Thoughts About LLMs, aka “AIs”

(Note: in this piece, I link to a lot of websites that I’ve played with at different times. This is to allow the reader to make up their own minds about these things. No endorsement is intended, except of course when I am linking to my own books. If I didn’t like them, I wouldn’t publish them.)

First off, what we see today is not truly artificial intelligence, in the sense of “artificial sapient beings capable of exercising judgment and choice.” ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion and their many cousins and descendants are Large Learning Models (LLMs), software that has been programmed to extrapolate statistical information from the dataset it is given and offer randomized responses to human commands based on the dataset and the extrapolations. The results are only as good as the initial programming, and the dataset. And in terms of output, they’re only vastly more complicated versions of the random generators available at Seventh Sanctum and similar websites for more than a decade. Here are the situations in which I personally have used LLMs:

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Wolf’s Trail (Hunter Healer King Book 1) is now Out on Amazon!

Now available in Kindle Unlimited

The name’s Chloe Fortebat, and I am in trouble. I left my father’s ranch on the plains to come to the Old World: a place of airships, steampower, and monsters nobody talks about. Now I’m dodging giant werewolves with fangs the size of my knife, and the hunters crazy enough to go after them. The most dangerous of these doesn’t look the part: a quiet, sharp-dressed medical man with a tired face….

My name is Dr. Maxim os Storm, and I hunt the beasts that haunt the night. The leader of this pack of werewolves has set his mark on Miss Fortebat, but this brave lady would rather fight him than let him make her his tool. As far as I am concerned, that makes her my ally. My only chance of curing her lies with an ancient machine, hidden by my people in the caves beneath Wolf Island. We must keep that artifact out of the werewolf’s grasp at all costs, for he would put it to a terrible use….

Final Episode of Hunter Healer King

To claim her inheritance, Chloe Fortabat has to leave her ranch and come to the Old World, where she mingles with monster hunters. The most dangerous of these doesn’t look the part: a quiet, sharp-dressed medical man. Dr. Maxim os Storm’s mission is to destroy those monsters which feed on human pain. He is drawn to Chloe, but she is being slowly transformed into the exact type of monster he hunts. He does not know if he can cure her in time, or what she will do when she learns his secrets…

The final Vella episode of Hunter Healer King is now live. I am collecting the Vella episodes into book form, and will release it to Kindle Unlimited under the title Wolf’s Trail (Hunter Healer King Book 1) in late December 2023, barring catastrophes. If you are interested in learning more about Vella, keep reading.

Continue reading “Final Episode of Hunter Healer King”

New Episode for Hunter Healer King

To claim her inheritance, Chloe Fortabat has to leave her ranch and come to the Old World, where she mingles with monster hunters. The most dangerous of these doesn’t look the part: a quiet, sharp-dressed medical man. Dr. Maxim os Storm’s mission is to destroy those monsters which feed on human pain. He is drawn to Chloe, but she is being slowly transformed into the exact type of monster he hunts. He does not know if he can cure her in time, or what she will do when she learns his secrets…

I plan to drop new episodes for this serial every day in the Kindle Vella store for the foreseeable future. To learn more about Vella, keep reading.

Continue reading “New Episode for Hunter Healer King”

New Episode for Hunter Healer King

To claim her inheritance, Chloe Fortabat has to leave her ranch and come to the Old World, where she mingles with monster hunters. The most dangerous of these doesn’t look the part: a quiet, sharp-dressed medical man. Dr. Maxim os Storm’s mission is to destroy those monsters which feed on human pain. He is drawn to Chloe, but she is being slowly transformed into the exact type of monster he hunts. He does not know if he can cure her in time, or what she will do when she learns his secrets…

I plan to drop new episodes for this serial every day in the Kindle Vella store for the foreseeable future. To learn more about Vella, keep reading.

Continue reading “New Episode for Hunter Healer King”

New Episode for Hunter Healer King

To claim her inheritance, Chloe Fortabat has to leave her ranch and come to the Old World, where she mingles with monster hunters. The most dangerous of these doesn’t look the part: a quiet, sharp-dressed medical man. Dr. Maxim os Storm’s mission is to destroy those monsters which feed on human pain. He is drawn to Chloe, but she is being slowly transformed into the exact type of monster he hunts. He does not know if he can cure her in time, or what she will do when she learns his secrets…

I plan to drop new episodes for this serial every day in the Kindle Vella store for the foreseeable future. To learn more about Vella, keep reading.

Continue reading “New Episode for Hunter Healer King”

New Episode for Hunter Healer King

To claim her inheritance, Chloe Fortabat has to leave her ranch and come to the Old World, where she mingles with monster hunters. The most dangerous of these doesn’t look the part: a quiet, sharp-dressed medical man. Dr. Maxim os Storm’s mission is to destroy those monsters which feed on human pain. He is drawn to Chloe, but she is being slowly transformed into the exact type of monster he hunts. He does not know if he can cure her in time, or what she will do when she learns his secrets…

I plan to drop new episodes for this serial every day in the Kindle Vella store for the foreseeable future. To learn more about Vella, keep reading.

Continue reading “New Episode for Hunter Healer King”

State of the Author, End of October 2023

-Wolf’s Trail, Hunter Healer King, Book 1 is in the hands of my proofreaders as I speak.

-When I get it back, I will be editing it instead of writing for NaNoWriMo.

-I am also trying to write a prequel short story for an anthology.

-I have a draft ebook cover, and raw materials for the paperback cover.

-I have vague ideas for Hunter Healer King, Book 2.

New Episode for Hunter Healer King

To claim her inheritance, Chloe Fortabat has to leave her ranch and come to the Old World, where she mingles with monster hunters. The most dangerous of these doesn’t look the part: a quiet, sharp-dressed medical man. Dr. Maxim os Storm’s mission is to destroy those monsters which feed on human pain. He is drawn to Chloe, but she is being slowly transformed into the exact type of monster he hunts. He does not know if he can cure her in time, or what she will do when she learns his secrets…

I plan to drop new episodes for this serial every day in the Kindle Vella store for the foreseeable future. To learn more about Vella, keep reading.

Continue reading “New Episode for Hunter Healer King”

New Episode for Hunter Healer King

To claim her inheritance, Chloe Fortabat has to leave her ranch and come to the Old World, where she mingles with monster hunters. The most dangerous of these doesn’t look the part: a quiet, sharp-dressed medical man. Dr. Maxim os Storm’s mission is to destroy those monsters which feed on human pain. He is drawn to Chloe, but she is being slowly transformed into the exact type of monster he hunts. He does not know if he can cure her in time, or what she will do when she learns his secrets…

I plan to drop new episodes for this serial every Sunday in the Kindle Vella store for the foreseeable future. To learn more about Vella, keep reading.

Continue reading “New Episode for Hunter Healer King”