David Allen Green - Twelfth Night Till Candlemas

2025-01-12

This story is as a cautionary tale reminding us the value of critical skills.

The story had been found – because of a librarian using critical skills (and thereby not giving equal weight to each factor), an archive, and a catalogue/index.

Verily: librarians, archivists, cataloguers, and indexers are the Noble Professions.

For they organise information in a manner in which humans actually think – unlike ChatGPT and Artificial Intelligence.

They are the holders of the old knowledge and skills.

I'm usually skeptical when it comes to all the hype around AI and for sure this story is another example of a tasks where humans succeeded while ChatGPT confidently gave the wrong answer.

Still, this is not only a case where "humans are good, AI is bad". Very smart humans have been trying to find that story for forty years. To find the book the librarian had to use her skills, work around false memories and look into the right archives. Humans, critical thinking and the right tools are what solved this forty-year quest.