TURNING THE RASPBERRY PI INTO A MCU PROGRAMMER

• by:

September 5, 2020

Once you graduate beyond development boards like the Arduino or Wemos D1, you’ll find yourself in the market for a dedicated programmer. In most cases, your needs can be met with a cheap USB to serial adapter that’s not much bigger than a flash drive. The only downside is that you’ve got to manually wire it up to your microcontroller of choice.

Unless you’re [Roey Benamotz], that is. He’s recently created the LEan Mean Programming mAchine (LEMPA), an add-on board for the Raspberry Pi that includes all the sockets, jumpers, and indicator LEDs you need to successfully flash a whole suite of popular MCUs. What’s more, he’s written a Python tool that handles all the nuances of getting the firmware written out.

After you’ve configured the JSON file with the information about your hardware targets and firmware files, they can easily be called up again by providing a user-defined ID name. This might seem overkill if you’re just burning the occasional hex, but if you’re doing small scale production and need to flash dozens of chips, you’ll quickly appreciate a little automation in your process.

Of course, if you’re just trying to flash some code in a pinch, there are some more expedient options out there. We’re particularly fond of using a development board to program the bare MCU.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/8qee_lv31-o?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparentPosted in Microcontrollers, Raspberry Pi

Face Masks: Why Your Eyes Might Be Saying More Than You Realize

FeaturedNeurosciencePsychology·September 6, 2020

Summary: Researchers investigate how the eyes play a critical role in emotional expression and finding a potential mate.

Source: The Conversation

There’s a good chance that you when you leave the house today you’ll put on a face mask that obscures your mouth. Such coverings can affect our ability to communicate and provides a particular challenge to those that need to see lips to understand speech.

But what of the eyes that remain uncovered? Shakespeare said the eyes were the windows to the soul. I’m not sure about “souls”, but it’s very clear that eyes can provide a great deal of information.

It’s why poker players sometimes wear dark glasses because of a fear of giving away a “tell”, a tiny almost imperceptible cue to other players that they are holding a good hand, or bluffing. This might be common wisdom, but there is also some science that supports this.

Our emotions are how we understand others and how they understand us. And research has found that it is possible to interpret people’s emotions by analysing their eyes. In 2017, researchers at Cornell University showed volunteers images of eyes expressing different emotions: sadness, disgust, anger, joy, surprise or fear.

The participants were able to consistently rate how well different words describing mental states matched the “eye expression”. The researchers concluded that the eyes provide essential interpersonal insight, and that different aspects of the eyes (such as how open they are or how sloped the brow is) give information about different mental states.

The neuroscience is also interesting here. We know humans are exceptionally sensitive to very tiny changes in direction of gaze. When you are trying to judge which direction someone is looking in, it significantly activates your amygdala, a part of the brain we have long known to be associated with emotion. This shows there is a link between emotion and eyes at a neurological level.

We know that the amygdala is relevant in all things to do with emotion, and it is best known for its role in fear and its mediation of the “fight or flight” response. Further research has shown that the amygdala is also active when we are monitoring the scene for events where a person may be looking in our direction, or changing their direction of gaze.

This could indicate the importance of the eyes in finding a mate, expressing interest in others, or perhaps conversely in identifying threats from others. In short, we are wired to extract information from the eyes – information that can help us assess the emotions of those around us and so allow us to engage more effectively with them.

There is further evidence of the importance of the eyes from neurochemistry. We know that oxytocin, a naturally produced hormone, is important in social interactions and that it may be important in how we perceive the faces of those around us.

Researchers have found that, when shown images of faces, people who are given oxytocin spend more time looking at the eyes than those given a placebo. Since oxytocin is a factor in social interactions, this finding suggests the eyes are very important in how we understand our engagement and interaction with those around us. Those with elevated levels of oxytocin appear to seek out the eyes to help them better engage socially with others.

There are, however, some things that the eyes can’t tell us. There is one rather sticky myth that comes from so-called “neurolinguistic programming” (NLP), the approach often favoured by those who like to claim you can use psychology to achieve an advantage over others.

The theory goes that if someone is looking up and to the right when they are talking then that somehow indicates that they are lying. But when researchers filmed a group of people telling true and false stories, and then asked another group to try to spot the lies by looking at the speakers’ eyes, they found no evidence for a link between lying and eye movements at all.

