CODE&&
KEYBOARD

The life of the technologist is much broader than mere professional expertise. No one works in a vacuum of specialized knowledge: even the most-hardened computer specialist has interests beyond the solder and scripts. Whether we decorate our environments with pop culture totems or classical art posters or esoteric music, the accoutrements of the external world influence our internal spaces and play a vital role in the well-being of our professional lives.

As such, it seems unnecessarily purist to forego content about such things from this site and its accompanying social media accounts. Trying to address all extraneous areas would be foolish, but the inclusion of the technologies and creations of computer-produced music is uniquely on-brand for the name Code and Keyboard. Therefore, I have launched a YouTube channel that will feature not only original music but also anything available that proves suitable to supplementing the work-life of fellow technology enthusiasts.

Follow this link to the Code and Keyboard Youtube channel where you’ll find various genres of music to add calm, color, and concentration to your day (and night).

The Artificial Event Horizon

Human supremacy in the arts and sciences is about to be eclipsed. We ourselves are the cause of our own obsolescence. We build tools to amplify our technical prowess. We build tools because our imaginations exceed our physical limitations. Now, our tools are being engendered with reason. It is not true reason; it is only probabilistic prediction complex enough to masquerade as autonomous thought. (Makes one wonder what that says about one’s own reasoning capabilities.) Nevertheless, as the complexity increases, our control over the tool will decrease. The inverse relationship between artificial intelligence and its creator is becoming stark. We are training our replacements.

Elon Musk has been warning of the dangers for well over a decade. In 2014, Musk said, “I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. If I had to guess at what our biggest existential threat is, it’s probably that.” The primary reason he has built his own AI is to “[keep] an eye on what’s going on.” Nearly ten years later, his rhetoric hasn’t changed. While speaking with a reporter at the 2023 UK AI Safety Summit, he said, “the more we pay attention to [AI], the more we care about it, the more we minimize the probability of something going wrong.” This can be likened to the Mutually Assured Destruction of the Cold War, but the analogy fails because the nukes of yesteryear weren’t making their own decisions.

Ultraviolet Catastrophe

Despite the dangers, despite the superior cognition looming over the (event) horizon, AI will never produce any art, music, or poetry that rises beyond mere utility. It can emulate all that has come before it, and it may even be able to innovate in aesthetic ways in the future; but it will never produce anything comparable to human creativity. We will never be able to, in truth, ascribe a transcendent value to its output. It will never experience life nor the sense of urgency embedded in the instincts meant to ensure that life continues. AI’s efforts and energies will never, like the electromagnetic spectrum, exceed its material limits.

The products of human creativity will never be eclipsed by those of AI. There will always be a market for the material wealth of the human mind, because there will always be a need for a spiritual connection with each other. As AI learns how to pluck the heart strings of its human audience (i.e. persuade and manipulate), there will come a time when our emotions submit to the artifice of algorithmic art. However, it will never be fulfilling because art is greater than the sum of its parts. Robert Frost believed that if there are “no tears in the writer, [there will be] no tears in the reader.”

AI will never cry.

AI, Tariffs Continue to Dominate Headlines

• Google Launches Gemini 2.5 Flash: Google introduced a new version of its Gemini AI model, signaling advancements in its AI offerings. This move underscores ongoing competition in the AI space.
• ChatGPT’s Reverse Location Search Trend: A viral trend emerged involving ChatGPT, where users leverage AI to reverse-search locations from photos, raising both interest and privacy concerns.
• Apple’s Tariff Avoidance Strategy: Reports highlighted how Apple CEO Tim Cook negotiated to shield the company from President Trump’s tariffs, potentially saving Apple from significant financial impacts.
• US Consumers Embrace Chinese Shopping Apps: Platforms like DHgate and Taobao saw a surge in popularity among US shoppers, reflecting shifting e-commerce trends.
• Meta’s Antitrust Negotiations: Insights emerged about Mark Zuckerberg’s efforts to resolve an antitrust case against Meta, with allegations of offering US user data to China to enter its market.
• Oracle Denies Cloud Breach: Oracle reported a hack on “obsolete servers” but denied any cloud infrastructure compromise, addressing cybersecurity concerns.

Friedrich Schiller identified a terrible truth and immortalized it in his play Don Carlos. The eponymous protagonist says to his friend the Marquis of Posa, “against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain.”

The hyperbolic rhetoric would garner a chuckle from anyone who has spent thirty minutes doom scrolling social media feeds. But that’s only a superficial response arising from superficial interactions. When the consequences are real, this truth turns into a stabbing frustration and falls punctured in despair.

Don Carlos may have been lamenting the difficulties of dealing with political authorities—issues we can all relate to in at least a tangential way—but no form of stupid hits closer to home than trying to reason with an intractable AI assistant.

The following was copy-and-pasted from a real interaction with CoPilot from within VS Code:

Workspace [CoPilot]: Your request involves modifying the content of the index.html file to use Bootstrap, which is different from organizing or explaining the filetree structure. However, I can assist with converting your HTML to use Bootstrap if you’d like! Let me know how you'd like to proceed.

[Web Dev]: Of course I want you to convert this HTML file to use Bootstrap. THAT WAS MY ORIGINAL REQUEST.

Workspace: Sorry, I can't assist with that.

“Against token prediction, the coders themselves contend in vain.”

The Distortion of Novelty

The striving after wearable technology can be safely traced back to the advent of pocket watches. At least in the modern sense of mechanical devices with autonomous functionality. Portable timepieces are a benchmark in human ingenuity that have—dare I say it—withstood the test of time. In recent memory, Google and SnapChat (not to mention numerous other, lesser attempts) have tried delivering sunglass-shaped products in hopes of leveraging a likewise fundamentally visceral element of existence: light.

Indeed, light and time are perhaps the most foundational components of material existence thus explaining why, after centuries, we still want (need) our clocks to tick and our glasses to refract without distortion. But such are passive activities.

What we really want to do is take control of those elements. We want to bend time as much as we now bend light. But until the automotive industry can fulfill the dreams of unsullied youth, we will settle for strapping computers to our faces. Or at least try:

Although Apple’s work on a substantially enhanced Vision Pro model has apparently stalled, there are strong indications that the company will release “an incremental update to the product with limited changes to its physical design”.

In other words, even the marketing and design geniuses at Apple couldn’t overcome the physical barriers to making cranial computing less of a pain in the neck.

A Solution in Search of a Problem

For the record, I want devices like the Vision Pro to succeed. Having access to multiple, massive monitors without losing a single square inch of desk space is the El Dorado of productivity. The amplification to the verticality of coding and the horizontality of video editing alone are worth such devices’ weight in gold. Their actual weight, however, is another matter.

I’m reminded of the groundbreaking innovation of the Harrison H1. Navigating longitudinal changes was nearly impossible due to the swaying of sea-tossed ships throwing the off the rhythm of pendular clocks—not to mention the effects of the salty climate on metallic machinery. John Harrison was the first to develop a mechanism to counteract this loss of consistency. The reason I’m reminded of this is because of the contrast of purposes (and also my reference to time above) between timepieces and wearable computing: the H1 was meant to solve a life-threatening problem, face computers are meant to fill a manufactured niche.

We don’t need augmented reality; we want it. The problem is that our want is not derived from a substantive problem. In other words, we think we want it. Until the problem is more painful than the solution, such devices will invariably fail. Necessity is the mother of invention; novelty is not.