Or: Where to even begin?
The following was a brief adventure checking out a new LLM called “talkie” — started by asking “What is a theremin” 1 and it went downhill quickly from there. To wit:
. . . so I queried, asking WHO was Leo Theremin 2 .
Uh, yeah. I don’t think so. . .let’s move on. How would it identify the true nature of the theremin, i.e., among the first electronic musical instruments 3.
Hmmm. . .that didn’t go very well. So how does one play the theremin 4?
Wow — I don’t even have to do any of that on my semi-modular synths! Okay, let’s try who is Leo one more time 5.
Oh, dear. Houston, we have more than “just a problem here. . .how about the brightest star in the “Theremin Pantheon” Ms. Clara Rockmore 6?
Okay, so no concurrency, according to them. Let’s try something else 7:
Oh, dear.
So close, so hopeful 8.
Mind you, this was the SECOND time I’d run this line of questioning — the first run was both close and just as bad. I would have screen-capped the session if I had foreseen how bad it was going to be. I didn’t but I ran this about 18 hours after the first run. I’m tempted to do another run, but [SHRUG]. . .these really are pretty simple topics to track down without resorting the use of any kind of AI agent 9.
- https://www.classical-music.com/features/instruments/what-is-a-theremin ↩︎
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Theremin
↩︎ - See #1 above ↩︎
- https://www.wikihow.com/Play-the-Theremin\
https://youtu.be/DhAHIMHel7U?si=DsNI95AjOVuRC ↩︎ - See #2 above ↩︎
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clara_Rockmore
↩︎ - See more details in #6 above ↩︎
- Well alrighty then! https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=M.%20Wheatstone&title=Special%3ASearch&ns0=1\
WHO? ↩︎ - I am a musician working in electroacoustic/experiment music — https://audiozoloft.bandcamp.com/ as well as a retired archivist/librarian, so yeah, a LITTLE insider knowledge but it really only informed the search queries. ↩︎
