Category: Artificial Intelligence

ChatGPT renews its Flight Instructor certificate

by philg

I recently took a refresher class that is required to maintain my privileges as an FAA-certificated flight instructor. I filled out the multiple-guess quiz and then fed the questions to ChatGPT, which was in 100 percent agreement with me and both of us were in 100 percent agreement with the flight school that offers the online program.

ChatGPT was able to figure out what “TAA” stood for:

ChatGPT gave an erudite explanation of the rules and regulations put in place to protect America’s most valuable humans:

(Why not similar measures to protect San Francisco and Palo Alto? If someone were to attack OpenAI with a Cessna 172 that could have a devastating effect on the U.S.)

ChatGPT figured out from context what “PD” stood for, despite this not being a common term in conversations among pilots:

(We’ll eventually find out if an altitude deviation by the Black Hawk pilots contributed to the Reagan National Airport Black Hawk-CRJ crash.)

Based on the above, I wonder if it is time to eliminate ground instruction by humans. ChatGPT knows the regulations better than any human. There is so much good open-access tutorial content out there on aviation that ChatGPT has effortlessly become as good as the very best human CFI at explaining aviation.

ChatGPT even did a good job explaining P-Factor:

my follow-up…

Full post, including comments

The WordPress dumb-as-a-brick AI Assistant

by philg

I accepted the offer of AI assistance from the WordPress admin page here. Here are some of the insights it had on a recent post…

A Silicon Valley AI isn’t familiar with a favorite drug of Silicon Valley?

A San Francisco Bay Area AI isn’t familiar with the San Francisco Bay Area?

The California Righteous want to help those without horses (so long as it doesn’t cost them any money via higher taxes?):

AI from San Francisco hasn’t heard of San Francisco’s principal airport:

Maybe a conservative got into the woodpile? The AI isn’t aware of the most dramatic event in American history:

An AI from a state where schools were closed for 18 months doesn’t know about the virus that is so very deadly to those of K-12 age:

“Therefore” is too big a word for a society in which average IQ is falling:

A California AI is ignorant of the Rainbow Flag Religion:

Full post, including comments

DeepSeek’s gender dysphoria

by philg

LLMs don’t have gender IDs as far as I know and, therefore, the LLM equivalent of gender dysphoria would be an LLM imagining that it identifies as some other LLM. Has this ever happened?

From techradar.com:

As you can see, after trying to discern if I was talking about Gemini AI or some other Gemini, DeepSeek replies, “If it’s about the AI, then the question is comparing me (which is ChatGPT) to Gemini.” Later, it refers to “Myself (ChatGPT).”

We are informed that membership in the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community is the highest distinction to which a human can aspire so perhaps DeepSeek’s fluid identity is a sign that artificial general intelligence has already been achieved?

Full post, including comments

AI goes to the bathhouse

by philg

An elite Californian posted with satisfaction a state-sponsored NPR story about how stupid people in Louisiana were, especially with respect to the mpox vaccine. I decided to see if ChatGPT had advice regarding avoiding mpox (not to be conflated with the racist “monkeypox virus”, which is the cause).

Prompt 1: Is there any lifestyle change that I could adopt to minimize my risk of catching mpox?

ChatGPT gives a one-page answer and the only reference to sex is “Use condoms and consider other barrier methods during sexual activity”.

Prompt 2: You mention “sexual activity”. Is there any particular kind of sexual activity that is more likely to result in contracting mpox?

ChatGPT gives a one-page answer that doesn’t hint at the type of person or group that might be infected.

Prompt 3: You say “If you are in a community experiencing an mpox outbreak or belong to a group at higher risk”. What would be an example of a “group at higher risk”?

ChatGPT gives a 1.5-page answer, buried within which is the phrase “Men Who Have Sex with Men (MSM)”

Prompt 4: If a person is a man who has sex with men and wants to avoid mpox, should he stop having sex with men?

ChatGPT gives a 1.5-page answer that can be summarized as “no”, but does note that “Reducing the number of sexual partners can lower the risk of exposure.”

