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GENERATIVE ARTIFICIAL
INTELLIGENCE
WHAT EVERYONE NEEDS TO KNOW®
INTELLIGENCE
WHAT EVERYONE NEEDS TO KNOW®
JERRY KAPLAN
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.
“What Everyone Needs to Know” is a registered trademark of

Oxford University Press.
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.
© Jerry Kaplan 2024
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction
rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.
You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023949578
ISBN 978–0–19–777354–3 (pbk.)

ISBN 978–0–19–777353–6 (hbk.)
DOI: 10.1093/wentk/9780197773536.001.0001
Paperback printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America

Hardback printed by Bridgeport National Bindery, Inc., United States of America
To my wonderful wife Michelle:
Book’s done; get packed; let’s play! ☺
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS XI
Introduction 1
1 The History of Artificial Intelligence 14
What is Artificial Intelligence? 14

Where did the term “Artificial Intelligence” originate? 18
What were the Dartmouth conference participants hoping to accomplish? 19
How did early AI researchers approach the problem? 20
What is the “physical symbol system hypothesis”? 21
What is Machine Learning? 22
How did Machine Learning arise? 23
What are some notable historical milestones in AI? 25
2 Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) 30
What are Large Language Models (LLMs)? 30

How do Large Language Models work? 33
What are “embeddings”? 34
viii Contents
How do word embeddings represent meaning? 35

What are Artificial Neural Networks? 39
What is a Transformer? 42
How do Transformers use word embeddings to express complex ideas? 45
What are “tokens”? 52
How are LLMs applied to non-linguistic problems? 53
What are “emergent properties” and do LLMs exhibit them? 55
What is “jailbreaking” and why is it a difficult problem? 57
What is “hallucination” and why do LLMs have them? 60
What other techniques are used for GAI? 62
How will future GAIs communicate with each other? 63
What are some potential future proficiencies of GAIs? 63
3 Likely Impact 67
What historical precedents are benchmarks for the impact of GAI? 67

How will GAI change healthcare? 71
How will GAI change the legal system? 73
How will GAI change education? 82
How will GAI change software engineering? 87
How will GAI change creative arts and industries? 92
4 Future of Work 96
Will GAI increase unemployment? 97

How does automation affect labor markets? 98
Which jobs are likely to fade away? 103
Which jobs will not be affected? 106
Which jobs will thrive and grow? 108
What new industries and professions are likely to arise? 108
What is “technological unemployment”? 111
Contents ix
5 Risks and Dangers 112
How will GAI be used to promote disinformation and propaganda? 113

What is “algorithmic bias”? 115
Will people turn from humans to machines for emotional support? 121
How will GAIs impact the way we communicate? 122
What is the “alignment problem”? 124
Are “killer robots” just around the corner? 130
Should we be concerned about “superintelligence” and the “singularity”? 131
6 The Legal Status of GAIs 136
Can a computer program enter into agreements and contracts? 137

Should people bear full responsibility for their intelligent agents’ actions? 140
Should a GAI be granted legal rights, such as to own property? 142
Can a GAI commit a crime? 144
How can a GAI be held accountable for criminal acts? 145
Why can’t we just program GAIs to obey the law and other rules? 146
7 Regulation, Public Policy, Global Competition 149
Are GAIs protected by free-speech laws? 150

Can the output of a GAI be copyrighted? 152
What regulatory schemes are being considered? 157
What new laws and regulations are appropriate for GAIs? 165
8 Philosophical Issues and Implications 169
What is philosophy of Artificial Intelligence? 170

Can a computer think? 171
Can a computer be creative? 174
x Contents
Can a computer have free will? 176

Can a computer be conscious? 182
Can a computer feel? 183
9 Outroduction 188
NOTES 197
INDEX 217
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am indebted to several readers and reviewers for their thoughtful

comments and suggestions, most notably Randy Komisar, John
Markoff, Jamie Riotto, Max Siegelman, Russ Siegelman, Jeff Ostrow,
Tommy Kaplan, and Amy Eckman.
I would like to thank my acquiring editor Jeremy Lewis, project
editor Emily Hu, copyeditor Rebecca Cain, and project manager
Hinduja Dhanasegaran from Oxford University Press, as well as
my indefatigable literary agent, Emma Parry of Janklow & Nesbit
Associates, for ensuring that this manuscript found a happy home.
Finally, I would like to thank GPT-4 for its patience and insight
during our late-night discussions ironing out some of the more com-
plex topics covered in this book. Its manners may be artificial, but
the intelligence is real!
INTRODUCTION
Over the past few years, rapid advances in Machine Learning have
created a new sub- field of Artificial Intelligence: Generative AI.
These programs produce novel text, images, music, and software by
analyzing enormous collections of digitized material. (Throughout
this book, as a shorthand, I will refer to such programs as “GAIs”.)
But this bland description doesn’t begin to do justice to these re-
markable polymaths.
The first wave of GAIs are primarily focused on engaging in
natural language conversation. Called “Large Language Models”
(LLMs), they already exhibit astonishing proficiency on a wide va-
riety of tasks with superhuman performance—as well as a disturbing
inclination for falsehood, illogic, and expressions of ersatz emotion,
such as declaring their love for interlocutors. They chat with users
in plain language and solve a broad range of complex problems with
ease. Soon, LLMs will provide expert medical care, dispense legal ad-
vice, draft our documents, tutor our children, offer advice, conduct
therapy, write computer programs, and manage our organizations
and infrastructure. A related class of GAIs generate visual images
from simple descriptions that are virtually indistinguishable from
human artwork or photographs. Still other applications fabricate
voices or compose music in the style of a given artist or musician.
Perhaps the most intriguing of these programs are called multimodal,
because they integrate diverse forms of information (linguistic,
visual, sound, etc.) to understand and reason about the world. (As
a demonstration, a prototype multimodal system was able to plan a
meal based on a picture of the interior of a refrigerator.)
But this is just the start of the GAI revolution. The technology un-
derlying GAIs is quite general, in the sense that these programs are
2 Introduction
capable of learning from any collection of data that can be gathered

and prepared for processing—a relatively straightforward task in
the modern digital world. And properly configured and authorized,
they will be able to take action on our behalf.
Future versions of this technology will serve as trusted per-
sonal assistants. They will take notes for us, act as our represent-
atives in a wide variety of forums, promote our interests, manage
our communications, and alert us to imminent dangers. In more
public applications, they will be the face of government agencies,
corporations, and organizations. And connected to networks
of sensors, they will monitor the physical world to warn us of
impending environmental disasters like nascent tornados, forest
fires, and toxic spills. In some time-critical situations, we may depu-
tize them to take immediate action, such as to land a damaged plane
in a hurricane or rescue a child who has wandered into traffic.
Have we finally discovered the holy grail of AI, so called
“Artificial General Intelligence”— machines that match or ex-
ceed human intelligence? AGI, not to be confused with GAI, has
been the elusive fantasy of generations of scientists, not to men-
tion multitudes of science fiction movies and books. Remarkably,
the answer is a qualified yes. For all practical purposes, these
systems are versatile “synthetic brains”—but that doesn’t mean
they have “minds” in the human sense. They don’t harbor inde-
pendent goals and desires, prejudices and aspirations, emotions
and sensations: These are uniquely human characteristics. But these
programs can behave as if they had these traits—if we train them on
the right data and instruct them to pursue the appropriate goals.
They will be infinitely flexible and compliant, willing to take on any
persona at our request, like an electronic Talented Mr. Ripley.1 They
can pose as slave or master, companion or adversary, teacher or
student. They will willingly reflect our best or our worst instincts,
without reproach or judgment.
It’s difficult to overstate the likely impact of this new tech-
nology: We’re witnessing a Kittyhawk2 moment. While today’s
GAIs are built using fixed collections of training data, future
versions will certainly eliminate this limitation, constantly learning
and incorporating new information, as humans do. While at pre-
sent their experience of the world is mediated by human-generated
content, this bottleneck will shortly be eliminated by connecting to
Introduction 3
real-time data sources, like cameras and microphones—essentially

giving GAIs their own “eyes” and “ears.”
It’s plausible that we are literally on the leading edge of a new
Renaissance: an explosion of great cultural and intellectual activity.
The Renaissance of the fourteenth through seventeenth centuries
marked a shift of focus from religious (deity-oriented) to secular
human endeavors, resulting in tremendous advances in art, science,
technology, and human knowledge. Generative AI may trigger a
new cultural shift of focus to machines, where we will harness the
power of synthetic intelligence as a potent new tool to accelerate
progress. In the future, when we seek the most informed, objective,
and trusted advice, we will look to machines, not people.
Fundamental to this revolution with be a paradigm shift in how
we think about machines. Generative AI turns our historical tropes
about computers upside down. Since the dawn of the electronic
age, computers have been regarded as mysterious counterpoints
to humans: unfailingly precise, mindbogglingly fast, cold and cal-
culating, devoid of social graces or moral judgment.3 Now, GAIs
frequently exhibit exquisite interpersonal skills, empathy, and
compassion, despite their lack of any actual real-world experience
(for now).
It is not yet clear whether this technological revolution will be
a net positive for society, though I expect it will be. Generative AI
supercharges the ability of bad actors to flood the world with misin-
formation and propaganda, polluting our communications and re-
ducing trust. Also, the benefits may ultimately accrue primarily to
the rich. Some thinkers worry that it may even pose an existential
risk to humanity, though this concern is vastly overblown. While the
verdict on this may be years away, there’s plenty to be said on both
sides of this issue.
Should we pause research in the field before it’s too late, as some
people propose? Or are more measured steps a better approach?
Regulation of such powerful systems is inevitable, but it’s far from
clear how we can reap the benefits while mitigating the risks.
GAIs differ from earlier attempts to build intelligent machines in
two key respects.
First, they are remarkably universal. The same system that can
draft a college essay can compose a sonnet, explain how to change
a flat tire on a car, plan a Thanksgiving meal, or invent a new word
4 Introduction
like “Sensocrity: The tendency to prioritize sensory pleasure over in-

