Showing all posts tagged: artificial intelligence

Facebook has been scraping the pages of Australians since 2007

12 September 2024

Jake Evans, writing for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation:

Facebook has admitted that it scrapes the public photos, posts and other data of Australian adult users to train its AI models and provides no opt-out option, even though it allows people in the European Union to refuse consent.

For sure, Facebook operates a little differently in Australia. According to information provided by Melinda Claybaugh, Meta’s global privacy director, who was speaking at an Australian parliamentary inquiry into AI adoption, the social network has been collecting user data since 2007.

Only Facebook members who set their profiles to private, were spared. Australians, unlike residents of the European Union who are protected by strong privacy laws, also do not have the option to opt-out of having their data collected, if they elect to make their Facebook page publicly visible.

One can only wonder what sense Meta’s AI technologies made of the content posted by Australians to their Facebook pages, and what conclusions they drew about us.

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Authors slam NaNoWriMo neither for nor against AI stance

9 September 2024

National Novel Writing Month, AKA NaNoWriMo, the popular, twenty-five year old, write a fifty-thousand word novel in thirty-days challenge, infuriated authors last week, after organisers appeared to support the use of AI tools by participants. While they didn’t specifically endorse apps such as ChatGPT, they did not rule them out either:

NaNoWriMo neither explicitly supports nor condemns any approach to writing, including the use of tools that leverage AI.

NaNoWriMo’s neutral stance however has upset many writers. Not only do they feel generative AI tools threaten their livelihoods, some have also seen their own works used to “train” AI chatbots, usually without their permission or knowledge.

To these authors, the neutral position represents support of this conduct. But like many segments of society, NaNoWriMo, and its community of amateur and professional writers, have been grappling with the advent of AI technologies. Organisers say their (since amended) AI policy was intended to put an end to what had become inflammatory discussion on the topic:

In early August, debates about AI on our social media channels became vitriolic. It was clear that the intimidation and harassment we witnessed were causing harm within our community of writers. The FAQs we crafted last week were written to curtail those behaviors.

I don’t really know much about the NaNoWriMo community, but with over half a million members globally, it surely represents a wide and varied group of writers. Although some six-hundred NaNoWriMo manuscripts have gone on to be published, for many participants the writing challenge is simply a fun way to pass some time. The majority are not looking for publishing deals. I’d venture to say some participants may not be the greatest of writers. Others might struggle, for whatever reasons, to put a story idea they have, into words.

NaNoWriMo is saying they don’t have a problem with some of their members using AI tools, if it helps them with the process, be that drafting or proofreading. But they make an obvious caveat:

If using AI will assist your creative process, you are welcome to use it. Using ChatGPT to write your entire novel would defeat the purpose of the challenge, though.

I’m not in favour of using AI apps in any creative endeavours, particularly writing. Personally, I don’t think AI has any place in NaNoWriMo, for the precise reason organisers have stated above. AI defeats the purpose. But we’re getting to the point where it’s going to be hard to tell what work has been AI assisted, and what hasn’t. Plagiarism tools may be effective, but not if the AI apps stay one-step ahead. Imposing a ban on AI apps seems pointless. AI is here to stay, and is only going to more deeply embed itself in our lives. This is what we need to expend our energies on navigating.

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The photorealistic AI-generation revolution is here

29 August 2024

Chris Welch, a writer for The Verge, on the new “reimagine” feature, that shipped with Google’s recently launched Pixel 9 smartphones. Long story short, “reimagine” allows someone to edit/enhance any photo, anyway they choose:

With a simple prompt, you can add things to photos that were never there. And the company’s Gemini AI makes it look astonishingly realistic. This all happens right from the phone’s default photo editor app. In about five seconds.

That’s quite the leap for generative artificial intelligence, one that’s going to leave the rest of us wondering if what’s depicted in a photo is actual or not.

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Threat of AI, demise of blogging, the world in February 2015

15 August 2024

Since re-booting disassociated in May 2022, I’ve been slowly (incredibly slowly) restoring selected posts from the previous version of the blog that was online between 2007 and 2017. The restored posts are tagged legacy, and also include a few posts written prior to 2007, going back to 2003.

On checking as I typed this, I see there are presently seventy-four of the old posts back here now. Considering there were about twelve thousand posts originally, bringing back selected older posts is taking quite some time. I don’t intend to restore every last old post though. Some of them are now quite irrelevant and out-dated, and many include an abundance of dead links and long gone URLs.

