China and AI: Moving Ahead?
April 10, 2025
There’s a longstanding rivalry between the United States and China. The rivalry extends to everything from government, economy, GDP, and technology. There’s been some recent technology developments in this heated East and West rivalry says The Independent in the article, “Has China Just Built The World’s First Human-Level AI?”
Deepseek is a AI start-up that’s been compared to OpenAI with its AI models. The clincher is that Deepseek’s models are more advanced than OpenAI because they perform better and use less resources. Another Chinese AI company claims they’ve made another technology breakthrough and it’s called “Manus.” Manus is is supposedly the world’s first fully autonomous AI agent that can perform complex tasks without human guidance. These tasks include creating a podcast, buying property, or booking travel plans.
Yichao Ji is the head of Manu’s AI development. He said that Manus is the next AI evolution and that it’s the beginning of artificial general intelligence (AGI). AGI is AI that rivals or surpasses human intelligence. Yichao Ji said:
“ ‘This isn’t just another chatbot or workflow, it’s a truly autonomous agent that bridges the gap between conception and execution,’ he said in a video demonstrating the AI’s capabilities. ‘Where other AI stops at generating ideas, Manus delivers results. We see it as the next paradigm of human-machine collaboration.’”
Meanwhile Dario Amodei’s company designed Claude, the ChatGPT rival, and he predicted that AGI would be available as soon as 2026. He wrote an essay in October 2024 with the following statement:
“ ‘It can engage in any actions, communications, or remote operations,’ he wrote, ‘including taking actions on the internet, taking or giving directions to humans, ordering materials, directing experiments, watching videos, making videos, and so on. It does all of these tasks with a skill exceeding that of the most capable humans in the world.’”
These are tasks that Manus can do, according to the AI’s Web site. However when Manus was tested users spotted it making mistakes that most humans would spot.
Manus’s team is grateful for the insight into its AI’s flaws and will work to deliver a better AGI. The experts are viewing Manus with a more critical eye, because Manus is not delivering the same results as its American counterparts.
It appears that the US is still developing higher performing AI that will become the basis of AGI. Congratulations to the red, white, and blue!
Whitney Grace, April 10, 2025
Stamping Out Intelligence: Censorship May Work Wonders
April 9, 2025
Sorry, no AI used to create this item.
I live in a state which has some interesting ideas. One of them is that the students are well educated. At this time, I think the state in which I reside holds position 47 out of 50 in terms of reading skills or academic performance. Are the numbers accurate? Probably not, but they indicate that learning is not priority number one in some quarters.
A young student with a gift for mathematics is the class dunce. He has to write on the chalk board, “I will not do linear algebra in class.” Thanks, OpenAI. Know any budding Einsteins in Mississippi?
However, there is a state which performs less well than mine. That state is Mississippi. Should that state hold the rank of the 50th less academically slick entity in the US. Probably not, but the low ranking does say something to some people.
I thought about this notion of “low academic performance” when I read “Mississippi Libraries Ordered to Delete Academic Research in Response to State Laws.” The write up says:
A state commission scrubbed academic research from a database used by Mississippi libraries and public schools — a move made to comply with recent state laws changing what content can be offered in libraries. The Mississippi Library Commission ordered the deletion of two research collections that might violate state law, a March 31 internal memo obtained by Mississippi Today shows. One of the now deleted research collections focused on “race relations” and the other on “gender studies.”
So what?
I find it interesting that in a state holding down the 50th spot in academic slickness assumes that its students will be reading research on these topics or any topics for that matter.
I did a very brief stint as a teacher. In fact, I invested one year teaching in a quite challenging high school environment about 100 miles south of Chicago. If my students read anything, I was quite happy. I suppose today that I would be terminated because I used the Sunday comics, gas station credit card application forms, job applications for the local Hunt’s Drive In, and a wide range of printed matter. My goal was to provide reading material that was different from the standard text book, a text book I used when I was in high school years before I showed up at my teaching job.
The goal is to get students reading. Today, I assume that removing books and research material is more informed than what I did.