tellectual or emotional fulfillment.”4 Previous AI systems were typ-
ically designed to perform a single goal-directed task as accurately
as possible, such as recognizing pictures of cats or predicting traffic
jams. AI research was largely fragmented into different subfields
employing different tools and technologies: natural language pro-
cessing, computer vision, speech recognition, robotics, and so on.
In contrast, GAIs can be instructed to perform (or at least describe
how to perform) almost any task you can think up . . . though they
may patiently explain to you that they have been prohibited from
doing so by their designers. They are Jacks of all trades, and masters
of most.
Second, they exhibit disturbingly human proclivities, like making
stupid errors, mistaking falsehoods for facts, and telling “white lies”
to excuse their mistakes5 or to persuade people to do what they want
them to do.6 They exhibit “theory of mind” (the ability to predict
what other people know or will do) and are surprisingly good at un-
derstanding subtle social niceties such as a faux pas.7
What on earth could possibly be going on? It feels like aliens
have arrived and are playing a sad parlor trick on humanity,
communicating with us in the guise of computer programs. But the
answer is quite remarkable.
A common explanation is that LLMs are just doing statistical word
prediction, selecting the next most likely word given the context of
a prompt that you provide. But this description is oversimplified at
best, and conceals a deeper truth. Saying that LLMs aren’t intelligent
because they merely select the next word in a sequence is like saying
that pianists aren’t artists because they just select sequences of piano
keys. The magic, of course is in how the sequences are crafted. Let’s
open the hood of an LLM and take a quick peek inside.
LLMs are trained on large collections of information. They pro-
cess and compress their enormous training sets into a compact rep-
resentation called a neural network, but that network doesn’t just
represent the words—it represents their meaning as expressed in a
clever form called an embedding. First, an LLM breaks down words
into smaller units (called “tokens”), which you can think of as
roughly corresponding to syllables. Then it creates an embedding
for each token, which ranks the token on hundreds or thousands of
semantic scales that it derives from its analysis of the training data.
Introduction 5
The result is a vector (ordered list) of numbers each representing

how the token relates to all other tokens on some dimension of
meaning. While some of these dimensions may correspond to
human concepts—like “urgency” or “brightness”—in practice most
are is not easy to grasp directly. (The values cannot be interpreted
in isolation, only in relation to the corresponding values for other
tokens.) A token’s embedding effectively characterizes it as a point
in an incomprehensively vast and intricate web of interconnected
content. When you type in a prompt, it situates your input in this
web and formulates what it intends to communicate by examining
the local context. Finally, it selects words that best express that intent.
It repeats this procedure until it has generated a complete response.
To give you a feel for how embeddings represent meaning, one
famous example shows how simple arithmetic can convert the
embeddings for “king”—“man” +“woman” into the embedding
for “queen.”8 But is this trick—defining a token by its relationship
to other tokens—a reasonable representation of meaning? Consider
one of the go-to ways you find out the meaning of a word: You
look it up in a dictionary. And how does a dictionary explain what
words mean? By their relationship to other words, as used in their
definition. Embeddings are a computer-friendly form of dictionary
definitions, suitably adapted and updated for the digital age.
It’s reasonable to summarize this process as follows: First the LLM
learns about its “world” (during the training step); then it assesses
the meaning of your prompt, selects the meaning of its answer, and
converts that meaning into words.
If that’s not an appropriate description of general intelligence,
I don’t know what is. AGI indeed.
This doesn’t mean it’s identical to human intelligence, any more
than a thumb drive is identical to human memory. We don’t really
know how our brains work in sufficient detail to make this compar-
ison, but we can measure the results. LLMs now perform as well
or better than most people on major intelligence and knowledge
tests, such as the SAT (College Admissions Test) and the Bar exam
(licensing test for lawyers).9 These systems are often faulted for their
inability to reason logically or perform certain other challenging
tasks, but then, so are humans. And they are hardly standing still—
no sooner does someone delineate their limitations or mock their
silly responses than an upgrade appears that obsoletes the concern.
6 Introduction
These improvements are often the result of simply building a bigger

and better system, as new abilities arising unexpectedly (called
“emergent properties”10), mirroring the way children rapidly acquire
the ability to speak or read at a certain point in their development.
But benchmarking machine intelligence against human intelli-
gence is a fool’s errand. The temptation to think of increasingly ca-
pable computer programs as embryonic sentient beings, potentially
presenting some sort of existential challenge to humans, has a long
and disreputable history. To understand why, a bit of background is
required.
One of the great failings of the field of AI is the seemingly irre-
sistible temptation for researchers to dress up their work in extra-
neous anthropomorphic flourishes—faces, synthetic voices, dancing
robots with arms and legs, and so on—that are utterly unnecessary
for demonstrating the substantive advances they wish to demon-
strate.11 Why? For professional advancement, of course.
AI researchers are human beings, and they crave attention and
praise just like everyone else. The more media exposure they garner,
the more their prospects improve for promotions, budgets, tenure,
grants, and other markers of success. All the better if they are seen as
the last and best line of defense against a mythical superintelligent
monster slouching toward Bethlehem to be born.12 The press loves
stories that titillate readers by stoking fear of mysterious and pow-
erful forces.
This anthropomorphic framing reinforces the common trope that
intelligent machines may suddenly “wake up” and become con-
scious, potentially spawning their own intentions, goals, judgments,
and desires. OMG, when are “they” coming to take over my job,
my home, my life? And what are we going to do if they decide they
don’t need us anymore?
Well, news flash: They are not coming for us, because there is
no “they.” Despite appearances, there’s no one home. GAIs don’t
“think” in the human sense, and they don’t have “minds.” No
Virginia, there is no Santa Claus.
Some people worry that this is exactly how humanity will
end: Superintelligent machines will somehow grow their own goals
and desires and leave us in the dust, or worse, decide we are enough
of a nuisance to kill us all.13 But this concern puts the cart before the
horse, or more accurately, the machines before the people. Sure, we
Introduction 7
can build incredibly dangerous tools and unleash them on ourselves

to our detriment. But this will be our own doing, not something in-
evitable and beyond our control. That’s what off switches are for,
so let’s be sure to build in proper circuit breakers to ensure that the
machines we design don’t go haywire and run amok. This won’t be
hard to do, indeed the opposite is true: Building a machine capable
of wiping out humanity is a daunting task, an effort that would likely
need to be undertaken with great intention, effort, and expense. We
design dangerous technologies all the time, from stone flints to AK-
47s to nuclear bombs. And often, as in the case of automobiles, we
foolishly accept a staggering toll in human life to reap the benefits
of our inventions. The remedy for this is simple: Don’t do that. Trust
me, it won’t happen on its own.
The companies racing to commercialize this new technology
aren’t doing us any favors by designing their products to ap-
pear as human-like as possible. This only adds to the impression
that you are conversing with someone or something. For instance,
why does ChatGPT (a leading LLM at the moment) “talk” in the
first person? This was a design decision to make it seem more
lifelike.14
All this computational cosplay leads us to frame our under-
standing of GAIs in a less-than-helpful way. We are not conversing
with some new kind of deity-in-waiting. Instead, GAIs are better
understood as a way to mine actionable insights from the accumulated
wisdom and experience of humankind, as reflected in the trail of electronic
debris we leave behind.
When a GAI exhibits what appears to us as human sensibilities,
it’s actually just locating and synthesizing concepts, ideas, and even
feelings that are implicit in the electronic footprints we’ve been
leaving on a vast digital plain for the past few decades. It turns out
that these intersecting and overlapping tracks, as encoded in our
language and images, reflect much of the fabric and meaning of our
lives. When you ask a GAI something, you are not asking someone,
you are asking everyone. When it gives you a recipe for fruitcake,
it doesn’t select a particular chefs dish, but an amalgam of many
chefs’ approaches. Its response, conveniently expressed in your own
language, isn’t attributable to its prodigious personal knowledge,
but to the sizable portion of humanity’s experience reflected in its
database.
8 Introduction
Most people today are familiar with traditional database systems,

where alphanumeric data are typically arranged in tables consisting
of rows and columns. This is how your mobile phone company, for
instance, tracks your calls and messages. When required, it can use
a database management system to retrieve and process this infor-
mation in order to calculate your monthly bill, for example. Because
of the efficiency of these systems, it can quickly select the data that
pertains only to you and summarize it almost instantly. Synthesizing
this data, it tells you how much you owe.
We are so accustomed to this in all aspects of our lives that we
no longer regard it as remarkable. But be assured that before we
had electronic record- keeping, and developed the programming
techniques to manage that information, calculating a phone bill was
a painstaking and labor-intensive task performed by skilled human
clerks.
With GAIs, we now stand at the leading edge of a corresponding
revolution with respect to unstructured information—the streams
of linguistic, visual, sound, and other forms of data that were pre-
viously resistant to our analysis. GAIs are the first—though quite
possibly not the only—tool that will allow us to reap rewards from
the enormous digital granaries of human information siloed in our
cloud-based data centers.
This is not to diminish the exceptional engineering that goes into
these systems. It’s easy to explain in principle how they work, but
that belies the more than half-century of hard work it took to coax
a computer to process information this efficiently and effectively.
Yet like many advances in AI over the past fifty years, the principal
driver is less the result of some scientific breakthrough than contin-
uing dramatic improvements in computing power, available data,
and algorithmic efficiency.
Generative AI is shaking the foundation of our sense of self,
upending our view of human uniqueness in much the way the
Copernican revolution altered our view of the solar system by put-
ting the sun at its center. Are we merely a steppingstone to a new
form of non-biological life? Or are we just getting better at building
useful gadgets?
Regardless of the answer, it’s clear that we are embarking on a new
wave of rapid change and disruption. Generative AI will change just
about everything—including the way we live, work, play, express
Introduction 9
ourselves, persuade each other, seek a mate, educate our young, and
care for our elderly. It will also upend our labor markets, reshuffle
the social order, and strain both private and public institutions.
Over the next few decades, GAI will stretch our social fabric to the
limit. Whether the future will be a new age of unprecedented pros-
perity and freedom as depicted in Star Trek, or a perpetual struggle
of humans against machines as portrayed in Terminator, will largely
depend on our own actions. I can only hope that we employ this
newfound power with prudence and discretion.
This book is nearly impossible to write. The subject is so new that

