I m familiar with topics that become exponentially more absurd while you re writing about them, because I got started in political satire.…
So I normally keep my NationStates stuff separate from this blog. But it s 20 years today since I launched a little web game in the hope that it would promote my novel Jennifer Government , and help prevent it from sinking without a trace like my debut novel. So I m cross-posting. Twenty years! For perspective, the web itself is only thirty-three. Here are some things that didn t exist when I…