Jennifer Rubin, "Has Trump’s family abandoned him? I’m answering your questions", WaPo 4/24/2024: Q: Are Republicans the party of no? Why can't Republicans say yes? Instead of getting a border deal in exchange for Ukraine funding, they got nothing. A (Jennifer Rubin, Opinion Columnist): Yup. They are the masters at cutting off their noses despite […]
Speaking of Korean translation and AI, as we did in recent posts (see "Selected readings"), let us take a look at the latest developments in Korea: New AI-based translation tools make their way into everyday life in Korea AI equipped with natural language processing software, which allows it to interpret human language in various contexts, […]
Si Nae Park came to Penn last Thursday (4/18/24) to talk about kugyŏl / gugyeol / kwukyel 구결 口訣 ("oral glossing"). Gugyeol, or kwukyel, is a system for rendering texts written in Classical Chinese into understandable Korean. It was used chiefly during the Joseon dynasty, when readings of the Chinese classics were of paramount social […]
Daron Acemoglu, "The Simple Macroeconomics of AI": ABSTRACT: This paper evaluates claims about the large macroeconomic implications of new advances in AI. It starts from a task-based model of AI’s effects, working through automation and task complementarities. It establishes that, so long as AI’s microeconomic effects are driven by cost savings/productivity improvements at the task […]
Samuel Bray, "Cruel AND Unusual?", Reason 4/21/2024: On Monday, the Supreme Court will hear argument in an Eighth Amendment case, City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson. One thing I will be watching for is whether the justices in their questions treat "cruel and unusual" as two separate requirements, or as one. The Eighth Amendment […]
I got an echo of Saturday's post about chatbot pals, from an article yesterday in Intelligencer — John Herrman, "Meta’s AI Needs to Speak With You" ("The company is putting chatbots everywhere so you don’t go anywhere"): Meta has an idea: Instead of ever leaving its apps, why not stay and chat with a bot? […]
Is monolingualism a normal, natural, necessary state of affairs for human beings? Can you imagine a world in which there were only one language? How is that even possible? These are questions that come to mind after reading Gina Anne Tam's deeply thought provoking "Mandarin Hegemony: The Past and Future of Linguistic Hierarchies in China", […]
Daniel Deutsch wrote: I had to read this headline a couple of times. "The pandemic cost 7 million lives, but talks to prevent a repeat stall" Is the pandemic talking? Is it trying to prevent a repeat stall?
This is one of the most novel theories on the Voynich manuscript (Beinecke MS408; early 15th c.) that I've ever encountered, and there are many. The Voynich Manuscript, Dr Johannes Hartlieb and the Encipherment of Women’s Secrets, by Keagan Brewer and Michelle L Lewis, Social History of Medicine, hkad099 (22 March 2024) Keywords: Voynich manuscript, […]
Worries about future applications of AI technology focus on many things, including new forms of automation replacing human workers, realistic deepfake media spreading disinformation, and mass killing by autonomous military machines. But there's something happening already that hasn't gotten as much commentary: chatbots designed to be pals or romantic connections.
Most Americans probably know a few Japanese loanwords, especially those who were alive in the two or three decades after WWII, when so many terms from Japan entered the English language — kamikaze, banzai, bonsai, origami, and so forth — with soldiers returning from the war in the Far East. In the recent two or […]
In a comment on yesterday's post ("High vowel lenition/devoicing in French"), carveuir wrote: Ha! As a final-year undergraduate in 2015, I mentioned having come across devoicing of the second /i/ in "université" to my French linguistics tutor and he didn't believe me. Finally I've been vindicated. My impression is that this is common and perhaps […]