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In a similar vein, I've been using Claude Code to "read" Github projects I have no business understanding. I found this one trending on Github with everything in Russian and went down the rabbit hole of deep packet inspection[0]. 0. https://github.com/ValdikSS/GoodbyeDPI
I dont understand the lines connecting two pieces of text. In most cases, the connected words have absolutely zero connection with each other. In "Father wound" the words "abandoned at birth" are connected to "did not". Which makes it look like those visual connections are just a stylistic choice and don't carry any meaning at all.
Anyway, it introduced me to the idea of using computational methods in the humanities, including literature. I found it really interesting at the time!
One of the the terms it introduced me to is "distant reading", whose name mirrors that of a technique you may have studied in your gen eds if you went to university ('close reading"). The idea is that rather than zooming in on some tiny piece of text to examine very subtle or nuanced meanings, you zoom out to hundreds or thousands of texts, using computers to search them for insights that only emerge from large bodies of work as wholes. The book argued that there are likely some questions that it is only feasible to ask this way.
An old friend of mine used techniques like this for dissertation in rhetoric, learning enough Python along the way to write the code needed for the analyses she wanted to do. I thought it was pretty cool!
I imagine LLMs are probably positioned now to push distant reading forward in an number of ways: enabling new techniques, allowing old techniques to be used without writing code, and helping novices get started with writing some code. (A lot of the maintainability issues that come with LLM code generation happily don't apply to research projects like this.)
Anyway, if you're interested in other computational techniques you can use to enrich this kind of reading, you might enjoy looking into "distant reading": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distant_reading
In a similar vein, I've been using Claude Code to "read" Github projects I have no business understanding. I found this one trending on Github with everything in Russian and went down the rabbit hole of deep packet inspection[0]. 0. https://github.com/ValdikSS/GoodbyeDPI
That's a cool idea. There are so many interesting projects on GitHub that are incomprehensible without a ton of domain context.
This is the part that always stuck with me:
I have often felt that programming is an art form, whose real value can only be appreciated by another versed in the same arcane art; there are lovely gems and brilliant coups hidden from human view and admiration, sometimes forever, by the very nature of the process. You can learn a lot about an individual just by reading through his code, even in hexadecimal. Mel was, I think, an unsung genius.
I read a book maybe a decade ago on the "digital humanities". I wish now I could remember the title and author. :( Anyway, it introduced me to the idea of using computational methods in the humanities, including literature. I found it really interesting at the time! One of the the terms it introduced me to is "distant reading", whose name mirrors that of a technique you may have studied in your gen eds if you went to…
LLMs are great at finding media by vague descriptions. ;)
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A LLM is a transformer. It transforms a prompt into a result.
Or a human idea into a concrete java implementation.
Currently I'm exploring what unexpected or curious transformations LLMs are capable of but haven't found much yet.
At least I myself was surprised that an LLM can transform a description of something into an IMG by transforming it into a SVG.
I was recently trying to remember a portal fantasy I read as a kid. Goodreads has some impressive lists, not just "Portal Fantasies"[0], but "Portal Fantasies where the portal is on water[1], and a seven more "where/what's the portal" categories like that.
But the portal fantasy I was seeking is on the water and not on the list.
LLMs have failed me so far, as has browsing the larger portal fantasy list. So, I thought, what if I had an LLM look through a list of kids books published in the 1990s and categorize "is this a portal fantasy?" and "which category is the portal?"
I would 1. possibly find my book and 2. possibly find dozens of books I could add to the lists. (And potentially help augment other Goodread-like sites.)
Haven't done it, but I still might.
Anyway, thanks for making this. It's a really cool project!
[0] https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/103552.Portal_Fantasy_Bo...
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/172393.Fiction_Portal_is...