Poetry. Should the two masks that represent Comedy and Tragedy pass through each other (imagine a total eclipse), might not their overlapping intersection be an expression of deadpan? And what about Janus, that janitor in January? Do his back-to-back facial characteristics suggest anything more than the infinite, noncommittal gaze of beginnings and endings? Or does the almost reckless declarativeness of these poems show a mind's weathering both the antic and the intimate, both merriment and distress? Michael Gizzi's previous books include MY TERZA RIMA, CURED IN THE GOING BEBOP, and CONTINENTAL HARMONY, all available from SPD.
An insightful exploration of Chat GPT and other advanced AI systems—how we got here, where we’re headed, and what it all means for how we interact with the world. In ChatGPT and the Future of AI, the sequel to The Deep Learning Revolution, Terrence Sejnowski offers a nuanced exploration of large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and what their future holds. How should we go about understanding LLMs? Do these language models truly understand what they are saying? Or is it possible that what appears to be intelligence in LLMs may be a mirror that merely reflects the intelligence of the interviewer? In this book, Sejnowski, a pioneer in computational approaches to understanding brain function, answers all our urgent questions about this astonishing new technology. Sejnowski begins by describing the debates surrounding LLMs’ comprehension of language and exploring the notions of “thinking” and “intelligence.” He then takes a deep dive into the historical evolution of language models, focusing on the role of transformers, the correlation between computing power and model size, and the intricate mathematics shaping LLMs. Sejnowski also provides insight into the historical roots of LLMs and discusses the potential future of AI, focusing on next-generation LLMs inspired by nature and the importance of developing energy-efficient technologies. Grounded in Sejnowski’s dual expertise in AI and neuroscience, ChatGPT and the Future of AI is the definitive guide to understanding the intersection of AI and human intelligence.
Literary Nonfiction. Art. In SEEING OUT LOUD, Saltz critically engages with notable works of art by over 100 notable artists ranging from Picasso, Matisse, and Warhol to Matthew Barney, Gerhard Richter, and Chris Ofili. These reviews appeared in the Village Voice between November 1998 and winter 2003. "Jerry Saltz is the best informed and hair-trigger liveliest of contemporary art critics, tracking pleasure and jump-starting intelligence on the fly. Jerry's fast takes usually stand up better in retrospect than other people's long views"---Peter Schjedahl. "Jerry Saltz looks at art from the perspective of the viewer, the ignorant, the lover, and the enemy. His writing is overwhelmingly passionate, yet without sentimentality. His words pierce the content and beauty of each work of art to test its endurance in time and memory"---Francesco Bonami, Curator, 2003 Venice Biennale.
"Mrs. Oscar Hammerstein, so the story goes, once overheard someone praise "Ol' Man River" as a "great Kern song." "I beg your pardon," she said, "But Jerome Kern did not write 'Ol' Man River.' Mr. Kern wrote dum dum dum da; my husband wrote ol' man river." It's easy to understand her frustration. While the years between World Wars I and II have long been hailed as the "golden age" of American popular song, it is the composers, not the lyricists, who always usually get top billing. "I love a Gershwin tune" too often means just that-the tune-even though George Gershwin wrote many unlovable tunes before he began working with his brother Ira in 1924. Few people realize that their favorite "Arlen" songs each had a different lyricist-Ted Koehler for "Stormy Weather," Yip Harburg for "Over the Rainbow," Johnny Mercer for "That Old Black Magic." Only Broadway or Hollywood buffs know which "Kern" songs get their wry touch from Dorothy Fields, who would flippantly rhyme "fellow" with "Jello," and which of Kern's sonorous melodies got even lusher from Otto Harbach, who preferred solemn rhymes like "truth" and "forsooth." Jazz critics sometimes pride themselves on ignoring the lyrics to Waller and Ellington "instrumentals," blithely consigning Andy Razaf or Don George to oblivion"--
CHRIS PRATT is now one of the world's most sought-after actors. As the breakout star of Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy and The Lego Movie (two of 2014's biggest box-office hits), as well as landing the lead role in the 2015 Jurassic Park franchise re-boot, Jurassic World, his meteoric rise to fame is proof that anything is possible in Hollywood.Chris's journey to the movie-star A-list may just make him the ultimate 'zero to hero', but it certainly wasn't an overnight success story. A chance encounter transformed Chris's life from living in a van and waiting tables to make enough money to survive, to the bright lights of Los Angeles and his first tentative steps into the acting world.After years as a supporting player in both comedy and dramatic roles, on television (Everwood, Parks and Recreation) and in movies (The Five-Year Engagement, Delivery Man), Chris finally started to attract superstar buzz after appearing in three Best Picture Oscar-nominated films between 2011 and 2013. Along the way he's shown that nice guys don't always finish last, juggling a successful movie career and life as a devoted family man, and somehow finding time to develop killer abs along the way.
Adopting artist-poet Joe Brainard as its principal focus, this project presents "Pop poetics" not as a minor, coterie movement meriting a sympathetic footnote in accounts of the postwar era's literary history, but as a missing link that confounds and potentially unites any number of supposedly rigid critical distinctions (authenticity versus formalism, the "personal" versus the mechanical). Pop poetics matter, argues Andrew Fitch, not just to the occasional aficionado of Brainard's I Remember, but to anybody concerned with reconstructing the dynamic aesthetic exchange between postwar art and poetry.
From the bestselling, Man Booker–short-listed author of The Sisters Brothers comes a brilliant and boisterous novel that reimagines the folk tale A love story, an adventure story, a fable without a moral, and an ink-black comedy of manners, Undermajordomo Minor is Patrick deWitt's long-awaited follow-up to the internationally bestselling and critically acclaimed novel The Sisters Brothers. Lucien (Lucy) Minor is the resident odd duck in the bucolic hamlet of Bury. Friendless and loveless, young and aimless, Lucy is a compulsive liar, a sickly weakling in a town famous for producing brutish giants. Then Lucy accepts employment assisting the Majordomo of the remote, foreboding Castle Von Aux. While tending to his new post as Undermajordomo, Lucy soon discovers the place harbors many dark secrets, not least of which being the whereabouts of the castle's master, Baron Von Aux. He also encounters the colorful people of the local village—thieves, madmen, aristocrats, and Klara, a delicate beauty for whose love he must compete with the exceptionally handsome soldier Adolphus. Thus begins a tale of polite theft, bitter heartbreak, domestic mystery, and cold-blooded murder in which every aspect of humanity is laid bare for our hero to observe. Undermajordomo Minor is an adventure, a mystery, and a searing portrayal of rural Alpine bad behavior, but above all it is a love story—and Lucy must be careful, for love is a violent thing.