Several observations:
- Taking steps to prevent reading is different from how I would approach the question, “What should be in the school library?”
- The message sent to students who actually learn that books and research materials are being removed from the library seems to me to be, “Hey, don’t read this academic garbage.”
- The anti-intellectualism which this removal seems to underscore means that Mississippi is working hard to nail down its number 50 spot.
I am a dinobaby. I am quite thrilled with this fact. I will probably fall over dead with a book in my hands. Remember: I used outside materials to try to engage my students in reading for that one year of high school teaching. I should have been killed when a library stack fell over when I was in grade school.
These types of decisions are going to get the job done for me I think.
Stephen E Arnold, April 9, 2025
AI: Job Harvesting
April 9, 2025
It is a question that keeps many of us up at night. Commonplace ponders, "Will AI Automate Away Your Job?" The answer: Probably, sooner or later. The when depends on the job. Some workers may be lucky enough to reach retirement age before that happens. Writer Jason Hausenloy explains:
"The key idea where the American worker is concerned is that your job is as automatable as the smallest, fully self-contained task is. For example, call center jobs might be (and are!) very vulnerable to automation, as they consist of a day of 10- to 20-minute or so tasks stacked back-to-back. Ditto for many forms of many types of freelancer services, or paralegals drafting contracts, or journalists rewriting articles. Compare this to a CEO who, even in a day broken up into similar 30-minute activities—a meeting, a decision, a public appearance—each required years of experiential context that a machine can’t yet simply replicate. … This pattern repeats across industries: the shorter the time horizon of your core tasks, the greater your automation risk."
See the post for a more detailed example that compares the jobs of a technical support specialist and an IT systems architect.
Naturally, other factors complicate the matter. For example, Hausenloy notes, blue-collar jobs may be safer longer because physical robots are more complex to program than information software. Also, the more data there is on how to do a job, the better equipped algorithms are to mimic it. That is one reason many companies implement tracking software. Yes, it allows them to micromanage workers. And also it gathers data needed to teach an LLM how to do the job. With every keystroke and mouse click, many workers are actively training their replacements.
Ironically, it seems those responsible for unleashing AI on the world may be some of the most replaceable. Schadenfreude, anyone? The article notes:
"The most vulnerable jobs, then, are not those traditionally thought of as threatened by automation—like manufacturing workers or service staff—but the ‘knowledge workers’ once thought to be automation-proof. And most vulnerable of all? The same Silicon Valley engineers and programmers who are building these AI systems. Software engineers whose jobs are based on writing code as discrete, well-documented tasks (often following standardized updates to a central directory) are essentially creating the perfect training data for AI systems to replace them."
In a section titled "Rethinking Work," Hausenloy waxes philosophical on a world in which all of humanity has been fired. Is a universal basic income a viable option? What, besides income, do humans get out of their careers? In what new ways will we address those needs? See the write-up for those thought exercises. Meanwhile, if you do want to remain employed as long as possible, try to make your job depend less on simple, repetitive tasks and more on human connection, experience, and judgement. With luck, you may just reach retirement before AI renders you obsolete.
Cynthia Murrell, April 9, 2025
AI Addicts Are Now a Thing
April 9, 2025
Hey, pal, can you spare a prompt?
Gee, who could have seen this coming? It seems one can become dependent on a chatbot, complete with addition indicators like preoccupation, withdrawal symptoms, loss of control, and mood modification. "Something Bizarre Is Happening to People Who Use ChatGPT a Lot," reports The Byte. Writer Noor Al-Sibai cites a recent joint study by OpenAI and MIT Media Lab as she writes:
"To get there, the MIT and OpenAI team surveyed thousands of ChatGPT users to glean not only how they felt about the chatbot, but also to study what kinds of ‘affective cues,’ which was defined in a joint summary of the research as ‘aspects of interactions that indicate empathy, affection, or support,’ they used when chatting with it. Though the vast majority of people surveyed didn’t engage emotionally with ChatGPT, those who used the chatbot for longer periods of time seemed to start considering it to be a ‘friend.’ The survey participants who chatted with ChatGPT the longest tended to be lonelier and get more stressed out over subtle changes in the model’s behavior, too. Add it all up, and it’s not good. In this study as in other cases we’ve seen, people tend to become dependent upon AI chatbots when their personal lives are lacking. In other words, the neediest people are developing the deepest parasocial relationship with AI — and where that leads could end up being sad, scary, or somewhere entirely unpredictable."
