Generative Artificial Intelligence: As Big as it is, it is only a Program

We ignored the warnings we got from Mary Shelly, Thea von Harbou, and Karel Čapek, and Colossus: The Forbin Project (1966) by Dennis Feltham Jones. The Hegelian dialectic predicts that the terror of the artificial human must have created its own contradiction and it did: the Apple Macintosh 1984 Super Bowl Commercial and everything it validated from Thomas Edison (“All I ask of my body is that it carry my brain around.”) to Alan Turing (he, him, G), Grace Hopper (0111), and the nerds of Silicon Valley. 

We made everyone a computer programmer. Some of us started earlier than others. We made it as easy as possible. 

A cogent comment on LinkedIn.
However, I replied:
"When the devil tempts you he will not come with fire and claws.
He will ask you to comprise a little bit just this once.  
Aaron Altman to Jane Craig in Broadcast News."
Because of Clippy, people stopped learning to write letters.

For the people who never learned to program before, the user interface is as easy as a Google search or a Word document. Just ask. The program (measured against 1985) is an extremely large and complex compiler with a natural-language interpreter as the primary user interface. 

The Mercedes Maybach S 680 Brabus 
will not make coffee. It only does
extremely well what it was programmed to do.

The integrating truth which unites the two sides of the AI Dialectic to create the Synthesis which will result in a new Thesis, is that we all have been programming machines all of our lives. Aristotle never tuned a radio. Plato would not get his hands dirty lubricating the flyball governor on a steam engine. There was Archimedes and it is a thin hypothesis that he built the Antikythera Device. From learning to drive a bicycle and then a car (and change a tire) through Erector Sets, TinkerToys, and Legos we grew up interacting with machines.

I answered an ad from Murrary Resources, technical recruiters,
for a technical writer. "You do not look all that human to me,"
the human resources applicant tracking AI said to me.

The Antikythera Device ran for a century or so, three lifetimes: created, admired, and never to be repeated. Scholars who study the device wonder and discuss whether and to what extent this was the work of one person. It has no simpler precursors, no antecedent subassemblies. The common informed wisdom includes the fact that this wonderful astronomical computer also, incidentally, was used to set the dates of religious ceremonies, which for the Greeks necessarily included stadium games. 

I ask: What if civic religion and social rituals were the purpose; and the path to that solution included the attendant abilities to track the planets? 

I suggest: It took a lifetime to build (three generations: one brainiac with minions), ran for a lifetime, and was lost in transport, falling into the sea for 2000 years. Would the loss of a single sword have benchmarked the existence of swords and how to make them? Many people could make swords. Not-many people built the Antikythera.

For 2000 years, the standard calculator was the abacus: no gears, no sundial, no pointers. It does have an accumulator and a register but no ever called them that. 

GOSUB coffcoff. Despite their pretenses, programmers (now “devops”; formerly “data processing"), are just another class of users, like clericals and sales. They have other interfaces and presentations. Programmers will not tell you this, but they write with an “Application Development System” or “Program Developer Kit” which is a spellchecker for code. It is all colorized and color coded. If the programmer makes a mistake, the colors show that. Sometimes, the line itself will not accept an <Enter> if there is a bug on the line. That sure makes life easy. They now have “no code application development.” The programmers get to <quote> focus on higher level problems </quote> (ahem, coff-coff). RETURN.

Two hundred years ago, Charles Babbage built the Differential Engine and Lady Ada Lovelace programmed it. It took another lifetime for the world to catch on and catch up. The MIT “hackers” of the 1950s built model railroad switching systems from donated Bell Telephone racks. A hundred years ago, it had been suggested that in theory you could use your telephone to select and listen to a symphony orchestra in a distant city. 

Instead, we had broadcast radio—with commercials—an ethereal instantiation of newspapers, themselves an invention from only one previous century. 

Mathematicians complain about AI.

“First, it points out how AI models can “produce plausible but unreliable (or even incorrect) arguments which are difficult to distinguish from correct mathematical proofs.” Such developments put reviewers under increasing pressure and are “jeopardizing our ability to implement traditional standards for the correctness, transparency, and independent verifiability of proof,” the declaration warns.”

 — https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/06/mathematicians-warn-of-ai-threats-to-profession-as-industry-encroaches/

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/06/mathematicians-warn-of-ai-threats-to-profession-as-industry-encroaches/#:~:text=“Mathematicians should find it quite,College London, in a statement.