If you want to know what someone is feeling when face coverings are the norm, the eyes may well have the answer you are looking for. We can definitely tell if people are smiling by looking at their eyes, and a smile is so very important, now more than ever.

About this psychology research article

Source:
The Conversation
Contacts:
Nigel Holt – The Conversation
Image Source:
The image is in the public domain.

YARH.IO MKI Raspberry Pi Handheld is Made for Hackers

By Ash Puckett 7 hours ago

It’s modular and hackable.

(Image credit: YAHR.IO)

If you’re looking for an all-in-one Raspberry Pi handheld, you might appreciate the YARH.IO MKI project. This gadget is completely portable and self-described as a “hackable Linux handheld”.

The YARH.IO can be customized with add on boards and adjusting the physical modules on the handheld. Certain components can be removed, like the keyboard. Because it relies on a Raspberry Pi, it supports a variety of Linux-based operating systems.

 This edition is designed for the Raspberry Pi 3B+. It features a 5″ touchscreen with a resolution of 800 x 480. There is a keyboard module as well as a touchpad for cursor control. It’s completely portable, using a single Fenix ARB-L21-5000 5000mAh rechargeable battery that can be easily swapped for a fully charged one. It also features a DS3231 RTC clock module.

The GPIO connectors were made accessible through the bottom of the main module. This makes it possible to include any additional add-on boards. The shell used to house the components were digitally designed and 3D-printed. RECOMMENDED VIDEOS FOR YOU…CLOSEhttps://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.407.2_en.html#goog_975588915Volume 0% PLAY SOUNDThis video file cannot be played.(Error Code: 232001)

You can find a list of components needed to recreate thus project yourself on the YARH.IO website. If you want to purchase a pre-made unit, you may be able to get you hands on one of the limited number of fully functional prototypes through the official shop. These currently cost $629.

Record cold temperatures and a rare September snow arrive this week

By Tyler Mauldin, CNN Meteorologist

Updated 2:20 PM ET, Sun September 6, 2020

Anita Hill says she would work with Joe Biden

ESPN analyst breaks down discussing social injustice on air

Harris says she won’t trust Trump’s word alone on a vaccine

Trump denies calling US troops ‘losers’ and ‘suckers’

See scenes from protests in Rochester after Daniel Prude’s death

How much this city is losing from tourism this weekend

Multiple potential vaccines in critical phase three trial

Key model predicts dire Covid-19 death toll by year’s end

Keilar presses sheriff after he says she created negative view of police

Early season snow and record cold forecast

WH correspondent says this Trump move is especially notable

Several boats sink during President Trump supporter parade in Texas

Sheriff describes rescue efforts from Northern California fires

Police detain anti-government protesters in Hong Kong

Michael Cohen unleashes on Trump in new tell-all book

Breonna Taylor’s mom: I’ve never had a lot of faith in the system

VA secretary dismisses Trump’s POW comments as ‘politics’

Anita Hill says she would work with Joe Biden

ESPN analyst breaks down discussing social injustice on air

Harris says she won’t trust Trump’s word alone on a vaccine

Trump denies calling US troops ‘losers’ and ‘suckers’

See scenes from protests in Rochester after Daniel Prude’s death

How much this city is losing from tourism this weekend

Multiple potential vaccines in critical phase three trial

Key model predicts dire Covid-19 death toll by year’s end

Keilar presses sheriff after he says she created negative view of police

Early season snow and record cold forecast

WH correspondent says this Trump move is especially notable

Several boats sink during President Trump supporter parade in Texas

Sheriff describes rescue efforts from Northern California fires

Police detain anti-government protesters in Hong Kong

Michael Cohen unleashes on Trump in new tell-all book

Breonna Taylor’s mom: I’ve never had a lot of faith in the system

VA secretary dismisses Trump’s POW comments as ‘politics’

Anita Hill says she would work with Joe Biden

(CNN)An early taste of winter with record cold temperatures and snow — yes, snow — is on the way forthe Rocky Mountains.A strong September cold front is set to drop out of Canada in the beginning of the week, making its presence known from the Dakotas all the way down to Texas by Wednesday.This will bring a dramatic temperature swing to a large portion of the country as many deal with record-breaking, triple-digit heat over Labor Day weekend.Nowhere is this temperature roller coaster more pronounced than in Denver, where a 60-degree drop in the city’s high temperature, from 99 degrees to 37 degrees, is expected in a mere 48 hours Sunday to Tuesday.

