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Anticipations of Artificial Intelligence in Literature
From ancient myths of mechanical automata and golems to modern science fiction, writers have long imagined artificial beings with human-like intelligence. Early folklore (such as the bronze giant Talos in Greek myth or the clay Golem of Prague) hinted at the dream of created life. But it was in the 19th century and beyond that…
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Synergetics and Large Language Models: Emergence, Order, and Self‑Organization
Large Language Models (LLMs) such as GPT-4, Grok and Claude have revealed striking behaviors that seem to emerge as these models grow in scale. Certain abilities – from arithmetic and translation to common-sense reasoning – appear suddenly when the model’s size or training reaches a critical threshold, rather than improving smoothly from smaller models. This…
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The Logic of Failure in the Age of AI
How Dietrich Dörner’s Cognitive Insights Illuminate the Risks of Autonomous Systems Summary of the Book In his seminal work The Logic of Failure: Recognizing and Avoiding Error in Complex Situations, German cognitive psychologist Dietrich Dörner investigates how and why people fail when faced with dynamic, complex systems. Based on a series of simulations and experiments,…
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From Butlerian Jihad to GPT-4: Are We Rewriting Dune’s Cautionary Tale?
In Frank Herbert’s seminal science fiction epic Dune, the backdrop of galactic politics, mysticism, and ecological struggle is haunted by the shadow of an ancient war: the Butlerian Jihad. Thousands of years before the events of the novel, humanity waged a ferocious battle against intelligent machines—sentient computers and AI systems that had, in Herbert’s vision,…
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Max, the Robot, and My Knife: On the Ethics of Tracing, Templates, and AI Art
In Isaac Asimov’s short story Light Verse, a woman hosts a party. She’s known for her hauntingly beautiful light sculptures—ethereal patterns that pulse and dance in the air like visual poetry. One of the guests, an engineer, notices that her robot butler is behaving oddly and, being helpful, decides to “fix” it. Only after the…
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