However, no one spoke out against human mathematicians when Andrew Wiles announced his proof of Fermat's Last Theorem on 23 June 1993 at a lecture in Cambridge entitled "Modular Forms, Elliptic Curves and Galois Representations". As it was told in Fermat’s Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World’s Greatest Mathematical Problem by Simon Singh (New York: Walker, 1997; Anchor Doubleday, 1998), it was just another conference, but at the end of day one, the science journalists in the hall began calling their colleagues and by day three the place was packed. Andrew Wiles had proved Fermat’s Last Theorem. 

Or did he?

Again from the Singh work, closer inspection later by mathematicians at Wiles’s level revealed flaws in the proof. Wiles went back to work with a ream of white paper and a cup of sharp pencils. It took him three years. No one blamed him or his school or his parents. Instead, they gave him a medal. 

LET WORDS = 1024

The essential error in using AI (or a calculator) is seeking to avoid responsibility for choice and therefore not accepting responsibility for the consequences of your actions. Imagine that for an algebra class, you bought the instructor’s edition and copied out the answers to turn in for your homework. We recognize that as cheating. 

What if the book is wrong? Typos happen. The answer in the back can be wrong. A friend of mine had a math teacher who could not accept that the book was wrong. The kids did the problem correctly. Her book said that they were wrong. They met her after school (in the classroom, not the parking lot) and walked her through the answer. As it was told to me, the teacher refused to budge: the book could not be wrong. (She also called integers “intriguers”  perhaps indicating the challenge she found in high school maths.) So, AI can be wrong. Where is the surprise in that? 

Silicon Valley by Michael Rogers (Simon and Schuster, 1982).

"[Burt] Mathias is a self-made businessman who built the computer firm Solitron into a multimillion-dollar corporation. His college friend and partner, Alan Steinberg, is the computer genius of the operation, who explores the farthest reaches of computer intelligence while Mathias manages the finances. But Mathias stands on the brink of personal and professional ruin, about to lose both his wife and his business. To save Solitron from bankruptcy, he must gamble everything on whether Steinberg can perfect the first computer ever to simulate human consciousness. And once the job is complete, there is only one way to prove this remarkable ability to the incredulous world: the Turing Test..." (from the cover). 

As I remember the story, Mathias gamed the game by choosing as the human contestant, one of his own programmers, because who else would talk like a computer?

Big Bang Theory, NUMB3RS, NCIS,
Bones, Grey's Anatomy, replacing 
Leave it to Beaver, I Love Lucy, Lassie,
and Happy Days.

Clippy only does what it is programmed to do. The kids could prove their case, not just by working the problem but, had they chosen, via other paths. One of my physics professors, Dr. Alan Saaf at Lansing Community College, was answering homework questions at the blackboard. “I don’t understand number 3. …. How do you do number 5?... What equation do you use for number 1?...” He was going along and then he stopped. “You people would go out in the backyard and shoot hoops for 45 minutes and not make a single shot and still say you had a good time. How long did you spend on number 4? How many ways did you try to solve it?” 

There are over 300 proofs for the Pythagorean Theorem (one by Pres. James Garfield). The kids knew that the book was wrong because it contradicted known, provable truths. Clippy and Claude and the folk lack judgement.

This is an old problem among humans. In Computer Power and Human Reason: from Judgment to Calculation (1976), Joseph Weizenbaum warned of hackers whom he compared to compulsive gamblers. Driven by the superstition that one more patch will fix their problems, they stay up late, bleary-eyed and disheveled, working ever more frantically on a program they began without any reference to the substantive literature in the field in which they claim to be working. They are like gamblers who compulsively build complex rituals to control the game. 

Gamblers and Programmers

On the Cloudy Nights discussion board, which is mostly dedicated to chat about observational astronomy, in the forum for “Science! Astronomy, Space Exploration, and Others,” a topic title was the question “What can’t artificial intelligence do?”  The introductory post started: “We have made machines that can play chess better than we can. We are close to making machines that can write novels better than we can. Threshold question. Is there a limit? I can see no reason that there should be. The interesting question. What happens when we can make machines that can do everything better than we can?” In 100 replies, I was the only person who pointed out that while an AI could write a better novel, the novel itself was an invention. I received just one "like" for the comment. 

In a machine shop, there was a sign wrapped along the top of the walls: Good judgment comes from experience. Unfortunately, experience comes from poor judgment.  

