Satire or Marketing: Let Smart Software Decide
July 3, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
What’s PhD level intelligence? In 1962, I had a required class in one of the -ologies. I vaguely remember that my classmates and I had to learn about pigeons, rats, and people who would make decisions that struck me as off the wall. The professor was named after a Scottish family from the Highlands. I do recall looking up the name and finding that it meant “crooked nose.” But the nose, as nice as it was, was nothing to the bed springs the good professor suspended from a second story window. I asked him, “What’s the purpose of the bed springs?” (None of the other students in the class cared, but I found the sight interesting.) His reply was, “I am using it as an antenna.” Okay, that is one example of PhD-level intelligence. I have encountered others, but I will not regale you with are somewhat idiosyncratic behaviors.
The illustration demonstrates the common sense approach to problem solving. Thanks, MSFT Copilot. Chugging away on Recall and security over the holiday. Yep, I bet you are.
Why am I thinking about a story about bedsprings suspend from a second story window? I just read “ChatGPT Now Has PhD Level Intelligence, and the Poor Personal Choices to Prove It.” The write up states:
ChatGPT has become indispensable to plagiarists and spambots worldwide. Now, OpenAI is thrilled to introduce ChatGPT 5.0, the most advanced version of the popular virtual assistant to date. With groundbreaking improvements, GPT-5 is like having a doctor of philosophy right at your fingertips.
The write up (in a humorous vein I really hope) identifies some characteristics of the next big thing from Sam AI-Man, the Apple partner he hopes. The article suggests that ChatGPT 5 can cherish a saloon mug with this snappy phrase printed on the container:
Suck it up, liver.
No, I don’t want the mug, nor have I abused my liver as an undergraduate. I actually enjoyed spending time in the so-called university’s library.
The write up includes an short commentary about the ethical concerns or guardrails Sam AI-Man has on the Information Highway populated with smart vehicles and presumably less smart humans who are confident the zeros and ones don’t get scrambled:
Numerous questions have arisen regarding the ethics and legality of training ChatGPT on copyrighted text data without permission. In this latest version, however, reliance on authors’ intellectual property has been dramatically reduced. While GPT-5 started training from a knowledge base of millions of texts, it got around to reading only Frankenstein, plus maybe half of a Donna Haraway book. It basically bluffed its way through prelims by talking about “embodiment” a lot.
I get the Mary Shelly reference. But Donna Haraway forced me to ask Claude Sonnet 3.5, “Please, explain Donna Haraway’s contribution to ethical discourse.” Here’s what I received from the smart system competing with Sam AI-Man’s presumably smarter system:
Here’s Donna Haraway’s contribution to ethical discourse in three sentences:
- Donna Haraway challenged traditional ideas about what it means to be human by introducing the concept of a “cyborg” – a blend of human and machine.
- She argued that the lines between nature and culture, human and animal, and physical and non-physical are not as clear as we think, which forces us to rethink our ethical responsibilities.
- Her work encourages us to consider how technology and science affect our understanding of ourselves and our relationships with other living things, pushing us to develop new ethical frameworks for our changing world.
Thank you, Claude Sonnet 3.5! I have stated that my IQ score pegs me in the “Dumb Cod” percentile. I think Ms. Haraway is into the Ray Kurzweil and Elon Musk concept space. I know I am looking forward to nanodevices able to keep me alive for many, many years. I want to poke fun at smart software, and I quite like to think about PhD level software.
To close, I want to quote the alleged statement of a very smart person who could not remember if OpenAI used YouTube-type content to train ChatGPT. (Hey, even crooked nose remembered that he suspended the bed springs to function like an antenna.) The CTO of OpenAI allegedly said:
“If you look at the trajectory of improvement, systems like GPT-3 were maybe toddler-level intelligence… and then systems like GPT-4 are more like smart high-schooler intelligence. And then, in the next couple of years, we’re looking at PhD intelligence…” — Open AI CTO Mira Murati, in an interview with Dartmouth Engineering
I wonder if a person without a PhD can recognize “PhD intelligence”? Sure. Why not? It’s marketing.