No kidding. Interestingly, the study found those who use the bot as an emotional or psychological sounding board were less likely to become dependent than those who used it for "non-personal" tasks, like brainstorming. Perhaps because the former are well-adjusted enough to examine their emotions at all? (The privacy risks of sharing such personal details with a chatbot are another issue entirely.) Al-Sibai emphasizes the upshot of the research: The more time one spends using ChatGPT, the more likely one is to become emotionally dependent on it. We think parents, especially, should be aware of this finding.
How many AI outfits will offer free AI? You know. Just give folks a taste.
Cynthia Murrell, April 9, 2025
Oh, Oh, a Technological Insight: Unstable, Degrading, Non-Reversable.
April 9, 2025
Dinobaby says, “No smart software involved. That’s for “real” journalists and pundits.
“Building a House of Cards” has a subtitle which echoes other statements of “Oh, oh, this is not good”:
Beneath the glossy promises of artificial intelligence lies a ticking time bomb — and it’s not the one you’re expecting
Yep, another, person who seems younger than I has realized that flows of digital information erode, not just social structures but other functions as well.
The author, who publishes in Mr. Plan B, states:
The real crisis isn’t Skynet-style robot overlords. It’s the quiet, systematic automation of human bias at scale.
The observation is excellent. The bias of engineers and coders who set thresholds, orchestrate algorithmic beavers, and use available data. The human bias is woven into the systems people use, believe, and depend upon.
The essay asserts:
We’re not coding intelligence — we’re fossilizing prejudice.
That, in my opinion, is a good line.
The author, however, runs into a bit of a problem. The idea of a developers’ manifesto is interesting but flawed. Most devs, as some term this group, like creating stuff and solving problems. That’s the kick. Most of the devs with whom I have worked laugh when I tell them I majored in medieval religious poetry. One, a friend of mine, said, “I paid someone to write my freshman essay, and I never took any classes other than math and science.”
I like that: Ignorance and a good laugh at how I spent my college years. The one saving grace is that I got paid to help a professor index Latin sermons using the university’s one computer to output the word lists and microfilm locators. Hey, in 1962, this was voodoo.
Those who craft the systems are not compensated to think about whether Latin sermons were original or just passed around when a visiting monk exchanged some fair copies for a snort of monastery wine and a bit of roast pig. Let me tell you that most of those sermons were tediously similar and raised such thorny problems as the originality of the “author.”
The essay concludes with a factoid:
25 years in tech taught me one thing: Every “revolutionary” technology eventually faces its reckoning. AI’s is coming.
I am not sure that those engaged in the noble art and craft of engineering “smart” software accept, relate, or care about the validity of the author’s statement.
The good news is that the essay’s author now understand that flows of digital information do not construct. The bits zipping around erode just like the glass beads or corn cob abrasive in a body shop’s media blaster aimed at rusted automobile frame.
The body shop “restores” the rusted part until it is as good as new. Even better some mechanics say.
As long as it is “good enough,” the customer is happy. But those in the know realize that the frame will someday be unable to support the stress placed upon it.
See. Philosophy from a mechanical process. But the meaning speaks to a car nut. One may have to give up or start over.
Stephen E Arnold, April 9, 2025
Programmers? Just the Top Code Wizards Needed. Sorry.
April 8, 2025
No AI. Just a dinobaby sharing an observation about younger managers and their innocence.
Microsoft has some interesting ideas about smart software and writing “code.” To sum it up, consider another profession.
