News today that Apple and Meta announced Muse Spark Open, which is essentially a frontier AI model (the jagged edge of AI capability) running on a local desktop computer. As Mac Stories puts it: Muse Spark Open is at the bleeding edge of models that can be run locally on computers that can sit on your desk and don’t need more power than can be delivered from a wall outlet. The cost isn’t trivial, but […]
It is clear that we are facing the rise of a new and profoundly disruptive technology. It’s not clear if this is going to be similar to other major disruptions or if this is unique. I’m not convinced anyone is able to honestly answer that by the way. There has been a great deal written reacting to what people perceive the challenge to be, but I’m not aware of any broad, careful, reflective scholarly engagement […]
A study at MIT has found that Generative AI tools are having a significant impact on the way students are learning. That’s not terribly surprising in of itself, but the report presents data and results that support the assertion and makes suggestions about what to do about it. Skipping to the end of the report, in summary: Adapt educational processes for an AI-aware world (Section 3.1) Campus-wide and as soon as possible, review what our […]
Om Malik died recently. He was a keen observer of the tech industry, insightful and thoughtful. He was also an insider in that area; maybe that’s what gives his writing such power. In his last published essay, on the meaning of the name “Mythos” that Anthropic has bestowed upon its best frontier model, he reflects on the ways that the company and its president Dario Amodei are using a constructive narrative to legitimize Generative AI. […]
AI-generated bot swarms pose a significant threat to democracy by making fringe views appear mainstream through manipulated social evidence. These bots can compromise training data for future AI models, exacerbating misinformation. While banning isn't a solution, changing the economic incentives behind manipulation is crucial to safeguarding democratic integrity.
Artificial Intelligence makes an alluring promise: a frictionless life. Already, it is possible to summon almost anything with a voice command or a swipe. A pizza arrives when we want it, wherever we are. Some speculate that soon enough, our personal digital servants will anticipate our cravings before we are even aware of them. The moment we begin to feel a pang of hunger for our favorite slice, it will already be on its way. […]
I was honored to be invited to be one of the Episcopalians invited to this past week’s AI Future’s Conference that was held in Minnesota. It was a rich and ecumenical meeting, with papers delivered, working groups organized and lots of serendipitous conversation. This piece by the Dean of Chapel at General Seminary in NYC provides both an overview and a suggestion of the most generative way people of faith can respond to rapid spread […]
Inside the funhouse mirror factory: How social media distorts perceptions of norms – ScienceDirect: Online discussions are dominated by a surprisingly small, extremely vocal, and non-representative minority. Research on social media has found that, while only 3 % of active accounts are toxic, they produce 33 % of all content [4]. Furthermore, 74 % of all online conflicts are started in just 1 % of communities [5], and 0.1 % of users shared 80 % of fake news [6,7]. Not only […]
The more I think about what Chatbots are and what they aren’t, the more I think of them, not so much as a stochastic parrot, but as a tool that we’re trying to use for the wrong purpose. There are some discrete tasks, in particular fields that Chatbots can help with (summarization, coding, some well understood math problems) but there are others where they can’t. The limit is because of what they are, not what […]
People Are Being Involuntarily Committed, Jailed After Spiraling Into “ChatGPT Psychosis”: Jared Moore, the lead author on the Stanford study about therapist chatbots and a PhD candidate at Stanford, said chatbot sycophancy — their penchant to be agreeable and flattering, essentially, even when they probably shouldn’t — is central to his hypothesis about why ChatGPT and other large language model-powered chatbots so frequently reinforce delusions and provide inappropriate responses to people in crisis. […] “There’s […]