Such a front will bring a rare measurable snow to the Rockies. In fact, the higher elevations of the Rocky Mountains could pick up more than 8 inches of snow.This would be one of the earliest first measurable snowfalls on record for the area, which typically doesn’t see the powder begin piling up until October.Frost advisories and freeze warnings are also possible with temperatures settling some 40 degrees below normal in the Rockies, Plains, Midwest, and even parts of the South.Meanwhile, excessive heat will continue to impact the East Coast and West Coast this week with little reprieve expected the next seven days.

Outlook for September

This upcoming week’s pattern reflects what September may bring.The Climate Prediction Center (CPC) has released its outlook for the rest of the month. Forecasters are predicting warmer and drier-than-normal conditions across the West, a cooler-than-normal month across the north-central Plains, and a wetter-than-normal month across the south-central Plains and much of the eastern US.

One of the main indicators for the ongoing heat out West is the continuation of this summer’s weak monsoon, the CPC noted. The heat and dry conditions will only worsen the drought in the region, too.September often brings a variety of weather conditions, including tropical activity, which peaks Sept. 10.The CPC states this season’s hurricane outlook as a main driver behind the wetter-than-normal conditions for the east.

CNN Meteorologist Haley Brink contributed to this story.

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The Length of the Neurogenic Period Is a Key Determinant for Brain Size

FeaturedGeneticsNeuroscienceOpen Neuroscience Articles·September 4, 2020

Summary: During pregnancy, the maternal environment has a dominant influence on the length of the neurogenic period and the number of upper-layer neurons produced. The study reveals a link between the maternal environment and embryonic cortical neurogenesis in-vitro.

Source: Max Planck Institute

The neocortex, the largest part of our brain, enables us to speak, dream and think. During human evolution, the size of the neocortex has increased dramatically. To understand what caused this expansion, researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG) in Dresden have focused in previous studies on a gene called ARHGAP11B that is only found in humans and triggers an increased production of brain stem cells – a prerequisite for a larger brain. Now, studying different strains of mice, the same group has identified another, very different cause of neocortex expansion: the longer the gestation period (the time between conception and birth) of a species, the longer is the period during which neocortical neurons are generated (the neurogenic period), and the greater is the number of the so-called upper-layer neurons, a hallmark of neocortex expansion. The researchers also found that during pregnancy, the maternal environment has a dominant influence on the length of the neurogenic period and hence on the numbers of upper-layer neurons produced. They have thus uncovered a hitherto unknown link between the maternal environment and embryonic cortical neurogenesis during pregnancy.

The neocortex is evolutionarily the youngest part of the brain. The human neocortex is about three times bigger than that of our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees. In recent years a research team at the MPI-CBG, led by one of the institute’s founding directors, Wieland Huttner, has explored the cause of the evolutionary expansion of the human neocortex. The neocortex characteristically contains six layers of neurons, and it is primarily the upper layers that have expanded during evolution. Although previous studies of the research group have focused on genes that underlie this expansion, the group also suggested already in 2014, based on the results of a mathematical model, that among the species with highly folded brains the increase in neocortical neuron number can be explained by a longer neurogenic period – the developmental time window during which neocortical neurons are produced.

Longer gestation – longer neurogenic period – more neocortical neurons

The current study of the group, published in the journal Current Biology, provides experimental evidence for the 2014 model that lengthening the neurogenic period is a key aspect of neocortical expansion. Samir Vaid, one of the lead authors of the study, explains: “When I started my work in the research lab of Wieland Huttner in 2014, I was intrigued by the findings of the mathematical model, which was just published back then, and I set out to experimentally prove it. We now find that indeed embryos of mouse strains with a longer gestation (20.5 days) exhibit a longer neurogenic period and, remarkably, produce more upper-layer neurons than embryos of mouse strains with a shorter gestation (19.5 days).” The relevance of this finding lies in the fact that humans are the primates with the longest gestation, the longest neurogenic period, and the largest numbers of neocortical neurons. The neurogenic period in humans is eight to nine days longer than that in the great apes (gorilla, orangutan). Samir Vaid further adds: “During neocortical neurogenesis, the upper-layer neurons are generated last. Hence, by simply extending the last phase of the neurogenic period, a specific increase in the upper-layer neurons is achieved, which is a hallmark of the evolutionary expansion of the neocortex.”

