Tag: technology
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Turning Point?
A crowd spontaneously turned on a Waymo robot car when it tried to push its way through a Chinese New Year’s crowd in San Francisco’s Chinatown. So there were fireworks happening – pretty fun night and folks watching the fireworks. Every now and then traffic would build up and the crowd would make way for…
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The Three Laws of AI
When my previous company started using technologies such as machine learning to automate tasks such as curation, Rich Jaroslovsky, an experienced newsman who pioneered using web technology to build the online version of The Wall Street Journal, circulated a memo with three simple guidelines that are applicable to anyone thinking of using AI to automate…
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AI Mongering
I’ve been saving links to articles concerning the advancements & ethical quandaries related to ChatGPT, Bing AI Chat, Sydney, Bard and other Large Language Model AIs. All of this was in the hope that I’d be able to string together a cogent point of view about how I feel about the latest advancements. After doing…
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On the Cusp
One silver lining in getting laid off is that you have time to meet people and learn about things that you may have not had the time or attention to pick up on while in the trenches of a full time job. During the first week of my new no-fixed-schedule life I learned about: A…
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AI is only human
I’m so glad that The New York Times ran this op-ed (Artificial Intelligence’s White Guy Problem) about the inherent biases in Artificial Intelligence algorithms. Popular culture and much media coverage of AI tends to mysticize how it works, neglecting to point out that any machine learning algorithm is only going to be as good as the…
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Back when News was Physical
etaoin shrdlu are the first line of letters on a linotype keyboard, arranged based on frequency. The phrase is used to mark the end of a column. It is also the title of a short documentary about the last run of the linotype machines at the New York Times on July 2, 1978. There are all…
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The Modern Luddite’s Prayer
Sherry Turkle write’s in this week’s Sunday NY Times (The Flight from Conversation) that in the pursuit of connections via technology (email, texting, social media) we are forgetting the slow rhythm and cadence of face-to-face conversations. FACE-TO-FACE conversation unfolds slowly. It teaches patience. When we communicate on our digital devices, we learn different habits. As we ramp…