Ian Bicking: a blog

I was talking with someone about learning and memory, and they reflected (with some disappointment) that it’s the negative things we remember best.

Generating poetry was among the first popular parlor tricks for an LLM.

This post is part of the series Creating worlds with LLMs Hidden Door, “where roleplay meets fan fiction”, is an LLM-driven collaborative storytelling game.

Introduction This post is part of the series Creating worlds with LLMs Last year I participated in a text adventure hackathon to build a text-based game using AI.

I’ve been experimenting with using LLMs for worldbuilding and other generative/creative endevours.

Many years ago I was listening to a recording 1 by Alan Watts and he briefly mentioned Preta or The Hungry Ghost: Hungry or frustrated spirits who have enormous stomachs but mouths only the size of needles, a vast appetite and no means of fulfillment.

I’m pretty sure reading /r/AmItheAsshole is harmful to my psyche, and yet… … and yet why shouldn’t I be able to participate in this collectively harmful behavior?

I’ve been making some experiments with roleplaying and LLMs (Large Language Models, such as ChatGPT).

In my last post I described a city builder using GPT.

I’ve been doing lots of experiments with GPT, though I’ve only written about one until now… the more serious something is the harder it is to call it finished or identify the outcomes.

Over two years ago I wrote Thoughts On Voice Interfaces, a scattering of ideas about voice interactions.

making new string and list classes that call gpt3 under the hood so you can access elements beyond the final one. no more index errors!

There are many concerns about Mozilla right now, and reason to be concerned.

While I’m conflicted with the need to find a new job, versus using this break from employment to do things I don’t otherwise do, one way or another I feel compelled to make something.

I’ve had a lot of projects, and at this moment of reflection I thought I’d look back through those that felt most meaningful, and which despite my excitement I’ve also let go of.

I’ve been working on the Consumer Voice Products team in Mozilla for about a year now.

In Arnold Kling’s The Three Languages Of Politics he argues that we don’t all exist along some set of objective political axes, left and right, or even the classic two-dimensional spectrum (or even three dimensions).

Making the claim “users want control” is the same as saying you don’t know what users want, you don’t know what is good, and you don’t know what their goals are.

Or: The Best Way To Do Something Is To At Least Try We all know the story: you can’t make money on open source.

I have been part of the Firefox Test Pilot team for several years.