The influence of the mother on brain development

“We were, of course, very happy to be able to provide experimental evidence in mice for the 2014 model with its implications for human brain evolution”, adds Barbara Stepien, first author of the study. “However, we made a totally unexpected observation when we transferred short-gestation strain mouse embryos to long-gestation strain mothers and vice versa. Thus, we were astonished to see that it was not the genetic make-up of the embryo but rather the environment provided by the mother that determines how long the neuron-producing period is”, she continues. The team also analyzed a mouse-rat chimeric embryo, developing inside a rat mother, and found that factors in the rat environment influenced the upper-layer neuron generation by the mouse brain stem cells, suggesting that an external influence on upper-layer neuron generation may be a conserved phenomenon across species.

Implications for brain development and evolution

Wieland Huttner, who supervised the study, summarizes its implications: “The key aspect of this study is that in addition to specific genes, time emerges as a determinant of brain size in development and evolution. Interestingly, the action of genes and the role of neurogenic period length are not in conflict with one another. Thus, the human-specific gene ARHGAP11B implicated in human neocortex growth actually causes an extension of the neurogenic period. On a more general note, our present findings might help to gain further insight into the causes of, and remedies for, neurodevelopmental disorders, particularly those pertaining to cognition.”

About this neuroscience research article

Source:
Max Planck Institute
Contacts:
Katrin Boes – Max Planck Institute
Image Source:
The image is credited to Stepien / Vaid / Huttner / MPI-CBG.

Original Research: Open access
“Lengthening neurogenic period during neocortical development causes a hallmark of neocortex expansion” by Barbara K. Stepien, Ronald Naumann, Anja Holtz, Jussi Helppi, Wieland B. Huttner, Samir Vaid. Current Biology.

NT/ Musk-backed Neuralink unveils upgraded brain-implant technology

ParadigmFollowSep 4 · 33 min read

Neuroscience biweekly vol. 14, 22th August — 5th September

TL;DR

• Elon Musk has unveiled a pig called Gertrude with a coin-sized computer chip in her brain to demonstrate his ambitious plans to create a working brain-to-machine interface.
• Subscalp brain monitoring devices could offer long-term, continuous, and reliable recording of neural activity at home and in the clinic.
• Researchers have developed a neurologically acting protein and tested it in laboratory studies. In mice, the experimental compound ameliorated symptoms of certain neurological injuries and diseases, while on the microscopic level it was able to establish and repair connections between neurons. This proof-of-principle study suggests that biologics, which act on neuronal connectivity, could be of clinical use in the long term.
• The new study finds that the fusiform face area is active when blind people touch 3D models of faces.
• ‘Jumping’ sequences of DNA, known as transposable elements, partner up with evolutionarily recent proteins to influence the differentiation and physiological functioning of human neurons.
• Scientists have made a breakthrough in understanding how the enteric nervous system forms, which could pave the way for new treatments for neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s.
• A new method of brain imaging analysis offers the potential to greatly improve the effectiveness of noninvasive brain stimulation treatment for Alzheimer’s, obsessive compulsive disorder, depression, and other conditions.
• Researchers have identified specific sub-populations of brain cells in the prefrontal cortex, a key part of the brain that regulates social behavior, that are required for normal sociability in adulthood and are profoundly vulnerable to juvenile social isolation in mice.
• Researchers at CHU Sainte-Justine Hospital and Université de Montréal have made a major discovery in understanding the mechanisms underlying learning and memory formation.
• Exercise fights off stress by increasing levels of the brain protein galanin, according to research in mice recently published in JNeurosci.
• An international research team now reports that problems in spatial navigation can also be detected in people with a genetic risk for Alzheimer’s. Their article was published in the journal Science Advances.
• In a new study from the Danish psychiatry project iPSYCH, researchers have identified genetic risk factors for developing bipolar disorder and psychoses among people with depression. In the longer term, the results may contribute to ensuring the correct diagnosis is made earlier, so that the patients can receive the correct treatment as quickly as possible.

