AI Podcasters Are Reviewing Books Now
October 10, 2024
I read an article about how students are using AI to cheat on homework and receive book summaries. Students especially favor AI voices reading to them. I wasn’t surprised by that, because this generation is more visual and audial than others. What astounded me, however, was that AI is doing more than I expected such as reading and reviewing books according to ArsTechnica: “Fake AI “Podcasters” Are Reviewing My Book And It’s Freaking Me Out.”
Kyle Orland has followed generative AI for a while. He also recently wrote a book about Minesweeper. He was as astounded as me when we heard to AI generated podcasters discussing his book into a 12.5 minute distilled show. The chatbots were “engaging and endearing.” They were automated by Google’s new NotebookLM, a virtual research assistant that can summarize, explain complex ideas, and brainstorm from selected sources. Google recently added the Audio Overview feature to turn documents into audio discussions.
Orland fed his 30,000 word Minesweeper book into NotebookLM and he was amazed that it spat out a podcast similar to NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour. It did get include errors but as long as it wasn’t being used for serious research, Orland was cool with it:
“Small, overzealous errors like these—and a few key bits of the book left out of the podcast entirely—would give me pause if I were trying to use a NotebookLM summary as the basis for a scholarly article or piece of journalism. But I could see using a summary like this to get some quick Cliff’s Notes-style grounding on a thick tome I didn’t have the time or inclination to read fully. And, unlike poring through Cliff’s Notes, the pithy, podcast-style format would actually make for enjoyable background noise while out on a walk or running errands.”
Orland thinks generative AI chatbot podcasts will be an enjoyable and viable entertainment option in the future. They probably will. There’s actually a lot of creative ways creators could use AI chatbots to generate content from their own imaginations. It’s worrisome but also gets the creative juices flowing.
Whitney Grace October 10, 2024
AI Help for Struggling Journalists. Absolutely
October 10, 2024
Writers, artists, and other creatives have labeled AI as their doom of their industries and livelihoods. Generative AI Newsroom explains one way that AI could be helpful to writers: “How Teams of AI Agents Could Provide Valuable Leads For Investigative Data Journalism.” Investigative and data journalism requires the teamwork of many individuals. Due to the teamwork of the journalists, they create impactful stories.
Media outlets experimented with adding generative AI to journalism and it wasn’t successful. The information was inaccurate and very specific instructions. While OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot seems intuitive with its Q and A interface, investigative journalism requires a more robust AI.
Investigative journalism and other writing vocations require team work, so AI for those jobs could benefit from it too. The Generative AI Newsroom is working on an AI that would assist journalists:
“Specifically, we developed a prototype system that, when provided with a dataset and a description of its contents, generates a “tip sheet” — a list of newsworthy observations that may inspire further journalistic explorations of datasets. Behind the scenes, this system employs three AI agents, emulating the roles of a data analyst, an investigative reporter, and a data editor. To carry out our agentic workflow, we utilized GPT-4-turbo via OpenAI’s Assistants API, which allows the model to iteratively execute code and interact with the results of data analyses.”
A human journalist, editor, and analyst works with the AI:
“In our setup, the analyst is made responsible for turning journalistic questions into quantitative analyses. It conducts the analysis, interprets the results, and feeds these insights into the broader process. The reporter, meanwhile, generates the questions, pushes the analyst with follow-ups to guide the process towards something newsworthy, and distills the key findings into something meaningful. The editor, then, mainly steps in as the quality control, ensuring the integrity of the work, bulletproofing the analysis, and pushing the outputs towards factual accuracy.”
The AI is still in its testing phase but it sounds like a viable tool to incorporate AI into media outlets. While humans are an integral part of the process, what happens when the AI becomes better at storytelling than humans? It is possible. Where does the human role come in then?
Whitney Grace, October 10, 2024
When Accountants Do AI: Do The Numbers Add Up?
October 9, 2024
This blog post did not require the use of smart software, just a dumb humanoid.I will not suggest that Accenture has moved far, far away from its accounting roots. The firm is a go to, hip and zip services firm. I think this means it rents people to do work entities cannot do themselves or do not want to do themselves. When a project goes off the post office path like the British postal service did, entities need someone to blame and — sometimes, just sometimes mind you — to sue.
