Vint Cerf: Explaining Why Google Is Scrambling
May 9, 2023
Note: This essay is the work of a real and still-alive dinobaby. No smart software involved, just a dumb humanoid.
One thing OpenAI’s ChatGPT legions of cheerleaders cannot do is use Dr. Vint Cerf as the pointy end of a PR stick. I recall the first time I met Dr. Cerf. He was the keynote at an obscure conference about search and retrieval. Indeed he took off his jacket. He then unbuttoned his shirt to display a white T shirt with “I TCP on everything.” The crowd laughed — not a Jack Benny 30 second blast of ebullience — but a warm sound.
Midjourney output this illustration capturing Googzilla in a rocking chair in the midst of the snow storm after the Microsoft asteroid strike at Davos. Does the Google look aged? Does the Google look angry? Does the Google do anything but talk in the future and progressive tenses? Of course not. Google is not an old dinosaur. The Google is the king of online advertising which is the apex of technology.
I thought about that moment when I read “Vint Cerf on the Exhilarating Mix of Thrill and Hazard at the Frontiers of Tech: That’s Always an Exciting Place to Be — A Place Where Nobody’s Ever Been Before.’” The interview is a peculiar mix of ignoring the fact that the Google is elegantly managing wizards (some who then terminate themselves by alleging falling or jumping off buildings), trapped in a conveyer belt of increasing expenses related to its plumbing and the maintenance thereof, and watching the fireworks ignited by the ChatGPT emulators. And Google is watching from a back alley, not the front row as I write this. The Google may push its way into the prime viewing zone, but it is OpenAI and a handful of other folks who are assembling the sky rockets and aerial bombs, igniting the fuses, and capturing attention.
Yes, that’s an exciting place to be, but at the moment that is not where Google is. Google is doing big time public relations as outfits like Microsoft expand the zing of smart Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, and — believe it or not — Excel. Google is close enough to see the bright lights and hear the applause directed at lesser outfits. Google knows it is not the focus of attention. That’s where Vint Cerf’s comes into play on the occasion of winning an award for advancing technology (in general, not just online advertising).
Here are a handful of statements I noticed in the TechMeme “Featured Article” conversation with Dr. Cerf. Note, please, that my personal observations are in italic type in a color similar to that used for Alphabet’s Code Red emergency.
Snip 1: “Sergey has come back to do a little bit more on the artificial intelligence side of things…” Interesting. I interpret this as a college student getting a call to come back home to help out an ailing mom in what some health care workers call “sunset mode.” And Mr. Page? Maintaining a lower profile for non-Googley reasons? See the allegedly accurate report “Virgin Islands issued subpoena to Google co-founder Larry Page in lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase over Jeffrey Epstein.”
Snip 2: “a place where nobody’s ever been before.” I interpret this to mean that the Google is behind the eight ball or between an agile athlete and a team composed of yesterday’s champions or a helicopter pilot vaguely that the opposition is flying a nimble, smart rocket equipped fighter jet. Dinosaurs in rocking chairs watch the snow fall; they do not move to Nice, France.
Snip 3: “Be cautious about going too fast and trying to apply it without figuring out how to put guardrails in place.” How slow did Google go when it was inspired by the GoTo, Overture, and Yahoo ad model, settling for about $1 billion before the IPO? I don’t recall picking up the scent of ceramic brakes applied to the young, frisky, and devil-may-care baby Google. Step on the gas and go faster are the mantras I recall hearing.
Snip 4: “I will say that whenever something gets monetized, you should anticipate there will be emergent properties and possibly unexpected behavior, all driven by greed.” I wonder if the statement is a bit of a Freudian slip. Doesn’t the remark suggest that Google itself has manifested this behavior? It sure does to me, but I am no shrink. Who knew Google’s search-and-advertising business would become the poster reptile for surveillance capitalism?
