New Directions

This session was interesting - perhaps a little high concept for where I’m currently at, but it’s exciting to see fresh new ideas even if you lack the proper context for them.

Computer, Enhance!

With the amount of buzz around AI as some kind of silver bullet that will totally replace human expression and work, it’s refreshing to see a measured perspective focused more around AI as a means to augment rather than replace. Personally, I find it hard to see a use for these overly broad solutions: it takes about 5 minutes of trying to use one of these terrible LLM chatbots companies have been putting up in place of customer service to realise the value of a human with contextual awareness and basic problem solving skills. With that said, in situations where it makes sense to use, the presentation makes a great case for augmenting human behaviour through AI and hypertextual systems.

Hyperlepsis

A totally enthralling presentation that I barely understood. I am so fascinated by what was I understood of the presentation, that this is high on my list of papers to revisit not just on to read the full text but to explore the context and foundational works informing it. Some things you don’t understand will have you bounce off of them, others will have you excited to learn and recontextualise.

PAIRWISE

Interesting presentation on SPORE and some research into word associations. Pairwise comparisons for word association are interesting, though obviously there are risks of sampling bias in comparing two things out of context. In general, SPORE seems like a real heavy hitter that I’d like to keep an eye on as it seems like it may do a great job at reflecting and complimenting human thought patterns.