Is it Possible to Sneeze While Sleeping?

• Causes of sneezing
• How sleep affects sneezing
• What else is suppressed during sleep?
• Summary

Is it possible to sneeze during your sleep?

On any given day, you might sneeze as a result of your body getting rid of allergens, or perhaps in response to a cold virus.

While you can certainly sneeze at night as well, your own biological responses may help you automatically stifle sneezing while you’re actually asleep.

Let’s learn what’s behind the causes of sneezing, as well as why your natural inclination to sneeze may be different while you’re sleeping.

Why we sneeze

Sneezing (sternutation) is your body’s response to help clear your nose. When particles enter your nostrils, your nasal passageways may become itchy and irritated.

As a natural reflex, nerve signals are sent to your brain stem to tell your nose to get rid of invading particles before they reach your lungs and make you sick.

Some common substances that cause sneezing include:

• animal dander
• bacteria
• dirt
• dust
• mold
• odors, such as perfumes
• pollen
• smoke
• viruses

Other possible causes of sneezing include being exposed to bright light and plucking your eyebrows. It’s thought that some of the same nerves are activated in these cases, which then give into your body’s natural reflex to sneeze.

You can feel a sneeze coming on due to the muscles your body uses to prepare your nose to take action. You might take a deep breath and feel your abdominal and chest muscles contract. You may put your tongue against the roof of your mouth and close your eyes right before the sneeze occurs.

As you sneeze, your nose pushes out mucus, air, and saliva with a high level of force in order to get rid of the irritating particles. This is why it’s important to sneeze into a tissue. If you don’t have one, sneeze into your elbow to avoid spreading germs.

Sometimes, excess mucus may be left behind, and you have to blow your nose to get rid of it. In the case of allergies, you may keep sneezing from allergens that get stuck in your nose. Treatment with a decongestant and antihistamine may help offer some relief.

If you’ve ever been told not to hold back your sneezes, there’s a good reason for it. Preventing a sneeze doesn’t allow your body to get rid of particles that are stuck in the nose. You may even become sick or experience sinus irritation from stifling your sneezes.

How sneezing is affected by the stages of sleep

It’s thought that the reason you can’t sneeze when you’re asleep is because the nerves that help you sneeze are at rest during this time, too. This is particularly the case when you enter rapid eye movement (REM) sleep cycles.

During REM sleep, you aren’t aware of the tickling or irritating sensations that would ordinarily send nerve signals to the brain to induce a sneeze.

The case may be different when you’re in the light stages of sleep. If you’ve ever felt like you have sneezed in your sleep before, it’s likely because you haven’t yet fallen into a deep sleep, or you’re already starting to wake up naturally.

Much of the nerve signal action that controls natural reflexes like sneezing during your waking hours occurs at the brainstem. Researchers are still trying to determine why exactly this reaction occurs, and how it’s suppressed during your sleeping hours.

Do children sneeze in their sleep?

There’s a common misconception that young children can sneeze in their sleep. If you hear a child sneeze while sleeping, it’s likely they are in a light sleep cycle and are already partially awake.

It’s also a misconception that children are lighter sleepers than adults. The key difference is that babies and young children sleep longer, and thus have a larger number of sleep cycles that may be shorter in duration.

You can help your child establish healthy sleep habits early on by establishing a routine.

Other urges suppressed during sleep

The same biological processes that suppress sneezes while you’re asleep also prevent coughing.

It’s possible to have a nighttime cough from an illness, asthma, or allergies, but you’re likely awake when you do the coughing. More often than not, the urge to cough can wake you up during a lighter sleep cycle.

Other urges that may be suppressed during your sleep include:

• hiccups
• hunger
• thirst
• urination and defecation

Takeaway

Generally speaking, sneezing can only occur when you’re awake. If you feel like you or a loved one has sneezed in their sleep, the likely explanation is that they have awakened.

Another consideration is the process of sleep itself. StudiesTrusted Source continue to show that getting adequate sleep will reduce your risk of catching viral infections, which can in turn reduce the amount you sneeze at any time of the day.

