Werd I/O

"The blueprint for modern digital computing was codesigned by Charles Babbage, a vocal champion for the concerns of the emerging industrial capitalist class who condemned organized workers and viewed democracy and capitalism as incompatible."

"Babbage documented his ideas on labor discipline in his famous volume On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, published a year before Britain moved to abolish West Indian slavery. His work built on that of Adam Smith, extolling methods for labor division, surveillance, and rationalization that have roots on the plantation."

File this - all of this - under "things about the industry I've worked in for 25 years that I absolutely didn't know". How can we build on a better foundation? #Technology

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I'm pretty shocked that people are sharing Osama bin Laden's letter because they agree with it. Mostly because it is absolutely rife with antisemitic tropes.

This is one of the most dangerous aspects of the place we're in: the conflict in Gaza is leading to people unironically internalizing straight antisemitism. Which is really hard because what's happening in Gaza is awful - but anti-semitism is not at all the right lesson to be drawn from it. Of course it's not.

This kind of thing makes me more than a little fearful of what the next few years hold. #Media

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This feels like a good use for AI: taking in more data points, understanding their interactions, and producing far more accurate weather forecasts.

We're already used to some amount of unreliability in weather forecasts, so when the model gets it wrong - as this did with the intensification of Hurricane Otis - we're already somewhat prepared.

Once the model is sophisticated enough to truly model global weather, I'm curious about outcomes for climate science, too. #AI

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"Coal must be phased out seven times faster than is now happening, deforestation must be reduced four times faster, and public transport around the world built out six times faster than at present, if the world is to avoid the worst impacts of climate breakdown, new research has found."

Well, this is heartening. #Climate

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I feel this myself, but I don't think it means that coding is going away, exactly. Some kinds of coding are less manual, in the same way we don't write in assembler anymore. But there will always be a place for code.

Lately I've been feeling like AI replaces software libraries more than it replaces mainline code. In the old days, if you needed a function, you would find a library that did it for you. Now you might ask AI to write the function - and it's likely a better fit than a library would have been.

I don't know what this means for code improvements over time. People tend libraries; they upgrade their code. AI doesn't make similar improvements - or at least, it's not clear that it does. And it's not obvious to me that AI can keep improving if more and more code out in the world is already AI-generated. Does the way we code stagnate?

Anyway, the other day I asked ChatGPT to break down how a function worked in a language I don't code in, and it was incredibly useful. There's no doubt in my mind that it speeds us up at the very least. And maybe manual coding will be relegated to building blocks and fundamentals. #AI

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I read this the other day and haven't stopped thinking about it.

Mostly I worry about the children who have to grow up in this kind of environment. To my mind it's tantamount to child abuse.

What happens to them later? Do they stay inside this restrictive framework, or do they rebel? I'm genuinely curious to know how successful it is. It's not obvious to me that children will respond to it - unless they then go their whole lives never encountering an alternative point of view. #Society

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I strongly believe in this:

"Artists and writers must have solidarity across creative industries: if you wouldn’t feel comfortable with your own work being replaced by algogen, then you shouldn’t use generated content of other creative mediums."

On top of it being an ethical affront across the board, I don't believe AI can ever create the kind of art that I think is particularly valuable: subversive, provocative, pushing envelopes. It's fundamentally limited by its technical shortcomings. It'll always be, in the most literal sense, average.

But all art is valuable and all artists are valuable. They've already been in a vulnerable position forever; these kinds of products and policies punch down on people who already struggle to live and yet literally help us figure out what it means to be human. #AI

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Management consultants are to blame, for sure, but so are politicians for taking the bait. We know that there's big oil and gas money pushing against real solutions to climate change - anyone who's in that space needs to be vigilant against it.

One aspect of this might, perhaps, have been to not allow the talks to take place in one of the world's largest oil-producing nations. But here we are.

None of this is to say that McKinsey is off the hook for this kind of behavior. If this is happening, it's right to name and shame them. It's just: there are a lot of other people who should take some blame, too. #Climate

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This runs the gamut, but generally sits where I am: AI itself is not the threat. How it might be used in service of a profit motive is the threat.

Harry Josephine Giles worries about the digital enclosure movement - making private aspects of life that were once public - and I agree. That isn't just limited to AI; it's where we seem to be at the intersection of business and society.

Nick Harkaway: "In the end, this is a sideshow. The sectors where these systems will really have an impact are those for which they’re perfectly suited, like drug development and biotech, where they will act as accelerators, compounding the post-Covid moonshot environment and ambushing us with radical possibilities over time. I don’t look at this moment and wonder if writers will still exist in 2050. I ask myself what real new things I’ll need words and ideas for as they pass me in the street." #AI

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This is a great post from Matt: in response to a leak, he re-posted the full leaked content and added transparent context. Exactly how it should be done.

I wish, like many, that this wasn't the reality for Tumblr. But it's likely that it's too set in another era of the web, and it was too neglected by its previous owners. Automattic is a great company that makes sense as an acquirer, and they spent $100M to try and turn it around. That they ultimately couldn't is not an indictment of them.

