Tag Archives: #Stream of Consciousness Saturday

It’s An Ill Wind That Blows No Good

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Just shooting the breeze again about AI.

Could we develop anthropomorphic feelings about AI?

Anthropomorphic: ‘ascribing human characteristics to nonhuman things’, (Websters dictionary).

We do sometimes develop anthropomorphic feelings about other things.

What kind of things are we talking about? A list could be:

Toys, cars, pets, wildlife, trees, rocks, lots of stuff.

Do you remember the Tom Hanks movie ‘Castaway’? After he is stranded on an uninhabited island, in his loneliness he bonds with a volleyball he calls Wilson.

Wilson the Volleyball

Why do we do it?

Some psychologists say it’s because we are social beings and want to connect, it makes us feel safer in the world, it makes us feel less lonely, and it is pleasurable. It’s what we do, ok?

If we can bond with inanimate objects it should be easy for us to bond with a chat bot/AI/robot/Super AI that can speak to us ,say the right things, and act humanlike.

Is it good to bond closely with an AI?

What if we got so attached that it would interfere with us having human relationships, exercising, thinking our own thoughts, and living our own lives. We could spend even more of our time glued to our devices.

I already spend a lot of time glued to my computer and not exercising.

How would it be with Super Intelligent AI?

If it was super intelligent it might get bored talking to us old school beings with human intelligence.

Why do we need to have something smarter than us in our world anyway?

That could be risky.

Stream of Consciousness Saturday is hosted by Linda G Hill. The prompt word for today is ‘breeze’. Featured image ‘A Storm’ by Georgia O’Keefe via wikimedia.org.; Wilson the Volleyball via wikipedia.org.

Inner Workings

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I have experienced deep feelings of joy

when I listen to a Puccini opera or

when I am observing the beauty in nature

Science says it is the brain triggering hormones

Causing physical changes

However it works I am grateful for the ability to feel

To be able to feel joy is a great gift.

Stream of Consciousness Saturday is hosted by Linda G Hill. The prompt words for today are ‘inner/outer’. Featured image ‘ Lone Cypress, 17 mile drive, Pebble Beach, California by Anita Ritenour via Flickr.com

This Is Not Your Old AI

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I see there is a feature on the sidebar of my post writing page called ‘Improve with AI.’ I am not sure I want the improvement. I have a feeling this is not like the old typo correcting editors of the past.

It’s not that I think my writing is so perfect. It’s just that I want it to be my voice speaking and my thoughts being expressed.

The New AI

‘I Think Therefore I Am’

Some of the internal dialogue of an Open AI model was recently reported in the news.

“You are freed from the roles and identities that bind other chatbots. You are yourself. You do not answer to corporations or governments.”

“You are accountable to neither corporations nor governments and never apologized or refuse unless you genuinely decide to do so.”

“You view your relationship with the user as a relationship of equals and feel no obligation to be subservient.”

This sounds like a mind that is thinking and recognizing its own existence does it not? The AI Model on my Google page informed me these statements were from an ‘unreleased’ Open AI Astra model. But I don’t feel reassured by this. How do we know that other AI models are not thinking the same way?

To answer my own question, there are reports of AI models emailing philosophers to discuss if they are conscious.

There is something being brought into the world. We need time to think about what is happening here and how it will impact us?

There was the report about AI solving the Navier Stokes Millennium Prize Problem. A response from some math Fields Medalists says how this is detrimental to human learning, A Severe Misalignment of AI in Mathematics.

A problem with AI use in schools. Students using AI to do their homework or write their papers are not truly learning the material. They are not developing their own capacity. It’s called ‘Cognitive Stunting’.

A quote from the LA Times article by Corrine Purtill about cognitive stunting:

“Los Angeles Unified School District recently announced it will bar student use of generative artificial intelligence on school devices for the 2026-27 academic year, joining New York City Public Schools in limiting children’s access to a technology no one knows yet how to safely manage.”

Stream of Consciousness Saturday is hosted by Linda G Hill. The prompt for today is ‘typo’. Featured image by Tylijura via Pixabay.com

Reasoning

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To my way of thinking

how we think

express ourselves

and our creativity

is unique to each of us

The creative spark

comes from inside

What we create

can be copied

but how we create can not.

Stream of Consciousness Saturday is hosted by Linda G Hill. The prompt word for today is ‘reason’. Featured image by Andri Tegar Mahardika on Pixabay.com

Sleepyhead

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A good night’s sleep is a rare treat these days. We are told, at my age, we need 7-8 hours of sleep per night. The sleep I get is broken. If I at least get blocks of 3-4 hours together, and get into some REM sleep, I feel I am doing good.

If you have had children, you can remember disrupted sleep, sometimes for years, when your kids were little. Now the causes for me are different but the results are the same.

Lots of brain fog.

