[Petit Fours #450] On non-fiction, over-hype, and the State of Talk
Hello from the first Monday of November! Here’s what I’ve got for you today:
#1 Reminder: We have a call open for a Postdoctoral Scholarship on Autonomous Systems and Robotics in Society in our new research group. Applications are due by November 14. Please spread the word!
#2 Anil Dash’s recent piece on The Majority AI View is worth a read to calm down amidst the hype: “Technologies like LLMs have utility, but the absurd way they've been over-hyped, the fact they're being forced on everyone, and the insistence on ignoring the many valid critiques about them make it very difficult to focus on legitimate uses where they might add value.“
#3 For a thoughtful, conversational podcast, tune in to this State of Talk episode with Hannah Pelikan and Saul Albert on AI and human robot interaction.
#4 This manifesto (in Finnish) is geared for non-fiction book writing but, in my opinion, much of it applies to shorter formats, too: Manifesti paremman tietokirjallisuuden puolesta. I especially love the sense of urgency in the final “rule”: write like it’s the last thing you’ll do!
-A