Not sure if I agree with everything here, but it’s important reflection.

Booooooo. That Wikipedia is being mined by AI scrapers and negatively affected by AI search is such a perfect encapsulation of my concerns about generative AI.

Good reporting from the Kernel on a really disappointing set of changes at the university.

The Onion is truly one of the media outlets we need most during these times.

Some good (scary) observations in here—not least speculation on what xAI’s version of Sora would look like.

Well, this is terrifying.

Strong Ellul vibes in this passage:

The tech could represent the end of visual fact — the idea that video could serve as an objective record of reality — as we know it. Society as a whole will have to treat videos with as much skepticism as people already do words.

Unclear, though, whether Ellul would be cool with increased skepticism of the image or angry at the technology causing it.

Look, maybe this is a genuine misstep on OpenAI’s part, but it still feels to me like the company started with the guardrails off so that it could use this kind of user backlash to push the Overton Window in conversations with rightsholders.

Also, remember that we small potatoes rightsholders will never be able to have our voices heard like Disney or Nintendo.

Something feels off here. An AI CEO who claims they genuinely didn’t anticipate copyright and deepfake concerns is either dumb or playing dumb. I can’t help but suspect the latter, which is arguably worse, since it suggests an effort to shift the discourse before complaints come in.

This is a good article; it would be easy to just roll eyes at Cruz, but this goes further in explaining how Wikipedia actually works.

Just bookmarking everything I read on Sora for future grumpiness.

Wish I’d made more of a stink about Lexington adopting Flock cameras. It’s a creepy-as-hell technology, and we need to get rid of them.

Platformizing AI video generation in the way OpenAI is doing right now just makes me grumpier than I already am.

Good connection of the worrying story about removing anti-ICE apps to bigger problems in tech.

This never occurred to me, but distupting interlibrary loan is a mortal sin.

Fun profile on Doctorow; I’m excited for my preorder of his book to arrive this week!(?). Gift link.

Look, I know I’m predisposed to not like any new AI product, but this seems horrifying. Gift link.

5,000 cameras?! What the heck?

Truly, we live in the dumbest (and pettiest) timeline.

Surprised that more isn’t made of the fact that Anthropic was surveilling users’ conversations for its research. Are professors and students thinking about the company’s ability to read everything they type?

Depressing read but very well put.

I continue to believe that cracking down on intellectual property is not the right way to resist AI, but Koebler does a great job of describing how maddening it is that big companies are going to get away with worse infringement than individual people taking advantage of fair use.

I think it was an episode of the Reply All podcast that opened my eyes to the fact that not listening to microphones and still placing creepily relevant ads is actually the worse possibility.

Some pretty good jokes in here.

I’m completely serious when I say that Peter Thiel makes me want to get a seminary degree, because if we’re going to have theology about AI, I want it to be better than his.