Artificial Intelligence
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Tweezeday
Just in case you think chatting with an AI chatbot is private. In Chatbot Ad IDs Share Data To Google, Microsoft, Other Analytics Providers, Laurie Sullivan in MediaPost sources Tracking Conversations: Measuring Content and Identity Exposure on AI Chatbots, a report by four researchers at UC Davis. Among much else, they say, We find that 17… Continue reading
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Memday
Remembering the future What matters most about Memorial Day is that we stop killing each other, especially over problems that could have been solved without anyone dying. Word Pope Leo on AI. The whole thing. More evidence that advertising corrupts and digital advertising corrupts absolutely Wired: ‘Creepy’ Listening Tool for Targeted Ads Didn’t Actually Work, FTC Says. I added… Continue reading
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Oofday
This one is too good at them I just wasted an hour of writing and research by hitting the wrong chord on my keyboard here, after neglecting to save my work in progress. You can't teach an old dog old mistakes. Uh oh Some bad shit is going down in Garden Grove. The other two don't… Continue reading
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Thirstday
The inhuman touch For the first time ever, a call to AppleCare got me an AI agent rather than a human being. The agent solved my problem, but made me feel sad, because AppleCare’s people provided a human connection, just we get from the people behind the Apple Stores’ Genius Bars. Are they the next… Continue reading
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Personal Agentry
In Know your .agent, Esther Dyson suggests that we need a DNS-like registry of AI agents. She and her colleagues at the Agentic AI foundation (agentcommunity.org) have started one, and it has some good premises, such as accountability for AI agents and their operators. .agent is clearly designed—so far—to make Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, OpenAi, Perplexity, et.… Continue reading
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Fromday
That number is way too low California AG Bob Bonta writes, “On Friday, we announced a historic $12.75 million settlement against General Motors for illegally retaining and selling hundreds of thousands of Californians’ location and driving data to data brokers.” It’s coming down There are three great teams left in the NBA playoffs. The Knicks… Continue reading
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Thrumsday
Fills a void Great backstory in Axios on the Politik app. Just in time for finals and/or graduation A massive Canvas data breach paralyzes 9000 schools and 275 million students. My school, Indiana University, is among them. It’s a ransomware shakedown: You may already be infected Gadget Review: Google Chrome Silently Installs a 4 GB AI… Continue reading
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Whensday
All the way down, but not out This visit to an abandoned radio station speaks volumes about what remains of the industry. The station is WACQ/580 in Tuskegee, Alabama. I’m listening to the online stream right now, and it sounds like a working local station, with live talent and lots of ads by local sponsors.… Continue reading
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Default Lines
Suck onward I only had this one day to catch up on all kinds of stuff here in Santa Barbara, and ended up spending half of it trying to get our two printers working. The Brother is a laser printer that only worked on Wi-Fi after I downloaded new drivers and installed them with my… Continue reading
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Nutherday
Agents by agents for agents with agents around agents over agents without agents beside agents… I’m at the Agentic Internet Workshop, where most of the sessions are about what personal AI agents can do: for you, with each other, and (choose a preposition) each other. Wow: https://github.com/loyalagents, within which is https://github.com/loyalagents/loyal-agent-evals HT: Dazza Greenwood. We’ll miss it… Continue reading
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Websday
Grid lock-out Fortune: Nearly 50,000 Lake Tahoe residents have to find a new power source after their energy source looks to redirect lines to data centers. Greater Good Government Phil Windley nails a use case for MyTerms. Lesser Good Government Wired: ICE Is Expanding Across the US at Breakneck Speed. Here’s Where It’s Going Next—ICE plans to… Continue reading
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Your Future Starts Monday
Your private future, that is. Your present isn’t private. Not in the digital world. Not while you always agree to their terms, and not them to yours. With MyTerms, they agree to your privacy terms. Ones that, for example, disallow being tracked everywhere like a marked animal. There’s a standard for this now: IEEE 7012,… Continue reading
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Ursday
And it still is I posted Why Music Radio is Dying almost 15 years ago, but it’s getting action now for some reason. Verily Reid Hoffman in Faith in the Possible: “It’s easy to get caught up in product releases and cycles, and forget that every technology traces this spiritual arc. You are born into… Continue reading
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Wonday
em… As a lifelong over-user of em dashes and F bombs—hey, I'm from New Jersey—it's fun for me to learn that AI slop generators follow my style and F bombs are a way around detection. I'd say more, but would rather point to Tom Fishburne's typically excellent cartoon and post about the whole thing. Delayed… Continue reading
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Everwhen
Good deal This is cool: IU opens its free generative AI course to anyone worldwide. As always Jamie Smith nails it with No one is listening to Steve Jobs’s advice about the EU Digital ID Wallet. Still the only way Interesting how old posts get new traffic. The biggest this morning on the ProjectVRM blog is to Health… Continue reading
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Nowsday
Nobirds? Engadget: Shoe company Allbirds pivots to AI compute in sign of a totally normal and healthy economy. Say hello to “NewBird AI.” It’s April 15, not April 1. Just noting that. Reuters. Investopedia. Marketwatch. Apparently, you can still buy their shoes: allbirds.com. I love The Onion’s American Voices take. One more reason to hate advertising… Continue reading
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Everwhen
Of course they do 404 Media: Google, Microsoft, Meta All Tracking You Even When You Opt Out, According to an Independent Audit. Here it is. Look at it this way: personal privacy is a vacuum in the digital world, and will remain so as long as we're naked there. Surveillance will fill that vacuum. Inevitably. Constantly. … Continue reading
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TGI Day
Bad news OMFG, news is such a shitshow. Start with Do links hurt news publishers on Twitter? Our analysis suggests yes, by NiemanLab. Then, Social Media has Become a Freak Show, by Nate Silver. Thing is, more and more people in the U.S. now get their news (if that’s what it is) from social media, which… Continue reading
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Fendsday
How to prevent the all-knowing and all-doing from doing wrong. Very wrong. Just one approach. Wired: Anthropic Teams Up With Its Rivals to Keep AI From Hacking Everything And, of course, Gary Marcus is less worried. When you whack a hornet's nest with a baseball bat while standing naked, what are the hornets going to do?… Continue reading
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Toward a Human Future for AI
I was invited by Janna Anderson and Lee Rainie, of the Imagining the Digital Future Center at Elon University, to contribute my thoughts to their latest study, titled Building a Human Resilience Infrastructure for the Age of AI: Experts Call for Radical Change Across Institutions, Social Structures, which just came out. Here is the full… Continue reading