AI companies could be required to record images’ origin and compensate copyright holders. But as Robert J. Marks notes, end users might then have to pay.
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One problem is that the people at the big conference may not be the ones closest to the scene, doing the actual work.
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English argues that science research, which is already mostly paid for by taxpayers, should be open access so more of us can see what’s happening.
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It takes an experienced financial planner to distinguish between good and bad advice, so clients may as well skip the LLMs and go to the knowledgeable human.
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Brand marketing strategist Melinda Deines points to a study that shows that self-checkouts cause shoppers to view theft differently.
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Internet-based businesses tend to follow a life cycle in which quality deteriorates over time. Writer Cory Doctorow calls the process “enshittification.”
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For example, journalist Matt Taibbi was stunned to learn from Gemini that he’d written controversial stories — that don’t exist. What’s the market for libel?
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Mickelwait explained that shutting Pornhub down rather than merely forcing it to enact reforms is necessary because of how much damage has been wrought.
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At Wired we learn that the new app will require more chatting. Reader: “I really don’t want to chat with anyone, especially if they’re a bot, or a salesperson.”
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Embattled genetic testing outfit 23andMe had a customer base of 14 million for its home DNA testing kits. Thus, many of us know at least someone who has discovered a partial Mongolian, West African, or even Neanderthal ancestry via the famous “spit kit.” The 2006 startup, birthed in Silicon Valley and riffing off the Human Genome Project (2000), had a dazzling “the future is now!” launch. The founder, Anne Wojcicki (pronounced as if “Wojisky”), was the daughter of “Godmother of Silicon Valley” Esther Wojcicki and sister of YouTube’s former CEO, Susan Wojcicki. For a time, she was married to Google co-founder Sergei Brin and had plenty of billionaire backers. Thus 23andMe raised $1.4 billion in funding. So why has the Read More ›
The AI companies offering the image-creating services need Robot from Lost in Space in their legal departments waving its arms, crying out: “Warning! Danger!”
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The Big Tech companies may see replacing workers with AI as only natural. After all, that’s the future their executives were told from childhood to expect.
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Running a business is more about mindset than skillset and no technology can make up for fundamentally mistaken ideas about how to run a business.
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If we look at the papers presented at the conference, we can’t find evidence that AI is or will improve productivity.
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AI will be much harder to implement than previous information technologies.
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For context, read Bartlett’s two previous articles on the fall of SVB and interest rates. Some people are confused as to how you can lose money selling treasury bonds, since they are supposed to be “safe” assets (the government is not expected to default on its loans, and, if it does, the economy probably has bigger problems). Economist Bob Murphy put together a great explainer thread on Twitter, which I will largely follow here. Let’s say that there is an asset that always yields a 1% return every year on however much you have invested, but you never get the principal back except by selling it to someone else. Let us call this asset ABC, and let us say that it is Read More ›
For context, read Bartlett’s article explaining the fall of SVB here. I wanted to make a quick note about why tech bubbles tend to correspond with low interest rate environments. Interest rates essentially dictate how long someone can wait before they need to produce something of real value. In a 20% interest rate environment, it will be evident really quickly if you are failing to produce something of value. Since essentially 1/5 of your capital disappears each year, if you aren’t doing something that will generate real profits quickly, you are sunk. You can’t paper over problems with more borrowing because the cost of that borrowing is so high. Additionally, in such an environment, the payoffs for investment need to be large Read More ›
Many people awoke this morning to news of a bank that suddenly collapsed – Silicon Valley Bank, or SVB. While information is still developing, I thought I would provide some background information on what is known so far. SVB is the go-to bank for Silicon Valley startups. Over the last few years, the tech bubble has been growing and growing and growing, focused especially around Silicon Valley. That meant a lot of banking was happening, and it was happening with SVB. That is where the various companies put their deposits. How does a bank make money? By lending out deposits. In 2021, at the height of the tech bubble (and, not coincidentally, at a historically low-interest rate environment). The bank did what most banks do Read More ›
We’ve already noted the significant decline in circulation and collapse of trust in major newspapers (online or in print). But 2022 reported steep declines in other media as well. From the entertainment industry’s Variety mag, we learn that while there were some winners in TV — ESPN, crime shows, and digi-nets — most TV of all types continued to see losses, many of them double-digit losses. As commentator Don Surber noted, “The drop in viewers came despite an Olympics, a popular war and a federal election.” The drop in viewers is reflected in an overall drop in revenue, projected to continue. A highlight from Samba TV’s State of Viewership report: Gen Z and millennials are driving the shift away from Read More ›
Earlier this year, we wrote about PayPal starting to “fine” users for “misinformation” and wrongthink. While there is certainly misinformation out there, the alarming Disinformation Governance Board proposal and the Twitter files revelations underline the limits of what Big Government, Big Tech, or Big Business can do beyond simply imposing an official opinion. Of course, the official opinion may be based on a faulty understanding of the problem. The banned individuals may merely be better informed. PayPal, famously, now often drops customers for what appear to be political reasons, as Indian economist Rupa Subramanya explains: One by one, they go to start their business day only to find a baffling message from their payments app informing them: “You can no Read More ›