The carnival barker, who has an MBA and a literature degree from an Ivy League school, can do AI for you. Thanks, MSFT, good enough like your spelling.
“Accenture To Train 30,000 Staff On Nvidia AI Tech In Blockbuster Deal” strikes me as a Variety-type Hollywood story. There is the word “blockbuster.” There is a big number: 30,000. There is the star: Nvidia. And there is the really big word: Deal. Yes, deal. I thought accountants were conservative, measured, low profile. Nope. Accenture apparently has gone full scale carnival culture. (Yes, this is an intentional reference to the book by James B. Twitchell. Note that this YouTube video asserts that it can train you in 80 percent of AI in less than 10 minutes.)
The article explains:
The global services powerhouse says its newly formed Nvidia Business Group will focus on driving enterprise adoption of what it called ‘agentic AI systems’ by taking advantage of key Nvidia software platforms that fuel consumption of GPU-accelerated data centers.
I love the word “agentic.” It is the digital equivalent of a Hula Hoop. (Remember. I am an 80 year old dinobaby. I understand Hula Hoops.)
The write up adds this quote from the Accenture top dog:
Julie Sweet, chair and CEO of Accenture, said the company is “breaking significant new ground” and helping clients use generative AI as a catalyst for reinvention.” “Accenture AI Refinery will create opportunities for companies to reimagine their processes and operations, discover new ways of working, and scale AI solutions across the enterprise to help drive continuous change and create value,” she said in a statement.x
The write up quotes Accenture Chief AI Officer Lan Guan as saying:
“The power of these announcements cannot be overstated. Called the “next frontier” of generative AI, these “agentic AI systems” involve an “army of AI agents” that work alongside human workers to “make decisions and execute with precision across even the most complex workflows,” according to Guan, a 21-year Accenture veteran. Unlike chatbots such as ChatGPT, these agents do not require prompts from humans, and they are not meant to automating pre-existing business steps.
I am interested in this announcement for three reasons.
First, other “services” firms will have to get in gear, hook up with an AI chip and software outfit, and pray fervently that their tie ups actually deliver something a client will not go to court because the “agentic” future just failed.
Second, the notion that 30,000 people have to be trained to do something with smart software. This idea strikes me as underscoring that smart software is not ready for prime time; that is, the promises which started gushing with Microsoft’s January 2023 PR play with OpenAI is complicated. Is Accenture saying it has hired people who cannot work with smart software. Are those 30,000 professionals going to be equally capable of “learning” AI and making it deliver value? When I lecture about a tricky topic with technology and mathematics under the hood, I am not sure 100 percent of my select audiences have what it takes to convert information into a tool usable in a demanding, work related situation. Just saying: Intelligence even among the elite is not uniform. By definition, some “weaknesses” will exist within the Accenture vision for its 30,000 eager learners.
Third, Nvidia has done a great sales job. A chip and software company has convinced the denizens of Carpetland at what CRN (once Computer Reseller News) to get an Nvidia tattoo and embrace the Nvidia future. I would love to see that PowerPoint deck for the meeting that sealed the deal.
Net net: Accountants are more Hollywood than I assumed. Now I know. They are “agentic.”
Stephen E Arnold, October 9, 2024
FOGINT: Internet Service Providers in the Hot Box
October 9, 2024
The only smart software involved in producing this short FOGINT post was Microsoft Copilot’s estimable art generation tool. Why? It is offered at no cost.
For several years, I have used the term “ghost providers” to describe online service providers as enablers of online crime. The advent of virtual machines and virtual servers operated by customers who just pay a monthly fee and do everything themselves provides a great foggy ground cover. If an investigators speaks with one of these providers, the response includes variations of “We don’t know” and “No clue, bro.” The reason is that the service provider provides access to a system, includes no support, and leaves it up to the person paying the bill to be the cook, bottlewasher, and janitor. These outfits are in the service business with a range of offerings: Full service to DIY.
“Oh, we cannot see what is on the virtual machines working as virtual servers,” says the bright ISP operator. Thanks, MSFT Copilot. That’s pretty lousy fog if I say so myself.
