Michael Will

@scidata
8 Followers
19 Following
40 Posts

FORTH PROLOG GOFAI RISC-V Spaceflight Astronomy
Zebrafish Sci-Fi CitizenScience History Anthropology Psychohistory

(time to fill in some activity after being Mastodon-dormant for a year)

Websitehttps://scidata.ca
Discussionhttps://worthdefending.blogspot.com
GOFAI Forumhttps://gofai.discourse.group
LocationToronto
Michael WillApr 4

The COSMAC 1802 microprocessor (1976) had approximately 5,000 transistors, and 16x16-bit internal registers. The MOS 6502 (1975) had even fewer transistors, yet went on to power most of the early PC era.

A human brain weighs 3lbs and draws 30W.
Are we scaling in the wrong direction?

#GenAI vs #GOFAI

Michael WillMar 7
Tim Bray 🇨🇦Mar 7
“Recently I read Because Internet by Gretchen McCulloch and Algospeak by Adam Aleksic. The language we speak (and text) to each other is at the core of who and what we are, and the Internet is the strongest among the forces that channel and fertilize its growth. So there’s scope for plenty of books on the subject. Both books educated and entertained, one made me angry.” https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2026/03/05/Because-Algospeak
Michael WillFeb 15

A purely abstract representation of the #LEGO philosophy has been available as a programming language since 1970. It's called #FORTH.

#SeriousPlay #Psychology #ComputationalThinking

Michael WillFeb 12

RIP Robert Tinney, who fired the imagination of the personal computing world.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/02/byte-magazine-artist-robert-tinney-who-illustrated-the-birth-of-pcs-dies-at-78/

#GOFAI #ComputationalThinking

Byte magazine artist Robert Tinney, who illustrated the birth of PCs, dies at 78

He became one of the first to visualize personal computing by painting vivid cover art.

Ars Technica
Michael WillDec 9
Show threadTim Bray 🇨🇦Dec 9
2/2 “I was going to post a link to Paul Krugman’s “Talking With Paul Kedrosky”. It’s great, but while I was reading it I thought “This is going to be Greek to people who haven’t been watching the bubble details.” So consider this a preface to the Krugman-Kedrosky piece. If you already know about the GPU-fragility and SPV-voodoo issues, just skip this and go read that. https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/talking-with-paul-kedrosky
Talking With Paul Kedrosky

So, about this AI thing ...

Paul Krugman
Michael WillNov 28

Jeff Hawkins, inventor of the PalmPilot (tm), once carried a small wooden block around in his pocket. It helped him to imagine how he'd use a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) in daily life. I do the same today, only I use my old Palm III PDA to imagine how I'd use a pocket Intelligence Amplifier.

"One thing a person cannot do, no matter how rigorous his analysis or heroic his imagination, is to draw up a list of things that would never occur to him"
-Thomas Schelling

#ComputationalThinking

Michael WillNov 26

Always remember, the human brain models the universe in real time, with advanced communication and sensors, almost unlimited learning capacity, and true intelligence
- and uses 25W.

Oh, and can program in #Forth, which I predict will become the lingua franca of machine-machine.

Michael WillNov 10, 2025
Tim Bray 🇨🇦Nov 10, 2025

Went for a weekend walk in QE park; the colors of autumn are fading, but there are still treats for the eye.

#Photography #Vancouver

Michael WillOct 29, 2025
Show threadAaronOct 29, 2025
@scidata I've actually done some work combining the two!
Michael WillOct 26, 2025
AaronOct 26, 2025

@scidata

I don't see many folks embracing GOFAI anymore. It's a shame!

Have you read about Winograd's SHRDLU? Pretty sure it was before I was born, and the thing already understood natural language well enough to follow directions and answer questions, *without* "hallucinating". It's a shame they decided it couldn't be scaled and just gave up on it, instead of trying to rectify the problem.