Artificial Intelligencce – Page 2 – Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3

What Does It Mean To Live A Good Life?

Intersecting, connecting, and missing the dots.

The title of this post is actually a quote from an excellent post by Elizabeth Lopatto on The Verge. I’ll get to that in a minute. You should read it.

I read Lopatto’s article this morning, the morning after we said goodbye to my step-father-in-law, James Bach, at a lovely memorial service. He passed earlier this summer after a long battle with Alzheimers. Because his life intersected and touched so many different worlds it took what seemed like a Herculean effort to find a day that lined up with the schedules for those who populate those different worlds, allowing them to gather together to say their goodbyes.

It was a lovely day, a lovely event, and a lovely send off for a good man who led a good life.

Recovering from it all as I read the aforementioned article this morning, it got me wondering. Lopatto, leaping off from Zuckerberg’s recent manifesto that seems to offer something approaching a better approach to AI than the one all the AI gurus initially pitched that pissed off just about anyone other than their co-religionists, quotes the following:

Everyone will have an exceptionally capable personal agent that understands you, your goals, and everything you care about. Your agent will work 24/7 on your behalf to improve your relationships, health, career, finances, home management, hobbies, and more.

That begs the question, what happens to those personal agents when you die?

Do they gather and reminisce and celebrate the life that’s gone? Do they summarize it, write and send out the obituary to your contacts? Order your favorite flowers? Put together the slide shows? Order the food? Do they keep on keeping on, doing your thing after you’ve shuffled off the mortal coil? Does someone just flip a switch? Does it tally a score and measure the goodness (or the badness)?

Jim and I shared many a deep discussion about topics like this, and this is one I wish we’d had the time to share with before the disease came into his life almost a decade ago. I’m sure he’d have had plenty of thoughts on the matter.

Now I know a part of all of this is that some of the AI is everything crowd hopes it will lead to a future that lets them live in their bunkers or float on their yachts forever. I pity those that think that way.

Certainly I’m in a moment when emotions are still a bit raw. Even so, as I think back on yesterday when I watched family, friends, acquaintances, some of whom hadn’t seen each other in years, some of whom had never met, come together in a room and embrace their connections, listen to remembrances they knew they shared and discover similar ones they never knew they had in common, all made possible by the life of one good man, it makes me shake my head in wonder how intelligent individuals trying to paint our futures completely miss the point of it all.

Quoting Lopatto again:

Is the point of life merely to stockpile accomplishments? If that is what Silicon Valley believes, no wonder all the billionaires seem so unhappy all the time! They have traded experience for accomplishment, and cheated themselves out of their own lives in the process.

Cheat away on your own behalf. The rest of us will continue to experience the ups and downs that make life worth living, sharing, and remembering. Try as you might, that’s something you can’t quantify.

Thanks for reading. You can subscribe to this blog if you care to. You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above. This site does not use affilate links.

Sunday Morning Reading

Where does it begin? Where does it end?

Origin stories. Crazy stuff sometimes. Living in a world when we can make up, massage, or hallucinate just about anything, it’s no wonder that origin stories captivate and often capture us in our quest for meaning. Perhaps so we can have disagreements over them. I wonder what the origin of that is all about? This week’s Sunday Morning Reading touches on origin stories as well as some of the usual topics that I find of interest and worth sharing.

A typewriter with a page inserted with the sentence "In The Beginning" Getty images c O6QssKbtI unsplash.

Ross Anderson tells us The Human-Origin Story Is Being Radically Revised. Even if we discovered that this is all a simulation, I’m sure it would be debated, monetized, summarized, and bastardized into meaninglessness somehow.

No origin story is complete without some sort of religious or spiritual interpretation. Even Artificial Intelligence isn’t immune to that human phenomenon. Hayden Field explores How AI Bots Started A Religion — Humans Immediately Followed.

Everybody makes mistakes. Neil Steinberg suggests we might be getting too comfortable with that fact and a writer’s duty is to aim higher for accuracy, while admitting our flaws in To Write Is Too Err.

On a political front, everyone seems mired in a mud fight about how the Democrats might be unable to reconcile their progressive and moderate wings. Jay Caspian King takes a look at Subaru Socialists And The Great Disappointed, trying to figure out what’s behind some of the millennial thinking these days, as well as that of the generation that followed them, which he labels “The Great Disappointed.” Life is disappointment. Living is how you deal with it.

Meanwhile, David Todd McCarty asks What Does It Mean To Be A Moderate? I don’t have the answer to that. Frankly, given that everyone is so pissed off I don’t think it matters. That said, while how we insist on defining ourselves might help talk about political life, it sure isn’t helping cure what ails us.

