Magic for English Majors - by Ethan Mollick

Programming in prose in an AI-haunted world

I always thought reading science fiction would prepare us for the future, but fantasy novels might be better suited to understanding our suddenly AI-haunted world. There are now advanced and useful systems whose exact operations remain mysterious, even to those who built them. While one can understand the technical aspects of building Large Language Models like ChatGPT, the precise capabilities and limitations of these AIs are often only uncovered through trial and error. And having both conducted academic studies and developed magic spells for fictional fantasy games, working with ChatGPT…

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