Stephen E Arnold, July 3, 2024
Another Open Source AI Voice Speaks: Yo, Meta!
July 3, 2024
This essay is the work of a dinobaby. Unlike some folks, no smart software improved my native ineptness.
The open source software versus closed source software demonstrates ebbs and flows. Like the “go fast” with AI and “go slow” with AI, strong opinions suggest that big money and power are swirling like the storms on a weather app for Oklahoma in tornado season. The most recent EF5 is captured in “Zuckerberg Disses Closed-Source AI Competitors As Trying to Create God.” The US government seems to be concerned about open source smart software finding its way into the hands of those who are not fans of George Washington-type thinking.
Which AI philosophy will win the big pile of money? Team Blue representing the Zuck? Or, the rag tag proprietary wizards? Thanks, MSFT Copilot. You are into proprietary, aren’t you?
The “move fast and break things” personage of Mark Zuckerberg is into open source smart software. In the write up, he allegedly said in a YouTube bit:
“I don’t think that AI technology is a thing that should be kind of hoarded and … that one company gets to use it to build whatever central, single product that they’re building,” Zuckerberg said in a new YouTube interview with Kane Sutter (@Kallaway).
The write up includes this passage:
In the conversation, Zuckerberg said there needs to be a lot of different AIs that get created to reflect people’s different interests.
One interesting item in the article, in my opinion, is this:
“You want to unlock and … unleash as many people as possible trying out different things,” he continued. “I mean, that’s what culture is, right? It’s not like one group of people getting to dictate everything for people.”
But the killer Meta vision is captured in this passage:
Zuckerberg said there will be three different products ahead of convergence: display-less smart glasses, a heads-up type of display and full holographic displays. Eventually, he said that instead of neural interfaces connected to their brain, people might one day wear a wristband that picks up signals from the brain communicating with their hand. This would allow them to communicate with the neural interface by barely moving their hand. Over time, it could allow people to type, too. Zuckerberg cautioned that these types of inputs and AI experiences may not immediately replace smartphones, though. “I don’t think, in the history of technology, the new platform — it usually doesn’t completely make it that people stop using the old thing. It’s just that you use it less,” he said.
In short, the mobile phone is going down, not tomorrow, but definitely to the junk drawer.
Several observations which I know you are panting to read:
- Never under estimate making something small or re-invented as a different form factor. The Zuck might be “right.”
- The idea of “unleash” is interesting. What happens if employees at WhatsApp unleash themselves? How will the Zuck construct react? Like the Google? Something new like blue chip consulting firms replacing people with smart software? “Unleash” can be interpreted in different ways, but I am thinking of turning loose a pack of hyenas. The Zuck may be thinking about eager kindergartners. Who knows?
- The Zuck’s position is different from the government officials who are moving toward restrictions on “free and open” smart software. Those hallucinating large language models can be repurposed into smart weapons. Close enough for horseshoes with enough RDX may do the job.
Net net: The Zuck is an influential and very powerful information channel owner. “Unleash” what? Hungry predators or those innovating children? Perhaps neither. But as OpenAI seems to be closing; the Zuck AI is into opening. Ah, uncertainty is unfolding before my eyes in real time.
Stephen E Arnold, July 3, 2024
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Can Big Tech Monopolies Get Worse?
July 3, 2024
Monopolies are bad. They’re horrible for consumers because of high prices, exploitation, and control of resources. They also kill innovation, control markets, and influence politics. A monopoly is only good when it is a reference to the classic board game (even that’s questionable because the game is known to ruin relationships). Legendary tech and fiction writer Cory Doctorow explains that technology companies want to maintain their stranglehold on the economy,, industry, and world in an article on the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF): “Want Make Big Tech Monopolies Even Worse? Kill Section 230.”
Doctorow makes a humorous observation, referencing Dante, that there’s a circle in Hell worse than being forced to choose a side in a meaningless online flame war. What’s that circle? It’s being threatened with a lawsuit for refusing or complying with one party over another. EFF protects civil liberties on the Internet and digital world. It’s been around since 1990, so the EFF team is very familiar with poor behavior that plagues the Internet. Their first hire was the man who coined Godwin’s Law.
