She’s fast becoming my favorite writer.
Online age verification is coming, and privacy is on the chopping block
Google’s new Magic Editor pushes us toward AI-perfected fakery
The McMansion as harbinger of the American apocalypse
In the wake of the recession, the United States declined the opportunity to meaningfully transform the financial system on which our way of life is based. The breach was patched with taxpayer money, the system was restored, and we resumed our previous trajectory. The McMansion survived what could have been an existential crisis; it remains an unimpeachable symbol of having “made it” in a world where advancement is still measured in ostentation.
One day we will look at five-thousand-square-foot McMansions and Hummers and desert golf courses the same way we look now at thalidomide: a ginormous fuck up. That’s assuming we manage to plan for the future and come through a political fight antithetical to the mortal coil of capitalism: late, fossil, or otherwise.
Observation suggests that people are switching to using ChatGPT to write things for them with almost indecent haste. Most people hate to write as much as they hate math. Way more than admit it. Within a year the median piece of writing could be by AI.
I warn you now, this is going to have unfortunate consequences, just as switching to living in suburbia and driving everywhere did. When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai warns society to brace for impact of A.I. acceleration
When asked whether society is prepared for AI technology like Bard, Pichai answered, “On one hand, I feel no, because the pace at which we can think and adapt as societal institutions, compared to the pace at which the technology is evolving, there seems to be a mismatch.”
There’s an annoying tendency for internet journalism to be hyperbolic, but here I think it’s appropriate. “Brace for impact.”
America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places for 2023 via Kottke
The Century and Consumers Buildings in Chicago were two highlights of the architecture section of social studies class in, um, middle school? Elementary school? Whenever it was, one of the many perks living within driving radius of Chicago.
To this day, nothing inspires awe like a walk through The Loop.
Defending against Bluetooth tracker abuse: it’s complicated
Ever wonder how AirTags work?
Wendy’s, Google Train Next-Generation Order Taker: an AI Chatbot
The application has also been programmed to upsell customers, offering larger sizes, Frosties or daily specials. Once the chatbot takes an order, it appears on a screen for line cooks. From there, prepared meals are relayed to the pickup window and handed off to drivers by a worker
China detains man for using ChatGPT for spreading fake news in first known case
Gansu police accused Hong of committing a “major crime” saying that the suspect admitted to prompting ChatGPT to generate a made-up story based on trending social media posts in China over the last few years.
Dispatch from the scaffolds: Native fishing culture on the Columbia River
A group is its own worst enemy
Now, suddenly, when you create software, it isn’t sufficient to think about making it possible to communicate; you have to think about making communication socially successful. In the age of usability, technical design decisions had to be taken to make software easier for a mass audience to use; in the age of social software, design decisions must be taken to make social groups survive and thrive and meet the goals of the group even when they contradict the goals of the individual.
There’s this very complicated moment of a group coming together, where enough individuals, for whatever reason, sort of agree that something worthwhile is happening, and the decision they make at that moment is “This is good and must be protected.” And at that moment, even if it’s subconscious, you start getting group effects. And the effects that we’ve seen come up over and over and over again in online communities.
Of the things you have to accept, the first is that you cannot completely separate technical and social issues. There are two attractive patterns for thinking about the intersection of social and technological issues. One says, “We’ll handle technology over here, we’ll do social issues there. We’ll have separate mailing lists with separate discussion groups, or we’ll have one track here and one track there.” This doesn’t work; you can’t separate the two.
Arrested Development + Succession = perfection
OpenAI contractors make $15 to train ChatGPT
The work is defined by its unsteady, on-demand nature, with people employed by written contracts either directly by a company or through a third-party vendor that specializes in temp work or outsourcing. Benefits such as health insurance are rare or nonexistent — which translates to lower costs for tech companies — and the work is usually anonymous, with all the credit going to tech startup executives and researchers.
Gordon Lightfoot’s ‘Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald’ Was An Unlikely Hit
This has been a favorite song since I was six or seven.
“Hey Siri, play SomaFM [station name] radio.”
You won’t be disappointed.
May the Force always be with you via Kottke
In 1977, when Star Wars took the “domestic film rentals” crown from Jaws, Steven Spielberg wrote a congratulatory letter to George Lucas and had it printed full page in Variety—a charming move, tastefully done, that kickstarted a tradition amongst filmmakers and studios that continues to this day.
Cory Doctorow: The Swivel-Eyed Loons Have a Point
You might have some swivel-eyed loons in your life. I certainly have my share. Remember that we have common ground.
When they say they don’t trust vaccines because the pharma compa nies are corrupt and their regulators are toothless, that’s not your signal to defend the manifestly corrupt pharma companies who murdered 800,000 Americans with opioids, nor to cape for the regulators who let them get away with it.
Likewise, we all want to “save the children.” It’s just that some of us want to save the children from real threats who never seem to face justice – youth pastors, Catholic priests, rich people with private islands, border agencies practicing “family separation” – while swivel-eyed loons want to save kids from imaginary threats (adrenochrome-guzzling Satanists).
Remember all the things they’re right about. Lean into the common ground. Help them understand that corporate power, and its capture of government, is our true shared enemy.
How Could AI Change War? U.S. Defense Experts Warn About New Tech
“If we stop, guess who’s not going to stop: potential adversaries overseas,” the Pentagon’s chief information officer, John Sherman, said on Wednesday. “We’ve got to keep moving.”
A cliff? What cliff…
Faster, faster!