AI Historical Figures on Twitter

I’ve just started two Twitter accounts that use artificial intelligence to emulate the thoughts of two long-dead historical figures—apocryphal writing to entertain fellow enthusiasts. Twitter provides a never-ending torrent of content to respond to, and the idea of being able to hear a historical figure’s simulated thoughts about a given present-day event just sounded really fun to me. The model does an impressive job both at copying the vocabulary of the original person, and also often getting historical details right. Continue reading

A world of symbols (Part 5): Language’s arbitrary influence

1600s English men in formal attire

The concepts you most readily use to understand your experiences are determined by the language through which you learned them. And that language has been shaped arbitrarily by your own culture as well as cultures that came before it. Only by consciously avoiding those ready-made concepts can you actually notice the full spectrum of your experience. Continue reading