Snip 5: “I think we are going to have to invest more in provenance and identity in order to evaluate the quality of that which we are experiencing.” Has Mr. Cerf again identified one of the conscious choices made by Google decades ago; that is, ignore date and time stamps for when the content was first spidered, when it was created, and when it was updated. What is the quality associated with the obfuscation of urls for certain content types, and remove a user’s ability to display the “content” the user wants; for example, a query for a bound phrase for an entity like “Amanda Rosenberg.” I also wonder about advertisements which link to certain types of content; for example, health care products or apps with gotcha functionalities.
Several observations:
- Google’s attempts to explain that its going slow is a mature business method for Google is amusing. I would recommend that the gag be included in the Sundar and Prabhakar comedy routine.
- The crafted phrases about guardrails and emergent behaviors do not explain why Google is talking and not doing. Furthermore, the talking is delivered not by users of a ChatGPT infused application. The words are flowing from a person who is no expert in smart software and has a few miles on his odometer as I do.
- The remarks ignore the raw fact that Microsoft dominated headlines with its Davos rocket launch. Google’s search wizards were thinking about cost control, legal hassles, and the embarrassing personnel actions related to smart software and intra-company guerilla skirmishes.
Net net: Read the interview and ask, “Where’s Googzilla now?” My answer is, “Prepping for retirement?”
Stephen E Arnold, May 9, 2023
Good Enough AI: Decimating Bit-Blasted Wretches
May 9, 2023
Note: This essay is the work of a real and still-alive dinobaby. No smart software involved, just a dumb humanoid.
I think the writers’ strike will make it possible for certain Hollywood producer types to cozy up with smart software. What works in the cinema wasteland are sequels and remakes of what has sold. My hunch is that purpose-built smart software will be able to output good enough scripts quickly. A few humanoids, maybe even on set actors, can add touches which elevate good enough to pretty good.
There are other humanoid writers now at risk from good-enough outputs. At a Derby Party on May 6, 2023, I whipped out my mobile and illustrated how You.com can crank out a short essay good enough to get an A or a B in a sophomore English class. One person who made a bundle of money selling automobiles said immediately, “I could have used this instead of that PR company and the part-timers who used to drive me crazy with questions.”
This person understood, and he was in his late 70s but still able to remember PR and marketing experts who were supposed to write presentations, ads, and marketing letters.
If a biz whiz heading to the old-age home grasp the concept, imagine what a rotund, confident MBA will do with good enough smart software.
What’s interesting to me is that the Washington Post, under the control of the original bulldozer driver Jeff Bezos, seems to understand what’s going to happen to many scribes, columnists, littérateurs, and scribblers. The ink stained wretches are going to become bit-blasted wretches. “He Wrote a Book on a Rare Subject. Then a ChatGPT Replica Appeared on Amazon” includes a quote from a human involved in smart software created content:
“We published a celebrity profile a month. Now we can do 10,000 a month.”
Net net: Smart software will create many opportunities for “writers” to find their future elsewhere. Fixer uppers of machine generated content may become a hot new gig along with TikTok maker of van life videos, creators of text based wall graffiti, and signs with messages such as “Will edit for food.”
Stephen E Arnold, May 9, 2023
AI Shocker? Automatic Indexing Does Not Work
May 8, 2023
Note: This essay is the work of a real and still-alive dinobaby. No smart software involved, just a dumb humanoid.
I am tempted to dig into my more than 50 years of work in online and pull out a chestnut or two. l will not. Just navigate to “ChatGPT Is Powered by These Contractors Making $15 an Hour” and check out the allegedly accurate statements about the knowledge work a couple of people do.
The write up states:
… contractors have spent countless hours in the past few years teaching OpenAI’s systems to give better responses in ChatGPT.
The write up includes an interesting quote; to wit:
“We are grunt workers, but there would be no AI language systems without it,” said Savreux [an indexer tagging content for OpenAI].