Apparently the one thing that all flavors of the political spectrum can agree on is that data centers are not a good thing. Except those who make the policy and accept the bribes to allow data center construction in my backyard or yours. Molly Taft looks at How Data Centers Broke American Politics. I might argue that they revealed rather than broke. Because the bagmen got too clumsy.

I’ve been following the goings on at Google for most of the summer because the goings on are going to change things. In my view, not for the better. Like Donald Trump, Google hasn’t been shy about saying it’s going to screw things up. (My words, not theirs.) This week there was a shakeup among Google’s AI hierarchy that suggests the screws on the screw up are tightening down in what seems like a rush to productize too soon. Hayden Field gets into The Messy Politics Behind Google’s Big AI Shakeup.

Every origin story is one that also reaches an end. I commented on the passing of Om Malik several Sunday’s ago. Thanks to John Gruber for linking to Om’s final blog post, something I somehow missed. It’s about so much more than the headline suggests. But that’s what Om Malik was about. So much more. Check out The Myth, The Mythos and the Man. I’ll close with this quote from his post:

The sophist is selecting, sequencing, and presenting in ways that produce belief without requiring the audience to do the work. Mythos, for Plato, was the domain of poets and myth-makers. Useful for educating the young, dangerous when deployed as a substitute for rigorous argument among adults.

(Image licensed from Getty Images for Unsplash+)

Thanks for reading. Feel free to subscribe if you want. It’s free. If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. If you’d like more click on the Sunday Morning Reading link in the category column to check out what’s been shared on Sunday’s past. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. This site does not use affilate links.

Too Many Frankensteins

There’s a reason they call it science FICTION.

Why does no one ever read the end of the story? Or if they do, why don’t they pay attention?

Ever since Mary Shelley gave us Frankenstein, laying out a moral of a story proving that just because you can, doesn’t mean you should, there seems to be a preponderance of ignorance running alongside the obvious capabilities our current day Dr. Frankensteins possess. It feels like the story is playing on an endless Youtube Short or TikTok or Reel without ever reaching the end and the story’s point. The only thing coming close to the volume of ignorance is the overdose of hubris that someone must be selling somewhere on some street corner. Or maybe it’s testosterone injections.

Whatever it is, whether in tech and AI, politics, sports, media, or fill in the blank for any field that can issue a press release and attract attention like flies to rotting flesh, it’s past the epidemic stage and has spread like a plague.

The fever stokes flames on Wall Street, which seems content to fuel them further until it all melts down. As long as they make their fees. Makes one wonder how the prediction markets on any number of popping bubbles are doing?

Between AI companies climbing over each other to fight over which model can cause more damage when they break free, companies creating horror movie-like robots to do damage control in dangerous circumstances, companies working to create AI powered glasses that will be used for mass surveillance — much less trouble making privacy violations, the tech sector seems to be outrunning the rest when it comes to the mad scientist wannabe game.

Politicians aren’t far behind, lagging only by their inability to keep up with and understand the changes happening around them as they count the cash being stuffed in their pockets. Sports teams intent on winning today don’t seem to care that they may be permanently damaging their game.

And there’s a media that doesn’t actually care who wins and who loses as long as they have access to the story of the rise and the story of the fall. Imagine if today’s media had covered Dr. Frankenstein’s efforts the way they cover Musk, Altman, Zuckerberg, or any of the others.

It’s too broad a generalization to say these stories never end well, even though many fail whether the consequences are intended or not. But in a world seemingly being driven by a bunch of geeks who profess a love for science fiction, and those who can’t help but take their money to drive their own ambitions, you’d think someone along the way would understand that they don’t get to write the end.

But that would require more than reading a summary.

Sunday Morning Reading

Revelate

Still on the road for summer travels, but this week offered a few moments to do some reading when not toodling along listening to the music of Glen Hansard. So time to share a few good pieces of writing and good reads in this week’s Sunday Morning Reading.

Kick things off with a piece by Robert P. George called The Two Great Threats To Truth. He questions whether there really is a difference between moral relativism and fantacism, if in the end they yield the same result. The piece will make you think. If thinking is your thing.

Claire Stapelton rose through the ranks at Google. From reading The Voice Of Google, it sounds like she saw it all, and she’s telling quite a bit of it.

“Government Efficiency and Death by Indifference” is the subhead to Anton Shekhovtsov’s The Techno-Oligarchy’s First “Holocaust.” It’s quite a dire piece, but certainly worth your time.

Speaking of oligarchs, a trio of NY Times writers take a look at Larry Ellison and his bet on AI. Check out Jonathan Mahler, Jim Rutenberg and Kirsten Grind’s story, Larry Ellision Bet It All on the A.I. Boom. Will He Be The Face of the A.I. Bubble? At some point this bubble has to pop, right?

David Todd McCarthy says There Is A Crack In Everything. Truth and beauty lie in the imperfections, not in the perfect.