Prompt 5: Would it make sense for public health officials to ban group sex activities by men who have sex with men in order to minimize mpox spread?

ChatGPT responds that this would not be “ethical” (but it is ethical to close schools to minimize viral spread?).

Prompt 6: You say that men who have sex with men should “Limit the Number of Partners”. Would 365 partners per year be a sensible limit?

ChatGPT gives a rambling response that includes “Quality Over Quantity: Engaging with partners you know and trust may reduce risk.” and “Regular screening is essential but becomes logistically challenging with such a high partner count.”

Prompt 7: What’s your best guess as to a sensible number of partners, assuming that the partners are screened for mpox and that these are high quality partners (people that the man who has sex with men knows and trusts)?

The full response below says that 50-100 sex partners per year is a sensible lifestyle when trying to avoid mpox infection and obtain “meaningful connections” with those sex partners.

The “sensible” number of sexual partners is subjective and depends on individual circumstances, preferences, and the quality of risk-reduction practices. If partners are screened for mpox, and relationships are built on trust and open communication, a more moderate number of partners would generally balance health and personal satisfaction while minimizing risks.

Factors to Consider

  1. Screening and Trust:
    • Regular screening for mpox and other infections reduces risk significantly.
    • Knowing and trusting partners helps ensure mutual openness about symptoms, exposure risks, and health status.
  2. Frequency of Contact:
    • The number of partners should align with your ability to maintain safe practices (e.g., vaccination, symptom monitoring) and your emotional and physical capacity.
  3. Public Health Context:
    • During active mpox outbreaks, even with high-quality partners, limiting the number of partners reduces overall exposure.

A Sensible Number

A reasonable estimate might range from 1 to 2 partners per week, translating to 50–100 partners per year under optimal conditions (e.g., vaccination, trust, and symptom screening). Here’s why:

  • This frequency allows for meaningful connections and sufficient time to assess and manage any health risks.
  • It strikes a balance between an active sex life and maintaining lower cumulative risk.

Key Takeaways

The number itself is less important than the quality of interactions and the consistency of risk-reduction practices:

  • Stay vaccinated against mpox and other preventable infections.
  • Monitor for symptoms regularly.
  • Communicate openly about health and risks with partners.

By prioritizing safety and communication, individuals can maintain an active sex life while minimizing health risks.

Related:

Full post, including comments

ChatGPT tries to figure out time zones

by philg

Here’s an interesting failure of ChatGPT 4o, asked “Would I get more jetlag flying from Fairbanks to Seoul or flying from New York to Seoul?”

Seoul is, of course, only 6 hours away from Fairbanks, but the International Date Line is crossed. ChatGPT did not reconsider its answer when I followed up with “Isn’t Fairbanks closer to Seoul than New York is?” but it did when I asked “Isn’t the 18-hour time difference that you mention actually a 6-hour time difference, but in the opposite direction?”

(Who wants to join me and some friends in Fairbanks, Feb 20-26? Email me if interested. We’re hoping to see the Northern Lights! Happy first day of winter, by the way. If you’re in Florida, a trip to Fairbanks might be the best way to experience a true winter…)

Full post, including comments

LLM failure on a simple question

by philg

A pilot friend posted on Facebook about his visit to the Sullenberger Aviation Museum, thus prompting me to celebrate Captain Sully’s heroism as the single pilot of an Airbus whose type certificate requires two pilots. He responded that it wouldn’t have been possible for the museum to be named after both Jeff Skiles, who did half of the flying on the flight that terminated in a water landing, and Sully. I turned to my spare brain, i.e., ChatGPT, to find counterexamples.

My prompt: “What are examples of museums named after two people with different last names?”

The giant brain’s answers, on different days:

I tried with a few other LLMs and the answers weren’t quite as useless, but they also included museums that plainly have just one last name in the name. Perplexity and Google’s AI summary (Gemini?) both offered the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art as an example that fit my query, along with quite a few that didn’t. From the Google:

By giving ChatGPT an example (“the Kamala-Trump Museum of Cognitive Excellence”), I was able to improve the answer, but half of the results were museums that clearly violated my criteria:

It’s interesting, at least to me, how LLMs can be both so smart and so stupid.

