“Five Things: February 2, 2023 — As in guillotine…”

“Against risk-based authentication (or, why I wouldn’t trust Google Cloud)”

Add to that the risk of having auth linked to social media behaviour (youtube). Get banned from youtube; get locked out of Google Cloud.

“How AI is stealing your art”

Even if you think generative AI is the bee’s knees, this is exactly the sort of tech co overreach that leads to heavy-handed regulation and lawsuits that set broad, sweeping precedents

“A patchwork dodo is not a dodo”

“Netlify Acquires Gatsby, Its Struggling Jamstack Competitor - The New Stack”

The only thing I’ll say about this is that we’re going to see more of these kinds of acquisitions.

“Gaslighting and reality in AI - by Gary Marcus”

“Modern Health, frameworks, performance, and harm – Eric Bailey”

“Geeking with Greg: Layoffs and tech layoffs”

From 14 years ago and still true.

‘“Everyone Used to Be a Designer”’

“An AI app walks into a writers room - Charlie’s Diary”

“Revised Issues Paper on Intellectual Property Policy and Artificial Intelligence”

This paper from the World Intellectual Property Organisation raises a lot of really good questions that don’t have answers yet.

“Copyright and Artificial Creation: Does EU Copyright Law Protect AI-Assisted Output?”

Another paper on the same subject. This time based on a study made for the European Commission. The answer is again “it depends”

‘Qualification of AI creations as “works” under EU copyright law: AI-assisted versus AI-generated works’

The answer to “are AI works protected by copyright?” seems to be ‘no’ in the US but EU law is less clear

“No, large language models aren’t like disabled people (and it’s problematic to argue that they are) - by Emily M. Bender - Medium”

“Reading code is a different experience to writing code”

“Leakage and the Reproducibility Crisis in ML-based Science”

“OpenAI has hired an army of contractors to make basic coding obsolete - Semafor”

Not sure what to think about this, but it’s the right strategic move for OpenAI. Slightly fewer landmines.

“My perspective on ChatGPT (and creativity and teaching) – Learning and Technology”

Seeing people adoringly praise AI art on social media is like having that “so, wait, you actually like Adam Sandler comedies?” moment several times a day, every day.

The quality of AI art seems inversely proportional to the amount of praise given to it by the initial poster.

“AI-generated code helps me learn and makes experimenting faster”

If you’re going to use Copilot, this is the way to do it. Not including the generated code in the final product also hedges your bets on the lawsuit

“Tolerance for boredom - A Working Library”

“To help you best, I’d need to know you”

AI business models are going to collide so hard with the GDPR. I don’t see how we’re going to avoid a trainwreck of epic proportions. And fines.

“The contagious visual blandness of Netflix”

“Monetizing uninformation: a prediction”

“Flood the zone with bullshit (or facilitate others doing so), then offer paid services to detect said bullshit”

“Use the dialog element (reasonably) - scottohara.me”