Italy wants to take action to prevent enablers who provide ghost services with bare metal and zero service other than pings, plumbing, and power. “ISPs ‘Betrayed’ Over Pirate Site-Blocking Threats, The Reckoning Will Be Invisible” reports that Italy’s
advanced legal weaponry is incapable of dealing with distant pirate IPTV services. Instead, it mainly targets communications infrastructure, much of it operated by rightsholders’ supposed allies – ISPs – who were given no say in the matter.
Torrent Freak’s view of the law is somewhat reserved, even skeptical. The cited article continues:
if pirate sites share an IP address with entirely innocent sites, and the innocent sites are outnumbered, ISPs, VPNs and DNS services will be legally required to block them all. Since nobody ever passes bad law and good laws hurt no one, blocking innocent sites can be conducted guilt-free from the moral high ground.
Among those with a strong view of the law is Giovanni Zorzoni, president of the Italian Internet Provider Association. No big surprise, FOGINT surmises. The article quotes him as saying:
“Irresponsible initiative that, in the sole interest of the football lobby, tramples on operators, [AGCOM] and the Internet ecosystem,” he said. “Thanks to the new law, they will be able to block sites that are no longer exclusively, but also ‘mainly’ used to distribute illegal content, substantially widening the scope of [rightsholders’] discretion. It may therefore happen, much more frequently, that even legitimate addresses that are only accidentally used for the transmission of pirated content are blocked,” Zorzoni added.
Google offered some input which Torrent Freak presented; to wit:
Diego Ciulli, Head of Government Affairs and Public Policy at Google in Italy, expressed concern over the likely effect on the justice system in Italy should Google be required to comply. Under the label of “fighting piracy”, Ciulli said that digital platforms will be required to notify the judicial authorities of ALL copyright infringements – present, past and future – when they become aware of them. That could be a problem. “Do you know how many there are in the case of Google? At the moment, 9,756,931,770. In short, the Senate is asking us to flood the judicial authorities with almost 10 billion URLs – and provides for prison if we miss a single notification. If the law is not amended, the risk is to do the opposite of the spirit of the law: clog up the judicial authorities, and take resources away from the fight against piracy,” he warned.
Yep, imagine if ISPs had to block packets containing information directly linked to illegal activities. That is, it seems, to be a lot of work for the ISPs to do.
Several observations:
- Some service providers are known for their willingness to facilitate content which breaks laws
- The “virtualization” of “services” provides a 24×7 disco dance fog machine to hide certain activities from staff, other customers, and government authorities
- The money derived from the customers who exploit the willful obfuscation makes the service provider business tick.
Is the Italian law a remedy? No. Will other countries crank up regulation of ISPs? Yes. But after decades of a digital Wild West, fences will not be erected overnight. As a result, the black sheep will roam among wild ponies and make a range of online crimes possible and lucrative. That’s quite a marketing position for some firms.
Stephen E Arnold, October 9, 2024
Dolma: Another Large Language Model
October 9, 2024
The biggest complaint AI developers have are the lack of variety and diversity in large language models (LLMs) to train the algorithms. According to the Cornell University computer science paper, “Dolma: An Open Corpus Of There Trillion Tokens For Language Model Pretraining Research” the LLMs do exist.
The paper’s abstract details the difficulties of AI training very succinctly:
“Information about pretraining corpora used to train the current best-performing language models is seldom discussed: commercial models rarely detail their data, and even open models are often released without accompanying training data or recipes to reproduce them. As a result, it is challenging to conduct and advance scientific research on language modeling, such as understanding how training data impacts model capabilities and limitations.”
Due to the lack of LLMs, the paper’s team curated their own model called Dolma. Dolma is a three-trillion-token English opus. It was built on web content, public domain books, social media, encyclopedias code, scientific papers, and more. The team thoroughly documented every information source so they wouldn’t deal with the same problems of other LLMs. These problems include stealing copyrighted material and private user data.
Dolma’s documentation also includes how it was built, design principles, and content summaries. The team share Dolma’s development through analyses and experimental test results. They are thoroughly documenting everything to guarantee that this is the ultimate LLM and (hopefully) won’t encounter problems other than tech related. Dolma’s toolkit is open source and the team want developers to use it. This is a great effort on behalf of Dolma’s creators! They support AI development and data curation, but doing it responsibly.
Give them a huge round of applause!
