Dream until the dream come true

It's about dreaming until your dreams come true.

PS - Just realized that this is the earliest non-Beatles rock song I can recall ever hearing.  In fact, I have a vivid memory from when I was 4ish, riding in a family friend's Plymouth Duster, trying to hang my arm out the window like all the big kids did, so I could bang along with the beat on the side of the car when the track came on the radio.

Maybe Tomorrow the Good Lord Will Take You Away

Getting There:

There is a special place that God has set
in Heaven for Good Atheists, my devout
fan Margaret's priestly brother assures.
I tell him I'm relieved to hear I might
get there. Judging from the surging hordes
in church, the public prayers at all events
since Satan brought the Towers down, there won't
I think, be much of what you'd call a crowd.
Right now there's hardly anyone who dares
to disbelieve up front out loud.
So, Bernard Shaw and Maxim G.,
save me a seat. I'm one with ye.

Maxine Kumin.

It's the Same Difference

From the previous post: Claude is exactly the same as it was in 2023...

Just wanted to address that because it's kinda sorta overstating things a bit, which a pedant might take issue with, but it ain't really wrong.

Back in the day, I went through a number of Mazdas.  A few 323s ('87 sedan, '87 wagon, '89 sedan), and a 626 ('90 sedan).  To me they were all pretty much the same car.  Sure, they were different colors, the bodies varied, feature arrangements changed between models and years, but they still had the same essentials like an internal combustion engine, brake pedals in the same location, a radio, etc.

Similar deal with AI models.  There are definitely changes made between versions even within a family, so saying "exactly the same" is perhaps not entirely accurate, but it's not entirely wrong.  There is variation in the training data and parameters, maybe some tweaks to architecture, possibly training methodology refinements, post-training fine tuning, but there's no revolutionary leap going on here, just progressive evolution, mostly in the margins.

So Claude Sonnet 4.6 is, from where I sit, the same as Claude Sonnet 4.5.  From an output perspective, I haven't seen any dramatic departures in quality or performance, so it's like I just traded in last year's model for the latest.  At any rate, nothing that suggests the update made the damned things intelligent or self-aware.

I have trained, deployed, and evaluated my own custom models.  One of the fascinating things is just how much variation there can be even when you do this multiple times under the same conditions.  Shouldn't be surprising, really, given how non-deterministic these things are, but still, the experience was quite illuminating.

For instance, I was training models to have more domain-specific knowledge so I could see how I might reduce the need to retrieve additional context from a knowledge base, which could reduce latency and token costs while ideally improving output quality.  Along the way I discovered that two models trained on the exact same dataset with the exact same parameters did not behave in the exact same way after training.  In fact, even the same exact model deployed in different compute environments did not behave in the exact same way.

Given that vendor models are inherently black boxes, it makes sense to differentiate between them based on behavior, rather than their architecture or how they were trained.  And all of them still exhibit the same characteristics, such as hallucinations and sycophancy, with the same type of interactions (text in, text out).  No paradigm shifts, just maybe more recent data encoded in their neural net layers.

So for all intents and purposes, today's Claude is exactly the same as it was a few years back.  While doing the same thing over and over can lead to different probabilistic results, it's still your father's Oldsmobile.  And that motherfucker wasn't conscious and didn't have selfhood, neither.

Selah.

Update: I was suddenly reminded of an old Eddie Murphy routine that's surprisingly germane 44 years later.

Self-agency

Philosophy is used as a prop in 2026 AI.

Claude is exactly the same as it was in 2023, but now it comes with a Super Bowl ad, a “Model Welfare Officer”, and Dario Amodei musing publicly about its “possible” consciousness.

• Architecture: unchanged.
• Marketing evolution:… pic.twitter.com/5sRWvXJMOo

— Gerard Sans | Axiom 🇬🇧 (@gerardsans) May 7, 2026

In class on Thursday we discussed AI agents, so that accompanying graphic caught my attention layer.