“Microsoft CTO Predicts AI Will Generate 95% of Code by 2030” reports:
Developers’ roles will shift toward orchestrating AI-driven workflows and solving complex problems.
I think this means that instead of figuring out how to make something happen, one will perform the higher level mental work. The “script” comes out of the smart software.
The write up says:
“It doesn’t mean that the AI is doing the software engineering job … authorship is still going to be human,” Scott explained. “It creates another layer of abstraction [as] we go from being an input master (programming languages) to a prompt master (AI orchestrator).” He doesn’t believe AI will replace developers, but it will fundamentally change their workflows. Instead of painstakingly writing every line of code, engineers will increasingly rely on AI tools to generate code based on prompts and instructions. In this new paradigm, developers will focus on guiding AI systems rather than programming computers manually. By articulating their needs through prompts, engineers will allow AI to handle much of the repetitive work, freeing them to concentrate on higher-level tasks like design and problem-solving.
The idea is good. Does it imply that smart software has reached the end of its current trajectory and will not be able to:
- Recognize a problem
- Formulate appropriate questions
- Obtain via research, experimentation, or Eureka! moments a solution?
The observation by the Microsoft CTO does not seem to consider this question about a trolly line that can follow its tracks.
The article heads off in another direction; specifically, what happens to the costs?
IBM CEO Arvind Krishna’s is quoted as saying:
“If you can produce 30 percent more code with the same number of people, are you going to get more code written or less?” Krishna rhetorically posed, suggesting that increased efficiency would stimulate innovation and market growth rather than job losses.
Where does this leave “coders”?
Several observations:
- Those in the top one percent of skills are in good shape. The other 99 percent may want to consider different paths to a bright, fulfilling future
- Money, not quality, is going to become more important
- Inexperienced “coders” may find themselves looking for ways to get skills at the same time unneeded “coders” are trying to reskill.
It is no surprise that CNET reported, “The public is particularly concerned about job losses. AI experts are more optimistic.”
Net net: Smart software, good or bad, is going to reshape work in a big chunk of the workforce. Are schools preparing students for this shift? Are there government programs in place to assist older workers? As a dinobaby, it seems the answer is not far to seek.
Stephen E Arnold, April 8, 2025
HP and Dead Printers: Hey, Okay, We Will Not Pay
April 8, 2025
HP found an effective way to ensure those who buy its printers also buy its pricy ink: Firmware updates that bricked the printers if a competitor’s cartridge was installed. Not all customers appreciated the ingenuity. Ars Technica reports, "HP Avoids Monetary Damages Over Bricked Printers in Class-Action Settlement." Reporter Scharon Harding writes:
"In December 2020, Mobile Emergency Housing Corp. and a company called Performance Automotive & Tire Center filed a class-action complaint against HP [PDF], alleging that the company ‘wrongfully compels users of its printers to buy and use only HP ink and toner supplies by transmitting firmware updates without authorization to HP printers over the Internet that lock out its competitors’ ink and toner supply cartridges.’ The complaint centered on a firmware update issued in November 2020; it sought a court ruling that HP’s actions broke the law, an injunction against the firmware updates, and monetary and punitive damages. ‘HP’s firmware "updates" act as malware—adding, deleting or altering code, diminishing the capabilities of HP printers, and rendering the competitors’ supply cartridges incompatible with HP printers,’ the 2020 complaint reads."
Yikes. The name HP gave this practice is almost Orwellian. We learn:
"HP calls using updates to prevent printers from using third-party ink and toner Dynamic Security. The term aims to brand the device bricking as a security measure. In recent years, HP has continued pushing this claim, despite security experts that Ars has spoken with agreeing that there’s virtually zero reason for printer users to worry about getting hacked through ink."
No kidding. After nearly four years of litigation, the parties reached a settlement. HP does not admit any wrongdoing and will not pay monetary relief to affected customers. It must, however, let users decline similar updates; well, those who own a few particular models, anyway. It will also put disclaimers about Dynamic Security on product pages. Because adding a couple lines to the fine print will surely do the trick.
