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Full of playful examples—statistically modelling dropping cannonballs from different heights, a neural net theory of cat recognition—Stephen Wolfram breaks down how ChatGPT works. Working from the simple claim “it’s just adding one word at a time,” the computer scientist describes how neural nets are trained to model ‘human-like’ tasks in 3D space, how they tokenize language, and concludes with a rumination on semantic grammar that recognizes the language model’s successes (and limits).
In a blog post, Swedish programmer and hobby media archaeologist Carl Svensson revisits “the colourful charm of Amiga utility disks.” Compiled by demosceners to circulate self-made and (cracked) commercial tools in the late 1980s and early 90s, these bootable software packs came in eccentric flavours—from hacked system interfaces featuring ASCII art to rich, audiovisual presentations. “If you wanted to make a demo, you’d be all set with just a handful of these disks,” concludes Svensson.
“We Are Electric: Extraction, Extinction and Post-Carbon Futures” opens at the University of Queensland (UQ) Art Museum in Australia. Foregrounding “bodily and planetary flows, the politics of extraction and exchange,” artists including Diane Borsato, Haines & Hinterding, and the Institute for Queer Ecology urge action and offer paths forward; using the trappings of Big Oil—rusty drill bits and barrels—Quandamooka artist Megan Cope’s Untitled (Death Song) (image, 2020) sounds a dire alarm.
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