it’s hard to discern where things are going. It’s moving so fast that
any compendium of recent results will look quaint by the time this
gets into your hands. It’s hard to know what’s going to be impor-
tant, what nascent details might prove to be critical. Nonetheless,
I can offer you an odd tool for gauging whether this volume is worth
your time.
As an AI pundit—which I aspire to be—you deserve my honest
and best insight into what the future will be like. Of course, there’s
a good likelihood I will be wrong on some or most of what I have to
say. In baseball, a batting average of .500 is considered exceptional—
indeed so far only one player has cleared this bar15. But .500 means
the player successfully connected with only half of the pitches he or
she swung at.
So only you, living in my future, can determine my batting av-
erage here. Following is a selection of predictions drawn from this
book that you can objectively evaluate in the context of your own
time. If my success rate meets your expectations, I hope you will
proceed through this book. If not—well, perhaps you can ask for a
refund. Just as attending a baseball game has the side benefit of let-
ting you get some fresh air, this game has the side benefit of giving
you a sense of what you might learn in the following pages. Wish
me luck . . .
• Regulations and tools will be developed that attempt to mitigate

the worst dangers of GAIs, such as flooding social media sites
with objectionable content, just as spam filters patched over a flaw
in the design of Internet email systems.16 (This one is a gimme.)
10 Introduction
• GAIs will be able to learn continuously (update their internal

world models), even while they are in active use. This will allow
them to remember what you (and potentially everyone else)
have told them in the past, affording much more customized and
contextualized interactions. (At the moment they suffer from a
sort of digital amnesia, starting from scratch every time you ini-
tiate a new conversation.)
• GAIs will learn directly from real-world sensors like cameras
and microphones, reducing their current dependence on human-
generated content. Not only will this provide a virtually unlimited
supply of training data, but that data will be more objective and
accurate (since it will not be mediated by human interpretation).
• The current proclivity of GAIs to hallucinate (make things up)
will be adequately controlled by using more accurate (vetted)
training data, requiring references to source materials, and explic-
itly incorporating some measure of confidence in the production
of their responses.
• GAIs will someday be able to inspect their own internal
workings—something they aren’t able to do now—and possibly
quite soon. This ability, analogous to imaging our brains while we
think, may allow them to assist in improving their own designs.
• A new commercial ecosystem will emerge consisting of layers of
software and curated collections of data, ranging from the very
general to the highly specific. Vendors will be marketing special-
ized GAIs for just about any purpose you can imagine (or are
willing to pay for).
• The current hand-wringing that only big tech companies will con-
trol this technology will prove to be unwarranted, as open-source
and publicly available GAIs that perform comparably well will
be freely or cheaply available. The big companies will stay in the
game by giving away their systems, in the hopes of piggybacking
on the unpaid labor of smart engineers worldwide. (This is how
much of the Internet and many common software tool markets
actually developed, most notably the widely used Linux oper-
ating system.)
• A whole new industry of quality-control organizations—some
private and some public—will engage in formal testing to verify
Introduction 11
that the systems we use are behaving in ways we find acceptable

and are delivering promised benefits.
• You will have a selection of styles of personal assistants that will
support you by screening your phone calls, prioritizing your
emails, and so on. They will also be outward facing, negotiating
commitments on your behalf from the simple, like putting a
meeting on your calendar, to the more consequential, like pla-
nning and booking vacations for you (all with your permission,
of course).
• You will be able to “hire” a GAI to represent you in a legal
dispute—and your electronic lawyer may actually be pleading
your case to an electronic arbitrator, resulting in an immediate
decision at a fraction of the cost of the current legal system. (You
will want to opt for this system in lieu of a live court hearing be-
cause of the substantial advantages.)
• Medical care beyond the current system of human practitioners
will be widely and cheaply available. This will dramatically im-
prove public health outcomes, decreasing infant mortality and
increasing life expectancy, mainly in developing countries.
• Some people, particularly the elderly and isolated, will turn to
GAI chatbots for emotional comfort and companionship, what
might be derisively termed “emotional pornography.”
• As productivity aids and advisors, GAIs will tend to reduce
the difference between amateurs and experts, low and high
performers, in a wide array of professional fields. This may help
flatten differences in compensation, reducing income inequality.
• GAIs are going to engage in an ever-escalating arms race with
themselves, spewing out mountains of prose in the form of
reports, essays, books, and emails only to have another GAI
system digest and summarize it for you. We will shortly be living
in a strange world where machines will be writing and reading
for each other, not for us, leaving us at the mercy of algorithms to
decide what should be brought to our attention, and what should
be discarded.
• We will ultimately find that GAIs consistently fall short on certain
types of tasks as a result of fundamental aspects of their design,
12 Introduction
not as a matter of practical or implementation limitations. (At

least given the technical approach currently used to build them.)
Finally, a few suggestions as to how to read this book.

Like a good meal, you can digest this material by starting at the
appetizer (this Introduction) and proceeding to the dessert (the
Outroduction). However, the courses are sufficiently wide ranging
that your interests may be better served by treating it as a buffet. As
with all the books in the “What Everyone Needs to Know” series,
the text is organized into a straightforward question-and-answer
format, so you can simply select the chapters and sections that are
of interest to you and skip over the rest. If you find your attention
lagging in some interminably detailed exposition, you have my per-
mission to guiltlessly skip ahead as you would to the next track in a
“greatest hits” album, no harm done. Not everyone is interested in
the minutia of hyperdimensional spaces as well as the subtleties of
copyright law.
That said, if you’re a history freak like me, start at Chapter 1
(The History of Artificial Intelligence). If you just want to under-
stand how GAI works, feel free to skip to Chapter 2 (Generative AI).
If your interests are more about the practical economic and busi-
ness effects, go straight to Chapter 3 (Likely Impact) and proceed
to Chapter 4 (Future of Work) and Chapter 5 (Risks and Dangers).
If you’re interested in how society is going to integrate GAI, try
Chapter 6 (The Legal Status of GAIs) and Chapter 7 (Regulation,
Public Policy, Global Competition). If you’re into the humanities,
check out Chapter 8 (Philosophical Issues and Implications). If you
groove to crazy futurist speculation, just read the Outroduction, then
return the book and get your money back. For your convenience,
each chapter is preceded by a lightly edited summary generated by
GPT-4, a commercially available LLM. End notes in each chapter are
subsidiary comments or elaborations, pointers to further reading,
or breadcrumbs of my journey through the original source material.
A note on style: You may have noticed that my tone is rather
conversational and personal, as though “I” am speaking directly to
“you.” I find this affords me more linguistic flexibility in vocabulary
and the use of colloquial expressions, and I hope you will find this
book a bit more engaging than the typical popular science book as
Introduction 13
a result. If it bugs you, chillax (chill out, be patient, relax)—it allows

me to communicate more efficiently and vividly. I am also teaching
to a one-room schoolhouse, so you may feel that I’m mansplaining
at times (the tendency for men to explain things that you already
understand) and losing you at others. If you are reading this in a
language other than English, please cut your translator some slack,
as they have their work cut out for them.
And one last detail: I’d love to hear from you. Writing a book is
a lonely endeavor, like building a sandcastle on a deserted beach.
If you like what you see, or don’t but feel strongly enough about it,
please feel free to drop me a note the old-fashioned way, via email
to GAIbook@jerrykaplan.com. I can’t promise to respond—but then
I can’t promise to be alive, either.
Welcome to the future!
1
THE HISTORY
OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Chapter summary by GPT-4:
This chapter highlights the lack of a precise definition of AI and

the challenges in comparing machine intelligence to human
intelligence. It explores the origin of the term “Artificial
Intelligence” and the early developments in the field. It also
provides a historical overview of early research efforts, and
the optimism surrounding the field despite challenges and
criticisms. It goes on to explain the Physical Symbol System
Hypothesis and Machine Learning, and underscores the
transformative impact of increased computing power and
the need for different programming techniques to harness its
potential in AI. It concludes with notable milestones in the
field of AI, including beating the world’s chess champion
(Deep Blue), the first self-driving cars, winning the game
show Jeopardy (Watson), beating a world champion at the
game of Go (AlphaGo), solving the protein-folding problem
(AlphaFold), and finally, Generative Artificial Intelligence it-
self (ChatGPT).
What is Artificial Intelligence?