If twelve-grand seems a lot, many posts were link-blog style, one-sentence affairs. My priority, when time permits, is bring back more of the article-type posts, such as film reviews. Anyway, to get to my point, a couple of posts I restored from February 2015, a mere nine-and-a-half-years ago now, still seem surprisingly relevant today.

One was about an apparently AI powered then Twitter account, called INTERESTING_JPG, which, although now inactive, remains online. INTERESTING would “look” at popular photos, and describe what it saw. INTERESTING’s accuracy was so-so, to the say the least. While AI is certainly a trending topic today, the concept has of course been present for a long time.

The other post I restored, which was originally published on 16 February 2015, was about the apparent demise of blogging, and personal websites. This not quite four years after the #IndieWeb movement, which is very much based on blogs and personal websites, was founded in 2011.

So there we have it. AI and #IndieWeb, two ideas that been with us for quite some time, but are, in a sense, making waves today.

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Create an AI version of yourself on Instagram to do who knows what

14 August 2024

Maybe back in 2006, I was in a discussion with then Australian web designer Jen Leheny, on the then forums of the Australian INfront, a design community we had helped establish in the late 1990’s, about WordPress. I was still using static HTML files to run disassociated, but was considering migrating to the then much in-trend CMS.

Jen said something like: “WordPress is working for me while I sleep.” I was sold. A short time later, I commenced the process of converting disassociated to WordPress.

Fast forward to 2024. A new tool by Meta, being trailed only in America at present, allows Instagram (IG) users to create an AI version of themselves. This… clone, will, says Alex Heath, writing for The Verge, allow IG users “to talk directly with humans in chat threads and respond to comments on their author’s account.”

This will, no doubt, allow harried IG users, influencers particularly, to do two things at once. Create more content. Network. Attend meetings. Take of the business side of their operation. They’ll also be able to sleep, soundly I imagine, in the knowledge the AI version of themselves is working on their behalf, at the same time.

That sounds like the good news, the pluses, of the new technology. As to the downsides. Where do we begin? What, for instance, if an IG AI avatar suggests a follower do something inappropriate, or unlawful? What responsibility might the (human) IG account holder have in that event?

This comes back to what a lot of people see as the incorrect application of AI technologies, including American author Joanna Maciejewska, who would prefer AI did her housework, not her writing. Any IG AI “assistant” should have the same purpose. Shouldn’t the technology be working behind the scenes, rather than taking centre stage?

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Only some search engines can access and index Reddit content

30 July 2024

Google, and Brave Search, are apparently the only search engines permitted to crawl Reddit, and index content published there. Other search engines, including Bing and Duck Duck Go, are presently being prevented from accessing the “front page of the internet” forum and discussion website.

Reddit appears to be concerned that search engines other than Google and Brave may use content on their website for training AI chatbots. The move has nothing to do — or so we are told — with a sixty-million dollar deal between Google and Reddit, made earlier this year.

This deal precisely allows Google to use content published on Reddit to train its AI apps though. It seems like it’s ok to take Reddit content for these purposes, so long as you’ve stumped up the cash. I wonder if Reddit members, who wrote the content in the first place, see any of this money.

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The WWDC edition of the Talk Show, ChatGPT, tall poppy syndrome

17 June 2024

John Gruber, of Daring Fireball, presented another edition of the Talk Show, at Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). The live show featured usual Apple executives Craig Federighi and Greg Joswiak, who were joined this year by John Giannandrea, perhaps best known for his work with Siri, Apple’s digital assistant.

I’m hardly an Apple aficionado, I only have an iPhone, but I still catch the WWDC edition of the Talk Show, just because I usually find the topics of conversation fascinating. I also read Daring Fireball daily. The website, not the RSS feed. Both experiences are essentially pretty much the same, so I opt for the website. But again, not because I’m any Apple fanboi, but mainly because a lot of what is published there is simply interesting to read.

I don’t usually watch the show in its entirety though, I listen, in podcast style, while doing other things. Two hours is a long time to sit and watch. But I took time this year to read some of the comments left on the Talk Show YouTube page. There’s a few unhappy campers out there.

A number of people were critical of what they considered to be Gruber’s rambling style of interviewing. I can’t say I’ve ever found that a problem, at least with the WWDC shows. He spends a bit of time introducing a topic, which sometimes need explanation, and then his guests respond. I suspect envy may be at the root of most of this criticism.