EFF loves Section 230 because it protects people who run online services from being sued by their users. Lawsuits are horrible, time-consuming, and expensive. The Internet is chock full of people who will sue at the stroke of a keyboard. There’s a potential bill that would kill Section 230:
“That’s why we were so alarmed to see a bill introduced in the House Energy and Commerce Committee that would sunset Section 230 as of December 31, 2025, with no provision to protect online service providers from being conscripted into their users’ online disputes and the legal battles that arise from them.
Homely places on the internet aren’t just a curiosity anymore, nor are they merely a hangover from the Web 1.0 era.
In an age of resurgent anti-monopoly activism, small online communities, either standing on their own, or joined in loose “federations,” are the best chance we have to escape Big Tech’s relentless surveillance and clumsy, unaccountable control.”
If Section 230 is destroyed, it will pit big tech companies with their deep pockets against the average user. Big Tech could sue whoever they wanted and it would allow bad actors, including scammers, war criminals, and dictators, to silence their critics. It would also prevent any alternatives to big tech.
So big tech could get worse, although it’s still very bad: kids addicted to screens, misinformation, CSAM, privacy violations, and monopolistic behavior. Maybe we should roll over and hide beneath a rock with an Apple tracker stuck to it, of course.
Whitney Grace, July 3, 2024
Some Tension in the Datasphere about Artificial Intelligence
June 28, 2024
This essay is the work of a dinobaby. Unlike some folks, no smart software improved my native ineptness.
I generally try to avoid profanity in this blog. I am mindful of Google’s stopwords. I know there are filters running to protect those younger than I from frisky and inappropriate language. Therefore, I will cite the two articles and then convert the profanity to a suitably sanitized form.
The first write up is “I Will F…ing Piledrive You If You Mention AI Again”. Sorry, like many other high-technology professionals I prevaricated and dissembled. I have edited the F word to be less superficially offensive. (One simply cannot trust high-technology types, can you? I am not Thomson Reuters obviously.) The premise of this write up is that smart software is over-hyped. Here’s a passage I found interesting:
Unless you are one of a tiny handful of businesses who know exactly what they’re going to use AI for, you do not need AI for anything – or rather, you do not need to do anything to reap the benefits. Artificial intelligence, as it exists and is useful now, is probably already baked into your businesses software supply chain. Your managed security provider is probably using some algorithms baked up in a lab software to detect anomalous traffic, and here’s a secret, they didn’t do much AI work either, they bought software from the tiny sector of the market that actually does need to do employ data scientists.
I will leave it to you to ponder the wisdom of these words. I, for instance, do not know exactly what I am going to do until I do something, fiddle with it, and either change it up or trash it. You and most AI enthusiasts are probably different. That’s good. I envy your certitude. The author of the first essay is not gentle; he wants to piledrive you if you talk about smart software. I do not advocate violence under any circumstances. I can tolerate baloney about smart software. The piledriver person has hate in his heart. You have been warned.
The second write up is “ChatGPT Is Bullsh*t,” and it is an article published in SpringerLink, not a personal blog. Yep, bullsh*t as a term in an academic paper. Keep in mind, please, that Stanford University’s president and some Harvard wizards engaged in the bullsh*t business as part of their alleged making up data. Who needs AI when humans are perfectly capable of hallucinating, but I digress?
I noted this passage in the academic write up:
So perhaps we should, strictly, say not that ChatGPT is bullshit but that it outputs bullshit in a way that goes beyond being simply a vector of bullshit: it does not and cannot care about the truth of its output, and the person using it does so not to convey truth or falsehood but rather to convince the hearer that the text was written by a interested and attentive agent.
Please, read the 10 page research article about bullsh*t, soft bullsh*t, and hard bullsh*t. Form your own opinion.
I have now set the stage for some observations (probably unwanted and deeply disturbing to some in the smart software game).
- Artificial intelligence is a new big thing, and the hyperbole, misdirection, and outright lying like my saying I would use forbidden language in this essay irrelevant. The object of the new big thing is to make money, get power, maybe become an influencer on TikTok.
