It seems like California is the furthest country in the EU.

Those old stories may have been full of crazy stuff, but look at children's programming over the past 30 years. SpongeBob characters, under the ocean, jumping off a diving board into a pool, again, under the ocean. It isn't violent, but it is crazy.

I think that children's authors primarily amuse themselves knowing that it will pass right over the heads of their target audience. It sure seems true of Collodi.

> look at children's programming over the past 30 years. SpongeBob characters, under the ocean, jumping off a diving board into a pool, again, under the ocean. It isn't violent, but it is crazy.

A frog in love with a pig?

> I think that children's authors primarily amuse themselves knowing that it will pass right over the heads of their target audience.

I take it Sir is familiar with the British tradition of pantomime? (Where no entendre will be left undoubled).

Always wondered how they had campfires and lit torches underwater.

My wtf cartoon through adult eyes is Ren and Stimpy. Serious moments of not even trying to be for kids.

I'll never forget his theory about the origin of the heart symbol.

The Gompertz function strikes again.

That's true, but it can be a trap. I recommend always generating a few alternatives to avoid our bias toward the first generation. When we don't do that we are led rather than leading.

Look at it this way. The carver doesn't have to grow the tree. Using an LLM for coding is a lot like being a carver. You can take broad or small strokes and discard what you don't like.

> Using an LLM for coding is a lot like being a carver.

It’s nothing like being a carver. It’s like being a director; “Once more! With feeling!”. “Perfect, brilliant, just one more take, and I want you to consider…”

A sculptor shapes with their hands, and there is pleasure in that. A director shapes with someone else’s hands.

It's like being a master, really. You're getting output from something that can't say no and that was built from the works of millions of unknowing and unconsenting contributors.

Yet we see directors as artists. Kubrick, Coppola (both of them), Hitchcock, etc.

We also see actors as artists, and pay them gorillions of dollars. AI is about using distilled human knowledge, while cutting the human out of the loop (and out of the payroll).

I'm in the conserving camp. It's more truthful than the narrativization that accompanies attempts to restore. We should remember that we all had a reptilian vision of dinosaurs for decades (centuries?) before the latest feathered view. We would have been better with neither. Just display the bones: what we have. Everything else burdens the public with guesses.

It's nice to see a passion project.

I would go so far as to say that it should be illegal for AI to lull humans into anthropomorphizing them. It would be hard to write an effective law on this, but I think it is doable.

Great article but disappointed that the monkey with the camera did not make an appearance.