A few weeks ago, a video of Neil Young performing "Rockin' in the Free World" in 1989 was doing the rounds on X, and it reminded me of his and other musical comebacks from that era. For me in the UK, that included people like Paul Weller and My Bloody Valentine reappearing after what felt at the time like periods of complete cultural absence.

My sense is that this is now practically impossible. Even relatively obscure artists are the subject of attentive online fandoms that keep them visible long after they've stopped producing new work. And crucially, I don't think you even need to participate in that discourse to know it's there, creating an ongoing blanket assumption of presence that robs us of the shock of reappearance.

I've developed the argument more fully, and with better metaphors, here: https://morbidcuriosity.substack.com/p/the-death-of-the-comeback

Caveat lector: like the Catholicism piece I posted a few weeks ago, this is an impressionistic argument about cultural experience rather than a statistical analysis of release intervals and sales figures. That said, I'd be interested in counterexamples whatever form they take.

I just had an interaction with ChatGPT+ that was a bit strange. I use ChatGPT to assist me in learning Chinese. I asked it to present me with 30 questions every morning to help practice different grammar vocabulary. To assist with this I uploaded a pdf of a textbook I've been using with this prompt:

Add all the grammar and vocabulary in this pdf into the selection that can be tested in my daily Chinese practice. I'd like a variety of different grammar tested every day in particular, but the vocabulary focus should be more on the later/newer vocabulary

So this was a pdf I'd uploaded into the chat, there was no connection to google drive at all.

I tabbed to a different screen and when I came back, ChatGPT was showing a box which said "ChatGPT needs access to your Google Drive in order to complete this request".

I asked "Why does Chatgpt need access to google drive for this request?"

To which ChatGPT then responded:

ChatGPT doesn't need access to Google Drive for this request.

You've already uploaded the PDF directly into this conversation, so I can use it to incorporate grammar and vocabulary into your daily Chinese practice.

Google Drive access would only be useful if you wanted me to automatically retrieve future textbooks, worksheets, or vocabulary lists stored there without uploading them manually.

For your current setup: - PDF: Use the textbook you've uploaded. - Previous Chinese practice: Draw on your past conversations and corrections. - Future material: Incorporate new Chinese content you share with me. - Daily tests: Continue automatically at your scheduled time, with varied grammar and an emphasis on newer vocabulary.

I've updated your existing daily practice instructions accordingly.

You don't need to connect Google Drive or grant any additional permissions.

Thought I would post this here because it was the first time I've seen AI really "go rogue" in the sense of taking a task in a direction I didn't intend. Obviously a minor thing and no harm done, but still a little scary. It would have been one thing if it had explained why it was requesting access to Google Drive before asking for access, but it didn't.

EDIT: And to be clear here, I am not an "anti-AI" guy at all. I use it a lot for all types of things and think it is a marvellous technology. This is just the first time I've encountered it doing something like personally and thought it was interesting.