Generative AI models generate AI hype
Text-to-image generators such as DALL-E 2 have been pitched as making stock photos obsolete. Specifically, generating cover images for news articles is one of the use cases envisioned for these…
Eighteen pitfalls to beware of in AI journalism
Reporting about AI is hard. Companies hype their products and most journalists aren’t sufficiently familiar with the technology. When news articles uncritically repeat PR statements, overuse images of robots, attribute…
Students are acing their homework by turning in machine-generated essays. Good.
The latest AI-related alarm: students around the world are using AI models such as GPT-3 to write essays, and getting good grades on them. I don’t condone cheating. But I think…
The bait and switch behind AI risk prediction tools
Toronto recently used an AI tool to predict when a public beach will be safe. It went horribly awry. The developer claimed the tool achieved over 90% accuracy in predicting when…
ChatGPT is a bullshit generator. But it can still be amazingly useful
The philosopher Harry Frankfurt defined bullshit as speech that is intended to persuade without regard for the truth. By this measure, OpenAI’s new chatbot ChatGPT is the greatest bullshitter ever.…
Four more things we worked on in 2022
We’re grateful to you for reading this blog / newsletter. It’s made our book project much more rewarding. We had a busy 2022. Here are links to things we worked on…
People keep anthropomorphizing AI. Here’s why
People have been anthropomorphizing AI at least since ELIZA in the 1960s, but the new Bing chatbot seems to have kicked things up a notch.This matters, because anthropomorphizing AI is…
AI cannot predict the future. But companies keep trying (and failing).
While the world gushes over large language models and text-to-image tools, a far more consequential kind of AI tool has been proliferating: AI for making decisions about individuals based on…
The LLaMA is out of the bag. Should we expect a tidal wave of disinformation?
Ten days ago, Meta announced a large language model called LLaMA. The company said the goal was to foster research. It didn’t release the model publicly but allowed researchers to…
Artists can now opt out of generative AI. It’s not enough.
Text-to-image models like Stable Diffusion and DALL-E are trained on vast amounts of data collected online—including images created by artists, without their consent. In response, artists developed the website Have…