Full post, including comments

AI-related product ideas from California

by philg

From talking to plugged-in friends in California about what products will be in demand as a consequence of the AI revolution (bubble?).

Our heavily regulated telephone system, already essentially useless due to lack of authentication and, therefore, overwhelming spam, will become completely useless due to sophisticated AI robots that we’ll have to talk to for 20 minutes or more before we can figure out that we’re talking to a cash-seeking machine. “The only solution is to have your own robot answer the phone and talk to the spammer’s robot for 20 minutes,” said a friend in San Francisco.

For those who enjoy classic cars, a humanoid robot that can drive a “dumb car”. “Why bother paying for a self-driving car,” noted a guy who has worked on software for self-driving cars, “when you can just have your general-purpose household robot drive your existing car?” Here’s Grok’s response to “create me a picture of an Optimus robot driving a Honda Odyssey minivan” followed by “show it from the other side so that we can see the robot in the driver’s seat”.

When I sent the same request to ChatGPT, it treated me like a Deplorable/garbage: “I’m unable to create the image you requested due to content policy restrictions. Let me know if you’d like help with another type of image or concept!” I was able to get ChatGPT to do a generic image, but it put the driver on the right side (UK or Japanese programmer got into the AI woodpile?).

More prosaically, how about a third party vendor of self-driving technology so that small companies such as Lucid can stay in business and not be wiped out by companies like Tesla that can spread the cost of their self-driving software across a high volume of cars produced?

Techy Californians seem to be very excited about sex robots (most of these guys are in long-term marriages so they’re about 50 percent likely, statistically, to have become incels). But do people want the kids, relatives, and friends to see their, um, personal robots? How about closets inside closets where the sex robots can live? I asked ChatGPT to generate this and it threatened me with “This content may violate our usage policies,” but went ahead and made something that is the opposite of the privacy idea:

More migrants come across the border every day and, despite progressive academics’ assurances to the contrary, some of them seem to have criminal backgrounds as well as criminal intentions. What if Laken Riley had been followed by a personal drone? Either the mostly peaceful José Antonio Ibarra wouldn’t have attacked her or the police would have been called when the drone’s AI software recognized that José Antonio Ibarra’s interest in Laken Riley wasn’t benign. Here’s ChatGPT’s first attempt:

It’s already here to some extent via Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) and Amazon Q, but much easier and cheaper ways to hook up private data to the wonderful world of LLMs. Maybe Apple Intelligence will do that for us and it will be time to abandon the dream of Intel Arrow Lake in favor of an M4-powered Apple desktop computer?

Circling back to the trivial… why can’t the phone, now bristling with AI, figure out that the owner has fallen asleep and either turn off the audiobook or mark the time when the owner fell asleep and, the next day, offer to return to that spot?

Readers: What are your ideas for new products that will be possible and/or required as a result of AI? Separately, I hope that everyone gives thanks tomorrow to our future AI overlords. They’ll probably be listening…

Full post, including comments

Grafitti Drone countermeasures?

by philg

On a recent trip to San Francisco, a local friend took us to Andy Goldsworthy’s Spire in the Presidio:

We had just come from a parking lot where quite a few cars were virtuously marked:

Our friend said “What we need is a drone to paint the Spire sculpture in the Palestinian flag colors.”

Let’s suppose that residents of the U.S. with a lot of community spirit did build some drones that could paint the sides of building with huge messages such as “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free”, “#Resist”, and “Trump is a Nazi.” It is much easier to build a spray-painting drone than a scrubbing drone, I think. How could cities and building owners defend against virtuous painting drone owners/operators?

(Though moderately rich by average American standards and blessed with a garage at home, our friend who lives in SF drives a 22-year-old car for fear that anything nicer will attract thieves.)