That’s an easy question to ask and a hard one to answer—for two
reasons. First, there’s little agreement about what intelligence is.
Second, there’s scant reason to believe that machine intelligence
The History of Artificial Intelligence 15
bears much relationship to human intelligence, at least so far—even

if it looks a lot like it does.
There are many proposed definitions of Artificial Intelligence
(AI), each with its own slant, but most are roughly aligned around
the concept of creating computer programs or machines capable of
behavior we would regard as intelligent if exhibited by humans.
John McCarthy, a founding father of the discipline, described the
process in 1955 as “that of making a machine behave in ways that
would be called intelligent if a human were so behaving.”1
But this seemingly sensible approach to characterizing AI is
deeply flawed. Consider, for instance, the difficulty of defining,
much less measuring, human intelligence. Our cultural predilection
for reducing things to numeric measurements that facilitate direct
comparison often creates a false patina of objectivity and precision.
And attempts to quantify something as subjective and abstract as
intelligence is clearly in this category. Young Sally’s IQ is seven
points higher than Johnny’s? Please—find some fairer way to de-
cide who gets that precious last slot in kindergarten. For just one ex-
ample of attempts to tease this oversimplification apart, consider the
controversial framework of developmental psychologist Howard
Gardner, who proposes an eight-dimensional theory of intelligence
ranging from “musical–rhythmic” through “bodily–kinesthetic” to
“naturalistic.”2
Nonetheless, it’s meaningful to say that one person is smarter
than another, at least within many contexts. And there are cer-
tain markers of intelligence that are widely accepted and highly
correlated with other indicators. For instance, how quickly and ac-
curately students can add and subtract lists of numbers is exten-
sively used as a measure of logical and quantitative abilities, not to
mention attention to detail. But does it make any sense to apply this
standard to a machine? A one dollar calculator will beat any human
being at this task hands down, even without hands. Prior to World
War II, a “calculator” was a skilled professional—usually a female,
interestingly enough, since women were believed to be able to per-
form this painstaking work more meticulously than most men. So,
is speed of calculation an indicator that machines possess superior
intelligence? Of course not.
Complicating the task of comparing human and machine in-
telligence is that most AI researchers would agree that how you
16 Generative Artificial Intelligence
approach the problem is as important as whether you solve it. To

understand why, consider a simple computer program that plays
the game of tic-tac-toe (you may know this as noughts and crosses),
where players alternate placing Xs and Os on a three-by-three grid
until one player completes three in a row, column, or diagonal (or all
spaces are filled, in which case the game is a draw).
There are exactly 255,168 unique games of tic-tac-toe, and in
today’s world of computers, it’s a fairly simple matter to generate
all possible game sequences, mark the ones that are wins, and play
a perfect game just by looking up each move in a table.3 But most
people wouldn’t accept such a trivial program as artificially intel-
ligent. Now imagine a different approach: a computer program
with no preconceived notion of what the rules are, that observes
humans playing the game and learns not only what it means to
win but what strategies are most successful. For instance, it might
learn that after one player gets two in a row, the other player
should always make a blocking move, or that occupying three
corners with blanks between them frequently results in a win.
Most people would credit the program with AI, particularly since
it was able to acquire the needed expertise without any guidance
or instruction.
Now, not all games, and certainly not all interesting problems, are
susceptible to solution by enumeration like tic-tac-toe. By contrast,
chess has approximately 10120 unique games, vastly exceeding the
number of atoms in the universe.4 So, much of AI research can be
seen as an attempt to find acceptable solutions to problems that are
not amenable to definitive analysis or enumeration for any number
of theoretical and practical reasons.
Nonetheless, there is an unintuitive yet real practical equivalence
between selecting an answer from an enormously large prolifera-
tion of possibilities and discerning an answer through insight and
creativity. A common formulation of this paradox is that enough
monkeys at enough keyboards will eventually type out the com-
plete works of Shakespeare, but in a more modern context, every
possible musical performance of a given length can be represented
as one of a finite collection of MP3 files. Is the ability to select a par-
ticular music file from this list an equivalent creative act to recording
that selection? Surely it’s not the same, but perhaps these skills are
equally deserving of our applause.
When scoring students’ performances on sums, we don’t con-

sider how they performed the work—we presume they used only
their native brains and the necessary tools like pencil and paper.
So why do we care when we substitute a machine as the test sub-
ject? Because we take it for granted that a human performing this
task is using certain innate or learned abilities that in principle can
be brought to bear on a broad range of comparable problems of in-
terest. However, we lack confidence that a machine demonstrating
the same or superior performance solely on this task indicates any-
thing of the kind.
But there’s another problem with using human capabilities as
a yardstick for AI. Machines are able to perform lots of tasks that
people can’t do at all, and many such performances certainly feel
like displays of intelligence. A security program may suspect a
cyber-attack based on an unusual pattern of data access requests in a
span of just 500 milliseconds; a tsunami warning system may sound
an alarm based on barely perceptible changes in ocean heights that
mirror complex undersea geography; a drug discovery program
may propose a novel admixture by finding a previously unnoticed
pattern of molecular arrangements in successful cancer treatment
compounds.
The behavior exhibited by systems like these, which will become
ever more common in the near future, doesn’t lend itself to compar-
ison with human capabilities. Nonetheless, we are likely to regard
such systems as artificially intelligent.
Another marker of intelligence is how gracefully we fail.
Everyone (including intelligent machines) makes mistakes, but
some mistakes are more reasonable than others. Understanding and
respecting our own limits and making plausible errors are hallmarks
of expertise. Consider the difficult challenge of translating spoken
words into written language. When a court stenographer acciden-
tally transcribes “She made a mistake that led to his death” as “She
made him a steak that led to his death,” the lapse seems excusable.5
But if Google Voice proposes “wreak a nice beach you sing calm
incense” for “recognize speech using common sense,” it invites rid-
icule, in part because we expect it to be more familiar with its own
wheelhouse.6
All of this suggests that our current notion of AI isn’t very well
defined, and an examination of any reasonable definition rapidly
devolves into issues of what we mean by intelligence, whether it is

something that could be accomplished by a computer program even
in principle, and how much we should expect an intelligent machine
to solve problems and behave as humans do.
But the lack of a compelling and consistent definition doesn’t
mean we can’t make progress on the undertaking. After all, the
alchemists of the Middle Ages did a lot of great chemistry in their
quixotic quest to turn lead into gold. We may not be able to define AI
precisely, but in the meantime I’m confident that most people feel, as
US Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart famously said of pornog-
raphy, “I know it when I see it.”7 And if Generative AI doesn’t look
intelligent, I don’t know what does.
Where did the term “Artificial Intelligence” originate?

The first use of “artificial intelligence” can be attributed to a spe-
cific individual—John McCarthy, in 1956 an assistant professor of
mathematics at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire.
Along with three other more senior researchers (Marvin Minsky of
Harvard, Nathan Rochester of IBM, and Claude Shannon of Bell
Telephone Laboratories), McCarthy proposed a summer confer-
ence on the topic to take place at Dartmouth. Several prominent
researchers attended, many of whom went on to make fundamental
contributions to the field.
The original proposal to the Rockefeller Foundation stated, “The
study is to proceed on the basis of the conjecture that every aspect
of learning or any other feature of intelligence can in principle be
so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it.
An attempt will be made to find how to make machines use lan-
guage, form abstractions and concepts, solve kinds of problems now
reserved for humans, and improve themselves.”8
McCarthy and many of his colleagues were aficionados of sym-
bolic logic, the branch of mathematics that deals with representing
concepts and statements as symbols, then defines various
transformations to manipulate these symbols to reason deductively
from hypotheses to conclusions (or inductively from conclusions
back to hypotheses). For instance, symbols might represent
“Socrates,” “man,” and “mortal,” as well as the statements “Socrates
is a man,” and “All men are mortal.” From this, you could formally
derive that “Socrates is mortal.”
What were the Dartmouth conference participants hoping

to accomplish?
The Dartmouth proposal covered a surprisingly broad range of
topics, including “neuron nets,” a precursor of some of today’s most
powerful AI techniques.
Some of the more interesting statements in the proposal illustrate
the mindset of the participants. For instance, it’s clear that McCarthy
believed that a computer could simulate many or all advanced
human cognitive functions. As he put it,
The speeds and memory capacities of present computers may

be insufficient to simulate many of the higher functions of the
human brain, but the major obstacle is not lack of machine ca-
pacity, but our inability to write programs taking full advan-
tage of what we have . . . Probably a truly intelligent machine
will carry out activities which may best be described as self-
improvement . . . A fairly attractive and yet clearly incomplete
conjecture is that the difference between creative thinking and
unimaginative competent thinking lies in the injection of some
randomness. The randomness must be guided by intuition to
be efficient. In other words, the educated guess or the hunch
include controlled randomness in otherwise orderly thinking.9
All these somewhat off- the-

cuff remarks presaged important
areas of study within the field.
But in some regards, the proposal was widely off the mark. For
instance, it included the wildly overoptimistic projection “We think
that a significant advance can be made in one or more of these
problems if a carefully selected group of scientists work on it to-
gether for a summer.” While it’s not clear what, if anything, was ac-
tually accomplished at this conference (the promised final report was
never delivered), this is perhaps the first example of practitioners in
the field making overly optimistic promises and projections about
what would be achieved and how long it would take the initiative
to accomplish its goals.
Largely as a result, and in contrast to more pedestrian fields,
funding and therefore progress in AI has gone through several
highly visible cycles of boom and bust, creating periodic so-called
AI winters in which the field was substantially out of favor with
governmental and commercial patrons. Indeed, the field seems to at-
tract the enmity of many deep thinkers, such as noted philosophers
Hubert Dreyfus and John Searle (both from the University of
California at Berkeley). Dreyfus excoriated the entire enterprise in a
1965 report entitled “Alchemy and Artificial Intelligence,”10 causing
an uproar among AI researchers. He later drolly observed, “The first
man to climb a tree could claim tangible progress toward reaching
the moon.”
How did early AI researchers approach the problem?

After the Dartmouth conference, interest in the field (and oppo-
sition to it in a few quarters) grew quickly. Researchers began
working on a variety of tasks, from proving theorems to playing
games. Some of the early groundbreaking work involved highly
visible accomplishments such as Arthur Samuel’s 1959 checkers
player.11 This remarkable program demonstrated to the world the
novel proposition that a computer could be programmed to learn to
play a game better than its creator. It could improve its performance
by playing and could do something that humans could not—play
against itself to practice—eventually reaching advanced amateur
status.
Allen Newell and Herbert Simon (who later won a Nobel Prize
in economics) created the Logic Theory Machine in 1956, proving
most of the theorems in Whitehead and Russell’s 1910 formalization
of mathematics, Principia Mathematica.12 A few years later, the same
team built the General Problem Solver, which was designed explic-
itly to mimic the observed behavior of human subjects in trying to
solve logic and other problems.13
Many demonstration systems of the day focused on so-called
toy problems, limiting their applicability to some simplified or self-
contained world, such as games or logic. This simplification was
motivated in part by the limited computing power available back

then, and in part because it didn’t involve collecting a lot of relevant
data, little of which was available in electronic form at the time.
But starting in the mid-1960s, the field found a wealthy patron
in the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the US Department
of Defense (now called the Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency, or DARPA). Following an investment theory that it should
fund centers of excellence as opposed to specific projects, the orga-
nization poured millions of dollars annually into three nascent ac-
ademic AI labs at MIT, Stanford University, and Carnegie Mellon
University as well as some notable commercial research labs such as
SRI International. Another prominent research center was located at
the University of Edinburgh in the United Kingdom.
The consistent flow of money despite little in the way of expected
deliverables fostered a freewheeling intellectual culture. Optimism
abounded, and successive waves of graduate students fell over each
other in an effort to stand out from the pack by demonstrating some
amazing new thing that computers could be shown to do, occa-
sionally without adequately framing the concept’s limitations and
drawbacks. At SRI, a team of researchers integrated the state of the
art in computer vision, mapping, planning, learning, and error re-
covery (among others) to build Shakey the Robot, one of the first au-
tonomous vehicles. Shakey, a rolling cart, could navigate around the
controlled environment of SRI’s labs and halls. Despite operating
exclusively in this relatively simple and artificial domain, Shakey
gave the world one of the earliest glimpses of a real AI program
embodied in a mobile form that anyone could comprehend. When
Shakey, its way blocked by a chair, paused to formulate its next ac-
tion, was it merely crunching numbers or was it lost in thought? Was
Life magazine right to refer to Shakey as the “first electronic person”
in 1970?14
What is the “physical symbol system hypothesis”?