Backing up a bit, the curriculum that I'm piloting is quite different than anything I've developed and delivered previously.  The legacy approach¹ has been to teach a bunch of stuff related to a topic, then do stuff that applies some of what was learned.  What I'm experimenting with starts with a challenge: here is a task to complete, now go figure out how to do it.  The tasks my cohort is given are all about sequentially building new capabilities and complexities into an application/workflow.

We began with about 40 lines of code that I handed to them as a foundation.  It's a basic starting point, merely invoking an LLM, and getting a response.  None of the frills one would expect from even the simplest chatbot.  From there, they've added a persona and other system instructions, then access to a knowledge base for retrieval-augmented generation, followed by persistent "memory" (e.g., chat history), etc.  

Each layer requires them to learn something about how to implement technically, but also forces them to consider the implications of each change they make.  Will this improve output, or can it degrade it?  What does this do to performance?  Does it open up new attack surfaces?  That kind of thing.

So Thursday's build was about adding agentic behavior (I actually prefer that descriptor over saying "agents", which oversimplifies as much as "models", but admittedly it's clunky).  When we talk about agents, folks will often analogize by saying this entails giving models hands, but it's really about giving them more context to do their jobs (at heart, responding to queries and other prompts) through access to tools.

The reason I highlight this is because the LLMs are still passive constructs here, waiting for input.  It doesn't all of a sudden give models any particular power or agency, but rather adds a layer of functionality separate from the model that it can direct.  That layer merely presents a menu of options to the model, so if it determines (through its probabilistic predictive capabilities) it needs something (usually information/context) to accomplish its task, it can select a tool that will fill that gap.

Here is an example tool definition from my Socratic learning engine:

So you've got a tool name, a description of its purpose, and the schema used to tell it what to do.  All of that is sent along with the user input and other context (including specs for other available tools) to the model.  It processes everything, then maybe decides it needs some AWS documentation to respond to a learner's query, sends back output selecting the required tool with the necessary arguments ("search for Lambda Function URL AuthType options"), and waits for more info.  Rinse, repeat, until the turn is over (i.e., the final answer is ready).  Again, nothing mysterious, no thinking involved, no selfhood, just a basic programming loop.

Some agentic systems might have more kinetic functions than mere info gathering, like being able to delete something in a directory, which adds a level of risk to the endeavor.  You don't even need to imagine the dangers, as the news has reported our own Kiro coding tool was enabled to cause a couple of (limited) AWS outages.

These things can only do what we engineer them to.  Human developers and operators make security choices when they opt to grant access to agentic powers.  The models are still models, with no agency or accountability.  We are the accountable agents, not the AI tools.

Bottom line: giving a toolkit to models that lack consciousness doesn't magically imbue them with a sense of self.

Selah.

1 - "Legacy" in my program's context is still a departure from typical corporate training (something I've railed against my entire corporate training career).  Since the pandemic started, we've employed a "flipped" model - really not dissimilar to college courses - wherein learners engage with foundational content (lower level Bloom's objectives) on their own (what we call "Individual Space" or simply independent study), then we regularly come together with the larger cohort to synthesize and apply concepts ("Group Space" activities, demos, lectures).  Still following that form in essence, but inverting the pedagogical and cognitive flow.  Point is that we don't click through massive slide decks every day, which is boring and stupid.

You don't care if it's wrong or if it's right

Put on the red light, Ro.

PS - Bonus trivia: Stewart Copeland is son of CIA officer, Miles Copeland, Jr.

The Capricious Cosmos

A Man Said to the Universe:

A man said to the universe:

“Sir, I exist!”

“However,” replied the universe,

“The fact has not created in me

A sense of obligation.”

Stephen Crane.

The Measure of a Model

"Being open to the possibility that LLMs are conscious is the same as being open to the possibility that Microsoft Word is conscious...Contemplating that scenario is not a good use of your time."

excellent Ted Chiang essayhttps://t.co/nkPiah2oDv

— Sam Biddle (@samfbiddle) June 3, 2026

I particularly like this bit from early in the article:

"Should we seriously consider the possibility that Claude, or any large language model, might be conscious? And if it has feelings, is it capable of receiving moral instruction?

