Ken's Blog

I don’t want my students using AI to do their homework. That would defeat much of the purpose of learning to do things for yourself.

But I am starting to think that it would be beneficial for students to use AI to help them evaluate their work. Given that AI is (at least in its current form) essentially a patchwork gathering of the expertise of many humans, students could benefit from what those many human experts think of their work.

The trick will be to figure out how to invite students to use that resource without implicitly inviting them to use AI in the work itself. I wonder whether it would be possible to design homework assignments in a way that encourages the former while discouraging the latter.

Whenever somebody gets up in front of a room full of people and says that they had invented something, I check to see if that’s really true. All too often, I discover that somebody had invented the same thing before that person “invented” it.

This happens so often that I am tempted to organize a seminar on this odd quirk in invention timelines. In my seminar, I would map out the actual sequence of events that led to various inventions, which often significantly differs from the official sequence.

In most cases, I think people would be surprised to find out who really invented something first. But I also quite sure that they would be entertained.

This evening I saw “The Lost boys, the Musical” on Broadway. It was fun.

One odd thing. It looked at the 1980s as some faroff time, exotic and somewhat foreign.

As someone who saw the movie in theaters when it came out in theaters, I found this bemusing.

But it didn’t take away from the fun — it just added another layer to the experience of seeing a time capsule movie.

This morning I felt motivated to explore the wonders of Piet Hein’s Soma cube. So I did what I usually do — I made a computer graphic version of it.

There is so much more to explore about this fascinating 3D puzzle. Meanwhile, you can see my first experiments with it by clicking on the image below.

I was talking today with Carl Goodman, the former director of the American Museum of the Moving Image. At some point he said that we are living in a post-digital age.

I understood what he meant. If you’ve grown up with a certain level of technology, you don’t think of it as technology. It’s just reality.

People who’ve spent their whole lives immersed in digital technology no longer even think about how transformational it is. As Alan Kay said, “Technology is anything that was invented after you were born. Everything else is just stuff.”

You can see that everywhere you look. We don’t think of houses and windows and clothing as technology — even though they really are. To us they are just stuff.

It has been seventy two years since the Army-McCarthy hearings. History has not been kind to that political witch hunt.

And today we saw a continuation of that monstrous perversion of government. The fact that the target was Dr. Anthony Fauci — an actual American hero who was instrumental in saving millions of lives — made it all the worse.

As a patriotic American, I am proud of Dr. Fauci for standing firm against these shameless bullies. Just to score cheap political points with their base, Rand Paul, Josh Hawley and Rick Scott are disgracing the U.S. Congress, just as Joseph McCarthy had done in his own time.

The question I have for these men is the same question asked of McCarthy by Joseph Welch on June 9, 1954: “Have you no sense of decency?”

There is a Delmore Schwartz short story with the title “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities”. The story itself is deep and profound, and I encourage you to read it.

But I have always found the title alone to be deeply moving. As each of us begins to understand and develop our own unique power to contribute to the world, we have a responsibility to use that power well.

In a sense, we are each in a deal with God (or whatever you want to call it). We’ve been given a gift, we repay that gift by using it.

For some of us, this begins with a demo. We show the world that something is possible, and by doing so we are floating something new out into that world.

That act of creation is not free. It also creates an obligation on our part.

We also need to help usher that little idea out of the nest, until it can find its own wings and fly. In demos begin responsibilities.

I finally saw The Odyssey. It is indeed every bit as good as the hype.

I can understand why it is breaking box office records. It is extraordinary even by Christopher Nolan’s high standards.

This is one of those movies that people will still be watching many years from now.

I know a person who gives names to everything. So I started to wonder: Is there a name for the phenomenon of giving names to everything?

I asked the AI built into my web browser, but it had no clue. So even the AIs are stumped by this one.

I wonder if there is a name for that.

It turns out that taking one day off is not enough, after an event as crazy and exhausting as the SIGGRAPH conference.

So I am taking a second day off to fully recharge my batteries.

I tell myself this will make me incredibly productive in the days and weeks that follow.

This may just be just an illusion. But then again, isn’t all of computer graphics an illusion?