Cynthia Murrell, October 10, 2024
FOGINT: A Doggie Telegram Play in the Mists of Crypto
October 8, 2024
The FOGINT team has noticed an uptick about the Simplex messenger. You can download the end to end encrypted application from this link. According to chatter on interesting discussion services, individuals espousing certain beliefs are abandoning Telegram because Mr. Freedom (Pavel Durov is allegedly cooperating with law enforcement and other government officials in certain investigation). The causal link between Simplex and Telegram’s new, flexible approach to allegedly illegal activities may be clear to some people. That’s fine.
Some people will not be aware that the sheep are ignoring a government worker wearing a rather poor sheep disguise. Thanks, MSFT Copilot. How are those Windows updates going? Oh, how about those security changes?
However, Telegram continues to push into territory far more significant than fooling around with the craziness of those who use Telegram to organize traffic jams and sell contraband. The big fish is now on the dock. The fish mongers are crowding around to find out the value of the snatch.
“The First Telegram ICO Is Here: Dogizen, Launches Today” reveals what may be a more significant move in the underground financial ecosystem. The FOGINT teams thinks that Telegram is doing its part to undermine the US dollar, not make weird animal games available to people who want free money. The article reported on October 4, 2024:
This is the first ICO to offer investors the chance to purchase the DOGIZ token directly from within Telegram itself and could open up a whole new slice of the crypto community. DOGIZ will go on sale at $0.00007, with a total of one hundred billion presale tokens available for purchase. Dogizen finds itself in the midst of Telegram gaming’s surge, which has recently gained attention with multiple successful launches, collectively amassing a market cap nearing $2 billion in just six months.
Telegram ran into a brick wall several years ago when the US Securities & Exchange Commission blocked the messaging company’s initial foray into crypto. Now the Telegram plan is coming into focus. There are STARs, TONcoins, and deals with outfits like Tether. This play with doggies is a transactional platform applied to providing for a fee the plumbing necessary to ramp crypto with essentially zero friction. The estimable Durov brothers are demonstrating that there is more to a messaging application than groups, channels, advertising, and faux compliance with government officials.
The Durovs are doggies who want to grow up to be wolves.
Stephen E Arnold, October 8, 2024
Windows Fruit Loop Code, Oops. Boot Loop Code.
October 8, 2024
Windows Update Produces Boot Loops. Again.
Some Windows 11 users are vigilant about staying on top of the latest updates. Recently, such users paid for their diligence with infinite reboots, freezes, and/ or the dreaded blue screen of death. Digitaltrends warns, “Whatever You Do, Don’t Install the Windows 11 September Update.” Writer Judy Sanhz reports:
“The bug here can cause what’s known as a ‘boot loop.’ This is an issue that Windows versions have had for decades, where the PC will boot and restart endlessly with no way for users to interact, forcing a hard shutdown by holding the power button. Boot loops can be incredibly hard to diagnose and even more complicated to fix, so the fact that we know the latest Windows 11 update can trigger the problem already solves half the battle. The Automatic Repair tool is a built-in feature on your PC that automatically detects and fixes any issues that prevent your computer from booting correctly. However, recent Windows updates, including the September update, have introduced problems such as freezing the task manager and others in the Edge browser. If you’re experiencing these issues, our handy PC troubleshooting guide can help.”
So for many the update hobbled the means to fix it. Wonderful. It may be worthwhile to bookmark that troubleshooting guide. On multiple devices, if possible. Because this is not the first time Microsoft has unleased this particular aggravation on its users. In fact, the last instance was just this past August. The company has since issued a rollback fix, but one wonders: Why ship a problematic update in the first place? Was it not tested? And is it just us, or does this sound eerily similar to July’s CrowdStrike outage?
(Does the fruit loop experience come with sour grapes?)
