Tuesday, September 26, 2023

Questioning Humans.

About 30 years ago, in the early days of the internet, I was in the benighted offices of an agency called Foote Cone and Belding, which most people called Foot Cut and Bleeding, mostly because the place made their souls bleed, if not their soles.

A bunch of creatives were having an argument about something and I said something like, "I can find that out by calling the information desk of the New York Public Library." 

The information desk was famous for answering even the most obscure and difficult of questions. 

So a race began. Me and my ancient sources. And someone else with a rudimentary Netscape browser.

I don't remember who won. Except today, we face a similar John Henry vs. Steam shovel competition. Who's smarter? Humankind and our talents, abilities, serendipities and synapses. Or powerful computer programs that can process massive amounts of information at interplanetary speed? 

If you owned a company, who would you rather have writing your ads and website? Me or Chat GPT?

Just now I ran across an article about the sorts of questions the Information Desk at the New York Public Library used to receive. About twenty of those questions are pasted below. 

I can't imagine any machine, or any human for that matter could manage to unravel many of these. And that's what makes me favor humans. At least we can have a laugh about things. Or a cry.

Even more than that. 

We can be stupid, curious, absurd and nonsensical.

You might say, those are the four cornerstones of what makes life worth living.

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All these questions and more are from this book, available here.

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