- The technology which seems to have flowered in January 2023 when Microsoft said, “We love OpenAI. It’s a better Clippy.” The problem is that it is now June 2024 and the advances have been slow and steady. This means that after a half century of research, the AI revolution is working hard to keep the hypemobile in gear. PR is quick; smart software improvement less speedy.
- The ripples the new big thing has sent across the datasphere attenuate the farther one is from the January 2023 marketing announcement. AI fatigue is now a thing. I think the hostility is likely to increase because real people are going to lose their jobs. Idle hands are the devil’s playthings. Excitement looms.
Net net: I think the profanity reveals the deep disgust some pundits and experts have for smart software, the companies pushing silver bullets into an old and rusty firearm, and an instinctual fear of the economic disruption the new big thing will cause. Exciting stuff. Oh, I am not stating a falsehood.
Stephen E Arnold, June 23, 2024
Can the Bezos Bulldozer Crush Temu, Shein, Regulators, and AI?
June 27, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
The question, to be fair, should be, “Can the Bezos-less bulldozer crush Temu, Shein, Regulators, Subscriptions to Alexa, and AI?” The article, which appeared in the “real” news online service Venture Beat, presents an argument suggesting that the answer is, “Yes! Absolutely.”
Thanks MSFT Copilot. Good bulldozer.
The write up “AWS AI Takeover: 5 Cloud-Winning Plays They’re [sic] Using to Dominate the Market” depends upon an Amazon Big Dog named Matt Wood, VP of AI products at AWS. The article strikes me as something drafted by a small group at Amazon and then polished to PR perfection. The reasons the bulldozer will crush Google, Microsoft, Hewlett Packard’s on-premises play, and the keep-on-searching IBM Watson, among others, are:
- Covering the numbers or logo of the AI companies in the “game”; for example, Anthropic, AI21 Labs, and other whale players
- Hitting up its partners, customers, and friends to get support for the Amazon AI wonderfulness
- Engineering AI to be itty bitty pieces one can use to build a giant AI solution capable of dominating D&B industry sectors like banking, energy, commodities, and any other multi-billion sector one cares to name
- Skipping the Google folly of dealing with consumers. Amazon wants the really big contracts with really big companies, government agencies, and non-governmental organizations.
- Amazon is just better at security. Those leaky S3 buckets are not Amazon’s problem. The customers failed to use Amazon’s stellar security tools.
Did these five points convince you?
If you did not embrace the spirit of the bulldozer, the Venture Beat article states:
Make no mistake, fellow nerds. AWS is playing a long game here. They’re not interested in winning the next AI benchmark or topping the leaderboard in the latest Kaggle competition. They’re building the platform that will power the AI applications of tomorrow, and they plan to power all of them. AWS isn’t just building the infrastructure, they’re becoming the operating system for AI itself.
Convinced yet? Well, okay. I am not on the bulldozer yet. I do hear its engine roaring and I smell the no-longer-green emissions from the bulldozer’s data centers. Also, I am not sure the Google, IBM, and Microsoft are ready to roll over and let the bulldozer crush them into the former rain forest’s red soil. I recall researching Sagemaker which had some AI-type jargon applied to that “smart” service. Ah, you don’t know Sagemaker? Yeah. Too bad.
The rather positive leaning Amazon write up points out that as nifty as those five points about Amazon’s supremacy in the AI jungle, the company has vision. Okay, it is not the customer first idea from 1998 or so. But it is interesting. Amazon will have infrastructure. Amazon will provide model access. (I want to ask, “For how long?” but I won’t.), and Amazon will have app development.
The article includes a table providing detail about these three legs of the stool in the bulldozer’s cabin. There is also a run down of Amazon’s recent media and prospect directed announcements. Too bad the article does not include hyperlinks to these documents. Oh, well.
And after about 3,300 words about Amazon, the article includes about 260 words about Microsoft and Google. That’s a good balance. Too bad IBM. You did not make the cut. And HP? Nope. You did not get an “Also participated” certificate.
