TagAI
AI and Wall Street’s Hype Curve
Almost all new tech has a hype curve. Here are the stages.
Online Training: Real Education or Going Through the Motions?
Not all online trainings are bad. But many are procedural and pointless.
Will You Be My Valentine, Chatbot?
It is a tragedy indeed when our loneliness as a culture has developed so far that many people see chatbot companions as one of the only way forward.
Taylor Swift and the Looming Threat of Deepfakes
According to an attorney, Swift should probably go after the AI companies themselves if she decides to sue.The country-turned-pop star Taylor Swift has commanded headlines for well over a year now with her record-breaking “Eras Tour” as well as her romance with Kansas City Chiefs tight-end Travis Kelce. Unfortunately, her image has also made the rounds in AI engines. Deepfake pornography is already an emerging problem, but its seriousness resurfaced when explicit, AI-generated images of Taylor Swift went viral in late January. Only ten states currently have laws prohibiting deepfake pornography, but legislation is underway to ban it in several others, including Swift’s home state, Tennessee. According to attorney Carrie Goldberg, if Swift were to sue anyone, it would probably have to be focused on the AI companies themselves. USA Today reports, It’s possible that the faked Read More ›
The Apple Vision Pro is Here
What exactly is the point of this new, painfully expensive piece of gadgetry?
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 ›