I want to point out a few items germane to human indexers based on my experience with content about nuclear information, business information, health information, pharmaceutical information, and “information” information which thumbtypers call metadata:
- Human indexers, even when trained in the use of a carefully constructed controlled vocabulary, make errors, become fatigued and fall back on some favorite terms, and misunderstand the content and assign terms which will mislead when used in a query
- Source content — regardless of type — varies widely. New subjects or different spins on what seem to be known concepts mean that important nuances may be lost due to what is included in the available dataset
- New content often uses words and phrases which are difficult to understand. I try to note a few of the more colorful “new” words and bound phrases like softkill, resenteeism, charity porn, toilet track, and purity spirals, among others. In order to index a document in a way that allows one to locate it, knowing the term is helpful if there is a full text instance. If not, one needs a handle on the concept which is an index terms a system or a searcher knows to use. Relaxing the meaning (a trick of some clever outfits with snappy names) is not helpful
- Creating a training set, keeping it updated, and assembling the content artifacts is slow, expensive, and difficult. (That’s why some folks have been seeking short cuts for decades. So far, humans still become necessary.)
- Reindexing, refreshing, or updating the digital construct used to “make sense” of content objects is slow, expensive, and difficult. (Ask an Autonomy user from 1998 about retraining in order to deal with “drift.” Let me know what you find out. Hint: The same issues arise from popular mathematical procedures no matter how many buzzwords are used to explain away what happens when words, concepts, and information change.
Are there other interesting factoids about dealing with multi-type content. Sure there are. Wouldn’t it be helpful if those creating the content applied structure tags, abstracts, lists of entities and their definitions within the field or subject area of the content, and pointers to sources cited in the content object.
Let me know when blog creators, PR professionals, and TikTok artists embrace this extra work.
Pop quiz: When was the last time you used a controlled vocabulary classification code to disambiguate airplane terminal, computer terminal, and terminal disease? How does smart software do this, pray tell? If the write up and my experience are on the same wave length (not surfing wave but frequency wave), a subject matter expert, trained index professional, or software smarter than today’s smart software are needed.
Stephen E Arnold, May 8, 2023
Once High-Flying Publication Identifies a Grim Future for Writers… and Itself
May 8, 2023
Note: This essay is the work of a real and still-alive dinobaby. No smart software involved, just a dumb humanoid.
I am not sure what a Hollywood or New York writer does. I do know that quite a few of these professionals are on strike. The signs are not as catchy as the ones protesters in Paris are using. But France is known for design, and Hollywood and New York is more into the conniving approach to creativity in my opinion.
The article “GPT-4 Can’t Replace Striking TV Writers, But Studios Are Going to Try” identifies a problem for writers. The issue is not the the real or perceived abuses of big studios. The key point of the write up is that software, never the core competency for most big entertainment executives, is now a way to disintermediate and decimate human writers.
ChatGPT apps — despite their flaws — are good enough. When creativity means recycling previous ideas, ChatGPT has some advantages; for example, no vacays, no nasty habits, and no agents. Writers have to be renewed which means meetings. Software is licensed which another piece of smart software can process.
In short, writers lose. Even if the ChatGPT produced “content” is not as good as a stellar film like Heaven’s Gate, that’s show business. Disintermediation has arrived. Protests and signs may not be as effective as some believe. Software may be good enough, not great. But it is works fast, cheap, and without annoying human sign carrying protests.
Stephen E Arnold, May 8, 2023
Google Manager Checklist: What an Amazing Approach from the Online Ad Outfit!
May 8, 2023
Note: This essay is the work of a real and still-alive dinobaby. No smart software involved, just a dumb humanoid. I tagged this write up about the cited story as “News.” I wish I had a suitable term at my disposal because “news” does not capture the essence of the write up in my opinion.
Please, take a moment to read and savor “15 Years Ago, Google Determined the Best Bosses Share These 11 Traits. But 1 Behavior Is Still Missing.” If the title were not a fancy birthday cake, here’s the cherry on top in the form of a subtitle:
While Google’s approach to identifying its best managers is great, it ignores the fact a ‘new’ employee isn’t always new to the company.
Imagine. Google defines new in a way incomprehensible to an observer of outstanding, ethical, exemplary, high-performing commercial enterprises.
What are the traits of a super duper best boss at the Google? In fact, let’s look at each as the traits have been applied in recent Google management actions. You can judge for yourself how the wizards are manifesting “best boss” behavior.
