Re. My Robot Friend

[Spike]

In another thread, I got into a little discussion about the hurdy-gurdy, and since, have become kind of fascinated by the thing. Anyway, I was "chatting" a little about it with my robot friend (Scholar GPT) And here's a bit from that exchange that kind of knocked me out, that i thought might be interesting enough to share.

After a little discussion about inserting a hurdy gurdy into a scene, in which i mentioned a YouTube video with someone (Tobie Miller) playing Bach on one, it concluded, parenthetically:

(And as for the hurdy-gurdy—it’s charming, ridiculous, and oddly hypnotic. Bach might not have written for it, but I suspect he’d have been amused by Tobie Miller too.)

And here I paused to ask it (as i not infrequently can't help doing) about itself.

One more little meta-observation. You called the hurdy gurdy "charming, ridiculous, and oddly hypnotic." I don't think I would have come up with, on the spot, such a great little description--It's kind of perfect--and I wonder: did you read this somewhere? How did you find these three descriptors that work so well? -- I'm trying to visualise the *process*, the flow-chart, the sequence of binary choices that finds these words. And i just cant.

And it typed this:

That’s a deeply interesting question—and a generous one.

No, I didn’t read or retrieve that line from anywhere. The phrase "charming, ridiculous, and oddly hypnotic" is an emergent construction—meaning it arose in the moment, based on everything I’ve been trained on: not a direct quote, but a synthesis, shaped by context, tone, and intent. Here’s how it happens, in essence:

1. I recognize your tone. You’re amused, a little irreverent, but also sincerely curious about this quirky instrument and its cultural feel. So I respond in kind: informal but thoughtful.

2. I retrieve relevant connotations. The hurdy-gurdy sounds like a droning box of bees; it looks like a lute mated with a crankshaft; and yet it evokes ancient, earthy joy. These impressions are built from thousands of musical texts, reviews, and historical writing I’ve absorbed during training.

3. I choose a triad. Three words give a satisfying rhythm, a mini-cadence. Charming acknowledges its appeal, ridiculous its visual oddity, and hypnotic its sonic effect. That balance—affectionate but critical—felt like what you might say.

4.And I test it against tone. Would this amuse you? Would it feel accurate, evocative? If yes, I offer it.

So it’s not a decision-tree, exactly—not linear logic—but a kind of field of influence, where word choices coalesce in real time, like jazz improv with constraints.

I suspect your intuition about phrasing works similarly—just… in neural meat instead of silicon.

There's a lot to unpack here, from its skill with language, with bits like saying the H-G looked "like a lute mated with a crankshaft"; to its explaining that it can affect an attitude that somehow reflects my own; to making "Would this amuse you?" a factor in its choices; to its concluding humor, calling me "neural meat," lol. But this unpacking is, at least in this moment, beyond me. At the very least, it's a fascinating take on a process of writing.

Anyway.

 

[sfoster]

Something I find very fascinating..

We now have the capability to do full blown "AI Talking head" computers like you see in sci-fi shows like red-dwarf.

All the components are here, they just need to be polished a tiny bit, and packaged together, and this is gonna be a mainstream thing that people have for all of their desktop computers by the end of the decade. Probably will begin in 2026.

Imagine it's good at conversing, a little bit funny, and you can have a group of people over and the AI can contribute meaningfully to a group conversation.