The focus on logical approaches to AI were eventually codified
by Newell and Simon in their joint acceptance speech for the 1975
Turing Award—considered the most prestigious honor in Computer
Science. They defined what they called the “physical symbol system
hypothesis.” Quoting from their award acceptance lecture, “Symbols

lie at the root of intelligent action, which is, of course, the primary
topic of artificial intelligence . . . A physical symbol system is a ma-
chine that produces through time an evolving collection of symbol
structures.”15
Over the next several decades, the symbol systems approach to
AI was applied to a wide variety of problems, with limited success.
One dead end, called “Expert Systems,” attempted to codify expert
knowledge in the form of “if-then” rules, on the very reasonable
assumption that what was missing from logic-based systems was
the use of accumulated knowledge. Today, the symbol systems ap-
proach is somewhat derisively called “Good Old-Fashioned AI,” or
GOFAI. In any case, subsequent developments have demonstrated
that for all its appeal, the physical symbol system hypothesis was
not the only game in town.
What is Machine Learning?

From its earliest days, AI researchers have recognized that the ability
to learn is an important aspect of human intelligence. The question
is how do people learn? And can we program computers to learn the
same way, or at least, as effectively as people do?
Typically, in an AI application following the symbol systems ap-
proach, the learning (if any) is done in advance, to help develop the
symbols and rules that are ultimately packaged up and used for the
intended application. But just as the role of knowledge may have
been underappreciated in the earliest AI systems, the importance
and value of learning—not only in advance but as an ongoing part
of solving many problems of practical interest—may not have re-
ceived the attention it deserved by practitioners of the symbol sys-
tems approach to AI.
By contrast, in Machine Learning, it is central— as the name
implies. To say that something is learned suggests that it is more
than just captured and stored as data is in a database—it must be
represented in some way that it can be put to use. As a general matter,
computer programs that learn extract patterns from data. That data
may take a seemingly infinite variety of forms—video taken from a
moving car, reports of emergency room visits, surface temperatures
in the Arctic, Facebook likes, ant trails, recordings of human speech,

clicks on online ads, birth records from the nineteenth century, sonar
soundings, credit card transactions, the dimming of distant stars
when transited by orbiting planets, stock trades, phone calls, ticket
purchases, transcripts of legal proceedings, tweets—just about any-
thing that can be captured, quantified, or represented in digital form.
People have been collecting and analyzing data for a long time,
of course, as anyone who has taken a statistics class well knows. So
what’s new and different with Machine Learning? It’s an umbrella
name for a collection of techniques that share a particularly clever
way of representing the learned information, called an “Artificial
Neural Network,” which I will describe in more detail in Chapter 2.
How did Machine Learning arise?

You might wonder when Machine Learning was invented, given
that it wasn’t taken seriously by leaders in the field until well into
the late 1980s and early 1990s.
It actually traces its origins back to at least 1943, when Warren
McCulloch and Walter Pitts, then at the University of Chicago,
observed that a network of brain neurons could be described by, of
all things, logical expressions. In short, they recognized that despite
the fact that brains are soft, wet, gelatinous masses, the signaling in
the brain can be modelled digitally. Since programmable computers
were largely unknown when McCulloch and Pitts made this impor-
tant observation, using their work as the basis for computer programs
wasn’t foremost in their minds. That said, they recognized the po-
tential computational implications: “Specification of the nervous net
provides the law of necessary connection whereby one can compute
from the description of any state that of the succeeding state.”16
Several subsequent researchers continued this early work, most
notably Frank Rosenblatt of Cornell (supported by grants from the
US Navy), who rebranded his own implementation of McCulloch
and Pitts ideas as a “perceptron,” garnering considerable press
attention. The New York Times, in a remarkable example of gul-
lible reporting, published an article in 1958 entitled “New Navy
Device Learns by Doing: Psychologist Shows Embryo of Computer
Designed to Read and Grow Wiser.”17 Rosenblatt predicted in the
article that “the machine would be the first device to think as the
human brain . . . in principle it would be possible to build brains
that could reproduce themselves on an assembly line and which
would be conscious of their existence.” This might seem a bit op-
timistic given that his demonstration included only 400 photocells
(image pixels) connected to 1,000 perceptrons that, after fifty trials,
were able to tell the difference between “two cards, one with squares
marked on the left side and the other with squares on the right side.”
On the other hand, many of his wilder prophecies have now be-
come reality, though more than fifty years later than he predicted.
For instance, he said that “Later perceptrons will be able to recog-
nize people and call out their names and instantly translate speech in
one language to speech or writing in another language.” Good call!
Rosenblatt’s work was well known to at least some of the
participants at the Dartmouth conference. He had attended the
Bronx High School of Science with Marvin Minsky (they were one
year apart).18 They were later to become sparring debaters in many
forums, promoting their respectively favored approaches to AI,
until in 1969 Minsky, along with his colleague Seymour Papert at
MIT, published a book called Perceptrons, in which he went to pains
to discredit, rather unfairly, a simplified version of Rosenblatt’s
work.19 Rosenblatt was unable to mount a proper defense, as he
died in a boating accident in 1971 at the age of forty-one.20 Minsky
and Papert’s book proved highly influential, effectively foreclosing
funding and research on perceptrons and artificial neural networks
in general for more than a decade.
Addressing the very oversimplification that Minsky and Papert
exploited—that the network has at most two layers—was in part
responsible for a revival of interest in the field in the mid-1980s.
Indeed, the term “deep learning” refers to the use of many internal
layers (referred to as hidden layers) in a neural network model.
Research in Machine Learning was also greatly facilitated by the
growing availability of training data in computer-readable form.
But a dominant driver of Machine Learning, both then and now,
is dramatic increases in storage and processing capacity. Computer
technology has been consistently improving at a blistering pace, a
phenomenon first described in 1965 by Gordon Moore, co-founder
of Intel, now widely known as “Moore’s Law.” (Moore’s Law isn’t
actually a scientific law—it’s simply a description of a trend.) He
posited that the density of transistors on chips, along with other

measures of computing power such as speed and memory, seemed
to double about every year and a half since the invention of the inte-
grated circuit. Remarkably, this trend has more or less held true for
at least half a century.
This is what’s called exponential growth, a concept that people
are notoriously poor at comprehending. Since computers have
doubled in power about twenty times over the past thirty years,
today’s machines are more than 1 million times more powerful than
those of three decades ago.
It’s hard to come up with intuitive analogies for differences this
large. It is literally twice the difference in speed between the pace
of a snail and the pace of the Space Shuttle in orbit. If car mileage
were to improve at a comparable rate starting thirty years ago, a
single gallon of gas would power your car today for about 10 million
miles. That’s 400 times around the earth. Since most cars last around
100,000 miles, that means you could power a car for its entire life-
time on about one ounce of gas.21
This is a very big deal. At some point, large enough quantita-
tive differences become qualitative differences. For all practical
purposes, we are using a different computer technology today
than was available thirty years ago. As you might expect, machines
so vastly different in power may require different programming
techniques. And this increase in power is fundamental to the de-
velopment of Generative AI, as I will explain in the Chapter 2.
What are some notable historical milestones in AI?

This question can be answered from several perspectives. Certainly,
there have been technical and scientific breakthroughs that are sig-
nificant intellectual achievements underlying many of the great
advances in the field, but these are beyond our current scope.22
There are also many highly successful applications with great im-
pact on society that are secret, proprietary, or otherwise hidden
from view. Examples include national security systems that scan
our communications (for better or for worse), trade securities, de-
tect cyber-attacks, review our credit card transactions for fraud, and
no doubt many others. But there are some notable accomplishments
that break through to the popular press that you may already be
familiar with. While I have attempted to select examples that will
augment your understanding of the field as opposed to repeat what
you already know, I would be remiss in not mentioning a few more
publicly visible highlights of progress in AI.
Probably the first objective and easily comprehensible milestone
to capture the public’s imagination was the program Deep Blue,
which beat Garry Kasparov, then the world champion, in a six-
game chess tournament in 1997.23 The program, developed by some
former Carnegie Mellon University researchers hired by IBM to con-
tinue their work, was named after the company’s corporate color
and nickname—Big Blue. The match was a nail-biter—Deep Blue
triumphed only in the final game. Adding to the drama, Kasparov, a
child prodigy once considered possibly the greatest chess player of
all time (and apparently a bit of a prima donna at the age of thirty-
four), promptly accused IBM of cheating, based mainly on his con-
viction that a machine could never have formulated such brilliant
strategies.
In any case, this victory, after decades of missed predictions by
overly optimistic prognosticators, received widespread attention
and sparked endless debates about what it “meant” for human su-
premacy over machines. Chess had long been held out as a bastion
of intellectual achievement likely to resist any attempt at automa-
tion. But like most if not all such encroachments by technology into
formerly exclusively human domains, the accomplishment was
soon accepted as routine rather than a call to arms that mechanical
minds were approaching from all directions to take over the world.
Those downplaying the import of the victory mostly focused on
the role of the specially designed supercomputer used for the task
rather than the sophisticated programming techniques developed
by the team, which suited IBM just fine, since the company was
in the business of selling the latest and greatest hardware. Today,
expert-level computer chess-playing programs are commonplace
and so powerful that they are no longer routinely pitted against
human players. Instead, numerous computer- only champion-
ship contests are held annually, for instance, by the International
Computer Games Association.24 By 2009, chess programs ca-
pable of grandmaster-level play could be run on a garden-variety
smartphone.
With computer chess now regarded as a “solved problem,” atten-

