beet - Monday Morning Memo

The beet is the murderer returned to the scene of the crime.
The beet is what happens when the cherry finishes with the carrot.
The beet is the ancient ancestor of the autumn moon, bearded,
buried, all but fossilized; the dark green sails of the grounded
moon-boat stitched with veins of primordial plasma;
the kite string that once connected the moon
to the Earth now a muddy whisker
drilling desperately for rubies.

The beet was Rasputin’s favorite vegetable.
You could see it in his eyes.

– Tom Robbins,

Jitterbug Perfume

“Whenever there’s a lot of patterns, a lot of data, A.I. is very good at processing that — certain things like the game of Go or chess. But humans have this tendency to believe that if A.I. can do something smart like translation or chess, then it must be really good at all the easy stuff too. The truth is, what’s easy for machines can be hard for humans and vice versa. You’d be surprised how A.I. struggles with basic common sense. It’s crazy.

You and I know birds can fly, and we know penguins generally cannot. So A.I. researchers thought, we can code this up: Birds usually fly, except for penguins. But in fact, exceptions are the challenge for common-sense rules. Newborn baby birds cannot fly, birds covered in oil cannot fly, birds who are injured cannot fly, birds in a cage cannot fly. The point being, exceptions are not exceptional, and you and I can think of them even though nobody told us. It’s a fascinating capability, and it’s not so easy for A.I.”

- Yejin Choi, a 2022 recipient of the prestigious MacArthur “genius” grant who has been doing groundbreaking research on developing common sense and ethical reasoning in A.I., interviewed by David Marchese, “An A.I. Pioneer on What We Should Really Fear,” NY Times, Dec 21, 2022

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