Last medically reviewed on September 5, 2020

Researchers study why neural networks are efficient in their predictions

by Universitat Rovira i Virgili

Artificial intelligence, machine learning and neural networks are terms that are increasingly being used in daily life. Face recognition, object detection, and person classification and segmentation are common tasks for machine learning algorithms which are now in widespread use. Underlying all these processes is machine learning, which means that computers can capture the essential properties or the key characteristics of processes in which the relationships between objects are very complex. The learning process involves good and bad examples with no previous knowledge about the objects or the underlying laws of physics.

However, since it is a blind optimization process, machine learning is like a black box: computers make decisions they regard as valid but it is not understood why one decision is taken and not another, so the internal mechanism of the method is still unclear. As a result, the predictions made by machine learning for critical situations are risky and by no means reliable because the results can be deceptive.

In this study, the research group made up of Vladimir Baulin, from the URV’s Department of Chemical Engineering, Marc Werner (Leibniz Institute of Polymer Research in Dresden) and YachongGuo (University of Nanjing, China) has tested the predictions of a neural network to check whether they coincide with actual results. To this end, they chose a well defined practical example: the neural network had to design a polymer molecule that would cross the lipid membrane in as short a time as possible. The lipid membrane is a natural barrier that protects cells from damage and external components. To monitor the neural network’s prediction, the researchers developed a novel numerical method that uses an exhaustive enumeration system that determines all the possibilities of polymer composition by directly programming the high-performance graphic cards in parallel calculations.

“The traditional processor of a computer can contain a maximum of 12-24 nuclei for calculations, but graphic cards are designed to make parallel calculations of image and video pixels, and they have thousands of calculation cores optimized for parallel calculations,” explains Vladimir Baulin. This enormous computational power generates thousands of millions of polymer combinations in just a few seconds or minutes. In this way a map can be generated that contains all the possible combinations and, therefore, how the neural network chooses the correct result can be monitored.

“What is surprising is that such a simple, minimum network as the neural network can find the composition of a molecule,” Baulin points out. “This is probably due to the fact that physical systems obey the laws of nature, which are intrinsically symmetrical and self-similar. This drastically reduces the number of possible parameter combinations that are then captured by the neural networks.”

Therefore, comparing the result of the neural network with the actual result not only makes it possible to check the prediction but also shows how the predictions evolve if the task is changed. And, in turn, this shows how neural networks make decisions and how they ‘think.’

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Explore furtherHow to make AI trustworthy

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More information: Marco Werner et al, Neural network learns physical rules for copolymer translocation through amphiphilic barriers, npj Computational Materials (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41524-020-0318-5Provided by Universitat Rovira i Virgili

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GPT-3 is an idea machine

13.22, FRIDAY 4 SEP 2020 LINK TO THIS POST

GPT-3, created by OpenAI, is the startlingly human A.I. text generator that I posted about last month – read that summary here (including its religious proclamations…).

I’ve since been shown the beta version.

Here’s what I didn’t expect: GPT-3 is capable of original, creative ideas.

Using GPT-3 doesn’t feel like smart autocomplete. It feels like having a creative sparring partner.

And it doesn’t feel like talking to a human – it feels mechanical and under my control, like using a tool.

“Imaginative” and “tool-like” are two very different experiences to reconcile… and yet!

After each of my sessions with GPT-3, I was left with new concepts to explore. Let me give you some examples…

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The interface to GPT-3 is modelled on text autocomplete. You type in a prompt, which can be as long and as structured (or not) as you like, and then hit a button. GPT-3 picks up where you left off; it takes a few seconds.

So, as a prompt, I gave GPT-3 the start of an essay (one I wrote for a client), stopping halfway through a sentence:

And, like drop-shadows and lighting can be used for visual affordances in 2D interfaces, spatial metaphors are helpful in these glimmers of a new, everyday cyberspace.

Other ways we can make a friendly, approachable cyberspace are

(I’ve bolded the text because that’s how the GPT-3 interface works: it puts the user-written text in bold.)

Then I hit the button.

And it rattled off a couple of hundred words… which ended with this paragraph:

The ‘low-fi’/’hi-fi’ slider in Apple’s Photos app is a great example of this. It gives the user a choice between a user friendly interface or a more technical one.

