Latest news with #PGWodehouse
Sydney Morning Herald
21-05-2025
- General
- Sydney Morning Herald
Idiom or idiot? Google's AI Overview is trying its best
Fine words butter no parsnips. A ludicrous phrase, though it's true. Or real at least, listed in the Oxford and elsewhere. Maybe you've met the proverb before, hiding in a PG Wodehouse novel. Yet imagine you haven't. What does it mean? Fancy speech is all very well, perhaps, but it fails to deliver material benefits. Talk is cheap, in other words. Elegant waffle won't moisten your greens. Facing fresh idiom, humans play this mental game, speculating what a lip-sticked pig connotes, a milkshake duck, a rat with a gold tooth. We base our guesswork on kindred expressions or meld the idiom's disparate ingredients into a cogent whole. Ethiopians say, 'The smaller the lizard, the greater its hope of becoming a crocodile.' I don't know the aphorism, but I reckon I could fumble my way towards an answer. Google's AI Overview thinks likewise. Rather than admit ignorance, the software gives any mystery phrase a go, be that a Chinese wisdom or a make-believe badger like Crab Man's prank in April. Crab Man is a Bluesky avatar who learnt that AI Overview is up for defining any guff. 'You can't lick a badger twice.' That was a beta test, a fabrication tapped into Google's window with 'meaning' added to the tail. According to Overview, the proverb means 'you can't trick or deceive someone a second time after they've been tricked once'. Bingo: the machine translation as feasible as the input idiom despite both being phony. Once social media caught wind, fake phrases proliferated, fed into Overview to see what bunkum came back. Allegedly, 'a shower a day keeps the ventriloquist away' means hygiene deters discouragement. While 'you can take your dog to the beach, but you can't sail it to Switzerland' suggests some tasks are manageable, while others are complex. Which is true-ish, for all the gaslighting going on. Kyle Orland, senior gaming editor at Ars Technica, argues in Overview's defence, admitting 'I've come away impressed with the model's almost poetic attempts to glean meaning from gibberish, to make sense out of the senseless'. A perfect example lies in one exchange. For starters, 'dream makes the steam' deserves to be a motto. Just as the proposed translation – how imagination powers innovation – is faultless. Compare that to the claptrap the dad offers in the Telstra ad, telling his son they built the Great Wall of China 'during the time of the Emperor Nasi Goreng, to keep the rabbits out'. If you don't know, say so.
The Age
21-05-2025
- General
- The Age
Idiom or idiot? Google's AI Overview is trying its best
Fine words butter no parsnips. A ludicrous phrase, though it's true. Or real at least, listed in the Oxford and elsewhere. Maybe you've met the proverb before, hiding in a PG Wodehouse novel. Yet imagine you haven't. What does it mean? Fancy speech is all very well, perhaps, but it fails to deliver material benefits. Talk is cheap, in other words. Elegant waffle won't moisten your greens. Facing fresh idiom, humans play this mental game, speculating what a lip-sticked pig connotes, a milkshake duck, a rat with a gold tooth. We base our guesswork on kindred expressions or meld the idiom's disparate ingredients into a cogent whole. Ethiopians say, 'The smaller the lizard, the greater its hope of becoming a crocodile.' I don't know the aphorism, but I reckon I could fumble my way towards an answer. Google's AI Overview thinks likewise. Rather than admit ignorance, the software gives any mystery phrase a go, be that a Chinese wisdom or a make-believe badger like Crab Man's prank in April. Crab Man is a Bluesky avatar who learnt that AI Overview is up for defining any guff. 'You can't lick a badger twice.' That was a beta test, a fabrication tapped into Google's window with 'meaning' added to the tail. According to Overview, the proverb means 'you can't trick or deceive someone a second time after they've been tricked once'. Bingo: the machine translation as feasible as the input idiom despite both being phony. Once social media caught wind, fake phrases proliferated, fed into Overview to see what bunkum came back. Allegedly, 'a shower a day keeps the ventriloquist away' means hygiene deters discouragement. While 'you can take your dog to the beach, but you can't sail it to Switzerland' suggests some tasks are manageable, while others are complex. Which is true-ish, for all the gaslighting going on. Kyle Orland, senior gaming editor at Ars Technica, argues in Overview's defence, admitting 'I've come away impressed with the model's almost poetic attempts to glean meaning from gibberish, to make sense out of the senseless'. A perfect example lies in one exchange. For starters, 'dream makes the steam' deserves to be a motto. Just as the proposed translation – how imagination powers innovation – is faultless. Compare that to the claptrap the dad offers in the Telstra ad, telling his son they built the Great Wall of China 'during the time of the Emperor Nasi Goreng, to keep the rabbits out'. If you don't know, say so.
Spectator
19-05-2025
- Business
- Spectator
The SNP attack on Starmer's EU deal makes no sense
To mutilate the words of PG Wodehouse, it is never difficult to distinguish between a Scottish nationalist with a grievance and a ray of sunshine. Fury is the fuel that drives the SNP, which has been in power at the Scottish parliament for 18 years. So it is hardly a surprise that First Minister John Swinney has reacted angrily to the new deal struck between the United Kingdom and the European Union. The agreement reached between Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen will increase freedom of movement, create closer relationships between businesses, and increase cooperation on food standards. These are things that the SNP has been demanding ever since the UK voted, in 2016, to leave the EU. But the decision to maintain the status quo of EU fishing boats having access to UK waters until 2038 undermines all of that so far as the First Minister and his colleagues are concerned.
Times
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Stephen Fry: What Jeeves and PG Wodehouse taught me about life
If I were to say that the defining characteristic of PG Wodehouse was his professionalism, that might make him sound rather dull. The man himself, who knew just what was expected of authors, was used to having to apologise for a childhood that was 'as normal as rice pudding' and a life that consisted of little more than 'sitting in front of the typewriter and cursing a bit'. But 50 years on from his death at 93, manuscript on lap, his reputation soars as high as ever. The product of such industry and effort, almost a hundred books, transcended any hint of the plodding or the pedestrian that this iron discipline and devoted diligence might suggest. Indeed, from his lifetime through to the present day,
Times
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
9 of the funniest books chosen by Miranda Hart, Adam Kay and more
This year marks 50 since England's foremost humourist PG Wodehouse died, aged 93 and with, as Stephen Fry writes in a forthcoming essay for the Sunday Times, 'manuscript on lap'. Wodehouse never stopped writing, producing almost a hundred books and inventing the immortal Jeeves and Wooster, Psmith and Blandings. What's the secret of his enduring appeal, despite his devotion to 'silly people doing silly things'? For Fry, it is the genius of his language, and often his dialogue: 'No actors are as good as the actors we each of us carry in our head … one of the gorgeous privileges of reading Wodehouse is that he makes us feel better about ourselves because we derive a sense of personal satisfaction from the laughter mutually created.'