For Cloudy Nights, I wrote: "(As far as we know) only humans can invent something new. You can say that an AI can write a novel better than a human, but the novel is an invention. As a form of narration and history, the novel is relatively recent. Poetry - epic poetry - was first. And before poems were invented, people made lists of things. ... Painting as we know it evolved in a series of quantum leaps. By the 4th century BCE graphical realism had achieved what we regard as modern techniques. The "Renaissance Masters" of Holland painted in a hyper-realistic style that violated "natural" vision. See The Arnolfini Portrait by Jan Van Eyck.  If you were in the room where the painter stood, you would not see the image in the mirror at the back the way it is presented in the painting. It is hyper-real. Impressionism, Expressionism, Abstract, ...  Performance Art.... That is the essential distinguishing characteristic that explains the difference between human intelligence and machine intelligence."

https://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/2023/06/invisible-cheating-and-visible-rights.html

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Documentation is Specification 

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Atlas Shrugged Part 3: Who is John Galt

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The Antikythera Device

Targets in Scorpius (also Messier 22)

I got out for the first time since March 25. Nominally clear-ish, everything was faint with city lights and water in the air. Aside from Scorpius, Sagittarius, and the Big Dipper, I counted about 80 stars.

[Posted to The Sky Searchers astronomy discussion board.]

Telescope: Explore Scientific 102 mm doublet refractor on Twilight-I Alt-Az manual mount. Eyepieces: Meade 5000 82-degree 14mm and TeleVue 7mm Series 1. 

2234 - Zuben el Genubi

2339 NGC 6231

0006 Lesath and Shaula

0009 Messier 7 Ptolemy's Cluster

0017 Messier 80 - 47X

0022 Messier 80 - 94X 

0026 Messier 4 - no joy. 

0032 Messier 22 in Sagittarius

0039 Messier 6 Butterfly Cluster

The tube was wet. So, I packed everything up and put it all on the porch in case I can go out again later this morning before sunrise.

Thanks and Clear Skies,

Mike M.

Commentary: 

Zuben el Genubi. Claw of the South. Also now designated Alpha Librae because of the Roman compulsion for Twelves which added Libra to their zodiac and made the Scorpion fold up his claws. In a small telescope, this is an easy double star: two Main Sequence F stars about 76 light years from Earth. For myself, I learned of it at a show at the Hayden Planetarium in the summer of 1969. The other claw is Zuben al Schamali and I never get tired of saying their names.

NGC 6231.  An open cluster of about 100 stars mostly traveling together, though of the easily spotted bright pair one is only 15 ly from Earth and not in the group. 

"The original New General Catalogue was compiled during the 1880s by John Louis Emil Dreyer using observations from William Herschel and his son John, among others. ...  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_General_Catalogue#Index_Catalogue

"This cluster is estimated to be about 2–7 million years old,^[2][3] and is approaching the Solar System at 22 km/s. The cluster and association lie in the neighboring Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way. Zeta¹ Scorpii (spectral type O8 and magnitude 4.71.^[7]) is the brightest star in the association, and one of the most radiant stars known in the galaxy.^[8] NGC 6231 was used to measure the binary fraction of B-type stars: 52%±8%, indicating that B-type stars are commonly found in binary systems, but not as commonly as in O-type stars.^[3]

NGC 6231 also includes three Wolf-Rayet stars: HD 151932, HD 152270,[9] and HD 152408.[10]". Wolf-Rayet stars are considered unstable and likely to go nova at any time.
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_6231.

Lesath and Shaula are the two stars in the Sting. 

Messier 7. Noted by Claudius Ptolemy in the 1st century of our era, it is visible to the naked eye, even in the city under forgiving skies, though not so tonight. It is to the left (East) of Lesath and Shaula. It is an open cluster of about 80 stars, with 20 to 30 easy to tally.

Messier 80 - A globular cluster of several hundred thousand stars packed into a sphere 95 light years in diameter. It is 32,000 light years from Earth. Globular clusters like this orbit the plane of the Milky Way. Current theory is that the disk (as with all "Grand Design" disk galaxies) condensed out of the halo of globular clusters. The Milky Way has about 125 of them now, likely many more earlier, and other galaxies have significantly more globular clusters. In a small telescope, it looks like a roundish patch of lighter gray. It is in the more or less open area between the eastern claw star "Graffias" (gripper) beta Scorpii and Antares in the center of the body. It is fairly easy to find, even on a bad night.

Messier 4 -- No joy. Technically brighter than Messier 80, it is much larger so its light is spread out and it is not always easy to find. I was told, "Messier 4 does not respond well to light pollution." 

Messier 22 -- Big, bright and easy to find in a small telescope, it looks like a dandelion gone to seed. You cannot miss it. It is above the "knob" in the "top" of the "Teapot" which everyone else calls Sagittarius. Just over 10,000 light years away it is one of the "closer" globular clusters. It contains at least 72,000 stars and likely twice that many, as well as several to many black holes swallowing stars. For myself, M22 is the Bay Shore Highway around Traverse City, Michigan. Tourist shops sell M22 decals. We have ours. I also have an M22 coffee cup. 