Harding notes that, though this settlement does not include monetary restitution, other decisions have. Those few million dollars do not seem to have influenced HP to abolish the practice, however.
Cynthia Murrell, April 8, 2025
Passwords: Reuse Pumps Up Crime
April 8, 2025
Cloudflare reports that password reuse is one of the biggest mistakes users make that compromises their personal information online. Cloudflare monitored traffic through their services between September-November 2024 and discovered that 41% of all logins for Cloudflare protected Web sites used compromised passwords. Cloudflare discussed why this vulnerability in the blog post: “Password Reuse Is Rampant: Nearly Half Of Observed User Logins Are Compromised.”
As part of their services, Cloudflare monitors if passwords have been leaked in any known data breaches and then warn users of the potential threat. Cloudflare analyzed traffic from Internet properties on the company’s free plan that includes the leaked credentials feature.
When Cloudflare conducted this research, the biggest challenge was distinguishing between real humans an d bad actors. They focused on successful login attempts, because this indicates real humans were involved . The data revealed that 41% of human authentication attempts involved leaked credentials. Despite warning PSAs about reusing old passwords, users haven’t changed their ways.
Bot attacks are also on the rise. These bots are programmed with stolen passwords and credentials and are told to test them on targeted Web sites.
Here’s what Cloudflare found:
“Data from the Cloudflare network exposes this trend, showing that bot-driven attacks remain alarmingly high over time. Popular platforms like WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal are frequent targets, due to their widespread use and exploitable vulnerabilities, as we will explore in the upcoming section.
Once bots successfully breach one account, attackers reuse the same credentials across other services to amplify their reach. They even sometimes try to evade detection by using sophisticated evasion tactics, such as spreading login attempts across different source IP addresses or mimicking human behavior, attempting to blend into legitimate traffic. The result is a constant, automated threat vector that challenges traditional security measures and exploits the weakest link: password reuse.”
Cloudflare advises people to have multi-factor authentication on accounts, explore using passkeys, and for God’s sake please change your password. I have heard that Telegram’s technology enables some capable bots. Does Telegram rely on Cloudflare for some services? Huh.
Whitney Grace, April 8, 2025
Amazon Takes the First Step Toward Moby Dickdom
April 7, 2025
No AI. Just a dinobaby sharing an observation about younger managers and their innocence.
This Engadget article does not predict the future. “Amazon Will Use AI to Generate Recaps for Book Series on the Kindle” reports:
Amazon’s new feature could make it easier to get into the latest release in a series, especially if it’s been some time since you’ve read the previous books. The new Recaps feature is part of the latest software update for the Kindle, and the company compares it to “Previously on…” segments you can watch for TV shows. Amazon announced Recaps in a blog post, where it said that you can get access to it once you receive the software update over the air or after you download and install it from Amazon’s website. Amazon didn’t talk about the technology behind the feature in its post, but a spokesperson has confirmed to TechCrunch that the recaps will be AI generated.
You may know a person who majored in American or English literature. Here’s a question you could pose:
Do those novels by a successful author follow a pattern; that is, repeatable elements and a formula?
My hunch is that authors who have written a series of books have a recipe. The idea is, “If it makes money, do it again.” In the event that you could ask Nora Roberts or commune with Billy Shakespeare, did their publishers ask, “Could you produce another one of those for us? We have a new advance policy.” When my Internet 2000: The Path to the Total Network made money in 1994, I used the approach, tone, and research method for my subsequent monographs. Why? People paid to read or flip through the collected information presented my way. I admit I that combined luck, what I learned at a blue chip consulting firm, and inputs from people who had written successful non-fiction “reports.” My new monograph — The Telegram Labyrinth — follows this blueprint. Just ask my son, and he will say, “My dad has a template and fills in the blanks.”
If a dinobaby can do it, what about flawed smart software?
Chase down a person who teaches creative writing, preferably in a pastoral setting. Ask that person, “Do successful authors of series follow a pattern?”
