Below are posts associated with the “link” type.
🔗 linkblog: Scammers Used ChatGPT to Unleash a Crypto Botnet on X | WIRED'
Three cheers for ChatGPT or whatever.
🔗 linkblog: Why this chaplain sees her atheism as a gift : NPR'
Vanessa Zoltan is great, and I love what she shares here.
🔗 linkblog: The Legislature’s Transportation Budget Cuts Contributed to the JCPS Bus Debacle - Kentucky Center for Economic Policy'
I hadn’t thought about this before, but of course the same General Assembly complaining about the JCPS bus crisis is responsible for underfunding their bus system.
🔗 linkblog: Use of AI Is Seeping Into Academic Journals—and It’s Proving Difficult to Detect | WIRED'
Good article on a worrying trend. It’s things like this that make me skeptical of arguments that generative AI could have real benefit when used properly. It’s not that I disagree—it’s that in the aggregate, I’m not sure the proper uses will outweigh the problems.
🔗 linkblog: Elon Musk, Once Again, Tries To Throttle Links To Sites He Dislikes | Techdirt'
I’ve instinctively never liked t.co links, and this demonstrates what the problem with them are.
🔗 linkblog: An Iowa school district is using ChatGPT to decide which books to ban - The Verge'
Even if ChatGPT could be trusted to do this task, “let’s remove books from libraries with less work” is a good example of how efficiency isn’t always a good thing.
🔗 linkblog: OpenAI wants GPT-4 to solve the content moderation dilemma - The Verge'
Look, if an automated process could save human moderators from the awful work they have to do, I’d be all for it. I’m unconvinced that GPT-4 could do it, though.
🔗 linkblog: Elon Musk keeps getting creepier - The Verge'
I think this is two weeks in a row that I’ve shared Casey Newton’s Platformer column, but that’s because it’s two weeks in a row he’s written something important.
🔗 linkblog: The Case of the Internet Archive vs. Book Publishers - The New York Times'
Good coverage of a worrying development. I’m sympathetic to authors’ worries here, but I also think they’re wrong. If digital is different than the physical, copyright considerations need to be more generous, NOT stricter. The Internet Archive is an important service, and I’m worried about the future.
🔗 linkblog: The U.S. Government Wants To Control Online Speech to “Protect Kids” | Electronic Frontier Foundation'
There’s so much inane blathering about free speech on the internet that it’s easy to sometimes forget that it can be a real concern. Here’s one such example.
🔗 linkblog: AI hysteria is a distraction: algorithms already sow disinformation in Africa | Odanga Madung | The Guardian'
So many important points in this piece.
🔗 linkblog: Generative AI Is Making Companies Even More Thirsty for Your Data | WIRED'
This is not a future I look forward to (or a present I want to live in).
🔗 linkblog: Clarence Thomas accepted even more gifts from billionaires, new report finds : NPR'
This… just keeps getting worse. All justices, regardless of political stripes, need to ensre they aren’t being influenced.
🔗 linkblog: Author discovers AI-generated counterfeit books written in her name on Amazon | Ars Technica'
I’m not thrilled about AI’s ability to do this, but let’s be clear: Amazon is as much to blame here, and I like them even less.
🔗 linkblog: It’s time to change how we cover Elon Musk - The Verge'
Casey Newton has some good insight here.
🔗 linkblog: Now you can block OpenAI’s web crawler - The Verge'
This is a welcome step, but I’m concerned it’s an empty, distracting gesture—it certainly doesn’t solve the deeper issue.
🔗 linkblog: Zoom says its new AI tools aren’t stealing ownership of your content - The Verge'
Zoom’s responses to this are meaningless, empty corporate speak. I’m not concerned about owning my content, I’m concerned about others using it while affirming my ownership. And yes, I “consent” to it in the sense that I use Zoom, but that is meaningless consent and Zoom knows it. What a garbage response.
🔗 linkblog: Eight Months Pregnant and Arrested After False Facial Recognition Match - The New York Times'
Facial recognition software is gross. What a good—but terrible!—example that just because it comes from an algorithm doesn’t mean it’s right. When will we learn that the risks of wrong decisions outweigh the purported promise of the right ones?
🔗 linkblog: Academic Book About Emojis Can’t Include The Emojis It Talks About Because Of Copyright | Techdirt'
This is dumb. Copyright is important, but this example shows how much we’ve made it overreach.
🔗 linkblog: A jargon-free explanation of how AI large language models work | Ars Technica'
Haven’t read this yet, but I’m bookmarking for my classes.
🔗 linkblog: Someone Has to Deliver Your Packages in This Scorching Heat | WIRED'
So many of our conveniences depend on someone else doing work we wouldn’t want to do ourselves.
🔗 linkblog: JCPS approves $11.7M for AI weapons detection in schools'
Guns in schools are bad, but adding surveillance to schools is not the solution.