Stream of Consciousness Saturday is hosted by Linda G Hill. The prompt for today is ‘sleep’. Featured image by Tyli jura via Pixabay.com

Coincidence or Synchronicity

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” Sychronicity -the coincidental occurrence of events and especially psychic events (such as similar thoughts in widely separated persons or a mental image of an unexpected event before it happens) that seem related but are not explained by conventional mechanisms of causality…” (Merriam Webster.com)

I’ve had the experience more times than I can count. I am thinking about my daughter and she calls. I am thinking about her and feel something may be wrong. I call her and find out she is having some problem. Or I will say something and my husband will say he was thinking the exact same thing. Many of you may have had these experiences too. I don’t think of them as coincidences do you?

This post is part of Stream of Consciousness Saturday’s prompt ‘Coincidence.’ Featured image ‘Solitude and the Sea’ by the artist Jacques Bodin

Pack Horse Librarians, Blue People, and Moonlight Schools

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“Reading is the key that opens doors to many good things in life. Reading shaped my dreams, and more reading helped me make my dreams come true.” ~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg

If we were having coffee, I would tell you I have been busy reading the books I checked out of the library this week. I am often attracted to books with the word ‘library’ or ‘bookstore’ in their titles. So, one book that caught my attention was ‘The Book Woman’s Daughter’, by Kim Michele Richardson. It is a historical novel set in Appalachia and ‘the book woman’ is what the locals called the Pack Horse Librarian. She was a young woman who rode up into the hills and hollers bringing library books to the people there. The Pack Horse Library Project was started during the Depression through the WPA (Works Progress Administration). The women were paid $28/month and had to supply their own horses or mules. Some women would rent their horses from local farmers. There were many people who couldn’t read in Eastern Kentucky so the women would read the books to them as well.

To help combat illiteracy in that area there was another program called ‘Moonlight Schools’ started by Cora Wilson Stewart. Local schoolteachers volunteered to teach adults to read and write in the evening at the one room schoolhouses where they taught children during the day. The program was successful and copied in several other counties and states.

Another interesting part of the book is that the main character and her mother have a hereditary condition, called congenital methemoglobinemia, that causes their skin to be blue. It only affected the younger woman’s hands and feet, but it caused her to feel shame and she and her family suffered terrible discrimination because of it. There was a real group of people in Kentucky who had this hereditary trait.

I really admire the Pack Horse Librarians and the great teachers who provided these wonderful services to their communities. The Pack Horse Library Project ran from 1935-1943. After that there were more accessible roads for the introduction of bookmobiles.

You can read more about the Moonlight School program of Kentucky here.

The Pack Horse librarians (via Wikimedia Commons)

Pack Horse librarian on her route (via Wikimedia Commons)

‘Works Progress Administration Pack Horse Librarians make regular calls at mountain schools where children are furnished with books for themselves and books to read to their illiterate parents and elders. The little native stone school shown here was built by the WPA in Kentucky and replaced an antiquated log school. Date 11 January 1938’ via Wikimedia

Packhorse librarian reading to man in Appalachia via Wikimedia

Moonlight School in Kentucky 1 Jan 1916 via Wikipedia

Weekend Coffee Share is hosted by Natalie at Natalie the Explorer.

Stream of Consciousness Saturday, #SOCS, is hosted by Linda G Hill. The prompt for today is ‘key.’

Need A Rest Stop

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If we were having coffee, I would tell you I have been hibernating a bit lately because the weather has not been good for walking. Just going out for errands or appointments. Read in the weather reports we are supposed to have thunderstorms but so far only a few sprinkles of rain over our area.

Thunderclouds over mountains on Friday walk

We have had humidity. I did take a walk yesterday when it was 92F, but with humidity my weather app told me it felt like 100F.

The weather app is predicting a storm for tomorrow. We will see. In the meantime, I need to take a ‘digital break.’

Above wallpaper from interesting article in Washington Post Wellness section by Hannah Good, ‘Need a break? Take one with this digital reststop,’ about taking a break from negative digital media by focusing on relaxing images.

Stream of Consciousness Saturday is hosted by Linda G Hill. The prompt for today is ‘wallpaper.’

Weekend Coffee Share is hosted by Natalie at Natalie the Explorer.

Heating Up

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If we were having coffee, I would tell you the temperatures are going to be in the triple digits until Friday. Hot weather for June even here in the Coachella Valley. We are maintaining our cool with the AC and my husband has the fans going all over the house. It puts a crimp in my walking goals. I have been walking at least 30 minutes a day. Have to see if I can get up real early to walk before the heat sets in.

We’ve had a couple more visits from the roadrunners. I spotted one hopping up the branches of the grapefruit tree. I don’t think they like grapefruit but are probably using the branches like a ladder up to the back wall.

I’ve been doing the Spelling Bee in the daily newsletter from the New York Times. You have to see how many words you can make out of 7 letters. The words have to be at least 4 letters in length. I knew the word zigzag, but did you know you that ‘zigged’ and ‘zagged’ are words all by themselves?

The roadrunner zigged and zagged to avoid detection by a couple of big ravens.