As we start this journey of 26 posts all about dinosaurs, you may have noticed that A does not start with a kind of dinosaur. This is not going to be about 26 different dinosaurs, although I promise I will throw in a few. So A is not for Apatosaurus, Ankylosaurus, Albertosaurus, or even Archosaur. This A is about how dinosaurs were grouped and identified as dinosaurs.
So one thing to know, even before I say more about what the ant-orbit-a-whatchamacallit, is that these posts are going to wrestle with questions about dinosaurs, such as:
What made a dinosaur a dinosaur?
Where did the dinosaurs come from? And where did they go?
What did they look like?
How did they behave?
And, most of all, how do we know?
In other words, I’m going to talk about the things that dinosaurs did. Their habits. Their loves and losses.. well, maybe not that. But the dinosaur ouvre, so to speak (i.e. their “body of work.” Body get it?) Since they lived 200 million years ago, it gets a little tricky trying to guess. But you would be surprised at what those clever scientists who study bones can figure out, just from the bones.
Every April, bloggers can try the A to Z challenge. Twenty-six posts about any subject. For 2024, I covered the alphabet on dinosaur characteristics, history of their identification, and famous people who dug for their bones. Links to all the individual posts by letter are in this “master” post below.
Da king! The Rex man! From the Dinosaur Journey museum, Fruita, CO. Photo by kajmeister.
I had been threatening. Pleading. Hinting for the last few years that I might just write about dinosaurs because I love ’em, and I hope you will, too. I have trekked across half a dozen dinosaur museums, as many fossil beds, gift shops, exhibits and so on. Often dragged my wife, sometimes my kids. (Does Big Foot count? Of course not! What about Godzilla? Well, let’s wait till the letter G and find out!)
Why do it? I wrote about the Olympics during the pandemic, it led to a book. Wrote about accounting–guess what the topic of my thesis is? Wrote about the Renaissance–worked it into my thesis. Wrote a published essay on the Mongols and the Silk Road… when you produce writing, it’s the gift that keeps on giving.
I do this because creativity is like a positive kind of algae. It breeds on itself. When you don’t produce, it gets harder to start every time you try.
From the Royal Tyrell Museum, Alberta, CA. Photo by kajmeister.
This is not just a list of dinosaurs, A-Z. While I could have talked about Apatosaurus, Albertosaurus, or Ankylosaurs, you can see that my first “A” post is something about the way dinosaurs are designed. Many of these posts covered the science and facts concerning dinosaurs, not just 26 posts about individual dinosaurs. There are a lot of A-Z lists and books already out there, if you just want know all the dinosaurs that start with “K,” for example.
These posts will be about what dinosaurs are and are not. There were even a few posts about non-dinosaurs, like the swimmers and fliers who were related but not technically on the dinosaur family tree. Family trees–they’re now called clades–figure heavily into all this discussion. See letter C.
Don’t despair! You can see with posts like “D is for Diplodocus” that I did cover a few famous dinosaurs. But let’s start with one of the key features that defines dinosaurs, then talk about what they were like. Next to each post link I also include the key question that the post tries to answer.
Image created by the AI Art Generator. See explanation below.
Rampant fear or unquestioning enthusiasm. These seem to be the two fundamental attitudes people have about Generative AI models. Programs like Chat GPT, Bloom, and Replika are demonstrating the power, potential, and problems associated with having technology that seems to talk. Aside from getting some definitional clarity around what Chat/AI is and is not, I present here a couple of Use Cases. They may inspire in you, as they have in me, both fear and enthusiasm.
Let’s Call It What It Is: Simulated Talking
A few definitions might be in order. First of all, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a large field, so let’s be clear that AI and Generative AI are different things. AI models are ones where you feed in data to get recommendations and predictions. We use simple models and algorithms ourselves, for instance, checking the weather by looking outside; that’s an unsophisticated algorithm that isn’t terribly predictive. In the past, computer models were similarly limited. They broke down fairly quickly if the variables got complicated or the model tried to look too far in the future. I can guess the weather in an hour, but what about next Sunday at 11 am, when I want to play pickleball? AI means that the models are big enough and full of enough data that the predictive accuracy is far beyond what computers “used” to predict. A self-driving car might be an example of AI. It’s not creating text or art, but it needs a huge influx of data and sophisticated decision-making capabilities in order to navigate a very complex environment.
Generative AI, which I’ll also call Chat/AI here, is a model that can create “new” content as part of its predictive output. You feed it tons of examples, and it creates something “new” or seems new, based on previous human-created patterns that made sense. The following example came from Prof. Louis Hyman, who will be discussed below. Suppose you asked Chat/AI to fill in the cat sat on the ____. The model might suggest floor, chair, lap, or mat. But mat might be the highest likelihood, perhaps 50%, so the generative AI picks that word.
