Language Log

Recent stock-market volatility reminds us of this KAL cartoon:

A poem by Dan Perkins:

…vs. having a video conversation with her…

Attachment ambiguity of the week: "RFK Jr. says he dumped dead bear in Central Park after ditching plan to skin it in bizarre video with Roseanne Barr", NY Post 8/4/2024.

Deepa Seetharaman & Matt Barnum, "There’s a Tool to Catch Students Cheating With ChatGPT. OpenAI Hasn’t Released It.", WSJ 8/4/2024:

OpenAI has a method to reliably detect when someone uses ChatGPT to write an essay or research paper. The company hasn’t released it despite widespread concerns about students using artificial intelligence to cheat.

The project has been mired in internal debate at OpenAI for roughly two years and has been ready to be released for about a year, according to people familiar with the matter and internal documents viewed by The Wall Street Journal. “It’s just a matter of pressing a button,” one of the people said.

[This is a guest post by Craig Benjamin, the leading authority on Yuezhi history.  It is a follow-up to "Yuezhi archeology without concern for Tocharian language" (8/4/24)]

"China Reaches Back in Time to Challenge the West. Way, Way Back:  The country’s archaeologists are striking out along the Silk Road to trace the reach of ancient Chinese civilization, disputing long-held beliefs", by Sha Hua, WSJ (7/29/24).

A recent article published in the Wall Street Journal concerning attempts by Chinese and Uzbek archaeologists to unearth material evidence of the Yuezhi and early Kushans makes interesting reading. The author prefaces their account by placing the work of the archaeologists in the context of Xi Jinping’s efforts to expand the scope and influence of Chinese civilization, arguing that the efforts of Chinese researchers in various global locations ‘has the potential to change the field of archaeology itself, along with China’s place in the sweep of human history’. However, rather than promoting the influence of Chinese civilization in Central Asia, the archaeologists appear to be intent upon advancing nationalist claims in support of China’s Belt and Road partner Uzbekistan by arguing, on the basis of very slender evidence, that the Kushans ‘were descendants of the local population’.  

Deep Learning "AI" systems are doing ever more impressive things, although there continues to be plenty of skepticism Out There about the underlying technologies.

And now there's increasing skepticism about the economic impact. An 8/2/2024 Atlantic article has the title "The Generative-AI Revolution May Be a Bubble", and the subtitle "Tech firms have been spending historic amounts of money on AI—but will it pay off?" A recent Goldman-Sachs report had the title "GEN AI: TOO MUCH SPEND, TOO LITTLE BENEFIT?", featured in a 7/24 Washington Post article "Big Tech says AI is booming. Wall Street is starting to see a bubble."

One idea about AI socio-economics has always been that wider and wider swaths of the world's population will want to pay for its participation in their daily lives, replicating the successes of social media and portable networked devices. But even if this is true, there are some hiccups along the way, such as Google's "Dear Sidney" Olympics ad:

We have entered a new chapter in the history of the so-called Silk Road.  What has happened?  For the first time in the history of the field of Silk Road Studies, Chinese archeologists have gone out into the field beyond their own political borders.  They are leading their own expeditions and carrying out their own excavations in other countries.  An American archeologist who has worked in the stans (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) for three decades and is out there exploring and excavating right now — always slowly and patiently — and who has close ties to the local archeologists, tells me that the region is crawling with Chinese archeologists who are working in support of Xi Jinping's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), for which see below.  As a result, they are now in a position to interpret their discoveries as they see fit, and that takes a radically different approach from what scholars have been saying, among other things, about an elusive people known as the Yuezhi for the last century and more.

"China Reaches Back in Time to Challenge the West. Way, Way Back:  The country’s archaeologists are striking out along the Silk Road to trace the reach of ancient Chinese civilization, disputing long-held beliefs", by Sha Hua, WSJ (7/29/24).

