Links

Craig Abbott about why we can't solve screenreader problems with AIs:

Empowering humans to communicate in a more accessible way prevents the problem at its source, avoiding the need to rely on expensive, unreliable machines to try and patch it in real-time afterwards.

(From: Screen readers do not need saved by AI - craigabbott.co.uk)

I don't think I would self describe as an AI hater, though there are a lot of things I hate about what we make computers do today. For all the reasons Anthony Moser lists in his post. Yet I am also careful, because I don't want to absolutely close the door to everything. Recently, to give one example, I saw multiple friends with disabilities use AI in meaningful ways and I don't want to discount that, who am I to hate on the technology that is useful to them in ways previous technology was not?

Among other points, he explains very clearly how creatives and AI companies are different:

Miyazaki tells stories that blend the ordinary and the fantastic in ways people find deeply meaningful. Altman tells lies for money.

(From: I Am An AI Hater | moser’s frame shop)

Maggie sees a use for AI as a possible intellectual tool:

I think we’ve barely scratched the surface of AI as intellectual partner and tool for thought. Neither the prompts, nor the model, nor the current interfaces – generic or tailored – enable it well. (…) It’s a problem I need to work on in some form.

(From: A Treatise on AI Chatbots Undermining the Enlightenment)

Tante nails it again:

The idea of frictionlessness has very narcissistic, “player character” vibes: You don’t experience friction if the whole world is build around you and your needs. When you get whatever you want when you want it.

This is about recognising value:

Because being actually touched, being inconvenienced, being emotionally moved, having your mind and perception changed means acknowledging your fellow human beings around you, realizing their differences to you and to recognize their value.

(From: Friction and not being touched)

Researchers Nolwenn Maudet, Anaëlle Beignon and Thomas Thibault looked at how tech companies are forcing AI on us.

They can deploy it faster than before:

Unlike previous technological evolutions, companies can now, through updates and softwares hosted in the cloud, transform interfaces overnight, affecting all users in an instant.

(From: How tech companies are pushing us to use AI | Limites numériques)

Their guide, based on their research (linked in the guide), shows how most of these tools are put front and center of UIs, are always on and hard to disable, and are presented as magic or a smart assistant.

tante makes a good point regarding billionaires and LLMs:

I keep thinking about how super wealth makes you lose getting to hear no like a normal person when I see multi-millionaires and billionaires talk about how they use LLMs.

(From: Never hearing No)

Vales says we should be more reasonable in critiqueing or hyping up AI:

Let’s strive for informed discussion, respectful critique, and a focus on addressing the real issues surrounding AI rather than going at each other’s throats.

(From: Advising Reasonable AI Criticism | Vale.Rocks)

I do agree with this and try to be reasonable, even if I mostly am a sceptic with regards to the majority of applications of the technology.

At the UN's AI for Good conference, Abeba Birhane was forced to remove any mention of Gaza and genocide.

She explains what happened in her post, and observes what trend this is an example of:

what “good” means is overwhelmingly shaped, defined, and actively curated by the tech industry that inherently holds invested interest in societal uptake of AI regardless of its risk or harm

(From: AI for Good [Appearance?] | AI Accountability Lab)

James Gleick reviewed The AI Con and points out that Turing didn't (try) to define intelligence, he defined how we can be fooled into not recognising machines. And it that's so:

The Turing test is done. We’ve proven that we can be fooled.

(From: The Parrot in the Machine | James Gleick | The New York Review of Books)

Websites allow search engines to crawl them, because these search engines then end up linking to the website. You'd get traffic in return.

LLM providers also crawl, but they link back less, say David Belson and Sam Rhea of Cloudflare:

These Large Language Models (LLMs) do their best to read the web to train a system that can repackage that content for the user, without the user ever needing to visit the original publication.

(From: The crawl before the fall… of referrals: understanding AI’s impact on content providers)

They share the numbers and it is, unsurprisingly, not a little bit less. LLMs refer back magnitudes less.

This is a problem, it makes writing on the web, as a business, even less attractive.