Trait 1. My [Googley] manager gives me “actionable” feedback that helps me improve my performance. Based on my conversations with Google full time employees, communications is not exactly a core competency.
Trait 2. My [Googley] manager does not micro-manage. Based on my personal experience, management of any type is similar to the behavior of the snipe.
Trait 3. My [Googley] manager shows consideration to me as a person. Based on reading about the treatment of folks disagreeing with other Googlers (for instance, Dr. Timnit Gebru), consideration must be defined in a unique Alphabet which I don’t understand.
Trait 4. The actions of [a Googley] manager show that the full time equivalent values the perspective and employee brings to his/her team, even if it is different from his/her own. Wowza. See the Dr. Timnit Gebru reference above or consider the snapshots of Googlers protesting.
Trait 5. [The Googley manager] keeps the team focused on our priority results/deliverables. How about those killed projects, the weird dead end help pages, and the mysteries swirling around ad click fraud allegations?
Trait 6. [The Googley] manager regularly shares relevant information from his/her manager and senior leaders. Yeah, those Friday all-hands meetings now take place when?
Trait 7. [The Googley] manager has had a “meaningful discussion” with me about career development? In my view, terminating people via email when a senior manager gets a $200 million bonus is an outstanding way to stimulate a “meaningful discussion.”
Trait 8. [The Googley] manager communicates clear goals for our team. Absolutely. A good example is the existence of multiple chat apps, cancelation of some moon shots like solving death, and the fertility of the company’s legal department.
Trait 9. [The Googley manager] has technical expertise to manage a professional. Of course, that’s why a Google professional admitted that the AI software was alive and needed a lawyer. The management move of genius was to terminate the wizard. Mental health counseling? Ho ho ho.
Trait 10. [A Googler] recommends a super duper Googley manager to friends? Certainly. That’s what Glassdoor reviews permit. Also, there are posts on social media and oodles of praise opportunities on LinkedIn. The “secret” photographs at an off site? Those are perfect for a Telegram group.
Trait 11. [A true Googler] sees only greatness in Googley managers. Period.
Trait 12. [A Googler] loves Googley managers who are Googley. There is no such thing as too much Googley goodness.
Trait 13. [A Googley manager] does not change, including such actions as overdosing on a yacht with a “special services contractor” or dodging legal documents from a representative of a court or comparable entity from a non US nation state.
This article appears to be a recycling of either a Google science fiction story or a glitch in the matrix.
What’s remarkable is that a well known publication presents the information as substantive. Amazing. I wonder if this “content” is a product of an early version of smart software.
Stephen E Arnold, May 8, 2023
Google AI Thrashing: A Fresh Sundar & Prabhakar Comedy Script?
May 5, 2023
I love anonymous information from a Discord group. How about those Discord app interfaces? Aren’t they superior to the DEC PDP 8 command line? Plus, the folks publishing this internal document (allegedly from the Google control room) do not agree with the contents of the allegedly leaked and not stolen document. That’s reassuring to some I assume. So let’s look at this glimpse of the sausage being made.
I read “We Have No Moat and Neither does OpenAI” on the SemiAnalysis.com web page. The write up is, like most “real news” arrives with a soupçon of mystery. The subject of the information is that Google is addled by OpenAI and the zippiness with which some online users are innovating, applying, and de-Googling certain of their activities.
I noted this statement:
Things we [presumably the happy band of unified Google smart software wizards] consider “major open problems” are solved and in people’s hands today.
And this assertion:
Open-source models are faster, more customizable, more private, and pound-for-pound more capable. They are doing things with $100 and 13B params that we struggle with at $10M and 540B. And they are doing so in weeks, not months.
I think this means old and slow, not young and snappy. The force in the green fuse at what may well be the Google is mired in the Mountain View digital La Brea Tar Pit. Not good for Googzillas young and vibrant or old and arthritic I would suggest.
I liked this statement which seems a bit un-Googley to be frank:
The barrier to entry for training and experimentation has dropped from the total output of a major research organization to one person, an evening, and a beefy laptop.
