Twitter / X is being flooded with clips from video games being passed off as footage from Gaza.
With the gutting of its trust and safety team, and payouts to accounts based on engagement, Twitter / X now rewarding trolls, clout-chasers and their clueless enablers -- with what looks like less oversight than ever from anyone inside the company.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/arma-3-video-game-clips-israel-hamas-conflict-1234849405/
@42e9d12a This is a very important and good way to add nuance to this discussion. Both that it depends on the type of work *and* that it can and does change over time...
I understand and sympathize with the Manhattan Borough president trying to get public agencies to invest in building a following in places other than X, but advocating for it to happen on Threads without even acknowledging that this just puts them at the whims of a *different* private company seems shortsighted at best.
Does he simply not know the fediverse exists, I wonder?
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/111/155/587/565/214/535/original/99b89a17f642a8eb.jpeg
@5d5c4ecb honestly they’re rarely all that great. And then what if what you really need isn’t in there? What if you need a summary of the way a document addresses subject x, say, which is buried on page 65, 32, 87 and in half a dozen footnotes and 2 figures?
In just the past two weeks:
🖥️ Microsoft announced deep integration of generative AI tools across Windows 11
🔍 Google rolled out changes to its Bard generative AI that allow it to use all your documents, emails and calendar items as fodder
🗨️ Amazon showed off the next generation of generative AI capabilities for Alexa, which should make it chattier and more flexible
💬 Meta announced a chat-based assistant for Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook
🧵/4
"Those who don’t opt to use AI to help them summarize others’ reports (likely generated with the help of AI), respond to emails (ditto) or adapt to new business processes (also created with the help of AI) risk drowning in a fire hose of communications and increased complexity."
Now, honestly, I hope I am wrong. But I also think that in the not too distant future, opting not to use these tools will be like opting not to use email in 2023. Possible, but hard.
5/5
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/why-you-soon-wont-be-able-to-avoid-aiat-work-or-at-home-65febec7
A recent global survey of 10,000 people by tech and consulting firm Capgemini found that people who have used generative AI tools for basic tasks like searching for and summarizing information were on the whole highly satisfied with them.
For now, the generative AI tools that can boost people’s productivity require an early adopter’s mindset ... BUT:
3/🧵
In just the past two weeks:
🖥️ Microsoft announced deep integration of generative AI tools across Windows 11
🔍 Google rolled out changes to its Bard generative AI that allow it to use all your documents, emails and calendar items as fodder
🗨️ Amazon showed off the next generation of generative AI capabilities for Alexa, which should make it chattier and more flexible
💬 Meta announced a chat-based assistant for Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook
🧵/4
Jacky Liang is living in the future.
An artificial-intelligence engineer in Philadelphia, he uses generative AI at work and in his personal life “as much as possible—to the point that even my girlfriend is like ‘Babe, please.’”
Now I realize Jacky (please be nice to him if you run into him on the internet!) isn't typical.
But he does embody the "interpersonal AI arms race" I think we'll all soon find ourselves in.
2/🧵
A recent global survey of 10,000 people by tech and consulting firm Capgemini found that people who have used generative AI tools for basic tasks like searching for and summarizing information were on the whole highly satisfied with them.
For now, the generative AI tools that can boost people’s productivity require an early adopter’s mindset ... BUT:
3/🧵
This week I wrote about what I think will be the unavoidability of using generative AI in both our work and, someday, personal lives.
For this simple reason: It really can make people more productive.
That creates a kind of communications arms race where the rest of us have to participate, or else risk drowning in the output of others.
Maybe I'm wrong. But here it is at length, and a brief thread on the subject.
🧵/1
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/why-you-soon-wont-be-able-to-avoid-aiat-work-or-at-home-65febec7
Jacky Liang is living in the future.
An artificial-intelligence engineer in Philadelphia, he uses generative AI at work and in his personal life “as much as possible—to the point that even my girlfriend is like ‘Babe, please.’”
Now I realize Jacky (please be nice to him if you run into him on the internet!) isn't typical.
But he does embody the "interpersonal AI arms race" I think we'll all soon find ourselves in.
2/🧵
This morning I thought about how my colleague Evan has been detained in solitary in Russia, for nothing -- as a geopolitical pawn, it seems -- and I teared up.
It absolutely kills me.
He represents the best of us -- inquisitive, smart, empathetic -- and they grabbed him on made-up charges. (They accused him of spying, basically.)
It's so heartbreaking.
I don't pray but if I did, it would be for Evan to come home as soon as possible.
https://www.wsj.com/world/evan-gershkovich-a-letter-from-his-family-10db5ccd?st=fi9ouy4ovx9pa7y
#IStandWithEvan
Journalist request:
Do you use any kind of generative AI tool regularly, either to communicate with others, or to make plans, in your work or personal life? If so, I would like to talk to you.
Note: openAI’s various tools, or Bard, or Bing chat, or whatever other tool, even if it’s integrated into something else, all qualify.
Thanks in advance!
#journalistrequest
what's the best way to launch a personal blog in 2023 with the lowest odds that anyone who isn't me will ever have the power to take it down?
(i.e. not on substack or some similar platform controlled by others)
@f7e4238e yeah I had one of those... it was... not great :)
but now I'm typing this on one that is SHOCKINGLY capable and gets like, 12 hours battery life easy (and it's been heavily used for almost 2 years)
here's a fun game to play with your sense of cosmic scale:
How big would the Earth be, if the Sun were the size of a basketball, and how far apart would the two be?
answer in next post
1/2
"If the Sun was a basketball, then the Earth would be the size of a tiny bead, just over 2 mm wide. This bead would sit about 25 m away from the basketball. That's approximately half the width of a football field."
2/2
https://athensscienceobserver.com/2018/05/25/cosmic-proportions/
3/
Second, why it’s so hard to maintain the things we depend on for our very existence:
An aging workforce. The reluctance of young people to take on these jobs. (They pay well, but who wants to become a maintenance engineer just to work in the heat all day and get filthy? And who wants to work on old stuff?)
Enter automation.
What if the most tedious and dangerous parts of these jobs could be done by robots overseen by people?
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/110/916/934/002/472/523/original/b57304bf2cf35027.jpeg
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