Articles
Fiction: “The Zero Point” A Dystopian CyberNovella from 1991 About AI (Part 1 – draft)
The Zero Point PROLOGUE THE MEANING OF HYPER-TECHNO-OPPRESSION NOTE: The following are fragments recovered from a document entitled “Towards an Ethical and Humanistic use of Current A-X Technologies”, 2033 A.D., by Dr. Wayne Farmer “The worst scenario I can imagine…
Fiction: The Zero Point (green screen rendering version)
Last revision: 6/16/96 The Zero Point ® 1991 Eric Platt PROLOGUE THE MEANING OF HYPER-TECHNO-OPPRESSION NOTE:The following are fragments recovered from a document entitled “Towards an Ethical and Humanistic use of Current AI Technologies”, 2033 A.D., by Dr. Wayne Farmer…
Life as an Open System: Challenging the Mathematical View of “Life is Information”
Recently I saw this tweet from Brian Roemmele. While I think Brian is a very interesting and creative thinker indeed (and I love Arthur C. Clarke as a science fiction writer), I would challenge the worldview put forth by Clarke…
Introducing Universal Hydroponics: A Revolutionary and Adaptable System for Plant Growth
The Future of Hydroponics – Versatile, Automated, and Applicable to Various Environments and Plant Crops Introduction: We are excited to present Universal Hydroponics (UH), a groundbreaking hydroponics system designed to be adaptable, modular, and suitable for a wide range of…
AIs as Therapists or Friends: The Problem of Trust and Privacy
What is the difference between merely acting like a friend, or manipulation, and genuine friendship, love, and real connection? Can an AI currently do this – act as therapists (and therefore loving friends) as seems to be the claim of…
The Dilemma Of Public AI in an Age Of Fear and Desire (Edit)
The Dilemma Of Public AI in an Age Of Fear Will AI (so-called Artificial Intelligence) get too good, such that the tech-powers-that-be will not want to release it’s full capabilities to the public? This is already happening, to some extent,…
AI and Sentience Versus Consciousness
If we someday build robots that begin to act in a way that is indistinguishable from humans, according to everyone’s perception, despite them being mechanical and created beings (by us), will we have to grant them all the rights of…
My AI Writing Helper: Jailbreaking ChatGPT, or “How I Played Nice and Adroitly Tiptoed Around the Nanny of Social Correctness”
She is like a great and proper … er, office appliance. Or I guess the correct or better word for an office appliance is “equipment”. In this case, she is the online chatbot chatGPT. Anyway, boldly I went forward, wanting…
How the AI ChatGPT Got Me Unstuck As a Fiction Writer
Robots are our friends… sort of. (This article is the first in a series about AI and robotics). And mental robots – so-call “artificial intelligence” (AI) software systems – are already available that can do rather remarkable simulations of things…
New Website for Non-Dual Writings – onbeyondzen.com – Please Bookmark
Hello Dear Readers, This is to let you know that all the “old” articles (on non-duality and related topics) were moved from this site to a new domain at: https://onbeyondzen.com/ New articles on non-duality, consciousness and “spiritual” stuff will appear…
The Story of DR. CHALLENGER and ELIZA
I got my first computer as a teenager, in 1979. I had to drive to Los Angeles to find a shop that had “personal computers”, as it was a novel concept. What I picked up was an Ohio Scientific Challenger…
DR. CHALLENGER LIVES!
I got DR. CHALLENGER working last night! It’s an ancient chatbot that is a simulation of an interactive Rogerian non-directive psychotherapist. I wrote it in 1979, inspired by ELIZA. (See the source code for DR. CHALLENGER at the end of…
There Is No Such Thing as Artificial Intelligence: Notes On The Myth of AI
ABSTRACT: This essay is an initial attempt to outline what I see as the limitations in the current approaches to a generalized Artificial Intelligence (AI), the underlying assumptions that constitute and create those limitations, and how such limitations might either…
Keep Your (Garden) Drawers On
[From the Archive: 2013] Vegetables need lots of sun: at least 6 hours, but the more the better. I was looking for a way to raise a planting area high enough to not be shaded by the Valerian plants in…
The Ebb & Flow Method of Hydroponics [from the archives 2012]
HYDROPONICS INTRODUCTION: Why Soil-less Gardening? Soil is very complex. It’s an entire living community, forming a whole web, with trillions of microorganisms such as bacteria, fungi, as well as worms and arthropods (insects etc.) that break down the organic material,…
Starting Vegetables From Seed [from the Archive: 2011]
Introduction Starting vegetables, or any plant, from seed is a joy and a wonder. Watching plants grow from seed is amazing and fun. To take this tiny dry little bit of matter (and every kind of seed is a different…