THERE IS NO SUCH LOW-FI/HI-FI SLIDER. This is an invention.

I mean, this is potentially a pretty good idea if you think about it. Or at least intriguing, and with work it could lead somewhere good.

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Another way you can use GPT-3 is semi-interactively.

It’s 2021. A hologram appears in a box outside 10 Downing St. It is Hari Seldon, who predicted the future 1,000 years ago, and pre-recorded messages to tell us our destiny. Hari says: “The final crisis has come. …

So what’s happened here is I’ve written the start, the bold bit, and GPT-3 has filled in the rest. It does its best to keep the same tone as the prompt. I’m truncating the responses.

After GPT-3 has done its bit, I can add a new prompt to the bottom, and ask it to continue. It feels collaborative.

Hari then describes the nature of the final crisis: it’s monetary. Britain’s money supply is “chronologically unstable”, he says, since in the future (this is a sci-fi tale) we’re always printing more money than before, creating severe inflation. In response, markets are sapping the governments power to spend even more. So, he says, the government has relented and abandoned the pound for the Swiss franc.

Ok, this is weird. Let’s keep digging. I continue with another prompt:

Fortunately, the hologram of Hari describes what we need to do to safely resolve the crisis. “First,” Hari says, “you must merge the Treasury with the Bank of England by setting up a Public Bank of Britain. …

I have googled this. THE WORDS ‘PUBLIC BANK OF BRITAIN’ DO NOT EXIST ON THE WEB.

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Last one.

It occurred to me that GPT-3 has been fed all the text on the internet. And, because of this, maybe it can make connections and deductions that would escape us lesser-read mortals. What esoteric knowledge might be hidden in plain sight? I can ask.

Prompting GPT-3 into a turn-taking conversation (by starting each line with who is speaking) makes it feel like a chat. Again, bold text is what I’ve typed. The rest is written by the A.I – and so…

Human: In all the data you have been trained on, is there any indication that humans have been contacted by extraterrestrial beings?

AI: I understand what you mean. Yes, I have identified three pieces of information that indicate humans have been contacted by extraterrestrial beings in the past.

Human: What are those three pieces of information?

AI: (information 1), (information 2), (information 3)

…which is enticingly close to being interesting! But odd. Not what a human would say. (And is it actually making connections on demand in its giant database? No, I don’t think so. But I figured I could trick it into revealing facts that it took for granted but that we, humanity, didn’t know that we knew.)

Let’s keep going…

Human: Can you please expand on the meaning of “(information 1)”?

AI: The meaning of (information 1) was that “55,000 researchers in the field of ufology were examined by a statistical analysis program”.

Human: Can you please expand on the meaning of “(information 2)”?

AI: The meaning of (information 2) was that the “mutilated cattle tissue samples have shown peculiarities in 14 locations”.

Human: Can you please expand on the meaning of “(information 3)”?

AI: The meaning of (information 3) was that “a three-mile wide black ring was found in the ocean using sonar. It was estimated to be 250 – 300 meters deep and was detected in the Pacific Ocean”.

Well! These are strangely specific and wildly imaginative ideas. I can’t find them cited anywhere.

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I’m trying to be pretty observational at the moment. Just… playing and seeing what happens and documenting as I go.

In this spirit, my field notes so far:

• Using GPT-3 is work, it’s not a one-shot automation like spellcheck or autocomplete. It’s an interactive, investigative process, and it’s down to the human user to interview GPT-3. There will be people who become expert at dowsing the A.I., just as there are people who are great at searching using Google or finding information in research libraries. I think the skill involved will be similar to being a good improv partner, that’s what it reminds me of.
• GPT-3 is capable of novel ideas but it takes a human to identify the good ones. It’s not a replacement for creative imagination. In a 15 minute session with the A.I., I can usually generate one or two concepts, suitable for being worked up into a short story, or turned into a design brief for a product feature, or providing new perspectives in some analysis – it feels very much like a brainstorming workshop, or talking something through with a colleague or an editor.

Even today, I can imagine a 15 minute consultation with GPT-3 becoming standard practice in every piece of creative work I do. And in the future?

Still digging.