The New York Times today had an article on a new AI-driven search engine named Perplexity. I put it through its paces with a few questions. Judge for yourself how it did.
First, I asked it about myself, but didn’t specify that I am B. Clay Shannon (as opposed to Clay Shannon, which I assumed would confuse the search engine, as there is a famous Clay Shannon, who is a winemaker) with the following question:
What connection does clay shannon have with mark twain?
Its answer was:
Clay Shannon has a connection with Mark Twain as an impersonator and author. He devotes his spare time to studying history and impersonating Mark Twain 1. Additionally, Clay Shannon is the author of the "Warble McGorkle" trilogy and its spinoff, the "Taterskin & The Eco Defenders" series 2. He has also written a book titled "MARK TWAIN, BIBLE SCHOLAR: 919 Bible Quotations, References, and Allusions from Mark Twain's Writings" 4. Furthermore, there is a recording of Mark Twain's book "Roughing It" Chapter 12 by Clay Shannon 5.
Impressive; better than Google would do, I thought. But just to be sure, I asked Google the same question. Its answer was:
Shannon's interest in Samuel Clemens, better known as author Mark Twain, began at an early age. While he enjoys his job at the Correctional Training Facility at Soledad, his love of history and Twain's writing has led him to a hobby breathing life into the literary icon.
Perplexity had some additional followup questions which it generated on its own, but none of the answers were very informative, so I asked it a new question: What is the novel Taterskin & The Eco Defenders about?
Its answer?
"Taterskin & The Eco Defenders" is a novel told from the perspective of the titular character, a Labrador Retriever, and is described as a Cli-Fi (climate fiction) story. It revolves around a few humans and several talking animals, and it is set in an ultimately utopian world. The book combines elements of adventure and environmentalism, and it seems to feature imaginative elements such as talking animals and dinosaurs. The novel is available in trade paperback and has been published by Blackbird Crow Raven.
Quite impressive, actually. One of its self-generated followup questions (and answers) to this was:
Who are the main characters in taterskin & the eco defenders?
The main characters in "Taterskin & The Eco Defenders" include Taterskin, a Labrador Retriever who is the titular character and the narrator of the story. The novel also features a few humans and several talking animals, contributing to its unique and engaging narrative
Also impressive, and a bit flattering (“unique and engaging narrative”).
So when I then asked Perplexity, What is Blackbird Crow Raven's real name? I figured it would know that, but it was confused and thought I was talking about literal birds:
The real name of the bird commonly known as Blackbird, Crow, and Raven varies based on its specific species. These birds belong to the family Corvidae, which includes crows, ravens, rooks, magpies, jackdaws, and jays. The specific names of these birds depend on their species, such as the American crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos) and the common raven (Corvus corax)1. Therefore, "Blackbird Crow Raven" is not a specific name but rather a combination of common names for different birds within the Corvidae family.
So I got more specific with this query: Who uses the nom de plume Blackbird Crow Raven?
It understood the question that time, but still doesn’t connect (any) Clay Shannon with Blackbird Crow Raven:
The individual who uses the nom de plume Blackbird Crow Raven is a writer of fiction, as a nod to their Native American heritage. This pseudonym is used for their literary works, and they have published books under this name on platforms such as Lulu and Amazon
The “funny” thing is, the search results show an image of the back cover of one of my books (as well as some Corvidae), where I plainly and unabashedly divulge the connection / my alter ego:
So just as AI images don’t do well generating text (often getting the spelling mangled), it also can’t read text. Admittedly this would be a difficult problem to solve programmatically, as the text is not stored in the image (as text — instead it’s pixels of color with no particular meaning). It’s doable to programmatically “read” text on an image, but would not be easy: the robots (the code behind the AI “machine”) would have to detect patterns of color (such as the white bits against the black background) and then deduce which letters are being displayed (complicating this is all the different types of fancy fonts which can make letters hard to decipher, sometimes even for wetware (humans)). Most times, though, the pattern it would be trying to decipher would not even be letters or words, but simply areas of a certain color against a background of a contrasting color (white on black, black on white, yellow on blue, etc.). So it’s a tough problem. A human getting the results shown above would know the answer to the question Who uses the nom de plume Blackbird Crow Raven? by looking at the image, but Perplexity is perplexed; it has no clue about the author’s real name; I doubt any AI machine currently does.
All in all, AI in general and Perplexity specifically are impressive, but they still have a ways to go. When used with evil intent, AI can indeed be dangerous (such as in the production of fake images and misleading data), but when used to generate images such as this one:
(which I generated with Bing Image Creator (Wall-E 3) using the prompt “Scenic Images of Trinity County, California in the style of Frederic Church”), I see nothing to complain about.
By the way, the image of “me” on the back cover of the book shown above was an AI-generated version of a “cross” between me and Mark Twain. What I actually look like is more like this:
(after starting a beard on 12/14/23)