Spero in Dialogue
6/24–6/28
Each week, we like to share links, books, movies, and content that the team found interesting. Hopefully it helps the world get to know us a little better, and maybe some interesting patterns will emerge.
Shripriya Mahesh
The world is drowning in plastic. (ProPublica)
A new type of plastic recycling that doesn’t work. An unfortunate read. Still rooting for plastic-eating bacteria.
Marc Tarpenning
How generative AI could reinvent what it means to play (MIT Technology Review)
I have recently started playing Baldur’s Gate 3, the first RPG I’ve played in at least a decade. The graphics and game play are great, but despite the thousands upon thousands lines of pre-packaged dialog, the non-player characters (NPCs) struck me as in desperate need of a LLM upgrade. Apparently, that’s a thing.
Sara Eshelman
Would You Clone Your Dog (New Yorker)
I remember a scene toward the end of Errol Morris’s 2010 film, Tabloid, about a woman traveling to Korea to have her dog cloned. I don’t remember anything about that movie, except the dog cloning part. I guess I’ve been living under a pet cloning rock since then because this is apparently now someone anyone can just do with a pencil eraser-sized skin sample and $50,000. Seems very sci fi, and fairly disturbing when they describe how it works.
Stephen Wemple
I hadn’t used it in a few weeks and maybe I just didn’t catch the progress but I started using it again this week and its really gotten good at structuring its responses. I thought this search was a great example. It also made me reflect a bit on how google search results have shaped the way I think and how AI + tools like Perplexity will change that.
