Links

In Weird things engineers believe about Web development, Brian Birtles talks about different assumptions of developers of websites and and web browsers:

it’s easy to assume our experience of the Web is representative of Web development in general

Yup, checks out.

I've been using “AI”, with quotes, a bunch on this website. I feel the industry is calling things artificially intelligent way beyond the scope of what that (admittedly hard to define) phrase actually means. That makes criticial analysis harder… that's good for marketeers, not so much for others.

Simon Willison agrees that “spicy autocomplete” is a good analogy for how LLMs work today, but at the same, it's ok to call it artificial intelligence:

We need an agreed term for this class of technology, in order to have conversations about it. I think it’s time to accept that “AI” is good enough, and is already widely understood.

Nolan Lawson on the problem of component encapsulation:

Overall, what I would love to see is a thorough synopsis of the various groups involved in the web component ecosystem, how the existing solutions have worked in practice, what’s been tried and what hasn’t, and what needs to change to move forward.

Dan McQuillan says AI is algorithmic Thatcherism:

“Case after case, from Australia to the Netherlands, has proven that unleashing machine learning in welfare systems amplifies injustice and the punishment of the poor. AI doesn't provide insights as it's just a giant statistical guessing game. What it does do is amplify thoughtlessness, a lack of care, and a distancing from actual consequences.”

(via Ethan Marcotte)

Sci-fi writer Ted Chiang: ‘The machines we have now are not conscious’:

Chiang’s view is that large language models (or LLMs), the technology underlying chatbots such as ChatGPT and Google’s Bard, are useful mostly for producing filler text that no one necessarily wants to read or write