Messier 6 - The Butterfly Cluster. Maybe more than 30 of the 120 stars are easy to see at 47X with a 4-inch telescope in the city. Likely 1590 light years from us, it is about 12 ly in diameter. It is only 94 million years old and so it has highly metallic stars with abundant elements more complex than helium. 

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Book Review - Writing for Their Lives: America’s Pioneering Female Science Journalists

 

Writing for Their Lives: America's
Pioneering Female Science Journalists
by Marcel Chotkowski LaFollette
MIT Press, 2023.

Written from access to archives of memoranda and correspondences among the editors and journalists, this book is a case of special pleading. Every rejection is laid at the feet of the Science Service management, though the author also grants that the founders were egalitarian in their evaluation of writers and the works which they submitted for publication. In fact, Science Service stands out as evidence of a paradigm shift in western culture from tradition and privilege to merit and meritocracy. 

It is certainly true that even into the 21st century, men who hold power discriminate against women who do not. That is the definition of sexism. And it applies to racism, or any other “ism.” The problem is not prejudice but prejudice with power. At Science Service that prejudice never existed though it remained  very real (even rampant) in the wider world. 

Jane Stafford  was granted a special award for medical writing by the American Society for the Control of Cancer and correspondence across December 1937 and January 1938 reveals that she could not accept the award in person because women were not allowed to enter the Harvard Club. And the ASCC and Harvard were among many others that had no intention of changing their by-laws lest a roomful of men feel uncomfortable in the presence of a woman. (page vii-viii) 

“As novelist Josephine Tey’s fictional historian reminds us, ‘Truth isn’t in accounts but in account books.’ Hidden within the Science Service records at the Smithsonian Institution Archives were sufficient examples of ‘account books’ (budgets, financial reports, pay lists, rejection slips to stringers, carbon copies, memos, and handwritten notes in letter margins) to shed light on workplace interactions, the writing process, and reactions to success, rejection or criticism.” (WFTL, page xii)

It is easy for us to accept that such rooms should be more-or-less 50-50. I believe that because most women are smarter than most men, the populations of academic societies will be shifted toward the women, if not within this generation then by the end of this century. A century ago, that hypothesis would have been dismissed on metaphysical grounds: men are essentially different from women—different from each other in their Aristotelean essences. 

The question that Marcel Chotkowski LaFollette does not ask is why does not everyone else in the world see the same obvious truth that she does? In fact, at least one other person does: 

https://www.mpg.de/female-pioneers-of-science/caroline-herschel

'Caroline Herschel's legacy is undoubtedly lasting'

Astronomer Sherry Suyu from the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics on comet-hunter Caroline Herschel, the first salaried female astronomer

[Q] Obviously, much has improved for women in science since the 18th Century. In your view and your experience, what do you regard as changes that have happened in terms of women in science?    

[A] The situation of course has improved in contrast to Caroline's time. In many areas, women and men now enjoy equal opportunities and there have been many positive changes. But there are still fewer women in STEM at higher levels – mainly I think because it is difficult to combine a professional career in science with having children. I think that employers should provide more support for women, so they can combine having a family with having a career. Scientists are evaluated by productivity. In that sense, when women start a family, their productivity is seen to decline as women who have families often take a break from their careers, hoping to return after a few years. But in reality, it's not that easy to continue with the same level of work productivity as before while rearing children. This means that in career terms, women still tend to be punished for having a family. Also, ironically, the time in women's lives when they want to have children and the time when they really want to work hard on their careers often coincides, when women are in their 30s. I think this should be reflected by family friendly initiatives in the workplace - women shouldn't have to choose between a family and a career.

https://www.mpg.de/frauen-in-der-forschung/caroline-herschel

https://www.mpg.de/female-pioneers-of-science/caroline-herschel

Das Gespräch führte Tanja Rahneberg Max-Planck-Gesellschaft

That program would allow women to work from home at the highest levels of management while men report to work to carry out the various tasks. Of course such generalizations must also acknowledge the Non-Binary Alphabet of Choices. Reconciling all of them equitably is a complex mathematical problem. However, if we only consider each person to be an individual, then the math is much easier. 

As for broad social change, during the late Middle Ages, English women who were shoemakers were called Shuster, bakers Baxter, brewers Brewster, and weavers Webster. It was a time of changes.

“The 1820s was the last decade in which no college for women existed. The first of its kind, Mount Holyoke, was founded not too far from Amherst in 1836. … Yet the very existence of Mount Holyoke (following a new array of academies providing high-school education for girls, and opening up posts for women teachers) must have shifted ideas for women’s futures.” (page 29) Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family’s Feuds by Lyndall Gordon, Viking, 2010.