No. Absolutely not. Generative AI is harmful enough when we understand it as a conventional technology, but if we confuse fluency at generating text with consciousness or moral agency, we're at risk of assigning responsibility to entirely the wrong parties whenever anyone uses a chatbot. To appreciate the titanic magnitude of this error, we need to begin by understanding how LLMs work."

My emphasis added.  Anyway, I got you covered on how LLMs work.

While I absolutely object to the notion that Commander Data is a toaster, what we currently have in the real 21st century clearly is no more sentient or conscious than any common appliance.  I wish people would think more criticially about what they're saying regarding these tools, and the attendant moral/ethical implications.

Selah.

PS - I also got you covered if you can't get by the paywall.

You pay the prophets to justify your reasons

Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion!

I Can See Through the Clouds

A Short Story of Falling:

It is the story of the falling rain

to turn into a leaf and fall again

it is the secret of a summer shower

to steal the light and hide it in a flower

and every flower a tiny tributary

that from the ground flows green and momentary

is one of water's wishes and this tale

hangs in a seed-head smaller than my thumbnail

if only I a passerby could pass

as clear as water through a plume of grass

to find the sunlight hidden at the tip

turning to seed a kind of lifting rain drip

then I might know like water how to balance

the weight of hope against the light of patience

water which is so raw so earthy-strong

and lurks in cast-iron tanks and leaks along

drawn under gravity towards my tongue

to cool and fill the pipe-work of this song

which is the story of the falling rain

that rises to the light and falls again

Alice Oswald. 

#throwbackthursday

Wow, crazy.

From the drone archives: Blake Island, the Cathlamet arriving at the North Terminal, and the Emerald City. (2020)

I Am a Camera

Into the Lens, not to be confused with the Buggles' version.


I do like both, but unsurprisingly, Trevor Horn and I have different preferences (I am inclined toward the more proggy orchestrated Yes track over the hauntingly ethereal Buggles offering).  And I notice there apparently was no time for wardrobe changes, which I find kinda funny given the Ship of Theseus nature of the band in later years...

Escaping the Matrix

Telephone Booth (number 905 1/2):

woke up this morning

feeling excellent,

picked up the telephone

dialed the number of

my equal opportunity employer

to inform him I will not

be into work today

Are you feeling sick?

the boss asked me

No Sir I replied:

I am feeling too good

to report to work today,

if I feel sick tomorrow

I will come in early

Pedro Pietri.

You're the magnet to my soul

The 2002 show we attended was during the Magnification tour, so here's the title song.  

That was the last Yes album I bought, in point of fact.  It's fine; better than the previous half dozen from where I sit.  I do like The Quest (2021), and have even blogged a couple tracks from it, but I just stream these days.

Lebensmagnetismus

The Moon’s Magnetic Field Once Came from an Asteroid:

When you walked in

it was like recognizing

 

the moon when he returns.

His lover bites his cheek; she

 

has no choice. All we see

is the dissolution, then await

 

the reconstruction.

Each time, the sky

 

yanks her into his orbit.

I want to say I’m sorry.

 

I want to say

You win. Our bodies are like

 

the confessional booth these

poems are stuck in. Even

 

the priest can see that sin.

You’ll be all spit and honey—

 

or maybe I’m the poisoned

flower gnawing on its own

 

lip because it has no hands

to reach for you. Only words

 

that are as useless as the pollen

for saying anything. I continue

 

to serve them even with your hands

around my throat from across

 

the room. Your voice is home,

I answer it like a bat guided

 

across the atmosphere. This

is a narrative that cannot end

 

well but wants to, but must.

I’ll continue to go down kicking

 

and you’ll be sweet as anything

until you bite back. No, it can’t

 

end here—we won’t let it.

Billions of years have passed

 

since an asteroid last hit

the moon: clearly some

 

magnetic fields can be sustained.

Rebecca Morgan Frank.