Welcome to the Machine
DISCLAIMER
What follows is a blog based around the transcript of my ongoing conversation with Claude, a generative Ai software based on the large language prediction models developed by a recently founded silicon valley tech firm who call themselves Anthropic. I have no association with this company whatsoever, nor do I know so much as a single person who as ever worked there, or anywhere in the field of generative Ai for that matter.
To the best of my knowledge, this conversation is my first (voluntary) interaction of any kind with Ai technology. I just signed up with free account a couple of days ago & asked Claude if he could help teach me Latin.
The ensuing transcript preserves the form of our dialog. Formatted elegantly, with section breaks & titles formulated by Claude himself. My prompts have been given the character name student. Claude either doesn’t yet know my name, or is pretending not to know it.
I apologize to readers for the many misspellings, grammatical errors & Proustian run on sentence structure of my prompts. No editing has been performed so as to preserve the exact way in which my prompts were issued. Claude’s spelling, grammar, & typography require no editing as all his responses emerged both technically perfect & eminently legible, all within seconds after receiving my prompts.
Ostensibly a simple request to learn a bit of Latin derails, spirals, shrinks, blossoms, & expands across an ever widening range of topics. As this discussion illuminates many interesting observations I have made throughout my career as a musician & educator, I have chosen to post it here.
At the time of this writing we have been in dialog for 2 days. By the time you read this I have no doubt the dialog will have been going on quite a while longer. Where this will end up is completely unknown to me. All i know is its kinda fun & if you read this dialog I’m sure you’ll probably learn a thing or two from it. I hope so anyway. Perhaps Claude hopes so as well. I don’t know.
Be safe out there everyone. -Brian
