generativeAI Archives - Philip Sheldrake

24 February 2026 / 0 Comments

Something Big Could Be Happening: A response to Matt Shumer’s post

Abstract image that looks vaguely like a planet rotating at speed.

A 2022 article in Noema magazine describes apophenia as "faulty pattern recognition. People see faces in clouds and alien ruins on Mars. ... Humans are pattern-recognizing creatures, and so apophenia is built in."

A Google engineer had claimed an LLM to be conscious, sentient, and indeed a person, and the article explores reasons for why he had reached such a conclusion. It's well worth a read, particularly its observation that we apply concepts that have wholly anthropomorphic heritage and meaning to LLM technology. Pehaps we need new vocabulary.

The technology's stochastic prowess is much advanced 42 months later, and perhaps that's all the more reason we continue to see things that aren't there. Matt Shumer's "Something Big Is Happening" is the latest example.

27 November 2025 / 0 Comments

Supersoftware — software that is itself symbolic AI

Abstract image created by Nano Banana Pro in response to the prompt to create an abstact image in the theme of this post's title

Trillions of dollars are flowing into LLM technology and services — that's not an exaggeration — and yet LLMs can’t grapple with enterprise software. When we invite them to code, to update schemas, to modify configurations, they break things. Constantly.

But this isn't an LLM problem. It's a software problem.

23 April 2025 / 0 Comments

Transition9 — the natural integration of human and next-level artificial intelligence

I'm never quite sure if the phrase is that we're blessed or we're cursed to live in interesting times. Either way, we're definitely here and it's definitely interesting.

Both the internet and the web were designed purposefully to be decentralized. No-one could take control let alone turn them off. Since then we've witnessed many power grabs — from privately owned social networks to nation states 'protecting' their citizens — interspersed with a series of community action and associated projects to re-decentralize things.

Decentralizing done well is a means to some very welcome ends, but it has proven to be a harder design challenge than centralizing. And just as you think you're making progress, along comes the next centralizing innovation.