Writers and their Beats Today

How much were the writers actually paid for their stories? How much did Science Service charge? We follow Hallie Hershberger in sales and advertising but never learn what the numbers were. There is very little mention of money, except as for example, Emma Reh in Mexico wrote to the home office for advances which were denied. Reh then sold her stories to other news outlets and even to other news reporters. LaFollette’s tone is that Emma Reh was not given everything that the author wants her to have had. I see Emma Reh as a very successful freelancer (“stringer” in journalism) who traveled to archaeological digs in Mexico and sold her reports. Ultimately, Emma Reh failed to deliver the book she promised. The economic problems at that time (the 1920s and 30s) were not hers alone. Failures happen and Reh accomplished much. 

“We were founded as an independent nonprofit in 1921 by newspaper magnate E.W. Scripps and zoologist W.E. Ritter, who wanted to improve the quality and accuracy of science journalism. We remain true to that mission today.” —  https://www.sciencenews.org/about-science-news (Accessed 6-June-2026.)

Science Service writer Gabriele Rabel reported from Germany from 1932 to 1938. LaFollette writes: “[Science Service editor, Frank] Thone expressed hope that ‘the financial sky will clear,’ but informed Rabel on March 6, 1933, that ‘in view of the monetary crisis which has suddenly developed in this country, it would be well if you did not send us any more manuscripts until further notice.” 

LaFollette seemed not to understand the Great Depression of the 1930s. The rolling bank failures began in Detroit on February 14, 1933. Michigan Governor William Comstock  declared a banking holiday. The proclamation had been signed at 1:00 AM, published, and delivered to bankers when they arrived for the start of the business day. Two weeks later, outgoing President  Herbert Hoover hesitated to declare a national bank holiday, so the newly-inaugurated President Franklin D. Roosevelt did just that on March 6, 1933. The flow of money in the United States stopped. 

They resumed eventually with many banks closed permanently and others reorganized and the dollar redefined from 1/20 of an ounce of gold to 1/32. Dollars were 60% smaller and there were more of them to go around. When LaFollette tallies payments made from 1928 though 1954 for 1 or 2 cents per word or $3 to $6 per article (p. 105-106) or editors paid $2600, $3640, $3900, or topped at $10,000 for the publisher 1927-1928 (p. 186) when dollars were much larger, the reader would have been helped with some standards of value against a market basket or comparable wages for clericals and college graduates. 

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InnoTech Austin 2026

I checked out a book of essays by Kurt Vonnegut from my local library. Speaking at college graduation ceremonies through the 1990s, Kurt Vonnegut said that you need about fifty people in your life, not “electronic ghosts” but real people. So, I had an additional reason to attend InnoTech Austin. I had not been to an InnoTech conference in too many years. (See “Previously” below.) Celebrating the start of its third decade, this year’s convention was for computer security professionals. I had a great time meeting people and their companies, and talking with them about their products and services. 

This year’s host was The HT Group, a recruiting,
staffing, and management consulting agency.
They had three tables. 

"In one focused day, Austin InnoTech creates an environment where education, innovation, peer-to-peer networking, and the latest technology and business solutions are all available specifically for IT & security professionals."

Entering the hall, the first people I met were Hannah Webster
and Will Arnett from Alias Digital Forensics.

Among the team sent by Genius Road of Dallas was
Associate Account Manager, Catherine Diaz.

To encourage circulation, there was a “Passport” game.
Completed itineraries were dropped into box from which
randomly selected winners were dawn.

Loren Woeber, VP at WiCyS: Women in Cyber Security
greeted many interested visitors.

Diane Kenyon and Jazmen Wright from 
Austin Women in Technology
 staffed a table at the Entrance. 

Red Hat was a major sponsor.
They handed out red leis that were popular. 

They say, "Apex sits at the center
of retail investing infrastructure,
supporting millions of accounts across hundreds of clients.
We see what investors buy, sell, and hold—in real time,
across four generational cohorts." Apex FinTech Solutions
cites $265 Billion in assets under custody,
over 40 million brokerage accounts plus another
119 million cost-based accounts. 

There was a lot of active listening.

Contrary to the assertion of Google's AI Overview, the 
conference was held at the PALMER EVENT CENTER at
Barton Springs Road and Riverside Drive.

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InnoTech Austin 2015  

BSides Austin 2023 

Austin Astro Public Star Party

ArmadilloCon 47 Part 3 

(ISC)^2 Holiday Dinner 2018