Here’s what I think is likely to happen at Amazon. Remember. I have zero knowledge about the inner workings of the Bezos bulldozer. I inhale its fumes like many other people. Also, Engadget doesn’t get near this idea. This is a dinobaby opinion.
Amazon will train its smart software to write summaries. Then someone at Amazon will ask the smart software to generate a 5,000 word short story in the style of Nora Roberts or some other money spinner. If the story is okay, then the Amazonian with a desire to shift gears says, “Can you take this short story and expand it to a 200,000 word novel, using the patterns, motifs, and rhetorical techniques of the series of novels by Nora, Mark, or whoever.
Guess what?
Amazon now has an “original” novel which can be marketed as an Amazon test, a special to honor whomever, or experiment. If Prime members or the curious click a lot, that Amazon employee has a new business to propose to the big bulldozer driver.
How likely is this scenario? My instinct is that there is a 99 percent probability that an individual at Amazon or the firm from which Amazon is licensing its smart software has or will do this.
How likely is it that Amazon will sell these books to the specific audience known to consume the confections of Nora and Mark or whoever? I think the likelihood is close to 80 percent. The barriers are:
- Bad optics among publishers, many of which are not pals of fume spouting bulldozers in the few remaining bookstores
- Legal issues because both publishers and authors will grouse and take legal action. The method mostly worked when Google was scanning everything from timetables of 19th century trains in England to books just unwrapped for the romance novel crowd
- Management disorganization. Yep, Amazon is suffering the organization dysfunction syndrome just like other technology marvels
- The outputs lack the human touch. The project gets put on ice until OpenAI, Anthropic, or whatever comes along and does a better job and probably for fewer computing resources which means more profit.
What’s important is that this first step is now public and underway.
Engadget says, “Use it at your own risk.” Whose risk may I ask?
Stephen E Arnold, April 7, 2025
AI May Fizzle and the New York Times Is Thrilled
April 7, 2025
Yep, a dinobaby blog post. No smart software required.
I read “The Tech Fantasy That Powers A.I. Is Running on Fumes.” Is this a gleeful headline or not. Not even 10 days after the Italian “all AI” newspaper found itself the butt of merciless humor, the NYT is going for the jugular.
The write up opines:
- “Midtech” — tech but not really
- “Silly” — Showing little thought or judgment
- “Academics” — Ivory tower dwellers, not real journalists and thinkers
Here’s a quote from a person who obviously does not like self check outs:
The economists Daron Acemoglu and Pascual Restrepo call these kinds of technological fizzles “so-so” technologies. They change some jobs. They’re kind of nifty for a while. Eventually they become background noise or are flat-out annoying, say, when you’re bagging two weeks’ worth of your own groceries.
And now the finale:
But A.I. is a parasite. It attaches itself to a robust learning ecosystem and speeds up some parts of the decision process. The parasite and the host can peacefully coexist as long as the parasite does not starve its host. The political problem with A.I.’s hype is that its most compelling use case is starving the host — fewer teachers, fewer degrees, fewer workers, fewer healthy information environments.
My thought is that the “real” journalists at the NYT hope that AI fails. Most routine stories can be handled by smart software. Sure, there are errors. But looking at a couple of versions of the same event is close enough for horse shoes.
The writing is on the wall of the bean counters’ offices: Reduce costs. Translation: Some “real” journalists can try to get a job as a big time consultant. Oh, strike that. Outfits that sell brains are replacing flakey MBAs with smart software. Well, there is PR and marketing. Oh, oh, strike that tool. Telegram’s little engines of user controlled smart software can automate ads. Will other ad outfits follow Telegram’s lead? Absolutely.
Yikes. It won’t be long before some “real” journalists will have an opportunity to write their version of:
- Du côté de chez Swann
- À l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs
- Le Côté de Guermantes
- Sodome et Gomorrhe
- La Prisonnière
- Albertine disparue (also published as La Fugitive)
- Le Temps retrouvé
Which one will evoke the smell of the newsroom?
Stephen E Arnold, April 7, 2025
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