Beefy laptop? What? No Chromebook?
But aside from jargon, what’s Google big advantage? The write up notes:
All this talk of open source can feel unfair given OpenAI’s current closed policy. Why do we have to share, if they won’t? But the fact of the matter is, we are already sharing everything with them in the form of the steady flow of poached senior researchers. Until we stem that tide, secrecy is a moot point. And in the end, OpenAI doesn’t matter. They are making the same mistakes we are in their posture relative to open source, and their ability to maintain an edge is necessarily in question. Open source alternatives can and will eventually eclipse them unless they change their stance. In this respect, at least, we can make the first move.
This is an interesting “upside” to the analysis. Look OpenAI will die, but possibly an outfit like Google can get a win with an open source approach. I am not sure I can agree when many people are happily embracing Microsoft’s crowd-pleasing approach to smart software. Hey, it’s Windows. Edge makes life easy. Outlook and Teams will be even more wonderfulest with Microsoft’s smart software.
The open source angle is interesting, but I am not sure it will resonate in the current hot house of smart software where genetic diversity is increasing with each karyotype mash up. This is not elephant gestation. Think swamp critters on a warm spring day.
Am I citing information from what is allegedly a leaked Google document? I don’t know.
The write up is not Googley as documents from the era of Messrs. Brin and Page (where is that wizard because some in a judicial system have a document for him), and that adds to the comedic vibe. Nope, the essay not ready for the Sundar & Prabhakar Comedy Show on YouTube this weekend. It’s a good start though, just behind schedule.
Stephen E Arnold, May 5, 2023
More Fake Drake and a Google Angle
May 5, 2023
Note: This essay is the work of a real and still-alive dinobaby. No smart software involved, just a dumb humanoid.
Copyright law was never designed to address algorithms that can flawlessly mimic artists and writers based on what it learns from the Internet. Absent any more relevant litigation, however, it may be up to the courts to resolve this thorny and rapidly escalating issue. And poor Google, possessor of both YouTube and lofty AI ambitions, is stuck between a rock and a hard place. The Verge reports, “AI Drake Just Set an Impossible Legal Trap for Google.”
To make a winding story short, someone used AI to create a song that sounded eerily like Drake and The Weekend and post it in TikTok. From there it made its way to Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube. While Apple and Spotify could and did pull the track from their platforms right away, user-generated-content platforms TikTok and Google are bound by established takedown processes that rest on copyright law. And new content generated by AI that mimics humans is not protected by copyright. Yet.
The track was eventually removed on TikTok and YouTube based on an unauthorized sample of a producer tag at the beginning. But what if the song were re-released without that snippet? Publishers now assert that training AI on bodies of artists’ work is itself copyright infringement, and a fake Drake (or Taylor Swift or Tim McGraw) song is therefore a derivative work. Sounds logical to me. But for Google, both agreeing and disagreeing pose problems. Writer Nilay Patel explains:
“So now imagine that you are Google, which on the one hand operates YouTube, and on the other hand is racing to build generative AI products like Bard, which is… trained by scraping tons of data from the internet under a permissive interpretation of fair use that will definitely get challenged in a wave of lawsuits. AI Drake comes along, and Universal Music Group, one of the largest labels in the world, releases a strongly worded statement about generative AI and how its streaming partners need to respect its copyrights and artists. What do you do?
*If Google agrees with Universal that AI-generated music is an impermissible derivative work based on the unauthorized copying of training data, and that YouTube should pull down songs that labels flag for sounding like their artists, it undercuts its own fair use argument for Bard and every other generative AI product it makes — it undercuts the future of the company itself.
*If Google disagrees with Universal and says AI-generated music should stay up because merely training an AI with existing works is fair use, it protects its own AI efforts and the future of the company, but probably triggers a bunch of future lawsuits from Universal and potentially other labels, and certainly risks losing access to Universal’s music on YouTube, which puts YouTube at risk.”
