Links

The unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major, unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works, and must not be permitted

(From: Statement on AI training)

Gladwell writes like someone who doesn't care about being correct because he doesn't care about being correct! His spitballs are truly spitballs, and he doesn't care where they land.

(From: Forget Gladwell)

Jake Archibald presents some options for how <selectedoption> would work:

what if the selected is modified?
This is the bit I want your opinion on.

(From: How should work? - JakeArchibald.com)

Iris van Rooij on Ada Lovelace:

Two centuries later, as we are living through yet another AI summer where AI hype and promises of artificial general intelligence (AGI) abound, Ada’s wise words remain relevant as ever. When writing about the “AI” of her time, called the Analytical Engine, she wrote: “It is desirable to guard against the possibility of exaggerated ideas that might arise as to the powers of [AI]. In considering any new subject, there is frequently a tendency [...] to overrate what we find to be already interesting or remarkable”.

(From: Editorial AI Inside: Celebrating Ada and Women in AI | Radboud University)

Last week I saw Nick Doty from the Center of Democracy and Technology give an excellent short talk at the W3C's 30tj birthday event, in which he said:

We need to consider human rights in all the work that we do at W3C in the next 30 years.

(From: Happy 30th Birthday, W3C - Center for Democracy and Technology)

He just published the full text.

This is creepy, dull and useless. I wish they didn't:

If you think avoiding AI-generated images is difficult as it is, Facebook and Instagram are now going to put them directly into your feeds. At the Meta Connect event on Wednesday, the company announced that it’s testing a new feature that creates AI-generated content for you “based on your interests or current trends” — including some that incorporate your face.

(From: Meta’s going to put AI-generated images in your Facebook and Instagram feeds - The Verge)

In our rush to digitize the world, we often underestimate the value of the patina, subtle imperfections, and otherwise visible history of the physical objects we choose to digitize.

(From: Wendell Berry on the benefits of writing without a computer | Sean Voisen)

But in eliminating the effort, in refusing the temporality of making, the outcome of an “AI”-driven creative process is a phantasm, an unsubstantiality, something that passes through the world without leaving any trace. A root that twists back upon itself and tries to suck the water from its own desiccated veins.

(From: Coming home | A Working Library)

Glad the AI Act seems to effectively protect my rights:

Anyone living in the EU, EEA or Switzerland will not have their data harvested. LinkedIn has not yet confirmed why it has spared the citizens of Europe, but it may be due to rules introduced under the EU AI Act.

(From: LinkedIn trains GenAI models on personal data by default)

Mat​hia⁠s S​chäf⁠er wrote a balanced post about the JavaScript discourse and where to put the blame for poor user experience.

I like what he wrote about the impact of tooling:

We need tools that make it easy to do the right thing and hard to impair the UX. Tools that inform the developer about the impact of a decision on performance and reliability.

(From: Something went wrong · molily)