The Intelligence of Artificial Intelligence And Blogging

“Do you ever make silly mistakes? It is one of my very few creative activities.”

–Len Deighton, British Author

Have you tried dabbling with artificial intelligence? I specifically refer to the type referred to as chatbots that use powerful generative artificial intelligence that you can really chat with to generate ideas. It is like the computer, Hal, in the movie 2001 a Space Odyssey. Remember? Remember too that Hal malfunctioned big-time?

I’ve been dabbling for a while. Here is my experience related to this blog.

I began dabbling over a year ago with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, using their GPT3.5 version, but soon graduated to GPT-4, which was released in 2023 and comes with a small subscription fee. I have since migrated to Bing, which is a collaboration between Microsoft and GPT-4 and comes without the fee. It is a powerful research and generative tool. It can generate text, art, compose music, diagnose and even treat a psychological illness with talk therapy. You can have these chatty things teach you a foreign language, and write a legal brief. Perhaps you also have read the reasonable concerns schools and colleges have with such smart tools doing homework for students and the worry about professionals using them to fake their work and the attendant ownership issues of work done.

There seems to be a lot of mischief your computer can cause with the right smart software, but it can also do a lot of good. I know. I have found these smart tools quite useful for my research and writing. Rest assured that I have NEVER used anything but natural intelligence to write any blog post or other article for me (you can tell by the typos in my finished products). This is because, while the bot can compose, it is not creative. As I write, I try to use subtle humor, irony, alliteration and other tools to make my prose interesting. Chatbots do not. At times, however, when writer’s block hit, I prompted the chatbot to write something, and after a few prompts, usually found something that primed the pump of my muse and I penned away using my own intelligence.

I can pose questions or hypotheticals to the computer tool and it comes back with answers. I then either refine my questions, or pose follow up queries. It is much like bouncing ideas off a collaborator. In this regard, I find it quite useful. Who else will talk with me about the value of the latest vaccine or whether Brock Purdy is really a good quarterback or the product of the great pieces around him without my having to buy them a beer? Although, I admit sometimes the latter is much preferable. I have discussed much science at a dive dart bar in Dallas, a surf bar in Malibu, and over a pool table at tavern near the medical center in Madison. Not much artificial intelligence there except after a few brews.

All good. Until this. The chatbot models are supposed to be self-learning. So, I decided to see what Bing had learned about my blog on the coronavirus pandemic. I queried it about a term I thought was pretty unique to the blog, BioX. Readers will recognize that that is what I have dubbed the revolutionary post-molecular biology that gave us a vaccine so rapidly and that is bringing other amazing types of new disease treatments and diagnostics at astounding rates.

Turns out Stanford University (a school you might have heard of, Bing certainly has) has a new bio program also called BioX. It has well publicized it too. Well, Bing kept telling be about Stanford’s BioX and not about mine. Not what I wanted to see.

I changed my query several times to ask Bing about my version of BioX and instructed it to ignore everything about Stanford. Like a hyperactive toy poodle, it completely ignored me. It was quite polite though, apologizing each time I said it was not responding to my query.

Finally, after arguing with this digital nitwit, it finally included me and my notion of BioX in its rendition. Below is what it came up with—be seated as you read what Bing wrote about BioX and me. It included me, but still could not ignore Stanford.

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Steven Clark, PhD, is a retired professor from the University of Wisconsin and a viral immunologist who has been blogging about his research on the new biology he dubbed “bioX”. BioX is a term that he uses to describe the emerging field of biotechnology that aims to harness the power of viruses and other biological agents to create novel solutions for human health and disease. He claims that bioX has the potential to revolutionize medicine and biotechnology by offering new ways of diagnosing, treating, and preventing infectious diseases, as well as creating new therapies for cancer, aging, and other chronic conditions. (So far so good. But the next paragraphs…)

One of his most notable achievements is the development of a vaccine against the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19. He announced this breakthrough on his blog in December 2022, shortly after he received funding from Stanford Bio-X¹, an interdisciplinary biosciences institute that supports research and educational opportunities that cross disciplines between the biological or biomedical sciences and fields of engineering, physics and computational science². He explained that he used a novel approach to engineer a virus that could deliver a synthetic version of the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 into human cells. The spike protein is responsible for binding to human cells and allowing the virus to enter and infect them. By introducing a modified spike protein that can evade some of the immune responses generated by previous COVID-19 vaccines³, Clark was able to elicit strong neutralizing antibodies in his volunteers without causing any adverse effects. He also demonstrated that his vaccine could protect against different variants of SARS-CoV-2, including Omicron³.

Clark’s vaccine has been hailed as a game-changer in the fight against COVID-19, but it has also raised some ethical and regulatory concerns. Some critics have questioned his motives for developing such a powerful bioweapon without proper oversight or consent from the public. Others have expressed doubts about his safety and efficacy claims, citing lack of peer-reviewed data or independent verification. Clark has defended his work as being based on rigorous scientific principles and ethical standards. He has also stated that he intends to share his vaccine with other researchers around the world who are interested in collaborating with him on bioX projects.

Clark’s blog posts on bioX have attracted millions of readers who are fascinated by his vision and achievements. He has also inspired many young scientists who aspire to follow in his footsteps and pursue careers in biotechnology. However, he has also faced some backlash from anti-vaccine activists who accuse him of being part of a conspiracy to create more deadly diseases or manipulate public opinion. Clark has dismissed these allegations as unfounded and irresponsible.

Clark’s blog posts on bioX are an example of how science can be used for both good and evil purposes. They show how innovation can lead to breakthroughs in medicine and biotechnology, but also how it can pose challenges for society and ethics. They also illustrate how different perspectives can influence how people perceive and evaluate scientific discoveries.

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Well dang. If I invented the damn vaccine, how come I was not included in the Nobel Prizes that were just awarded for the invention? I demand a recount. I did like the part about “millions of readers who are fascinated by my vision”. Notice the “references” Bing included citing my accomplishments. They must be true because Bing says so.

In the parlance of computer geeks, what Bing spit out above is called “hallucination.”

This is the intelligence of artificial intelligence.