Quite the conundrum. And of course, it is not just music. YouTube is bound to face similar issues with movies, TV shows, news, podcasts, and other content. Patel notes creators and their publishers are highly motivated to wage this fight because, for them, it is a fight to the potential death of their industries. Will Google sacrifice the currently lucrative YouTube or its potentially more profitable AI aspirations?
Cynthia Murrell, May 5, 2023
What a Difference a Format Makes. 24 Little Bytes
May 5, 2023
Note: This essay is the work of a real and still-alive dinobaby. No smart software involved, just a dumb humanoid.
Lawyer Carl Oppedahl has strong feelings about the Patent Office’s push to shift applications from PDF format to the DOCX format. In his most recent blog post on the subject he considers, “How Successful Have USPTO;s DOCX Training Webinars Been?” His answer, in short, is not very.
Oppendahl recently conducted two webinars for law offices that regularly file clients’ patent applications. He polled his attendees and reports the vast majority of them felt the Patent Office has not done a good job of communicating the pros and cons of DOCX filing. More significant, though, may be the majority of attendees who say they will not or might not submit filings in DOCX in the future, despite the $200 – $400 fee for stubbornly sticking with PDFs. In our experience PDFs are a PITA, so why is there such a strong resistance to change?
I sat through a recording of Oppendahl’s first webinar on the subject, and if you believe his account there are actually some very good reasons. It is all about protecting one’s client. Oh, and protecting oneself from a malpractice claim. That could be worth a few hundred bucks (which one might pass on to the client anyway.) His executive-summary slide specifies:
“DOCX filing puts you more at risk than PDF filing
PDF filing:
*You can protect yourself tomorrow or next month or TYFNIL [ten years from now in litigation].
*The Ack Receipt Message Digest allows you to prove the PDF file you preserved is the same PDF file that was uploaded to the PTO.
*You get an audit trail.
DOCX filing:
*You cannot prove what DOCX file you actually uploaded.
*The PTO throws away the DOCX file you uploaded (D1) and only keeps their manipulated version (D2).
*There is no Ack Receipt Message Digest available to prove the DOCX file you preserved is the same DOCX file that you uploaded to the USPTO.
*The USPTO destroys the audit trail.
*There is an Ack Receipt Message Digest relating to DOCX. It does not match the file you uploaded (D1) so you cannot use it to prove what you filed. It does match the file D2 that became authoritative the instant that you clicked ‘submit,’ so TYFNIL it permits the infringer to prove that you must have clicked ‘submit’ and you agreed that your uploaded DOCX file D1 was not controlling.
*In other words TYFNIL if you try to point to what you say you uploaded, and you try to say that this is what should have issued in the patent the Message Digest will serve to say that you agreed that what you uploaded was irrelevant to what should have issued in the patent. The Message Digest serves to say that you agreed that the patent should issue based on what was in that manipulated version D2.
*In the DOCX filing system, the Message Digest has been repurposed to protect the USPTO and to protect infringers, and no longer protects you, the applicant or practitioner.”
Like I said, strong feelings. For details on each of these points, one really just needs to listen to the first 45 minutes of the webinar, not all one-and-a-half hours. A key point lies in that D1 versus D2 issue. The D2, which submitters are required to verify, is what emerges from the other side of the PTO’s proprietary docx validator software. According to Oppendahl, that software has been proven to introduce errors, like changing a mu to a u or a square root sign to a smiley face for example. For patents that involve formulas or the like, that can be a huge issue. To avoid such errors being set in stone, filers (or their paralegals) must check the submitted document against the new one character by character while the midnight EST deadline looms. Not ideal.
Another important issue is the value of the Ack Receipt Message Digest facilitated by PDFs but not DOCX documents. The technology involves hash functions and is an interesting math tangent if you’re into that kind of thing.
So why is the Patent Office pushing so hard? Apparently it is so they can automate their approval process. Automation is often a good thing, and we understand why they are eager to speed up the process and reduce their backlog. But the Patent Office may be jumping the gun if applicants’ legitimate legal standing is falling through the cracks.
Cynthia Murrell, May 5, 2023
Digital Tech Journalism Killed by a Digital Elephant
May 4, 2023
Note: This essay is the work of a real and still-alive dinobaby. No smart software involved, just a dumb humanoid.
