Today marks the beginning of a new communications initiative for the Episcopal Diocese of Rhode Island: “Dear Rhode Island Church” Over the next couple of years we’ll be working a team of talented communicators to share stories and images of the common life of our congregations across the state. I’ve seen some of the previews and I’m very excited about what is coming. This first video helps to frame the whole project. I’ll be sharing […]
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 […]
A.I. Is Poised to Rewrite History. Literally. – The New York Times: Johnson has been thinking all along about ways that historians and other authors could make money through the app. In our conversation in Mountain View, he put forward a possible new revenue stream: What if e-books of history came enhanced with a NotebookLM-like interface? Imagine, he went on, that “there’s a linear version of the story with chapters,” but then the primary materials […]
Speaking of AI and the illusion of sentience that seems to be tripping us up: “However much AI can mimic us or exceed us in certain capacities we can observe, still, that wouldn’t mean that AI is conscious, that it has subjective experience (what is sometimes called “sentience”). So it is unclear whether AI could, for example, appreciate beauty. It’s one thing to output speech and behavior that is humanlike or even, in certain respects, […]
I’m spending my sabbatical time doing a deep dive into how Machine Learning and Large Language Models (LLM) work and what the implications might be for all of us in the next few years. I came across this insight just now: AI’s Uneven Arrival – Stratechery by Ben Thompson: because they lack the ability to think and decide and verify they are best thought of as a tool for humans to leverage. Indeed, while conventional […]
People will share misinformation that sparks “moral outrage” – Ars Technica: It turned out that most people could discern between true and fake news. Yet they were willing to share outrageous news regardless of whether it was true or not—a result that was in line with previous findings from Facebook and Twitter data. Many participants were perfectly OK with sharing outrageous headlines, even though they were fully aware those headlines were misinformation. […] The urge […]
Every time the Olympics are broadcast prior to this year, it’s been an exercise in frustration trying to follow the events I’m interested in watching. I used to be on an Archery team, I taught riding, as a former dancer/choreographer I want to watch Rhythmic Gymnastics and now that I live in Rhode Island I want to watch ALL the sailing events. I seem to be the only person in the US who’s got that […]
Having co-written a piece with Kirk Smith on some practical ways that AI might be useful in small church ministry; I feel like I should point people to this longer, much more thoughtful article by Prof. Walter J. Scheirer on how AI might impact what it is to be a human being in the years to come: The Human in AI – Comment Magazine: The Portuguese political scientist Bruno Maçães has argued in his recent […]
Are you wondering how to get started with the newish social media platform that is usually called “Mastodon”? Well, I’ve written a started guide that you might find helpful. It’s targeted to people who are already familiar with using other social media services, and who might be the sort of people who follow this blog. Social Media and Mastodon People use social media for different reasons. That’s important to keep in mind. Some people are […]
I’ve heard from people around the state of Rhode Island today that they’ve been contacted by text message by someone claiming to be me and asking them to buy gift cards and send them to me. That’s not me. Really. I wouldn’t ask you to do that. That scam has been going around for years using email. Generally the message misspells my last name or gets my title wrong, and it’s never from my @episcopalri.org […]
