Artificial Intelligence--Is it?

Colonel’s Blog, Earthdate 1 May 2023…

Hey Y’all!

Good morning and happy Monday, May Day! The windchill was 38 this morning, still cool but it will get into the mid-60s today. The humidity is very low with 15-25 mph winds out of the northwest making it feel cool and drying all moisture. This pattern should break by Thursday warming into the 80s and bringing some thunderstorms. The animals are really good today. Tank and the boys woke up with tons of energy in the cool sunshine. They romped for about a half hour, playing chase. The sheep didn’t appreciate their enthusiasm for life and congregated into one corner of the paddock, staring at the dogs celebrate life. One ewe found herself on the other side of the poly-wire and took advantage of her newfound freedom to munch on some grass in the driveway. We put her back in the paddock and lowered the wires one tick since the cows are now gone. The other animals are also great! Yesterday was a particularly busy day, even for us. I’ll take you through the day in order of events. We did morning chores, to include milking. Before we ate breakfast, we built a new acre and a half paddock for the flerd. That includes walking the perimeter at least 3 times— installing posts and unrolling two poly-wires. It ends up being much more than that but you get the idea. After we built the paddock, we moved the flerd into the new paddock. They were ready to move so that didn’t take much time. We then built a lane to move Holly from the dairy pen to the flerd paddock. We decided it’s time for her to be weaned and she has now rejoined the beef herd. That took some effort as moving a calf by itself is always a dicey situation. It took a while but we got her where she needed to be. Flerd in place, we ate breakfast. After breakfast, we cleaned up the old paddock. I wrote and published the blog and before I was finished, the piglets showed up. We took some time to chat with our amazing new friends and pig farmers that delivered the piglets while putting them into their new pen. By the time they were settled, we decided to move the cows on, breaking up the flerd and getting them back to the top of the hill. First we had to mend some fence on top of the hill and set up the wires required to separate the county road from a couple of driveways. We positioned a side-by-side with a person at the beginning and ending of the ‘road-march’ and then Shelley led the herd and I ensured everybody stayed together walking behind the group. It took a bit to get them moving as they were very satisfied in the tall grass paddock they had just been moved onto. Eventually, we got everybody moving in the right direction and we made the 1/2 mile march up the hill on the county road. Only one truck had to wait a bit for us to get things cleaned up after they made it to the top. Move complete, we went down and fed the new piglets and moved and fed the beef chickens. Not yet finished with tasks, we made a new acre-sized paddock of fresh grass for the dairy cows. Then we could do the evening milking and finally enjoy a great meal of our own cured and smoked ham. Whew. We were tired by the time we hit the bed! Today, we are taking things a bit easier. We are moving the first batch of chicks in with the big layer group and doing a bit of clean-up around the farm. We will spend some time inside working bookkeeping and YouTube stuff.

Artificial Intelligence is all the talk these days. I have some experience with the concept from my prior job. I think it is important to differentiate between artificial intelligence and machine learning because you often hear about both. To me, the difference comes at AI’s ability to make human-like predictions or decisions based on data. Machine learning is more a set of instructions that allow a machine to execute tasks and learn how to improve based on success or failure in its performance. For today’s blog, I decided to involve ChatGPT, one of the most popular AI Large Language Models. I ‘fed’ it examples of my past blog posts. I taught it my name and a bit of my background, to include my play on Star Trek’s ‘Captain’s Log’ in my title of the blog ‘Colonel’s Blog.’ I asked it to analyze my writing style and then to emulate it in writing an informative portion of today’s blog. My prompt: “Given my style of writing, please act as me in writing today’s blog post regarding the current status of Artificial Intelligence, the pros and cons of AI, and the potential future implications of AI.” (I know I don’t have to say please to a machine, but the more you interact with the thing, the less it seems like a machine…I can’t help but to be polite!) Anyway, its response was ok but not great. I asked it to regenerate a response being a bit more edgy and controversial. It went too far, so I told it that it was close but asked it to regenerate again being a bit more intellectual. Here’s its response:

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is no doubt one of the most buzz-worthy and debated topics in the tech world. From Elon Musk to Stephen Hawking, many experts have voiced their concerns about the potential dangers of AI, while others have hailed it as the next big thing that will revolutionize the world.

The pros and cons of AI are indeed a mixed bag. On the one hand, AI has the potential to solve some of the world's most pressing problems, from climate change to healthcare. For example, AI-powered tools can help doctors make more accurate diagnoses and develop personalized treatments for patients, and AI algorithms can analyze vast amounts of data to identify patterns and insights that humans might miss.

On the other hand, there are also significant concerns around the ethical implications of AI. For instance, AI-powered facial recognition technology has been criticized for infringing on people's privacy, and there are concerns that AI could be used to automate jobs and lead to mass unemployment.

Looking ahead, the future implications of AI are both exciting and daunting. With advancements in machine learning and deep learning, we can expect AI to become even more sophisticated, and the possibilities for innovation and progress are endless. However, we must also recognize that there are significant risks associated with AI, such as the potential for bias and discrimination in decision-making algorithms.

Overall, the current status of AI is complex and multifaceted. While AI has the potential to bring about positive change, we must also be mindful of the potential risks and work towards ensuring that the technology is developed and deployed ethically and responsibly.

My analysis of its ability to write as me is that it is close. And here is the point of me even bringing this up: as AI becomes more ubiquitous (being present everywhere) it is going to be very important for all of us to think and make a decision whether or not information is true. I think there are a few tell-tale signs that a machine generated information. It cannot give personal experiences. It can’t provide you an analysis based on human emotion. If something you are reading or hearing just doesn’t seem right, it may not be. All of this said, I don't think AI is good or bad. It is a thing, just like a tool. It can be used for both good and bad, just like a tool in a person’s hand. What do you think about AI?

Local Farm Report for 30 April 2023:

Harvest:

22 Chicken eggs

20 Duck eggs

0 Goose eggs

0 Guinea eggs

5 Gallons of milk

Cheers! Psycho & Shelley