VN Alexander If you read and believe headlines, it seems scientists are very close to being able to merge human brains with AI. In mid-December 2023, a Nature Electronics article triggered a flurry of excitement about progress on that transhuman front: “‘Biocomputer’ combines lab-grown brain tissue with electronic hardware” “A system that integrates brain cells into a hybrid machine can …
VN Alexander 2023 was the year that an artificial intelligence (AI) known as ChatGPT-4 spectacularly passed the Turing Test. For a hundred million users, interacting with the Chat bot was indistinguishable from interacting with a human being. The bot appeared to be able to understand questions and reason out competent answers. Although its replies were …
VN Alexander You may recall that, during the thick of it in 2020-2021, Covidians were immune—no, that’s not the right metaphor—they were allergic to facts. They did not respond well even to the common sense statement that, since the C0Vld-19 shots hadn’t been through long-term trials, it might be unwise to take one. Like terrorized lab animals …
VN alexander In Martin Amis’ The Zone of Interest (2014), set in a Nazi death camp, the Commander, Paul Doll, has his wife, Hannah, and two daughters living with him in the “zone,” where the smell of rotting flesh from the mass graves functions as a persistent clue that things have gone very, very wrong in the …
VN Alexander I’ve never wanted to be able to control any of my devices with my thoughts. I am perfectly happy to use a physical interface that I can turn off, let go of, or walk away from. What about you? Is your keyboard holding you back? Is your mouse slowing you down? Do you …