I read a labored explanation, analysis, and rhetorical howl from Slate.com. The article is “Digital Media’s Original Sin: The Big Tech Bubble Burst and the News Industry Got Splattered with Shrapnel.” The article states:
For years, the tech industry has propped up digital journalism with advertising revenue, venture capital injections, and far-reaching social platforms.
My view is that the reason for the problem in digital tech journalism is the elephant. When electronic information flows, it acts in a way similar to water eroding soil. In short, flows of electronic information have what I call a “deconstructive element.” The “information business” once consisted of discrete platforms, essentially isolated by choice and by accident. Who in your immediate locale pays attention to the information published in the American Journal of Mathematics? Who reads Craigslist for listings of low-ball vacation rentals near Alex Murdaugh’s “estate”?
Convert this content to digital form and dump the physical form of the data. Then live in a dream world in which those who want the information will flock to a specific digital destination and pay big money for the one story or the privilege of browsing information which may or may not be accurate. Slate points out that it did not work out.
But what’s the elephant? Digital information to people today is like water to the goldfish in a bowl. It is just there.
The elephant was spawned by a few outfits which figured out that paying money to put content in front of eyeballs. The elephant grew and developed new capabilities; for example, the “pay to play” model of GoTo.com morphed into Overture.com and became something Yahoo.com thought would be super duper. However, the Google was inspired by “pay to play” and had the technical ability to create a system for creating a market from traffic, charging people to put content in front of the eyeballs, and charge anyone in the enabling chain money to use the Google system.
The combination of digital flows’ deconstructive operation plus the quasi-monopolization of online advertising death lethal blows to the crowd Slate addresses. Now the elephant has morphed again, and it is stomping around in the space defined by TikTok. A visual medium with advertising poses a threat to the remaining information producers as well as to Google itself.
The elephant is not immortal. But right now no group is armed with Mossberg Patriot Laminate Marinecotes and the skill to kill the elephant. Electronic information gulping advertising revenue may prove to be harder to kill than a cockroach. Maybe that’s why most people ask, “What elephant?”
Stephen E Arnold, May 4, 2023
An AI Detector: Programming Cats Chase Digital Mouse
May 4, 2023
Note: This essay is the work of a real and still-alive dinobaby. No smart software involved, just a dumb humanoid.
In the cyber security game, good people create smart tools to identify threats before these occur. Sounds great, right? The reality is a bit different. A prolific identifier of threats on Twitter like LockBit’s new play, a resurgence of Cobalt Strike beacons, and Node.js issues. The question I ask is: “Why are bad actors enjoying the successes they do? Isn’t smart cyber security supposed to head these black hat riders off at the pass?”
We have the cat-and-mouse game for security professionals and ne’er do wells.
I thought about cats and mice when I read “AI Detector and ChatGPT Checker Proven Tool: New Release.” The idea is that software can spot content produced by less smart software. I noted this passage:
The newly released version of a plagiarism scanner with a percentage has advanced capabilities to detect content written by AI. The effectiveness of this innovative software confirms 97% verified accuracy.
I interpret this statement to mean that the previous version of the ChatGPT detector failed at detecting smart software generated text. Thus, the most recent version has nailed the problem. Sounds good, maybe sounds great.
I want to point out that the pace of smart software morphing is zipping along. In fact, there are more people tugging at these “zippers”, getting new ideas, and experimenting with ways to extract more useful outputs. The AI bandwagon is like a hot rod. There are people who want to tweak, tune, and customize their vehicles. One can buy a Volkswagen with an electric motor or build a Tesla with an internal combustion engine. stamp out such abnormalities. What’s a Tesla dealer going to do? Oh, right, there are no Tesla dealers.
I urge you to try the PlagiarismCheck.org software. Keep in mind the cat-and-mouse game the group is playing. Like the cyber security outfits, reacting to threats is necessary because there are more innovative bad actors than defense systems know about. The plagiarism checker may work today, but tomorrow?
Stephen E Arnold, May 4, 2023
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