Mark Twain fled to Berlin in 1891 with his wife and three little daughters. He had earned a great deal of money from Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and his other writing and lectures, but he invested in ventures that lost most of it and the family was short of funds. So in the fall…
Foreigners sure talk fast, don’t they? When you listen to someone speaking a foreign language, you’re sure they’re speaking very quickly, far faster than you speak in your more refined native language. It turns out they think exactly the same thing about the way you talk. It’s the “Gabbling Foreigner Illusion.” Speech scientists have studied it…
I’ve written about how AI is great and AI research will change the world and you should use it to plan your trips, while cheerleaders kick up their heels and wave their pom poms, rah rah sis boom bah. That’s part of the story. I don’t apologize a bit for being a cheerleader for AI. It’s a great big beautiful…
AI is taking over online searches. At the moment, that’s good news – the AI summaries are increasingly reliable and helpful. In the long term, they might be so good that paradoxically, they contribute to the enshittification of the internet. It’s a big, complicated, nuanced AI world! Let’s go through a little history, then talk…