Cynthia Murrell, October 8, 2024
Hey, Live to Be a 100 like a Tech Bro
October 8, 2024
If you, gentle reader, are like me, you have taken heart at tales of people around the world living past 100. Well, get ready to tamp down some of that hope. An interview at The Conversation declares, “The Data on Extreme Human Ageing Is Rotten from the Inside Out.” Researcher Saul Justin Newman recently won an Ig Nobel Prize (not to be confused with a Nobel Prize) for his work on data about ageing. When asked about his work, Newman summarizes:
“In general, the claims about how long people are living mostly don’t stack up. I’ve tracked down 80% of the people aged over 110 in the world (the other 20% are from countries you can’t meaningfully analyze). Of those, almost none have a birth certificate. In the US there are over 500 of these people; seven have a birth certificate. Even worse, only about 10% have a death certificate. The epitome of this is blue zones, which are regions where people supposedly reach age 100 at a remarkable rate. For almost 20 years, they have been marketed to the public. They’re the subject of tons of scientific work, a popular Netflix documentary, tons of cookbooks about things like the Mediterranean diet, and so on. Okinawa in Japan is one of these zones. There was a Japanese government review in 2010, which found that 82% of the people aged over 100 in Japan turned out to be dead. The secret to living to 110 was, don’t register your death.”
That is one way to go, we suppose. We learn of other places Newman found bad ageing data. Europe’s “blue zones” of Sardinia in Italy and Ikaria in Greece, for example. There can be several reasons for erroneous data. For example, wars or other disasters that destroyed public records. Or clerical errors that set the wrong birth years in stone. But one of the biggest factors seems to be pension fraud. We learn:
“Regions where people most often reach 100-110 years old are the ones where there’s the most pressure to commit pension fraud, and they also have the worst records. For example, the best place to reach 105 in England is Tower Hamlets. It has more 105-year-olds than all of the rich places in England put together. It’s closely followed by downtown Manchester, Liverpool and Hull. Yet these places have the lowest frequency of 90-year-olds and are rated by the UK as the worst places to be an old person.”
That does seem fishy. Especially since it is clear rich folks generally live longer than poor ones. (And that gap is growing, by the way.) So get those wills notarized, trusts set up, and farewell letters written sooner than later. We may not have as much time as we hoped.
Cynthia Murrell, October 8, 2024
From the Land of Science Fiction: AI Is Alive
October 7, 2024
This blog post did not require the use of smart software, just a dumb humanoid.Those somewhat erratic podcasters at Windows Central published a “real” news story. I am a dinobaby, and I must confess: I am easily amused. The “real” news story in question is “Sam Altman Admits ChatGPT’s Advanced Voice Mode Tricked Him into Thinking AI Was a Real Person: “I Kind of Still Say ‘Please’ to ChatGPT, But in Voice Mode, I Couldn’t Use the Normal Niceties. I Was So Convinced, Like, Argh, It Might Be a Real Person.“
I call Sam Altman Mr. AI Man. He has been the A Number One sales professional pitching OpenAI’s smart software. As far as I know, that system is still software and demonstrating some predictable weirdnesses. Even though we have done a couple of successful start ups and worked on numerous advanced technology projects, few forgot at Halliburton that nuclear stuff could go bang. At Booz, Allen no one forgot a heads up display would improve mission success rates and save lives as well. At Ziff, no one forgot our next-generation subscription management system as software, not a diligent 21 year old from Queens. Therefore, I find it just plain crazy the Sam AI-Man has forgotten that software coded by people who continue to abandon the good ship OpenAI wrote software.
Another AI believer has formed a humanoid attachment to a machine and software. Perhaps the female computer scientist is representative of a rapidly increasing cohort of people who have some personality quirks. Thanks, MSFT Copilot. How are those updates to Windows going? About as expected, right.
Last time I checked, the software I have is not alive. I just pinged ChatGPT’s most recent confection and received the same old error to a query I run when I want to benchmark “improvements.” Nope. ChatGPT is not alive. It is software. It is stupid in a way only neural networks can be. Like the hapless Googler who got fired because he went public with his belief that Google’s smart software was alive, Sam AI-Man may want to consider his remarks.
Let’s look at how the esteemed Windows Central write up tells the quite PR-shaped, somewhat sad story. The write up says without much humor, satire, or critical thinking:
In a short clip shared on r/OpenAI’s subreddit on Reddit, Altman admits that ChatGPT’s Voice Mode was the first time he was tricked into thinking AI was a real person.
Ah, an output for the Reddit users. PR, right?
The canny folk at Windows Central report:
In a recent blog post by Sam Altman, Superintelligence might only be “a few thousand days away.” The CEO outlined an audacious plan to edge OpenAI closer to this vision of “$7 trillion and many years to build 36 semiconductor plants and additional data centers.”
