TagAI
The Allure of General Purpose Technologies
Generative AI is merely the most recent one.
Human Impersonation AI Must Be Outlawed
I didn't used to think that AI systems could threaten civilization. Now I do.
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 ›
Artificially Smart: Artificial Intelligence and Higher Education
Understanding needs to remain the metric by which students are evaluated
Is Tech Still Innovating?
Is it just me, or is the world of technology feeling a bit … stale?
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 ›
Computers Still Do Not “Understand”
Don't be seduced into attributing human traits to computers.
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.
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.
AI Chatbot Claude Passed My “Sex and Gender” Test. I’m Impressed.
The chatbot "Claude" isn't perfect, but it's miles ahead of the others.
The Atlantic Warns of Smartphones in Schools. But Is Anyone Listening?
While word is getting out, there's still a long ways to go.This week, we ran a post covering a new public policy brief from the Institute for Family Studies and the Ethics and Public Policy Center. The brief conclusively demonstrated the tangible harms involved in exposing kids to the online world before they’re ready. The researchers concluded, in addition, that parents should not give their children digital devices. The stakes are too high, from increased risk of mental health disorders to learning impairments. Such warnings have been increasing over the past few years, thanks in large part to the in-depth research of people like Jonathan Haidt and Jean Twenge. The Atlantic published an article today on how smartphones are hurting kids’ cognitive and learning capacities. Derek Thompson writes, Researchers such as Read More ›
How Do We Define Successful Use Cases for Generative AI?
Current generative AI systems are designed to give us the most common solutions, instead of the new ones we need.
Large Language Models are Still Smoke and Mirrors
Incapable of understanding, LLMs are good at giving bloated answers.I recently received an email invitation from Google to try Gemini Pro in Bard. There was an accompanying video demonstration of Bard’s powers, which I didn’t bother watching because of reports that a Gemini promotional video released a few days earlier had been faked. After TED organizer Chris Anderson watched the video, he tweeted, “I can’t stop thinking about the implications of this demo. Surely it’s not crazy to think that sometime next year, a fledgling Gemini 2.0 could attend a board meeting, read the briefing docs, look at the slides, listen to every one’s words, and make intelligent contributions to the issues debated? Now tell me. Wouldn’t that count as AGI?” Legendary software engineer Grady Booch replied, “That demo Read More ›
AI and the Chinese Room Argument
We still haven't cracked the mystery of human intelligence.
The Present Shock We’re Experiencing
Our modern obsession with the possibility of truly smart machinery keeps a self-important anti-humanism alive and kicking.
This is Digital McCarthyism
Far from being liberated by these technologies, we have been plunged back into the worst abuses of surveillance and privacy violation.The notion that we’re getting somewhere, making progress, is remarkably durable. It survives wars, financial collapse, riots, scandals, stagnating wages, and climate change (to name a few). Though techno-futurists are also fond of AI apocalypse scenarios, where artificial intelligence somehow “comes alive,” or at any rate uses its superior intelligence to make an autonomous decision to wipe out humanity, much more ink has been spilled this century prognosticating indomitable technical progress, which somehow stands in for human progress generally. But sanguine belief in progress is belied by the actual events of the twenty-first century. Computers have gotten faster and AI more powerful, but digital technology has also been used to spread misinformation, make deep fakes, and conduct relentless cyberwarfare. Financial Read More ›