Net net: Quite a document. And no mention of Sagemaker. The Bezos-less bulldozer just smashes forward. Success is in crushing. Keep at it. And that “they” in the Venture Beat article title: Shouldn’t “they” be an “it”?
Stephen E Arnold, June 27, 2024
Nerd Flame War: AI AI AI
June 27, 2024
The Internet is built on trolls and their boorish behavior. The worst of the trolls are self-confessed “experts” on anything. Every online community has their loitering trolls and tech enthusiasts aren’t any different. In the old days of Internet lore, online verbal battles were dubbed “flame wars” and XDA-Developers reports that OpenAI started one: “AI Has Thrown Stack Overflow Into Civil War.”
A huge argument in AI development is online content being harvested for large language models (LLMs) to train algorithms. Writers and artists were rightly upset were used to train image and writing algorithms. OpenAI recently partnered with Stack Overflow to collect data and the users aren’t happy. Stack Overflow is a renowned tech support community for sysadmin, developers, and programmers. Stack Overflow even brags that it is world’s largest developer community.
Stack Overflow users are angry, because they weren’t ask permission to use their content for AI training models and they don’t like the platform’s response to their protests. Users are deleting their posts or altering them to display correct information. In response, Stack Overflow is restoring deleted and incorrect information, temporarily suspending users who delete content, and hiding behind the terms of service. The entire situation is explained here:
“Delving into discussion online about OpenAI and Stack Overflow’s partnership, there’s plenty to unpack. The level of hostility towards Stack Overflow varies, with some users seeing their answers as being posted online without conditions – effectively free for all to use, and Stack Overflow granting OpenAI access to that data as no great betrayal. These users might argue that they’ve posted their answers for the betterment of everyone’s knowledge, and don’t place any conditions on its use, similar to a highly permissive open source license.
Other users are irked that Stack Overflow is providing access to an open-resource to a company using it to build closed-source products, which won’t necessarily better all users (and may even replace the site they were originally posted on.) Despite OpenAI’s stated ambition, there is no guarantee that Stack Overflow will remain freely accessible in perpetuity, or that access to any AIs trained on this data will be free to the users who contributed to it.”
Reddit and other online communities are facing the same problems. LLMs are made from Stack Overflow and Reddit to train generative AI algorithms like ChatGPT. OpenAI’s ChatGPT is regarded as overblown because it continues to fail multiple tests. We know, however, that generative AI will improve with time. We also know that people will use the easiest solution and generative AI chatbots will become those tools. It’s easier to verbally ask or write a question than searching.
Whitney Grace, June 27, 2024
Prediction: Next Target Up — Public Libraries
June 26, 2024
This essay is the work of a dinobaby. Unlike some folks, no smart software improved my native ineptness.
The publishers (in spirit at least) have kneecapped the Internet Archive. If you don’t know what the online service does or did, it does not matter. I learned from the estimable ShowBiz411.com site, a cultural treasure is gone. Forget digital books, the article “Paramount Erases Archives of MTV Website, Wipes Music, Culture History After 30 Plus Years” says:
Parent company Paramount, formerly Viacom, has tossed twenty plus years of news archives. All that’s left is a placeholder site for reality shows. The M in MTV – music — is gone, and so is all the reporting and all the journalism performed by music and political writers ever written. It’s as if MTV never existed. (It’s the same for VH1.com, all gone.)
Why? The write up couches the savvy business decision of the Paramount leadership this way:
There’s no precedent for this, and no valid reason. Just cheapness and stupidity.
Tibby, my floppy ear Frenchie, is listening to music from the Internet Archive. He knows the publishers removed 500,000 books. Will he lose access to his beloved early 20th century hill music? Will he ever be able to watch reruns of the rock the casbah music video? No. He is a risk. A threat. A despicable knowledge seeker. Thanks to myself for this nifty picture.
