I started an account at OpenAI.org and I've installed a couple of apps on my iMac and iOS.

It's pretty cool!

Now, I don't know if AI will usher in the apocalypse or not, I suppose it probably could, but it's here so I might as well play with it.

What I've enjoyed so far is that you have a very patient, very "smart" interlocutor. One of my conversations recently was about trying to understand the physics of greenhouse gases. The degrees of freedom available in certain molecules, like CO2, that afford greater vibrational energy, and how that relates to interactions with heat in the atmosphere. I really had no idea about vibrational energy, but it makes perfect sense after discussing it with AI.

I've also discussed Maxwell's equations and discovered that it's not very spontaneous in terms of what it brings into the conversation. It discussed Maxwell's equations in Oliver Heaviside's form. I had to prompt it to talk about Heaviside. I haven't finished that conversation yet, I want to ask it about quaternions.

Now, I'm aware that it's often wrong, because the LLM may have been polluted with bad information. But I think these kinds of "pure" physics topics are less subject to that kind of distortion or noise. I could be wrong. But it certainly gives me other avenues to explore in more conventional sources.

So far, I'm kind of encouraged. I know there are vulnerabilities and defects and maybe those lead to unacceptable risks. But for exploring somewhat obscure or abstract topics in a conversational way, where you can keep kind of asking the question in different ways without pissing off your teacher, it's pretty cool.