From IA:

By way of introduction to what you see below under the asterisks, regarding the (not-always) technical reasons for the paucity of webpages in Mongolian script, see some of the comments here, especially the one at the top (Greg Pringle).

I might mention that the president of Mongolia's webpage in Mongolian script — which he links to — only displays correctly for me in Chrome, not in Firefox and not on my iPhone (Safari).

The PRC does have a word for "citizen", namely, "guómín 國民" (lit., "person of a country"), but it is a bit more problematic to find a Chinese word equivalent to the abstract concept of "citizenship".  If we mean by "citizenship", "the status / condition of being a citizen of a certain country", the legal term "guójí 國籍", which signifies the country in / to which an individual enjoys certain rights, duties, and privileges, will suffice.  If, however, we are searching for a term that conveys the notion of "a person's conduct as a citizen" (Collins) or "the character of an individual viewed as a member of society" (Random House), it is difficult to find a comparable Chinese term.

It is interesting that PRC citizenship in the latter respect is defined pretty much in terms of its absence

Matthew Erskine, "The Meaning of Conservative: Lessons from the Valparaiso University Dispute", Forbes 7/25/2024:

Valparaiso University is seeking to sell three valuable paintings, including a Georgia O'Keeffe, to fund renovations for freshman dormitories. The university argues that two of the paintings, purchased with funds from a 1953 donation by Percy Sloan, do not meet the donor's stipulation for "conservative" art. The donation specified that the funds be used to acquire "conservative" American art, which the university claims does not include modernist works like O'Keeffe's "Rust Red Hills" and Childe Hassam's "The Silver Veil and the Golden Gate."

The Paper (simplified Chinese: 澎湃新闻; traditional Chinese: 澎湃新聞; pinyin: Péngpài Xīnwén; lit. 'Surging News'), a Shanghai-based, state-owned online newspaper, has an article in Chinese reporting that the city of Handan in Hebei province is changing the names of more than a dozen of its roads that are named after chéngyǔ 成语 ("idioms; set phrases"). The reason given for changing these road names is "bùyì shíjì dàolù 不易识记道路" ("it's not easy to remember the streets").

Locally consistent hallucinations, anyhow… Zoë Hannah, "We pushed this ChatGPT game to the limits, but playing it the right way is more fun", Polygon 7/30/2024:

Apparently, we all like playing god, and we all like doing it badly. I bet none of us thought that removing the ladder from our Sims’ pools was such a universal experience until it became a pretty popular meme, and it’s no secret that lots of mods are centered on adding, uh, explicit elements to games. So, naturally, when I started playing around with DeepGame, Utile Labs’ ChatGPT-based choose-your-own-text-adventure game, I put my best sicko foot forward.

The game, which runs on ChatGPT and is available to anyone with an account, generates stories in a variety of genres. You start off with a command like “Play a romantasy story” or “Surprise me” and let the GPT do its thing — and despite my desire to break the game, I found it much more enjoyable when I took it just a little more seriously.

Like me, you may have been puzzled by Donald Trump's repeated references to Hannibal Lecter in his rally speeches. Given the contexts, I figured it was a connection between "political asylum" and "insane asylum" — and Miles Klee has the receipts ("Why Is Trump So Obsessed With Hannibal Lecter?: A Complete Timeline", Rolling Stone 7/30/2024):

How an off-script moment from early in the election cycle led to a bizarre MAGA ritual celebrating a fictional cannibal

[…] How did Trump end up name-checking Lecter as part of his pitch to the MAGA base? Responding to a request for comment on the matter, campaign communications director Steven Cheung replied, “President Trump is an inspiring and gifted storyteller and referencing pop culture is one of many reasons why he can successfully connect with the audience and voters. Whereas, Kamala [Harris] is as relatable as a worn-out couch.”

Absent any further explanation, a forensic review of the former president’s speeches over the past year is in order. What’s clear is that this all began with a simple misunderstanding — or several.