Buns “AND”  “OR” Chatbots  “NOT”

 

I baked some raisin buns for my college-going grand-nephew and his mom.   He was designing an algorithm and translating it into computer programs to create his own Chatbot called Mia.   He needed a break and I explained that I made the buns just the way he liked them by refining my recipe using Boolean Operators.   He looked at me quizzically and I said, “just as you use Boolean Operators and Values in your algorithms (recipes) and programs”.

 

The ingredients list said raisins “OR” sultanas – I put in raisins.

You don’t like caraway seeds; I did “NOT” include them.

“AND” I added half a cup of butter for flavour and lighter texture.

The “TRUTH” is in the eating.

(A mischievous or devious baker could mix in some crushed marijuana when making buns for a party to add to the high spirits.)

 

 

As we went back to work I noticed an emoji he doodled that I think might mean “She is talking through her hat”.   Maybe, maybe not, dear teenager!

 

Nowadays, when we hear the acronym AI we immediately think of artificial intelligence, the simulation of human intelligence in processes performed by machines.   Senior people in the field say that AI needs to be paused because some programmers and users input data without giving proper consideration to achieving ethical outputs.   Sam Altman, CEO of Research Laboratory, OpenAI said that his GPT-4 program is ‘aligned’ to follow human ethics.   Still, it is flawed.   It doesn’t have biological intelligence, reasoning or creativity.   Human sense is better than AI for divergent interpretations because of our experience and understanding of the world.

 

GPT (generative pre-trained transformer) means that a machine is fed a huge amount of data, INPUT, and through its layered structure of interconnected nodes and neurons resembling the human brain, deep learning is achieved.   The programmer’s expectation is that the machine will understand and produce OUTPUT when called for.

 

We are concerned about moral principles, respect for intellectual property and copyrights, individual rights, privacy, proper attribution of data, stopping plagiarism or unemployment.

 

Geoffrey Hinton, the “godfather” of AI quit Google warning that GPTChat needs to be paused.   Geoffrey Hinton is 75 and is the great-great-grandson of George Boole who was the first Professor of Mathematics at Queen’s College Cork in 1850/64 (now UCC).   George Boole’s philosophy of taking the principals of mathematical logic and reducing them to a simple form of algebra is now known as Boolean logic gates and these are basic to the design of digital computer circuits.   Boolean logic is centred on words known as Boolean Operators: “OR”, “AND”, “NOT”.   The values given to each of those words are “TRUE” or “FALSE”.

 

Another senior citizen, Michio Kaku, has retired from AI research but in his book Quantum Supremacy he tells us that quantum computing will work trillions of times faster and leave ChatGPT in its dust.   We might see ‘sentient machines’ in about one hundred years.   He said Einstein knew about quantum entanglement which he called “spooky action at a distance”.

 

I may never use ChatGPT but I did some deep reading to try and break it down to a simple formula that I could understand. 

 

Note:  It’s funny that back in 1950s Ireland AI meant bovine artificial insemination.