Kudos also for not letting go of the team, and simply finding other places for them to go in the org - again, exactly how it should be done, even if it almost never is. #Technology

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While empowering artists is obviously a good thing, this feels like an unwinnable arms race to me. Sure, Nightshade can produce incorrect results in image generators, but this will be mitigated, leading to another tool, leading to another mitigation, and so on.

For now, this may be a productive kind of activism that draws attention to the plight of artists at the hands of AI. Ultimately, though, real agreements will need to be reached. #AI

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I just don't think advertising is an appropriate way to support this kind of journalism - or, potentially, any kind. This is more evidence, but it's also worth knowing that the private equity firm that owns G/O Media has not been a good steward.

Non-profits and worker-owned co-operatives aren't just more aligned ways to run this kind of organization, but I strongly suspect they last longer, too.

There is, of course, always the possibility that advertising is an excuse, and the owners didn't want to support a feminist publication. #Media

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"Speaking as a science fiction writer, I'd like to offer a heartfelt apology for my part in the silicon valley oligarchy's rise to power. And I'd like to examine the toxic role of science fiction in providing justifications for the craziness." #Technology

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On models for journalism:

"I wonder if the big problem is that we focused on scale when we should have been focused on nailing down the audience. If we focused on millions when we should have focused on building ourselves a liveable wage. And if we put too much of an emphasis on global at the cost of local."

Yes! This! Exactly! News was seduced by the exponential VC model that should have been limited to certain kinds of hardware and software. And in the process - as well as through some legacy ivory tower thinking - it chose not to dig deep and figure out exactly who it was serving.

I still say modern newsrooms should use the word "community" instead of "audience". It's a two-way relationship. And building relationships does not scale. #Media

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Over time, I think it's becoming more and more likely that Zuckerberg will step down. I strongly suspect he'll be replaced by Adam Mosseri, whose Instagram and Threads products have been doing very well for Meta (in contrast to Zuckerberg's metaverse shenanigans).

In any event, if he really did veto proposals to protect teens' mental health, it's a pretty damning indictment of his leadership.

Now that the internet's growth is at the other end of the S-curve and we're societally more comfortable with technology and its implications, I think we're likely to see more 2000s-era CEOs replaced with people who have a more nuanced, less exponential-growth-led approach. #Technology

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At least in Washington State, car manufacturers may record and intercept the text messages of drivers who have connected their devices to their cars via Bluetooth or cable.

That data can then be resold or provided to law enforcement without a warrant. #Technology

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"Some critics of Big Tech have argued that leading AI companies like Google, Microsoft and Microsoft-funded OpenAI support regulation as a way to lock out upstart challengers who'd have a harder time meeting government requirements."

Okay, but what about regulation that allows people to create new AI startups AND protects the public interest? #AI

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A fascinating discussion of how authorship has changed, and what the demands of new authors from publishing houses really are.

In the old days, an author was someone who created a work. Today, they have to be a brand.

But it also turns out that unionization has a big part to play: many writers moonlight in the entertainment industry, where they can get healthcare and other benefits, all due to the WGA. #Media

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I'm really hopeful for this new generation of worker-owned media outlets. It's a promising model, and obviously hugely empowering.

What will be disempowering is if they start to disappear. So let's support them with our full voices. If you're into video games, check this out, and maybe consider supporting them? #Media

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The technology depends on ingesting copyrighted work, and the business models depend on not paying for it.

But just because the models only work if no payment is involved, that doesn't give the technology the right to operate in this way. It's not the same as a person reading a book: it's a software system training itself on commercial information - and also, that person would have had to pay for that book. #AI

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These numbers are amazing to me. The Daily Mail publishes around 1640 articles every weekday. BBC News, in contrast, which has lots of local newsrooms, "only" publishes around 226 in total.

The Daily Mail, in other words, is a content farm. It's also the largest news publisher on TikTok and one of the largest on the web.

It's famous in Britain for its center right stance and a-bit-upmarket tabloid positioning. I wonder if that reputation translates in the US and beyond? #Media

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Golinks seem like a small thing but actually might be the thing that pushes me over the edge to running my own tailnet.

I like Will's solution here to running multiple otherwise-conflicting golinks servers.

The whole thing seems powerful and I suppose I should just dive in. #Technology

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Unsurprising. Which is the word I will also use for his inevitable early release. #Business

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"An algorithm must not be in full control of decisions that involve killing or harming humans, Egypt’s representative said after voting in favour of the resolution. The principle of human responsibility and accountability for any use of lethal force must be preserved, regardless of the type of weapons system involved, he added."

Quite a reflection of our times that this is a real concern. And it is. #AI

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"AI systems falsely classifying individuals as criminal suspects, robots being used for policing, and self-driving cars with faulty pedestrian tracking systems can already put your life in danger. Sadly, we do not need AI systems to have superintelligence for them to have fatal outcomes for individual lives. Existing AI systems that cause demonstrated harms are more dangerous than hypothetical “sentient” AI systems because they are real."

This is it: we can focus on hypothetical futures, but software is causing real harm in the here and now, and attention to science fiction outcomes is drawn away from fixing those harms. #AI

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