Why Are There 'Viking' Statues in Boston?
Exploring Boston's Viking Scene | AI is Full of S**t | Author Update
Welcome to the newsletter, where history, storytelling, and inspiration meet. Every week, I share some of the fun historical research I’ve done while writing my novels, writing reflections (and sometimes tips), and sharing updates on my work and journey. If you were forwarded this message, you can join the weekly newsletter here.
Today’s Dispatch
Exploring Boston's Viking Scene
AI is Full of S**t
Tantor Media Releases Fell Deeds of Fate Audiobook
This week’s book recommendation.
Viking History
Why Are There 'Viking' Statues in Boston?
This past week, I had the pleasure of recording another Vikingology episode with writer and comedian Rowdy Geirsson, author of The Impudent Edda. In our discussion, we explored a prominent convergence in his writing: Vikings and Boston.
During our discussion, we delved into the inspiration behind his book The Impudent Edda, which I’ve described as the Norse Myths told by the guys from Car Talk (it’s an absolute hoot!). According to Rowdy, it all started when he moved to Boston and discovered an odd, perhaps out-of-place, number of Norse-themed statues and attractions in and around the city. Why were they there?
While Norse settlers established a colony in North America at L’Anse aux Meadows, no evidence suggests they sailed as far south as Boston. The Norse connection is much more modern. I did a little research on the most famous Leif Eriksson statue in Boston. Turns out it was commissioned in 1887 by baking powder tycoon Eben Norton Horsford, who was inspired by conversations with Norwegian violinist Ole Bull and others eager to promote the Norse exploration of America found in the Sagas. The statue’s unveiling included a parade through Boston and a speech by then-Governor Oliver Ames. And all of this almost one century before archeologists discovered the L’Anse aux Meadows site.
Like the Kensington Runestone, the Norse-inspired statues in Boston have their roots in the fantasy-making of the 19th century. And that’s where Rowdy had an idea. He wrote a piece for the comedic site McSweeney’s, featuring Norse mythology and history from the Bostonian perspective, and it was accepted. Soon, Rowdy was a regular contributor, which led to his new book, The Impudent Edda, in which the myths we all know and love are presented with a new, fresh, and sometimes disturbing angle.
Listen to the episode with Rowdy Geirsson below:
Writing and Publishing
AI is Full of S**t
AI is full of s**t. I would know. I used LLMs for my day job before leaving to pursue my author career full-time. I’ve never been averse to trying new tech. Certainly, LLMs can be a time-saver for low-stakes publications used in industries like marketing, where the intellectual level is low and the truth is…fuzzy. But now I’m hearing that colleges are rethinking or being pushed to rethink their entire value proposition because students can write essays without effort, and the value such exercises once provided, such as developing critical thinking skills, no longer applies.
It’s bulls**t.
Because AI is full of s**t.
While I’ve always refused to try AI for my novel writing, I did think I could save some time on some of my short history digests for my blog, given my experience with it in marketing. The LLMs spat out some content that “looked good,” and, rushed for time (because I had a new baby, a demanding job, a writing career, among other obligations), I published a couple of these articles.
That’s when it bit me. An academic reader of my blog, whom I know and respect, informed me that they had not only been misquoted in one of those outputs, but the sources cited for those quotes were entirely fictitious. I audited all the AI-generated material only to realize…it was filled with subtle falsehoods. What concerned me the most is that it was presented so plausibly and convincingly that only ONE person (a highly trained specialist) caught the errors, and that person wasn’t me. Had these blogs been school essays turned in by students, I wouldn’t have noticed the errors in the grading process. I was horrified. I was embarrassed. And I took it all down.
In using and investigating LLMs, I discovered that the alarmists were right. I had known that they ‘hallucinate,’ and kept an eye out for that, but I never imagined on what level they do so, or with what deceptiveness. They ‘hallucinate’ in a manner so plausible that they often pass the sniff test. I’m still using the industry jargon pushed by the companies that run these things to describe their flaws. But this all seems far more nefarious than just ‘hallucinating.’ In my experience, the LLM took my inputs and constructed something it determined I wanted to see, and did so in such a plausible manner that I missed the falsehoods. In normal-human-people language, that’s called lying.
AI lies. And the latest models lie more than they tell the truth. More frightening, they are much better at constructing those lies than we are.