And a little bit of what, in Australia is referred to as, tall poppy syndrome. Some people also felt Gruber doesn’t ask hard enough questions, but I’m not sure that’s the intent of the WWDC edition.

The topic of Apple’s partnership with ChatGPT was raised, specifically the question of who is paying who for the technology that will power Apple Intelligence, their in-development AI platform. It’s been the subject of much speculation. A firm, but friendly, “no answer” was offered by Greg Joswiak, Apple’s head of worldwide marketing, however. Well, at least the question was asked.

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Writers not using AI being accused of using AI… by AI apps

14 June 2024

I’m not anti-AI (well, not too much), but when there’s a one-hundred percent reliance on their abilities, and more crucially, the judgements some AI apps make, then there’s a problem.

News that (human) writers and journalists, who have never used AI-powered tools in their work, but are being fired for apparently doing so, because an AI app determined they were, is disturbing to say the least. This is particularly concerning, given the integrity of many AI-powered apps that check for supposed AI generated content, is dubious to begin with:

Some advertise accuracy rates as high as 99.98%. But a growing body of experts, studies, and industry insiders argue these tools are far less reliable than their makers promise. There’s no question that AI detectors make frequent mistakes, and innocent bystanders get caught in the crossfire.

Sure, there should be processes to check the veracity of work published publicly, especially (but not exclusively) on news outlets. As readers, we’re relying on the accuracy of the information presented to us. If the use of AI generated content is suspected though, it should be flagged for investigation. By people who will look into the issue raised. Not by another AI-powered app that will make a final — quite possibly incorrect — call.

But: there’s the rub. To quote — not plagiarise — Shakespeare. There probably are no people on hand to investigate. There were likely let go, and replaced by AI-powered apps, because it saved someone money. What a tangled web we weave. I get the horrid feeling we’re going to be hearing a lot more stories like this, going forward.

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Software vendors… supercharge their apps with AI. But why?

13 June 2024

This is a disturbing trend, vendors of software and apps, in particular those that have been around for years, suddenly introducing AI functionality. Indeed, whose idea was this?

What Apple announced looks like more of the same that’s been offered lately. Help writing emails that don’t need to be written, bad generative images that look little better than anything else on the market and a dubious integration with OpenAI which feels super weird given the former’s much marketed stance on privacy and the latter’s dubious respect for anyone’s data.

An app I use to read PDF documents, is an example. I just want to read PDF files… I don’t need help from an AI assistant for that. I’ve barely blinked at the feature so far, but who knows, maybe I should.

Perhaps the AI helper, will, like some book reading apps, scan the document, and return a summary of its contents, sparing the need to read it in full. Now that I think about it: no, I won’t find out if that’s one of the AI assistant’s purposes. That seems like a slippery-slope to me.

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Four-day workweeks are nigh, followed by zero-day workweeks

6 June 2024

There has been talk of the four-day workweek for as long as I can remember. We were told about it when I started school. Yet it’s to fully, properly, officially, arrive. The work week is still, for the most part, in many places, five days: Monday to Friday.

We don’t live in an age where Monday to Thursday is the norm. Or, as I’d prefer it, if four day weeks becomes a thing: Tuesday to Friday.

The sooner Monday absorbed into a three-day weekend, the better. No more Mondayitis hey? Still, a four-day work week is stepping closer. A number of companies and government organisations are embracing it, as Andrew Keshner writes for Marketwatch.

For the record, I will however strive to continue posting to disassociated at least five-days per week*.

But what of the zero-day workweek… utopia, we also heard about at school? When computers were meant to be doing everything, so people didn’t have to lift a finger. If AI is all it is cracked up to be, the zero-day workweek may likewise be nigh. But, as Joanna Maciejewska says, we’re not presently training AI correctly to bring that about:

I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes.

We need to be training AI to do the grunt work, not the creative stuff. It’s very simple really. If we’re no longer going to the workplace (and presumably living in a universal basic income world), we’re going to need something to do with the time we’ll have in all those seven-day weekends, fifty-two weeks of the year. You’re already looking at what I’ll be doing when the zero-day workweek arrives.

But what about you? What will you do when the work-free utopia of the future materialises?

* excluding (possibly) holidays, etc.

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