3 MAR 2026

Day 62

The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite, perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries.

Jorge Luis Borges · The Library of Babel

A small standing figure hammered from gold sheet, with simplified features, large head, and schematic limbs, shown against a neutral background.

I · THE OBJECT · BRITISH MUSEUM

Inca Gold Figurine

Inca Empire · 1438–1533 · Hammered gold

Inca priests carried gold and silver figures up mountains above five thousand metres and buried them in the snow. Most Inca metalwork was melted within decades of the conquest. These survive because they were hidden.

Enter lesson 6 MIN

II · THE IDEA · ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Catastrophic Forgetting

Training and alignment · 2017 onwards · Narrow fine-tuning corpus

Train a model to answer customer service questions and it may forget how to write poetry, summarise legal text, or translate. The damage is silent and often discovered too late.

Enter lesson 6 MIN

A limestone bust of a woman wearing a tall flat-topped blue crown. Her face is painted pale ochre, with red lips and black-lined eyes. The right eye is inlaid and luminous; the left is an empty socket. Her neck is long and marked with carved lines suggesting tendons.

III · THE WORK · ART HISTORY

The Bust of Nefertiti

Ancient Egypt, Amarna period · 1350 BC · Limestone with stucco, pigment and quartz

One eye is inlaid rock crystal, luminous and precise. The other is an empty socket. The asymmetry is not damage — it is evidence of how the object was used.

Enter lesson 7 MIN