Thoughts on AI

 Here's my issue with AI. 

We developed the internet, which was fine, but we expected too much of it. We thought it would expand our consciousness - and turn us into better versions of ourselves. But it didn't; it just let us look further into our hearts. Look at what's on display now, the angry, bitter, venal behaviour that floods social media. The internet wasn't a gateway; it was a mirror. It's showing us, US. And we're not great. 

But that would have been fine - if we'd learned. It doesn't particularly seem to me that we have.

And now - there's AI. We took all of that machine learning and let computers loose, with the expectation that they'd create something wonderful - or that they'd replace mundane employment, freeing human beings to enjoy lives of unfulfilled promise.

Except that's not happening either. We gave AI everything we know, and expected it to be able to replace us, but it's just another version of us. Instead of a person idly scrolling on the internet, flicking through Instagram, wasting their life with something petty. AI gives us a program, idly reforming images (based on inputs we've given it), flicking through those images as they endlessly morph and grow into further iterations of minor inputs we've supplied. AI isn't going anywhere new, it's going to places w'eve told it to go. It's the logical progression to the internet as a mirror. That internet mirror showed us all the dark places, the faults and the foibles of our existence. Then, AI turned around and started to just pinball around through the fractal chaos of all that information, defining and redefining the strange neural journeys our minds can take. But we know the steps on those journeys; they're nothing new.

Instead of AI, we need a way to expand ourselves, not have a program crawl through the myriad pathways of the houses our minds already reside in. We need to escape the paradigm completely. AI represents something that's still inside us. It will reproduce and grow but can never escape that boundary. 

The next step for us is to identify what's on the other side of that boundary.

The tyranny of expectation...

 ..Is hanging over my head again. I need to find a way to escape its clutches: to wriggle free of the idea that other people's happiness depends solely on my actions.

I'm always like this, on the eve of a concerted period of activity from the band. Really, I ought to have learned my lesson, by now - but it doesn't seem to have happened yet. Perhaps realisation is the first step towards altering one's behaviour? Le'ts hope so.

It's been a particularly trying few days, if I'm honest. A few days that I would really rather forget. I've walked off a lot of frustration, and confusion. The one thing that could save me, is a bicycle. But the weather has been (typically, for February) absolutely appalling. I'm hoping that will change, tomorrow. 

Blast from the past

 Every time I listen to The Flys, I'm in awe of exactly how perfect they were: a seamless mix of new-wave optimism and power-pop dynamics. Hooks and melodies for days. 

This is the opening track from their (totally forgotten) second album "Own". But, it's a Peel Session version, which I'm pretty sure has never been released. It's very odd - there has been an otherwise comprehensive 2CD Anthology, collecting everything they ever did, yet the radio sessions remain missing. Normally these are the first port of call, when a label goes looking for extra material. I live in hope that one day, absolutely everything can finally be released. Until then - just play this nice and loud, cheers.

Every now and again

 You want something.

Something that'll make you want to destroy planets, spit in the eye of God. 

This totally fits the bill.

Turn it up, people.

In other news, life is hard, getting harder. 

A lazy Sunday.

 Is there really any other kind?

But I managed to get back on the turbo trainer today, so my Strava stats for the week look vaguely respectable. I'm definitely down, as far as fitness goes - but it does feel like the power is still there. I do need to work on my cadence a bit - I suspect that's a lack of endurance riding. 

I've been busy keeping a diary for this year, as well. It's nice to have that, in concert with this digital alternative. The analogue version was a Christmas gift, and it's a lovely green Moleskine. A page a day, which seems like a perfectly good ratio, too.

Mind you, it is only January. Best laid plans, and all that.

I'm really not a musician.

I mean - I'm totally not.  

But there are certain things that just make me think I know what I'm on about. Case in point: the absolute guitar genius of Robert Quine. My favourite guitarist by some distance. Primarily for his work with the Voidoids, but more than that - for his absolute, single-minded focus. He took that left-field skronk-jazz madness, and made it his own, all the while maintaining a rigid discipline. There really wasn't anyone else like him.

RIP, Robert. 

Aw, c'mon now

 Sometimes you hear things which just totally blow you away. Here's a case in point. 

On this absolute banger, The New Pornographers are not just going into math-rock, they've emerged out the other side, into some rarified atmosphere where normal humans can't comprehend what they've just done.

"The Jessica Numbers" has always confused me, as I tried to work out that time-signature. Was it 13/8, or something? No, it's more complex than that. It's a series of guitar hits, which assume the formulation of a reverse Fibonacci series. Thus, each hit is the sum of the FOLLOWING TWO HITS.

The standard series would be: 1,2,3,5 etc, but this is in reverse - so the guitar hits are played as 5, then next time round it's 3, then 2, then 1........

 Aaaaaargh! Basically, it's (I think) an attempt to weld the Golden Ratio into music. My mind isn't just blown, it's scattered to the winds. 

First of the year.

 2023 can get in the bin. 

What a truly terrible year. On the plus side, at least I managed to get blogging again. More than 40 entries was my best performance for a while, which made me smile. Precious little else did, to be honest.

So, we're kicking off another year. Another year of my little blog. Howling into the void, yet again. I'm actually kind of pleased nobody gets to read it - I seldom have to worry about what to say, how to say it. I don't care about content, or anything else, at all.

It's liberating, cathartic, creative and wonderful. So yeah - here we go again.