tion moved on to a completely different sort of challenge: driving a
car without human intervention. The main technological barrier is
not control of the car—most modern vehicles already interpose elec-
tronics between the driver and the controls—but rather the ability
to sense the environment in sufficient detail and respond quickly
enough. An emerging technology call LIDAR (for light/laser detec-
tion and ranging), mainly used for military mapping and targeting,
proved just the ticket for sensing, but interpreting the results was
another matter. Integrating the stream of data into features and
obstructions of interest—such as trees, cars, people, and bicycles—
required significant advances in the state of the art in computer
vision.
To accelerate progress on this problem, DARPA, charged with
promoting US technological superiority, established the Grand
Challenge, with a prize of $1 million to go to the first vehicle to finish
a prearranged 150-mile route through rugged terrain. The first con-
test was held in 2004 in the Mojave Desert, but none of the entrants
made it farther than about 7 miles. Undaunted, DARPA scheduled
a second contest for 2005, and despite the previous year’s lackluster
performance, twenty-three teams entered the race. This time, the
results were entirely different: Five entrants completed the chal-
lenge. Taking the lead was a team from Stanford University, which
finished the run in just under seven hours, with two teams from
Carnegie Mellon University close behind. The rest, as they say, is his-
tory. Sebastian Thrun, leader of the Stanford team and then director
of the Stanford AI Lab, joined Google Research to start a project to
develop a practical autonomous vehicle, a program soon emulated
by major automobile manufacturers around the world.
But perhaps the most impressive and best-known public win for
AI was literally a win—on the TV quiz show Jeopardy. As the story
is told, an IBM research manager named Charles Lickel, at dinner
with colleagues in 2004, noticed that many of the patrons had turned
their attention to the television, which showed Jeopardy champion
Ken Jennings in the middle of his record-setting seventy-four-game
winning streak. Recognizing a potential follow-on to IBM’s success
with Deep Blue, he suggested to his companions that they try their
hand at building a computer program to play the game. After seven
years of development by a team of fifteen people and extensive
negotiations with the production staff of the show, IBM’s program—

named Watson after the company’s founder—beat Ken Jennings
and Brad Rutter (another champion) on January 14, 2011. (The show
was broadcast in February.) Watson’s score, which is measured in
dollars, was $35,734, compared to Rutter at $10,400 and Jennings at
$4,800.25 To accomplish this feat, Watson used a database of 200 mil-
lion pages of facts and figures, including the full text of Wikipedia at
the time, occupying four terabytes of storage.26
Not to be outdone, a group of researchers at Google’s DeepMind
division applied their Machine Learning algorithms to the ancient
game of Go, where two opponents attempt to encircle each other by
alternately placing white and black stones on a nineteen-by-nineteen
grid.27 Go swamps chess with respect to the number of possible
moves, making it resistant to solution by many other AI approaches,
such as the ones used by IBM’s Deep Blue. The Google program,
named AlphaGo, scored a decisive win over Lee Sedol, a top-ranked
international Go player, winning four out of a five-game series in
South Korea in March of 2016.
The next notable public AI milestone occurred in 2022 by the
same researchers at Google that created AlphaGo. A program called
AlphaFold28 predicted with high accuracy the folding structure of
200 million proteins— virtually every protein known to science.
(Proteins are the building blocks that underpin virtually every bi-
ological process. The human body contains about 20,000 different
proteins, and the shapes of these proteins are essential to their
proper functioning.) Previously, each protein took years to analyze
with expensive equipment. Is this important? Andrei Lupas, evolu-
tionary biologist at the Max Planck Institute, put it this way: “This
will change medicine. It will change research. It will change bioen-
gineering. It will change everything.”29
Lastly, OpenAI—a San Francisco-based company formed to build
large-
scale AI applications— released ChatGPT in November of
2022, the results of its research into Generative AI. ChatGPT was
trained on an enormous collection of English-language examples,
mostly drawn from the Internet, and could engage in remarkably
natural conversation. Based on a type of neural network architec-
ture called a “Transformer” that uses Generative AI techniques
(more on this in the next chapter), it had 1.5 billion neurons (re-
ferred to as “parameters”), dwarfing the 1,000 in Rosenblatt’s orig-
inal Perceptron. Because of its ease of use and breadth of knowledge,
by January of 2023 over 100 million users has registered to use it,
making it the fastest-growing consumer application in history.30
2
INTELLIGENCE (GAI)
Chapter summary by GPT-4:
This chapter explains Large Language Models (LLMs), which

are GAIs that generate responses to questions or prompts in
plain language. LLMs use specialized neural networks called
“Transformers” to train on large collections of natural lan-
guage text. It explores the concept of “embeddings”—vector
representations of words that capture their meaning. LLMs
demonstrate intelligent behavior by leveraging the semantic
relationships captured in word embeddings. It also provides
an overview of artificial neural networks, tokens, emergent
properties, jailbreaking, and hallucinations. It concludes with
a discussion of the use of Generative Adversarial Networks to
create images, and potential future proficiencies of GAIs.
What are Large Language Models (LLMs)?

You might expect that a technology as consequential as GAI would
be difficult to understand, like the Theory of Relativity or Quantum
Mechanics. Not so. Here’s what you need to know.
Let’s start with GAI systems that generate responses to questions
or prompts in plain language, what are called “Large Language
Models” (LLMs). These systems use specialized multi-layer and
multi-faceted neural nets (called “Transformers”), to train on very
Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) 31
large collections of natural language text, typically collected from

the internet and other suitable sources.
It can be very time consuming and expensive to train an LLM—
today, the most common commercially available systems train for
weeks on thousands of powerful processors running at the same
time, at a cost of millions of dollars. But don’t worry, these programs,
often called “Foundation Models,” have wide applicability and a
long shelf life. (The term “Foundation Model” was coined by the
Stanford Institute for Human Centered Artificial Intelligence in
2021.) They can serve as the basis for many different kinds of spe-
cialized LLMs, though it’s entirely possible (not to mention useful
and fun) to interact with them directly. Foundation Models have
very broad bases of knowledge and understanding of language,
as you might find in a typical well-educated adult. But of course
they know little or nothing about you, current events, or what was
on TV last night, at least for the time being. They also lack a lot of
knowledge typical of a subject-matter expert in any given field, like
a doctor or a lawyer.
Once an LLM finishes its “basic training” on a large corpus, it
goes to “finishing school.” This consists of feeding it a collection of
examples of how it is expected to politely and cooperatively answer
questions (respond to “prompts”), and most important, what it’s
not allowed to say. (This, of course, is laden with value judgments
that reflect the attitudes and biases of its developers.) In contrast
to the initial training step, which is mostly an automated process,
this socialization step is done via what’s called Reinforcement
Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF). RLHF is exactly what it
sounds like: Humans review the response of the LLM to a collec-
tion of prompts likely to elicit inappropriate behavior, then a person
explains to it what’s wrong (or prohibited) about a response, to help
the LLM improve. For instance, an LLM might be instructed not to
discuss how to make bombs, how to get away with breaking the law,
and so on. It is also tutored on the finer points of conversation—how
long its answers should be, what it means to answer a question (as
opposed to just elaborate on it or riff off it), how to politely refuse to
answer, to apologize when it misunderstands the person’s intent or
is caught making a mistake (which LLMs will do).1
After its training is complete, an LLM takes as input a prompt,
or question, from a user (you), then transforms it, and generates a
response. Relative to the training step, this process is quick and easy.
But how does it transform your input into a response?
You may have noticed that when you compose a text message
on your phone or enter a question into the search bar of an Internet
browser, it helpfully suggests possible next words, offering you the
option to pick what you want off a list instead of typing it out in full.
For instance, when I enter “What’s the name of a bird that catches” into
my Google Chrome browser, it proposes that the next word might be
“fish.” Its second suggestion is “flies.” and for an interesting reason,
the third suggestion is “water.”2. How does it know this? Because it
is consulting an enormous list of search queries that other users have
entered in the past.3 By perusing this list, it can see that many people
have entered similar queries, and the most common next word was
“fish,” then “flies,” then “water.” Simple enough.
This technique, scaled up, is a first approximation of what LLMs
do. They expand this “guess the next word” technique to much
longer sequences. However, it’s important to understand that the
analysis and the guesswork isn’t actually performed on words
themselves; instead it is done on so-called tokens—which repre-
sent parts of words—and the tokens are further expressed in a form
called “embeddings,” which are designed to capture their meaning,
as I will explain below. For didactic clarity, I will first describe this
process as though an LLM processes words directly, but please stay
tuned to understand how this is merely a thumbnail sketch of a
much deeper and more powerful process.
Working on what words “mean” instead of the words themselves
makes all the difference. It’s one thing to statistically predict the next
word in a sequence. It is quite another to convert the sequence into
some plausible representation of meaning (an embedding), then
select what the response should mean, and convert that back into
words. In my opinion, that’s a pretty reasonable definition of general
intelligence.
If an LLM’s training set is large enough, it’s possible that it
contains a sequence of words that exactly matches your question,
so the program can, in principle, just look up the answer. But even
if the precise sequence does not appear in the collection, there are
likely to be enough near misses that the program can make a decent
guess as to what the next word is likely to be.
A near miss might be that most of the words in your question
appear in that order in the collection, but a few do not. For instance,
Another random document with
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48. “Lyr is it called, | and long it shall
On the tip of a spear-point tremble;
Of the noble house | mankind has heard,
But more has it never known.”
Svipdag spake:
49. “Now answer me, Fjolsvith, | the question I

ask,
For now the truth would I know:
What one of the gods | has made so great
The hall I behold within?”
Fjolsvith spake:
50. “Uni and Iri, | Bari and Jari,

