Sunday, 6 April 2025

Andrew's AI Crash Course

Update 1: added an album of AI edit quirks below
Update 2: a fresh French look into the future of AI 
Update 3: AI as a means not an end in-and-of itself
Update 4: an overview of Art & Sci. ending up in AI 

Q: eh! can you spot the difference on this blog?
A: new header Web maps & AI for the public good

Have I mentionned that AI will need skilled writers more than skilled coders? Forbes wrote here about a US efforts in that regard. The one thing AI won't replace,  acc. to the starred (*) 'AI'ding Tool example below is curiosity:  it mirrors Steve Jobs' "stay hungry, stay foolish" at Stanford 2005 Commencement Address.

This post follows on my last AI trial, a long conversation here. Let's see here some lessons-learned in this blog, Medium Professional Channel herePersonal one here & elsewhere:

Blog

Community Engagement Series (2023)



23: AI Prompt Engineering Trial 2


A.I. Series (2024)


"AI for the rest of us"



Medium Professional

2017 

The robots aren’t coming… they’re here!

2022


2023





2024




2025





Medium Personal

2025


Flickr


These AI-edited shots aren't about removing elements - esp. people - per se, but rather about removing parts that detract from the photo; in other words, both tools and pitfalls in this narrow AI context. I don't think it's worth it, however, do you? Photo pros like Martin Bond here and Paul Nickeln here certainly don't!

French Connection 

I closed my Medium series on AI (see 2025 above) with Flavien Chervet: he pushes us past next-gen AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) towards "Creative Super Intelligence"; a recent presentation here (go to settings cogwheel for English auto-translate or French original) complements what I found the best intro to AI in English here (French original here)... As seen under both 2025 Medium posts above, he's part of the French & European AI wave to the American & Chinese ones.

'AI'ding Tool

Here are case studies that point to a useful role for AI: to aid in accelerating preparatory work, rather than to replace actual work; it still needs to be done by humans with the help of traditional IT incl. complementary AI tech:

  • Stanford professor who co-founded 4 startups: How to use AI as a 'force multiplier' to start a business - Source: CNBC
  • Google's AI 'co-scientist' cracked 10-year superbug problem in just 2 days - Source: LiveScience
  • ‘I sent AI to art school!’ The postmodern master who taught a machine to beef up his old work - Source: The Guardian
  • “Periodic table of machine learning” could fuel AI discovery - Source: MIT News
  • AI just achieved what no archaeologist could : a 2,000-year-old papyrus finally reveals its secrets - Source: Glass Almanac
  • * Caltech professor who led Nvidia's AI lab says AI can't replace this one skill - Source: Business Insider
  • Google DeepMind’s AI Agent Dreams Up Algorithms Beyond Human Expertise - Source: Wired
  • The people refusing to use AI - Source: BBC
  • Why We’re Unlikely to Get Artificial General Intelligence Anytime Soon - Source: New York Times

Fifty year evolution of art & sci toward AI


I see the point that AI is an evolution, not an revolution. 
Same as the Internet came from comp. sci. & the dot.com bubble burst in Y2K (Wikipedia):  we thought we could do all on the net, when we still need to start with human interaction that can then be extended on-line - not the other way around to save on, say, costs -  AI will likewise be trained and guided or perhaps even replace some of our functions, but human imagination is still ours not machines'... This "crash course" should get you started on your "journAI"... 

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This wraps up a blog started 15½ yrs. ago , as I move on to my life’s next phase - deets in banner menu & sidebar index on desktop here - quite happy with 365 posts, just over ⅔M hits, incl. just under 20K in April - tho I haven't paid Google Analytics to discern their provenance - thanks for reading!

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