... works as a web developer in Hveragerði, Iceland, and writes about the web, digital publishing, and web/product development
These are his notes
Tech punditry “EU AI Act means that OSS language models don’t get safe harbour protections! Model APIs will be illegal! Crime! Crime!”
Meanwhile, the AI act explicitly says existing legislation on the liability of intermediary service providers is unaffected
![5. This Regulation shall not affect the application of the provisions on the liability of intermediary service providers set out in Chapter II, Section 4 of Directive 2000/31/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council31 [as to be replaced by the corresponding provisions of the Digital Services Act].](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/5097/2023/4cad739d1d.png)
Looks like the tech industry and media is having an apopleptic fit about the proposed EU AI act.
Which makes me even more optimistic that it might be on the right track.
So far, generative AI is a one hit wonder among consumers. The only service with uptake is ChatGPT. People don’t seem to care about Bing Chat or the rest
It’ll be interesting to see whether the “AI everywhere in everything” strategy popularises AI or just turns people off
I just published “Google Bard is a glorious reinvention of black-hat SEO spam and keyword-stuffing”
…where I celebrate the fact that Google seems to be planning on bringing back the days of rampant keyword manipulation of search engine results
Medium-free link to Doctorow’s post.
From 2019, but useful background to the current situation.
But when it comes to picking and choosing what TV shows and films to greenlight, no, they don’t have a data-based algorithm.
The entire case for “AI” as a disruptive tool worth trillions of dollars is grounded in the idea that chatbots and image-generators will let bosses fire hundred of thousands or even millions of workers.
“How Iceland sold the same Green Electricity twice - Industry Decarbonization Newsletter”
“Google Bard hits over 180 countries and territories—none are in the EU - Ars Technica”
there’s suspicion that the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is at the center of the omission.
Not following privacy regulation limits your market reach.
“On browser compatibility and support baselines · molily”
My fear is that Google’s Baseline initiative oversimplifies the discourse on browser support.
“AI and Data Scraping on the Archive - Archive of Our Own”
We’d like to share what we’ve been doing to combat data scraping and what our current policies on the subject of AI are.
Unsurprisingly sensible.
“GitHub and OpenAI fail to wriggle out of Copilot lawsuit • The Register”
This one is likely to have consequences.
TIL that the screenplay for Honey I Shrunk the Kids was written by horror legends Brian Yuzna and Stuart Gordon 🤯
I just published “‘What next?’ he asks with trepidation” where I have a low-key anxiety attack about the future, before I break for the weekend 😅
‘Google Neural Net “AI” Is About To Destroy Half The Independent Web – Ian Welsh’
But in the larger sense “AI” is a giant parasite devouring other people’s expertise and denying them a living
“Humans and algorithms work together — so study them together”
“The downside of AI: Former Google scientist Timnit Gebru warns of the technology’s built-in biases”
“Google wants to take over the web”
The threat here isn’t sci-fi fantasies of intelligent computers that could exist in the distant future; it’s what companies are doing today
“Cats Migrated to Europe 7,000 Years Earlier Than Once Thought”