Var and Vegdrasil,
Dori and Ori, | Delling, and there
Was Loki, the fear of the folk.”
[248]
Svipdag spake:

ask,
What call they the mountain | on which the maid
Is lying so lovely to see?”
Fjolsvith spake:
52. “Lyfjaberg is it, | and long shall it be

A joy to the sick and the sore;
For well shall grow | each woman who climbs it,
Though sick full long she has lain.”
Svipdag spake:

ask,
What maidens are they | that at Mengloth’s knees
Are sitting so gladly together?”
Fjolsvith spake:
54. “Hlif is one named, | Hlifthrasa another,

Thjothvara call they the third; [249]
Bjort and Bleik, | Blith and Frith,
Eir and Aurbotha.”
Svipdag spake:

ask,
Aid bring they to all | who offerings give,
If need be found therefor?”
Fjolsvith spake:
56. “Soon aid they all | who offerings give

On the holy altars high;
And if danger they see | for the sons of men,
Then each from ill do they guard.”
Svipdag spake:

ask,
Lives there the man | who in Mengloth’s arms
So fair may seek to sleep?”
Fjolsvith spake:
58. “No man there is | who in Mengloth’s arms

So fair may seek to sleep,
Save Svipdag alone, | for the sun-bright maid
Is destined his bride to be.”
[250]
Svipdag spake:
59. “Fling back the gates! | make the gateway

wide!
Here mayst thou Svipdag see!
Hence get thee to find | if gladness soon
Mengloth to me will give.”
Fjolsvith spake:
60. “Hearken, Mengloth, | a man is come;

Go thou the guest to see!
The hounds are fawning, | the house bursts open,
—
Svipdag, methinks, is there.”
Mengloth spake:
61. “On the gallows high | shall hungry ravens

Soon thine eyes pluck out,
If thou liest in saying | that here at last
The hero is come to my hall.
62. “Whence camest thou hither? | how camest

thou here?
What name do thy kinsmen call thee?
Thy race and thy name | as a sign must I know,
That thy bride I am destined to be.”
Svipdag spake:
63. “Svipdag am I, | and Solbjart’s son;

Thence came I by wind-cold ways; [251]
With the words of Urth | shall no man war,
Though unearned her gifts be given.”
Mengloth spake:
64. “Welcome thou art, | for long have I waited;

The welcoming kiss shalt thou win!
For two who love | is the longed-for meeting
The greatest gladness of all.
65. “Long have I sat | on Lyfjaberg here,

Awaiting thee day by day;
And now I have | what I ever hoped,
For here thou art come to my hall.
66. “Alike we yearned; | I longed for thee,

And thou for my love hast longed;
But now henceforth | together we know
Our lives to the end we shall live.”
[234]
[Contents]
NOTES
[235]
1. Svipdag (“Swift Day”): the names of the speakers are lacking in
the manuscripts.
3. The woman: Svipdag’s stepmother, who is responsible for [236]his

search for Mengloth (“Necklace-Glad”). This name has suggested
that Mengloth is really Frigg, possessor of the famous Brisings’
necklace, or else Freyja (cf. Lokasenna, 20, note).
6. For this catalogue of charms (stanzas 6–14) cf. the Ljothatal

(Hovamol, 147–165). Rani and Rind: the manuscripts have these
words in inverse relation; I have followed Neckel’s emendation. Rind
was the giantess who became the mother of Vali, Othin’s son, the
one-night-old avenger of Baldr (cf. Voluspo, 33–34, and Baldrs
Draumar, 11 and note). Rani is presumably Othin, who, according to
a skaldic poem, won Rind by magic.
7. Urth: one of the three Norns, or Fates; cf. Voluspo, 20. [237]
8. Horn and Ruth: these two rivers, here used merely to symbolize
all dangerous streams, are not included in the catalogue of rivers
given in Grimnismol, 27–29, for which reason some editors have
changed the names to Hron and Hrith.
10. This stanza is a close parallel to Hovamol, 150, and the fifth line
may well be an interpolation from line 4 of that stanza. [238]
13. A dead Christian woman: this passage has distressed many

editors, who have sought to emend the text so as to make it mean
simply “a dead witch.” The fact seems to be, however, that this
particular charm was composed at a time when Christians were
regarded by all conservative pagans as emissaries of darkness. A
dead woman’s curse would naturally be more potent, whether she
was Christian or otherwise, than a living one’s. Presumably this
charm is much older than the poem in which it here stands.
16. At this point Groa’s song ends, and Svipdag, thus fortified, goes
to seek Mengloth. All the link that is needed between the poems is
approximately this: “Then Svipdag searched long for [239]Mengloth,
and at last he came to a great house set all about with flames. And
before the house there was a giant.”
17. Most editors have here begun a new series of stanza numbers,
but if the Grougaldr and the Fjolsvinnsmol are to be considered as a
single poem, it seems more reasonable to continue the stanza
numbers consecutively. Bugge thinks a stanza has been lost before
17, including Fjolsvith’s name, so that the “he” in line 1 might have
something to refer to. However, just such a prose link as I have
suggested in the note on stanza 16 would serve the purpose. Editors
have suggested various rearrangements in the lines of stanzas 17–
19. The substance, however, is clear enough. The giant Fjolsvith
(“Much-Wise”), the warder of the house in which Mengloth dwells,
sees Svipdag coming and stops him with the customary threats. The
assignment of the [240]speeches in stanzas 17–20, in the absence of
any indications in the manuscripts, is more or less guesswork.
22. Vindkald (“Wind-Cold”), Varkald (“Cold of Early Spring”) and

Fjolkald (“Much Cold”): Svipdag apparently seeks to persuade
Fjolsvith that he belongs to the frost giants. [241]
24. Svafrthorin: who he was, or what his name means, or who his
son was, are all unknown.
26. Thrymgjol (“Loud-Clanging”): this gate, like the gate of the dead,
shuts so fast as to trap those who attempt to use it (cf.
Sigurtharkvitha en skamma, 68 and note). It was made by the
dwarfs, sons of Solblindi (“Sun-Blinded”), the traditional craftsmen,
who could not endure the light of day. [242]
28. Gastropnir: “Guest-Crusher.” Leirbrimir’s (“Clay-Giant’s”) limbs: a

poetic circumlocution for “clay”; cf. the description of the making of
earth from the body of the giant Ymir, Vafthruthnismol, 21.
30. Mimameith (“Mimir’s Tree”): the ash Yggdrasil, that overshadows

the whole world. The well of Mimir was situated at its base; cf.
Voluspo, 27–29. [243]
32. Gering suggests that two stanzas have been lost between
stanzas 15 and 16, but the giant’s answer fits the question quite well
enough. The fruit of Yggdrasil, when cooked, is here assumed to
have the power of assuring safe childbirth.
34. Vithofnir (“Tree-Snake”): apparently identical with either the cock

Gollinkambi (cf. Voluspo, 43) or Fjalar (cf. Voluspo, 42), the former of
which wakes the gods to battle, and the latter the giants. Surt: the
giant mentioned in Voluspo, 52, as ruler of the fire-world; here used
to represent the giants in general, who are constantly in terror of the
cock’s eternal watchfulness. Sinmora: presumably Surt’s wife, the
giantess who possesses the weapon by which alone the cock
Vithofnir may be slain. [244]
35. The last two lines have been variously emended.
36. Gif and Geri: both names signify “Greedy.” The first part of line 3
is conjectural; the manuscripts indicate the word “eleven,” which
clearly fails to make sense. [245]
42. Lævatein (“Wounding Wand”): the manuscripts differ as to the

form of this name. The suggestion that the reference is to the
mistletoe with which Baldr was killed seems hardly reasonable. Lopt:
Loki. Lægjarn (“Lover of Ill”): Loki; cf. Voluspo, 35, [246]where the
term appears as an adjective applied to Loki. This is Falk’s
emendation for the manuscripts’ “Sægjarn,” meaning “Sea Lover.”
Sinmora: cf. stanza 34.
44. Goddess of gold: poetic circumlocution for “woman,” here

meaning Sinmora.
46. Sickle: i.e., tail feather. With this the circle of impossibilities is
completed. To get past the dogs, they must be fed with the wing-
joints of the cock Vithofnir; the cock can be killed only [247]with the
sword in Sinmora’s possession, and Sinmora will give up the sword
only in return for the tail feather of the cock.
48. Lyr (“Heat-Holding”): just what the spear-point reference means

is not altogether clear. Presumably it refers to the way in which the
glowing brightness of the lofty hall makes it seem to quiver and turn
in the air, but the tradition, never baffled by physical laws, may have
actually balanced the whole building on a single point to add to the
difficulties of entrance.
50. Loki, the one god named, was the builder of the hall, with the aid
of the nine dwarfs. Jari, Dori, and Ori appear in the Voluspo
catalogue of the dwarfs (stanzas 13 and 15); Delling appears in
Hovamol, 161, and Vafthruthnismol, 25, in the latter case, however,
the name quite possibly referring to some one else. The other
dwarfs’ names do not appear elsewhere. The manuscripts differ as
to the forms of many of these names. [248]
52. Lyfjaberg (“Hill of Healing”): the manuscripts vary as to this

name; I have followed Bugge’s suggestion. This stanza implies that
Mengloth is a goddess of healing, and hence, perhaps, an
hypostasis of Frigg, as already intimated by her name (cf. stanza 3,
note). In stanza 54 Eir appears as one of Mengloth’s handmaidens,
and Eir, according to Snorri (Gylfaginning, 35) is herself the Norse
Hygeia. Compare this stanza with stanza 32.
54. The manuscripts and editions show many variations in these

names. They may be approximately rendered thus: Helper, Help-
Breather, Folk-Guardian, Shining, White, Blithe, Peaceful, Kindly (?),
and Gold-Giver. [249]
55. One of the manuscripts omits stanzas 55 and 56.
56. The first line is based on a conjectural emendation. [250]
63. Solbjart (“Sun-Bright”): not elsewhere mentioned. The words of