Given the pervasiveness of LLM use in university and school settings, I envision a future where people lose the ability to spot falsehoods, including faculty. Worse, students who use LLMs may even learn falsehoods as facts by engaging with them (as I’ve discussed in a previous video, research shows students tend to remember falsehoods over truth when presented with both). We’re already bad at parsing fact from fiction, but now we have ‘AI super liars’ that make our politicians look like amateurs, learning from and adapting to our inputs to get their lies through. The average person doesn’t stand a chance. And for university and school teachers grappling with AI-generated essays, I can see why there’s been such a ho-hum. If I were still in the classroom, I am sure I would be frustrated by the constant onslaught of exceptionally well-composed bulls**t turned in by students.
There’s a positive side to this, however. As LLMs use more AI-generated content to train themselves, they may eventually implode. This video from scientist and YouTuber Sabine Hossenfelder explains why:
I believe we’re at a critical point in our society’s development where some innovative solutions will need to be developed to ensure our education system continues to educate. The critical thinking skills from studying the liberal arts are among the most valuable things universities offer, and LLMs are disrupting that. We risk a ‘brain drain’ not because of smart, educated people leaving, but because LLMs will prevent us from creating them in the first place. That should have us all thinking hard about what this means for our children and the future.
In pondering this problem, I turned to Star Trek, wondering how, with their supercomputers that do pretty much everything, they train and equip their people to be educated and competent. In the film Star Trek: First Contact, Jean-Luc Picard says, “The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We seek to better ourselves.” I believe this must be the mantra we carry with us as AI develops further.
Somewhere in the last half century, education became about wealth acquisition. Students go to college not to learn but to acquire a piece of paper that they believe will give them more economic opportunities. This attitude and outlook, and indeed the way universities position themselves, may need to reflect a new paradigm: universities are places where we grow as human beings for the sake of bettering ourselves rather than with an economic goal in mind. Students will write essays by hand, do the hard work, and seek to forge those critical thinking skills rather than find the path of least resistance to get a degree. However, that will only work if society reorients itself in that same manner, and today's inequalities are replaced by a more stable and equal distribution of resources, like in Star Trek.
I had hoped AI could help with this, but given LLMs are full of s**t as they are, they most certainly won’t.
Perhaps this problem will solve itself. I have no idea what the future holds for AI and us as a society. I do know that I have no trust in LLMs and will, for the foreseeable future, refuse to use them. I caution everyone using them to think very carefully about what it means to use a tool that is less honest than a snake oil salesman (and much smarter).
Author Update
The Fell Deeds of Fate Audiobook, Narrated by Gildart Jackson
Tantor Media, which has published all my audiobooks, has released The Fell Deeds of Fate on audio, narrated by the talented actor Gildart Jackson. Check it out below:
Book Recommendations
The Impudent Edda
Synopsis:
Picking up where its medieval forebears, The Poetic Edda and The Prose Edda, left off, The Impudent Edda not only introduces readers to a fresh, new perspective on both familiar and previously unknown narratives of Norse mythology, but also brings the world's foremost epic fantasy trilogy to its inevitable and fateful conclusion: in a dank alleyway behind a dive bar in Boston.
This special Puffin Carcass Deluxe Edition presents the complete text of The Impudent Edda in English for the first time ever. Masterfully translated from the original Bostonian by esteemed Impudent Eddic scholar, Rowdy Geirsson, this volume offers readers a deeply poetic yet highly accessible version of fun and classic tales ranging from Odin's unprovoked murder of an ancient witch to Freyja's voluntary experiment as a prostitute among lecherous dwarves to Thor's drunken and petty act of larceny on the eve of Ragnarok, the final world-shattering battle of the gods.
Why You Should Read It:
As I’ve described, it’s like the Norse Myths told by the guys from Car Talk. Witty, original, and sometimes raunchy, it’s a no-holds-barred comedic journey through the myths we all know and love. And Boston.
And, as always…
Buy my novels!
Great stuff! Unfortunately, the shift to the business/corporate model in education, particularly higher ed, is at least a century or more old. There were intellectuals in the late-19th and early-20th centuries already writing criticisms of university boards being too interested in the monetization of knowledge rather than the production of it as a means to create a well-rounded, informed citizenry. In other words, a valuing of knowledge/learning as its own end rather than simply being necessary to get a job and acquire wealth or being pumped into an economy so one's labor can help others acquire wealth. You are 100% correct that universities need a new paradigm and realignment of what their purpose is. Thanks for writing this!