My knowledge of MTV and VH1 is limited. I do recall telling my children, “Would you turn that down, please?” What a waste of energy. Future students of American culture will have a void. I assume some artifacts of the music videos will remain. But the motherlode is gone. Is this a loss? On one hand, no. Thank goodness I will not have to glimpse performs rocking the casbah. On the other hand, yes. Archaeologists study bits of stone, trying to figure out how those who left them built Machu Pichu did it. The value of lost information to those in the future is tough to discuss. But knowledge products may be like mine tailings. At some point, a bright person can figure out how to extract trace elements in quantity.
I have a slightly different view of these two recent cultural milestones. I have a hunch that the publishers want to protect their intellectual property. Internet Archive rolled over because its senior executives learned from their lawyers that lawsuits about copyright violations would be tough to win. The informed approach was to delete 500,000 books. Imagine an online service like the Internet Archive trying to be a library.
That brings me to what I think is going on. Copyright litigation will make quite a lot of digital information disappear. That means that increasing fees to public libraries for digital copies of books to “loan” to patrons must go up. Libraries who don’t play ball may find that those institutions will be faced with other publisher punishments: No American Library Association after parties, no consortia discounts, and at some point no free books.
Yes, libraries will have to charge a patron to check out a physical book and then the “publishers” will get a percentage.
The Andrew Carnegie “free” thing is wrong. Libraries rip off the publishers. Authors may be mentioned, but what publisher cares about 99 percent of its authors? (I hear crickets.)
Several thoughts struck me as I was walking my floppy ear Frenchie:
- The loss of information (some of which may have knowledge value) is no big deal in a social structure which does not value education. If people cannot read, who cares about books? Publishers and the wretches who write them. Period.
- The video copyright timebomb of the Paramount video content has been defused. Let’s keep those lawyers at bay, please. Who will care? Nostalgia buffs and the parents of the “stars”?
- The Internet Archive has music; libraries have music. Those are targets not on Paramount’s back. Who will shoot at these targets? Copyright litigators. Go go go.
Net net: My prediction is that libraries must change to a pay-to-loan model or get shut down. Who wants informed people running around disagreeing with lawyers, accountants, and art history majors?
Stephen E Arnold, June 26, 2024
Microsoft: Not Deteriorating, Just Normal Behavior
June 26, 2024
This essay is the work of a dinobaby. Unlike some folks, no smart software improved my native ineptness.
Gee, Microsoft, you are amazing. We just fired up a new Windows 11 Professional machine and guess what? Yep, the printers are not recognized. Nice work and consistent good enough quality.
Then I read “Microsoft Admits to Problems Upgrading Windows 11 Pro to Enterprise.” That write up says:
There are problems with Microsoft’s last few Windows 11 updates, leaving some users unable to make the move from Windows 11 Pro to Enterprise. Microsoft made the admission in an update to the "known issues" list for the June 11, 2024, update for Windows 11 22H2 and 23H2 – KB5039212. According to Microsoft, "After installing this update or later updates, you might face issues while upgrading from Windows Pro to a valid Windows Enterprise subscription."
Bad? Yes. But then I worked through this write up: “Microsoft Chose Profit Over Security and Left U.S. Government Vulnerable to Russian Hack, Whistleblower Says.” Is the information in the article on the money? I don’t know. I do know that bad actors find Windows the equivalent of an unlocked candy store. Goodies are there for greedy teens to cart off the chocolate-covered peanuts and gummy worms.
Everyone interested in entering the Microsoft Windows Theme Park wants to enjoy the thrills of a potentially lucrative experience. Thanks, MSFT Copilot. Why is everyone in your illustration the same?
This remarkable story of willful ignorance explains:
U.S. officials confirmed reports that a state-sponsored team of Russian hackers had carried out SolarWinds, one of the largest cyberattacks in U.S. history.
How did this happen? The write up asserts:
The federal government was preparing to make a massive investment in cloud computing, and Microsoft wanted the business. Acknowledging this security flaw could jeopardize the company’s chances, Harris [a former Microsoft security expert and whistleblower] recalled one product leader telling him. The financial consequences were enormous. Not only could Microsoft lose a multibillion-dollar deal, but it could also lose the race to dominate the market for cloud computing.