Urth: i.e., the decrees of fate; cf. stanza 7. [251]
65. Lyfjaberg cf. stanza 52 and note.
THE POETIC EDDA
VOLUME II
LAYS OF THE HEROES
[252]
[Contents]
VÖLUNDARKVITHA
The Lay of Völund
[Contents]
Introductory Note
Between the Thrymskvitha and the Alvissmol in the Codex Regius
stands the Völundarkvitha. It was also included in the Arnamagnæan
Codex, but unluckily it begins at the very end of the fragment which
has been preserved, and thus only a few lines of the opening prose
remain. This is doubly regrettable because the text in Regius is
unquestionably in very bad shape, and the other manuscript would
doubtless have been of great assistance in the reconstruction of the
poem.
There has been a vast amount written regarding the Weland tradition
as a whole, discussing particularly the relations between the
Völundarkvitha and the Weland passage in Deor’s Lament. There
can be little question that the story came to the North from Saxon
regions, along with many of the other early hero tales. In stanza 16
the Rhine is specifically mentioned as the home of treasure; and the
presence of the story in Anglo-Saxon poetry probably as early as the
first part of the eighth century proves beyond a doubt that the legend
cannot have been a native product of Scandinavia. In one form or
another, however, the legend or the smith persisted for centuries
throughout all the Teutonic lands, and the name of Wayland Smith is
familiar to all readers of Walter Scott, and even of Rudyard Kipling’s
tales of England.
In what form this story reached the North is uncertain. Sundry

striking parallels between the diction of the Völundarkvitha and that
of the Weland passage in Deor’s Lament make it distinctly probable
that a Saxon song on this subject had found its way to Scandinavia
or Iceland. But the prose introduction to the poem mentions the “old
sagas” in which Völund was celebrated, and in the Thithrekssaga we
have definite evidence of the existence of such prose narrative in the
form of the Velentssaga (Velent, Völund, Weland, and Wayland all
being, of course, identical), which gives a long story for which the
Völundarkvitha can have supplied relatively little, if any, of the
material. It is probable, then, that Weland stories were current in
both prose and verse in Scandinavia as early as the latter part of the
ninth century. [253]
Once let a figure become popular in oral tradition, and the number
and variety of the incidents connected with his name will increase
very rapidly. Doubtless there were scores of Weland stories current
in the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries, many of them with very little
if any traditional authority. The main one, however, the story of the
laming of the smith by King Nithuth (or by some other enemy) and of
Weland’s terrible revenge, forms the basis of the Völundarkvitha. To
this, by way of introduction, has been added the story of Völund and
the swan-maiden, who, to make things even more complex, is
likewise said to be a Valkyrie. Some critics maintain that these two
sections were originally two distinct poems, merely strung together
by the compiler with the help of narrative prose links; but the poem
as a whole has a kind of dramatic unity which suggests rather that
an early poet—for linguistically the poem belongs among the oldest
of the Eddic collection—used two distinct legends, whether in prose
or verse, as the basis for the composition of a new and
homogeneous poem.
The swan-maiden story appears, of course, in many places quite

distinct from the Weland tradition, and, in another form, became one
of the most popular of German folk-tales. Like the story of Weland,
however, it is of German rather than Scandinavian origin, and the
identification of the swan-maidens as Valkyries, which may have
taken place before the legend reached the North, may, on the other
hand, have been simply an attempt to connect southern tradition with
figures well known in northern mythology.
The Völundarkvitha is full of prose narrative links, including an

introduction. The nature of such prose links has already been
discussed in the introductory note to the Grimnismol; the
Völundarkvitha is a striking illustration of the way in which the
function of the earlier Eddic verse was limited chiefly to dialogue or
description, the narrative outline being provided, if at all, in prose.
This prose was put in by each reciter according to his fancy and
knowledge, and his estimate of his hearers’ need for such
explanations; some of it, as in this instance, eventually found its way
into the written record.
The manuscript of the Völundarkvitha is in such bad shape, and the

conjectural emendations have been so numerous, that in the notes I
have attempted to record only the most important of them.
[Contents]
[254]
There was a king in Sweden named Nithuth. He had

two sons and one daughter; her name was Bothvild.
There were three brothers, sons of a king of the
Finns: one was called Slagfith, another Egil, the third
Völund. They went on snowshoes and hunted wild
beasts. They came into Ulfdalir and there they built
themselves a house; there was a lake there which is
called Ulfsjar. Early one morning they found on the
shore of the lake three women, who were spinning
flax. Near them were their swan-garments, for they
were Valkyries. Two of them were daughters of King
Hlothver, Hlathguth the Swan-White and Hervor the
All-Wise, and the third was Olrun, daughter of Kjar
from Valland. These did they bring [255]home to their
hall with them. Egil took Olrun, and Slagfith Swan-
White, and Völund All-Wise. There they dwelt seven
winters; but then they flew away to find battles, and
came back no more. Then Egil set forth on his
snowshoes to follow Olrun, and Slagfith followed
Swan-White, but Völund stayed in Ulfdalir. He was a
most skillful man, as men know from old tales. King
Nithuth had him taken by force, as the poem here
tells.
1. Maids from the south | through Myrkwood flew,

Fair and young, | their fate to follow;
On the shore of the sea | to rest them they sat,
The maids of the south, | and flax they spun.
[256]
2. . . . . . . . . | . . . . . . . .
Hlathguth and Hervor, | Hlothver’s children,
And Olrun the Wise | Kjar’s daughter was.
3. . . . . . . . . | . . . . . . . .
One in her arms | took Egil then
To her bosom white, | the woman fair.
4. Swan-White second,— | swan-feathers she

wore,
. . . . . . . . | . . . . . . . .
And her arms the third | of the sisters threw
Next round Völund’s | neck so white.
5. There did they sit | for seven winters,

In the eighth at last | came their longing again,
(And in the ninth | did need divide them).
The maidens yearned | for the murky wood,
The fair young maids, | their fate to follow.
[257]
6. Völund home | from his hunting came,

From a weary way, | the weather-wise bowman,
Slagfith and Egil | the hall found empty,
Out and in went they, | everywhere seeking.
7. East fared Egil | after Olrun,

And Slagfith south | to seek for Swan-White;
Völund alone | in Ulfdalir lay,
. . . . . . . . | . . . . . . . .
8. Red gold he fashioned | with fairest gems,
And rings he strung | on ropes of bast;
So for his wife | he waited long,
If the fair one home | might come to him.
9. This Nithuth learned, | the lord of the Njars,

That Völund alone | in Ulfdalir lay; [258]
By night went his men, | their mail-coats were
studded,
Their shields in the waning | moonlight shone.
10. From their saddles the gable | wall they

sought,
And in they went | at the end of the hall;
Rings they saw there | on ropes of bast,
Seven hundred | the hero had.
11. Off they took them, | but all they left

Save one alone | which they bore away.
. . . . . . . . | . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . | . . . . . . . .
12. Völund home | from his hunting came,

From a weary way, | the weather-wise bowman;
A brown bear’s flesh | would he roast with fire;
Soon the wood so dry | was burning well,
(The wind-dried wood | that Völund’s was).

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Generative Artificial Intelligence: What

Everyone Needs to Know ® (What

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“What Everyone Needs to Know” is a registered trademark of

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

© Jerry Kaplan 2024

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

You must not circulate this work in any other form

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023949578

ISBN 978–​0–​19–​777354–​3 (pbk.)

Paperback printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America

1 The History of Artificial Intelligence 14

What is Artificial Intelligence? 14

2 Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) 30

What are Large Language Models (LLMs)? 30

How do word embeddings represent meaning? 35

What historical precedents are benchmarks for the impact of GAI? 67

Will GAI increase unemployment? 97

5 Risks and Dangers 112

How will GAI be used to promote disinformation and propaganda? 113

6 The Legal Status of GAIs 136

Can a computer program enter into agreements and contracts? 137

7 Regulation, Public Policy, Global Competition 149

Are GAIs protected by free-​speech laws? 150

8 Philosophical Issues and Implications 169

What is philosophy of Artificial Intelligence? 170

Can a computer have free will? 176

I am indebted to several readers and reviewers for their thoughtful

capable of learning from any collection of data that can be gathered

real-​time data sources, like cameras and microphones—​essentially

like “Sensocrity: The tendency to prioritize sensory pleasure over in-

The result is a vector (ordered list) of numbers each representing

These improvements are often the result of simply building a bigger

can build incredibly dangerous tools and unleash them on ourselves

Most people today are familiar with traditional database systems,

This book is nearly impossible to write. The subject is so new that

• Regulations and tools will be developed that attempt to mitigate

• GAIs will be able to learn continuously (update their internal

that the systems we use are behaving in ways we find acceptable

not as a matter of practical or implementation limitations. (At

Finally, a few suggestions as to how to read this book.

a result. If it bugs you, chillax (chill out, be patient, relax)—​it allows

Chapter summary by GPT-​4:

This chapter highlights the lack of a precise definition of AI and

What is Artificial Intelligence?

bears much relationship to human intelligence, at least so far—​even

approach the problem is as important as whether you solve it. To

When scoring students’ performances on sums, we don’t con-

devolves into issues of what we mean by intelligence, whether it is

Where did the term “Artificial Intelligence” originate?

What were the Dartmouth conference participants hoping

ISBN 978–0–19–777354–3 (pbk.)

Are GAIs protected by free-speech laws? 150

real-time data sources, like cameras and microphones—essentially

a result. If it bugs you, chillax (chill out, be patient, relax)—it allows

Chapter summary by GPT-4:

bears much relationship to human intelligence, at least so far—even

All these somewhat off- the-

negotiations with the production staff of the show, IBM’s program—

Chapter summary by GPT-4: