CategoryArtificial Intelligence
Can AI Really Start Doing Evil Stuff All By Itself?
We need to first talk to the man in the mirror before we go around blaming transistor circuit boards for what’s wrong in the world
What AI Will Probably Really Do to White Collar Businesses
The tech media are full of scare stories but we can look at what happened when advanced technology hit blue collar industries as a guide
Napster, Spotify, and AI: How Will AI Escape Copyright Woes?
Robert J. Marks on AI and learning from past copyright cases.Copyright lawsuits are abounding against generative AI. Since the advent of ChatGPT in late 2022, various companies, artists, and writers have raised concerns over AI’s plagiaristic tendencies. Robert J. Marks, host of the Mind Matters podcast, has the story over at Newsmax. Marks recalls the debacle of Napster, a music streaming service that provided music for “free” without payment to the artists. Not surprisingly, it was soon shut down. So how will it fare with generative AI? What’s the solution to all the impending legal woes in the realm of AI? Marks writes, Today’s Spotify keeps automatic records of song frequency and, from subscriber’s payments, distributes royalties accordingly. Similar methods could be applied to compensate content creators by generative AI. It’s not Read More ›
Robert J. Marks on the Copyright Lawsuits Against the Chatbots
Essentially, the salad of material that the chatbot produces for users contains thousands of ingredients lifted without compensation from copyright holders
Artificially Smart: Artificial Intelligence and Higher Education
Understanding needs to remain the metric by which students are evaluated
Robert J. Marks to speak at Big Sky Conference in Billings, Montana
He will focus on the way in which, while AI offers exciting possibilities, many claims for AI are provably overblown
Internet Pollution — If You Tell a Lie Long Enough…
Large Language Models (chatbots) can generate falsehoods faster than humans can correct them. For example, they might say that the Soviets sent bears into space...
Can There Really Be an Ultimate Happiness Machine?
Technology can do so much. Can it really provide an answer to the eternal human quest for happiness?
Does ChatGPT Depend on Copyright Violation to Function?
Without copyrighted material, ChatGPT has slim pickings to go on.ChatGPT, the large language model developed by OpenAI, might seem like it generates novel content, but of course we know that it partakes in what’s generally called “scraping.” It takes pre-existing material on the Internet in response to the prompt a human user inserts. Not surprisingly, the folks who put things on the Internet for a living, like writers and artists, haven’t taken so kindly to AI’s online sleuthing. In fact, a number of artists, writers (including George R. R. Martin, Jonathan Franzen, and John Grisham) and even news outlets have sued OpenAI over copyright infringement allegations. What’s fascinating, though, is that OpenAI hasn’t tried to dodge the allegation but freely admits that ChatGPT depends on copyrighted material to function. Read More ›
AI Will Disrupt Everything — But Forget the Robot Apocalypse!
It will be a slow, steady, measured disruption, like the one the printing press created
Computers Still Do Not “Understand”
Don't be seduced into attributing human traits to computers.
Framework for AI Legislation
Unfortunately, current calls for AI legislation seems to be largely motivated by fear of the unknown rather than looking for specific policy goals.
When it Comes to New Technologies Like AI, Tempers Run Hot
So far, the most tangible LLM successes have been in generating political disinformation and phishing scams.
This New Year, Resolve to Stay Human
This year, we will continue to declare that human beings are unique and exceptional.
Copyright in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
What exactly is a human and how does a human differ from a computer?On December 27, The New York Times Company sued Microsoft and OpenAI for violations of their copyright. The Times contends that training chatbots on its content in order to create an information competitor is a violation of its copyright. This suit is sure to bring up a number of old copyright issues that were never resolved, plus some new that need to be worked through. The fact is, the big search engines have been violating copyright from the very beginning. All search engines are in fact derivative works of the sites that they crawl, index, and dish out. Most search engines even provide excerpts from the sites they scan. However, most copyright holders have turned a blind eye to this for two main Read More ›
ChatGPT: You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby
Reviewing the bot's progress (and problems) from over the last year
The Two Visions of AI Technology
Competing views of AI's potential comprise a new struggle in Silicon Valley.
Tesla Recall Due to the Short Attention Span of Drivers
Tesla did nothing wrong, but some claim they didn’t do enough right.