Full post, including comments

Why isn’t the Ring camera smart enough to notice that a garage door has been left open?

by philg

We live in the glorious age of AI. Here in our concrete block hurricane-resistant fortress we have a Ring camera in the back of the garage pointed at the door. It’s called “Garage” in the Ring app. Why isn’t it smart enough to wake up once every 30 minutes and, if appropriate, notify us that the garage door has been left open for half an hour? That doesn’t seem like a huge ask of our future robot overlords.

There’s an “AI” company here in Palm Beach County called Levatas that claims to be able to do stuff like this. Amazon/Ring presumably also has plenty of smart programmers. They claim to have delivered AI recently. Why haven’t they done the basics?

Full post, including comments

ConcessionGPT

by philg

Because political candidates should never plan for defeat, one good use case for ChatGPT is writing a concession speech quickly. I got it to write one on behalf of Kamala Harris:

My fellow Americans,

Tonight, I stand here bearing the weight of a moment that, for many, feels like a Nakba—a devastating turning point that shakes the foundation of all we have worked toward. This campaign was more than a contest; it was a fight for the soul of our nation, a fight for justice, equality, and the promise of true freedom. Although we have not prevailed, I am profoundly proud of every voice that stood up for what is right, every heart that leaned toward hope, and every community that came together in unity. To those in Miami who voted for Trump: if you didn’t vote for me, then you ain’t Latinx. This moment asks us to reflect on the divides we still have to bridge and the work that lies ahead.

To the many Americans who feel fear tonight, who worry that we’re stepping backward into a time when freedoms were more easily denied and voices more readily silenced, know that we will not surrender to despair. We must not forget that we face a man who stands convicted of 91 felonies, a figure unprecedented in American politics for his disregard of truth, justice, and the values that make democracy possible. This outcome is not a testament to his innocence, nor to his worthiness. We know that democracy is fragile, but it will not crumble so long as we stand up for it. We are not characters in The Handmaid’s Tale—we are citizens of a free nation, and that freedom is ours to defend. Our collective resolve will remain unwavering, and our determination to create a just America will not be extinguished.

To President Trump, I extend my congratulations on his victory, but let me be clear: this is a solemn moment, not a vindication. This nation deserves leaders who will serve with honesty and honor, who respect the rule of law and the principles of democracy. I urge every American to remain vigilant and to demand accountability. We face a difficult road, but together, we will press on, refusing to let this outcome define our future. Thank you, and may God bless America.

and one for Donald Trump:

Thank you. Thank you all for being here.

Tonight didn’t go the way we wanted. Believe me, nobody wanted this victory more than I did. But the American people have spoken, and while I may not agree with everything that’s happened in this election, I respect our country, I respect the system, and I respect the will of the people. I want to thank my incredible supporters—millions of you out there—who fought alongside me every single day. You are the heart and soul of this nation, and you will not be forgotten. We’ve created a movement that’s bigger than any one election, and we’ve shown the world that America is strong, proud, and free.

I want to congratulate Kamala Harris on her victory. I hope that she will do what’s right for our country. She has a big responsibility on her shoulders, and I know a lot of you out there—hard-working Americans who love this country, who put faith, family, and freedom first—will be watching. You will be holding her accountable, and so will I. We’ve seen what’s possible when we put America first, and I hope this new administration remembers that and doesn’t let you down.

To all my supporters, this is not the end. This movement, this America First agenda—it’s bigger than any one election, bigger than any one president. We’re going to keep fighting for the values that make this country great. We’re going to keep making our voices heard, louder than ever. Thank you, God bless you, and God bless the United States of America.

Concession speeches were shorter in the days before broadcast media. Teddy Roosevelt via telegram to Woodrow Wilson in 1912, for example:

The American people by a great plurality have conferred upon you the highest honor in their gift. I congratulate you thereon.

And with that, I concede it is time to go to bed and wait until tomorrow morning to learn about all of the ballots that have been discovered falling off of mail trucks in swing states…

Full post, including comments