Bad things happened. The article includes this interesting item:
From the moment the hack surfaced, Microsoft insisted it was blameless. Microsoft President Brad Smith assured Congress in 2021 that “there was no vulnerability in any Microsoft product or service that was exploited” in SolarWinds.
Okay, that’s the main idea: Money.
Several observations are warranted:
- There seems to be an issue with procurement. The US government creates an incentive for Microsoft to go after big contracts and then does not require Microsoft products to work or be secure. I know generals love PowerPoint, but it seems that national security is at risk.
- Microsoft itself operates with a policy of doing what’s necessary to make as much money as possible and avoiding the cost of engineering products that deliver what the customer wants: Stable, secure software and services.
- Individual users have to figure out how to make the most basic functions work without stopping business operations. Printers should print; an operating system should be able to handle what my first personal computer could do in the early 1980s. After 25 years, printing is not a new thing.
Net net: In a consequence-filled business environment, I am concerned that Microsoft will not improve its security and the most basic computer operations. I am not sure the company knows how to remediate what I think of as a Disneyland for bad actors. And I wanted the new Windows 11 Professional to work. How stupid of me?
Stephen E Arnold, June 26, 2024
X: The Prominent (Fake) News Source
June 26, 2024
Many of us have turned away from X, formerly Twitter, since its Musky takeover and now pay it little mind. However, it seems many Americans still trust the platform to deliver their news. This is concerning, considering “X Has Highest Rate of Misinformation As a New Source, Study Finds.”
Citing a recent Pew Research study, MediaDailyNews reports 65% of X users say news is a reason they visit the platform. Breaking news is even more of a draw, with 75% of users getting their real-time news on the platform. This is understandable given Twitter’s legacy, but are users unaware how unreliable X has become? Writer Colin Kirkland emphasizes:
“What may the greatest concern in Pew’s findings is that while X touts that it has the most devoted base of news seekers, it also ranked the highest in terms of inaccurate reporting. All of the platforms Pew studied proliferate misinformation-based news stories, but 86% of X’s base reported seeing inaccurate news, and 37% say they see it often. As Meta makes definitive moves to curb its news output on apps like Instagram, Facebook and Threads — the only other potential breaking-news alternative to X — Elon Musk’s app reigns supreme in the proliferation and digestion of news content, which could have effects on the upcoming presidential election, especially due to the amount of misinformation circling the platform.”
Yep. How can one reach X users with this important update? Pew is trying the direct route. Will it make any difference?
Cynthia Murrell, June 26, 2024
Two EU Firms Unite in Pursuit of AI Sovereignty
June 25, 2024
Europe would like to get out from under the sway of North American tech firms. This is unsurprising, given how differently the EU views issues like citizen privacy. Then there are the economic incentives of localizing infrastructure, data, workforce, and business networks. Now, two generative AI firms are uniting with that goal in mind. The Next Web reveals, “European AI Leaders Aleph Alpha and Silo Ink Deal to Deliver ‘Sovereign AI’.” Writer Thomas Macaulay reports:
“Germany’s Aleph Alpha and Finland’s Silo AI announced the partnership [on June 13, 2024]. The duo plan to create a ‘one-stop-solution’ for European industrial firms exploring generative AI. Their collaboration brings together distinctive expertise. Aleph Alpha has been described a European rival to OpenAI, but with a stronger focus on data protection, security, and transparency. The company also claims to operate Europe’s fastest commercial AI data center. Founded in 2019, the firm has become Germany’s leading AI startup. In November, it raised $500mn in a funding round backed by Bosch, SAP, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Silo AI, meanwhile, calls itself ‘Europe’s largest private AI lab.’ The Helsinki-based startup provides custom LLMs through a SaaS subscription. Use cases range from smart devices and cities to autonomous vehicles and industry 4.0. Silo also specializes in building LLMs for low-resource languages, which lack the linguistic data typically needed to train AI models. By the end of this year, the company plans to cover every official EU language.”
Both Aleph Alpha CEO Jonas Andrulis and Silo AI CEO Peter Sarlin enthusiastically advocate European AI sovereignty. Will the partnership strengthen their mutual cause?
Cynthia Murrell, June 25, 2024
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