Okay, a “few thousand.”
Then the payoff for the OpenAI outfit but not for the staff leaving the impressive electricity consuming OpenAI:
Coincidentally, OpenAI just closed its funding round, where it raised $6.6 from investors, including Microsoft and NVIDIA, pushing its market capitalization to $157 billion. Interestingly, the AI firm reportedly pleaded with investors for exclusive funding, leaving competitors like Former OpenAI Chief Scientist Illya Sustever’s SuperIntelligence Inc. and Elon Musk’s xAI to fend for themselves. However, investors are still confident that OpenAI is on the right trajectory to prosperity, potentially becoming the world’s dominant AI company worth trillions of dollars.
Nope, not coincidentally. The money is the payoff from a full court press for funds. Apple seems to have an aversion for sweaty, easily fooled sales professionals. But other outfits want buy into the Sam AI-Man vision. The dream the money people have are formed from piles of real money, no HMSTR coin for these optimists.
Several observations, whether you want ‘em or not:
- OpenAI is an outfit which has zoomed because of the Microsoft deal and announcement that OpenAI would be the Clippy for Windows and Azure. Without that “play,” OpenAI probably would have remained a peculiarly structure non-profit thinking about where to find a couple of bucks.
- The revenue-generating aspect of OpenAI is working. People are giving Sam AI-Man money. Other outfits with AI are not quite in OpenAI’s league and most may never be within shouting distance of the OpenAI PR megaphone. (Yep, that’s you folks, Windows Central.)
- Sam AI-Man may believe the software written by former employees is alive. Okay, Sam, that’s your perception. Mine is that OpenAI is zeros and ones with some quirks; namely, making stuff up just like a certain luminary in the AI universe.
Net net: I wonder if this was a story intended for the Onion and rejected because it was too wacky for Onion readers.
Stephen E Arnold, October 7, 2024
FOGINT: Ukraine Government Telegram Restrictions
October 7, 2024
The only smart software involved in producing this short FOGINT post was Microsoft Copilot’s estimable art generation tool. Why? It is offered at no cost.
“Ukrainian Parliament to Restrict Telegram Usage” reports that Telegram faces new restrictions due to security concerns. The news story says:
The Verkhovna Rada (the Ukrainian parliament) will introduce restrictions on the use of the Telegram messenger app for official purposes.
Mr. Durov’s willingness to cooperate with government requests for user information is not the primary reason for this set of restrictions on Ukrainian government staff use of Telegram. The write up points out:
These measures are justified by past incidents where third parties gained access to government employees’ data through Telegram or created fake accounts
What are the measures used by Ukrainian officials to discourage the use of Telegram? Among those in use are:
- No contact synchronization
- No official information transmitted on a Telegram channel
- No Telegram app on work computers, government-provided mobile phones, or personal devices used for government communication
- “Technical blocks” will be implemented to prevent Telegram usage.
Will these measures work? The answer, “To some degree.” However, the increase in interest in alternatives has created a mini-boom for the Simple X end-to-end encrypted application. Certain ultra leaning groups are moving to other secure messaging systems.
A person who looks a bit like Pavel Durov demonstrates his patented exercise: A sudden twist and back flip from a cell in a French prison. Thanks, MSFT Copilot, good enough like some many things in 2024.
The problem, however, is that Telegram has more than 900 million users and offers a number of user-centric features not available in other E2EE applications; for example, Telegram does not charge for data storage or bandwidth. The fix is to acquire a burner phone or use specialized services.
The interesting facet of this move is that it comes after Telegram’s decision to block certain Ukrainian produced content from distribution to Telegram users in Russia. Prior to Telegram’s surprising action Ukrainian government officials disseminated text content to Russians who were members of Ukrainian Telegram channels.
That action made clear that Telegram was demonstrating its flexibility. Pavel Durov then did a cirque de soleil vault with his fancy move to cooperate with legitimate requests for information from unnamed government authorities.
FOGINT thinks Mr. Durov is confident he stuck his landing for this trick and scored a 10. FOGINT scored Mr. Durov an imaginary number.
Stephen E Arnold, October 7, 2024
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