What does my parent think about ML?

Quoting Mark Riedl’s description of neural networks, the journey from a data input to its expected prediction comprises many layers. These layers are gradually simplifying the data input into smaller chunks. Smaller chunks allow for more precise connections as there will be more granular permutations of it.

Though this neural networks are mimicking our human brain, we’re never really aware of the brain doing the input simplification part. Our senses are immediate, maybe not the most accurate but it will be the most reliable to support our survivability.

If I’m going to introduce this concept to my parents, it is probably like the act of teaching a child who always asks questions. Questions that my parent probably hasn’t thought for so long arises from the child’s mind, and now the parents are faced with a task to simplify the answer to fit into the child’s mind.

Reflection on last week’s work

Upon showing our work in class last week, Dano’s remark about my last week’s submission sticks out as he stated that my website does not require user to do anything. That is exactly what I thought about consciousness — the more you think about what you’re thinking, the more you will be lost. Consciousness flows when you’re really not doing anything, not even thinking about anything. The very moment you decide to think, the flow of your consciousness breaks.

I also like Yilin’s statement about how dancing does not require you to think ‘thoughts’, and similarly, the more you think, the more you will not be able to dance. I’m learning jazz at the moment, and I’ve been questioning how I become so addicted to jamming and improvisation? I do not think when I improvise, not because I do not want to, but because I’m incapable of thinking! If I start thinking about some thoughts, my improvisation line will surely break.The feeling during improvisation is somewhat like a floating feeling, I do not realize that time passes, and I do not even realise my body may be reacting certain way. Often times, after jamming, I might be trembling due to adrenaline or fear or excitement from the performance. This feeling, that is not very possible to happen activities that demand higher consciousness is what gets me addicted to jazz.

The Train of Browser Tabs

The work & metaphor

That being said, I’d like to use the personal browser’s usage as a metaphor for consciousness. The usage of personal browser can be reflected on the tabs. Some people accumulate their tabs as time passes, never deleting any of them, some other prefers to delete immediately unused tabs. Similarly, some people may think of numerous thoughts all at once, and some may think one thought after another.

Input Auth Token before generating the story

Either way, these tabs can be a clue of what the user has been searching or working on. They can be a peak into the user’s lifestyle and to some extent — their mind. Thus, I made a browser extension that logs all the active tabs, join the title of the tabs as part of a prompt “Make story with these tabs:”, send it to an LLM model, and expect the model to return an interpretation of the tabs in paragraph format, creating a narrative out of the tabs titles.

The result generated from openai/gpt-5 model

Also, the reason of tabs as subjects are the fact that user do not need to do anything (or prompt manually) to make the project work. Thinking happens naturally, similarly, the tabs being opened are just a repetitive occurrence in the user’s daily life, and yet, if we analyze each tab, we may be able to make a guess (LLM has a concept of making a guess on every set of ‘next’ words/alphabets/sentences too!) of what the user has been thinking.

Tutorial of Train of Thoughts

Notes

As a client, you're alone.

A server introduces you to a network of other alone people.

When the Tim Berners-Lee creates HTML/CSS/JS, do they consider the possibility of it being used in team? Do they create HTML/CSS/JS in solitude?

Ideas for next assignment:

- continuation of the blinking, after waking up, what do we do?

- take someone else's stream of thoughts: Twitter?

- doing nothing and use computers to shed a light on your train of thoughts

picking the last idea:

- log all tabs
- append it to a prompt Make a short story weaving together these tab titles, they had to be woven together in a way that made sense, the titles are: ${tabs}

- populate the result as an overlay on the webpage the user is at to interfere with their activities