Tag Archives: Technology

The front page of today’s LA Times featured the headline, “Workers lead the resistance as AI risk emerges.”

The online edition uses the title, “Column: Your boss wants AI to replace you. The writers’ strike shows how to fight back”

From the article…

A big reason that the AI hype machine has been in overdrive, issuing apocalyptic claims about its vast power, is that the companies selling the tools want to make it all feel inevitable — to feel like the future — and have you believe that resisting it is both futile and stupid. Conveniently, most of these discussions eschew questions such as: Whose future? Whose future does AI really serve?
The answer to that is “Big Tech” and, to a lesser degree, “your boss.”
Matt Nicholas, a 30-year-old writer and WGA member, who was all too aware exactly how AI was going to be used by the film and television industry — not to replace writers, but to undermine them.
Too many executives in too many industries, such as entertainment, tech and journalism, recognize generative AI for what it is: an opportunity to wield leverage over already precarious workforces. There’s going to be a long, hard struggle, but it’s one worth fighting.
I liked this post on VI-Control by user JJP so much, I wanted to archive it here.

Why Can Everyone Spot Fake News But The Tech Companies?

From Daring Fireballs John Gruber:

It’s the same reason why Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are overrun with state-backed troll accounts from Russia. Engagement leads to growth, growth is all that matters, and if the trolls and fake news are engaging, better not to look for them. The oft-quoted Upton Sinclair quote fits perfectly: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

Source: Why Can Everyone Spot Fake News But The Tech Companies?

So in the end, we will have Scambots talking to Anti-Scambots. Result: huge waste of energy and increased CO2 emissions. Make #tech #green already!

While I totally love the idea of keeping the scammers busy using a chatbot, in the grand scheme of things this is just wasted energy.

We really need to start thinking about the energy use for these stupid things.

Source: Somebody wrote an email bot to waste scammers’ time / Boing Boing

SoundCloud tries to allay fears, but streaming needs a business model – CDM Create Digital Music

And, look, while all of this shakes out, musicians and labels continue to pursue a strategy that caters to building relations on all these services. Some of them have great success stories with YouTube, with SoundCloud, with Spotify.

But maybe that’s the point. It seems to be the businesses in between that are non-functioning – or (in the case of futuristic blockchain propositions) just not ready for primetime.

Musicians and labels keep doing the hard work of making the music and fighting to get it heard. Yet investment and attention pours into the middleware between us and listeners – and that middleware really isn’t working terribly well.

Source: SoundCloud tries to allay fears, but streaming needs a business model – CDM Create Digital Music

Fabulous!! The silliest quotes from the early days of the iPhone

“Apple should pull the plug on the iPhone… What Apple risks here is its reputation as a hot company that can do no wrong. If it’s smart it will call the iPhone a ‘reference design’ and pass it to some suckers to build with someone else’s marketing budget. Then it can wash its hands of any marketplace failures… Otherwise I’d advise people to cover their eyes. You are not going to like what you’ll see.” – John C. Dvorak, Bloated Gas Bag, March 28, 2007

Source: The silliest quotes from the early days of the iPhone – MacDailyNews – Welcome Home