A Dog Day Afternoon, a blog post, an mp3 file, and AI … What an intriguing exploration.

Shortly after I retired from T. Rowe Price I took on an AI teaching-learning project for a multinational leader in the AI and machine learning space. That’s all I can share on that count because there’s a life-term NDA in place.

For me, AI is at the same time wonderfully promising and dreadfully frightening.

Not long ago I uploaded a pdf of a blog post I wrote in the summer of 2014 about my tangental involvement in the actual Dog Day Afternoon to a Large Language Model (LLM) that was married to the technology behind a Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA). I also uploaded a recording, an mp3 of WCBS Radio in NYC covering the event. I asked the bot to create a two-person, conversational discussion.

For me, AI is at the same time wonderfully promising and dreadfully frightening. I uploaded some source material to a Large Language Model (LLM)

The jargon isn’t important. The result is important—listen to the audio below.

That recording, including the three revisions I requested, was created in less than ten minutes. My first thought was, “Wow. They’ve about reached the pinnacle of this technology.

After a few days I listened again and was reminded of the innocent irony in a song from the Broadway show Oklahoma.

🎵 Everythin’s up to date in Kansas City
They’ve gone about as fur as they can go
They went and built a skyscraper seven stories high
About as high as a buildin’ orta grow
Everythin’s like a dream in Kansas City
It’s better than a magic lantern show
They’ve gone about as fur as they can go … 🎵

And I was reminded of Al Joleson saying, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

Here’s a link to my original story, the source material.