Richard Phillips Rho Agenda Blog

Latest Book Update (The Ripper’s Son) April 15, 2023

Hello to all my readers out there. As you know, I have taken a considerable pause with this novel more than halfway completed. First of all, my wife Carol and I have been traveling extensively and lately have been focussed on our daughter, Heather, who is expecting twins in a couple of weeks (a boy “Archer” and a girl “Isla” pronounced “Eye-la”). We are extremely excited about this and as “Grampa and Gramma” we will be quite busy for the next couple of months.

One other factor that has put me on pause for this book is the extreme rapidity at which the artificial intelligence models have been progressing over the last two years and especially with the release of ChatGPT-3, 4, and very soon 5 as well as Auto-GPT (an open-source, self-training version of GPT that is currently in Beta Testing). There are so many AI’s that are not being combined through application programming interfaces (APIs) that there is no slowing this bullet train, no matter how many big tech CEOs caution about the dangers that lie just around the corner. It is simple game theory driving everything forward. Any company that pauses will fall so far behind competitors that the results will be catastrophic.

Anyway, I want to make sure my new near-future scifi is well-grounded going forward. That said, I think that with some minor tweaking, there is nothing that will require me to do a significant rewrite of what I have done so far.

I wish all of you the best as we, here in the northern hemisphere, prepare for summer. I hope all you folks from down-under stay warm in the months ahead.

Richard