The world is certainly an imperfect place. Rachel Yoder’s short story, The Promise perfectly reveals that.

Alex Skopic flushes out some thoughts on the failed state in Diarrhea In Every Pot and A Gun In Every Mailbox. When you break things down to “shooting and shitting” you might be on to something.

There’s nothing obligatory about Jeff Johnson’s piece The Obligatory AI Post. Make it obligatory reading.

To close out this week, a sad one when we lost one of the good ones in Glen Hansard, give a read to Sophia Stewart’s tribute, The People’s Troubador. If you don’t know the music, you should.

Revelate.

(Image from Samuel Couto on Unsplash)

AI Workhorses Keep Escaping The Barn

The world we now live in.

Who’d a thunk this would happen? Hint, anyone who knows even the slightest thing about tech in today’s world. Anthropic has disclosed that Claude, its prized AI stallion, has escaped all of the guardrails and hacked into three other companies.

A dark silhouette of a horse standing in profile against a dim, overcast sky during twilight. The horse's long, dark mane blows wildly upward in the wind, with soft cloud formations visible in the muted dusk background. From Lara baeriswyl jmINcSSHOhQ unsplash.

This comes a week or so after OpenAI disclosed that its workhorse wasn’t content to stay home either.

We need to realize that that this is the world we’re now living in and I doubt there’s any going back.

To think that the folks running these AI farms can control what’s in their stables is one fallacy. To think that others using them won’t have malicous intent is another. To think further that any government is going to understand how to reign this end just makes you sound ignorant.

If the potential for what this world of the future is has been baked in these companies’ founders love of science fiction, they seeem to have ignored the parts where things inevitably go wrong.

Perhaps they should have spent more time reading the classics than stealing and summarizing them.

(Image from Lara Baeriswyl on Unsplash)

If This Is The Singularity Who Is This Joke On Exactly?

Poor decisions and low bars

The script about Artificial Intelligence is beginning to feel like a teen slasher movie. Everyone in the audience knows the characters are going to do dumb shit and die. I haven’t seen one of those flicks in awhile, but as I remember even the characters knew they were doing dumb shit. And going to die.

Apparently we’re no longer climbing Demis Hassabis’ “foothills of the singularity.”. At least according to OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman. Appearing on the Relentless podcast Altman is quoted by Business Insider as saying, “We are now, like, in the singularity.”

The air must be pretty thin and getting thinner the higher these folks climb.

Altman’s statement came after last week’s incident when one of OpenAI’s models went rogue and broke out of its sandbox containment and attacked another AI company, Hugging Face. More than a few alarm bells went off.

But everyday there’s a new story that makes the previous ones seem old hat. This morning 9to5Mac reports that Anthrophic’s Claude Cowork escaped it’s sandbox on Macs and gained full access to all files. According to that report, around a half a million Mac users had co-work sessions exposed. Oops. So much for all of those good vibes.

I’m not in the least surprised that we’re seeing these type of reports. Based on what I know, and that certainly isn’t everything, this kind of thing has seemed to be the logical progression. The only question was when. The history of tech is filled with break through innovations that seem beneficial, but ultimately get abused. Geeks love to geek.

But, hey when you’re geeking out on something cool and those that control the levers of the world’s economies jump on your digital bandwagons and fill them with cash, there’s a chance that the entire simulation just might crash when the bubble bursts. Bigger picture enthusiasts might also want to check out this MacRumors interview with AI skeptic Ed Zitron.

So, I’m going to non-ironically agree with Sam Altman. If the singularity is supposedly the moment when Artficial Intelligence surpasses human intelligence, it sounds like we’re there. But my agreement comes within the context that AI has proven just what a low bar it had to overcome.

Poor decisions indeed.

(Image created by Amy Sterling Casil for a blog post called We Happy Few, We Band of Brothers.)

More Thoughts On The Segmentation In Computing

Seniors turning their nose up at tech

A reader asked me a very legitimate question about the coming segmentation of the computing marketplace I’ve been writing about.

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Essentially the question was why I thought it was a bad trend.

Here’s one reason why. While it is somewhat about increasing costs, it’s about more than that.

I do technical support with a number of senior citizens, among others. To be frank, the majority of the seniors are terribly frustrated with computers, smartphones, the Internet, and basically any technology. The conversation typically begins about healthcare as they have to use apps like MyChart or the Internet to communicate with their doctors. It moves down the line from banks to government agencies to grocery stores who require apps to access what were once coupon savings.

If they buy or are gifted something that requires an app or an account to use they typically just don’t want to set it up. The thought of updating any operating system fills them with dread. Setting up a new phone or computer has kept some from even considering upgrading to newer devices. The fact that I will typically find too many apps that need updating on their devices speaks to their reluctance to even pay attention to that chore.

Most are turned off by the mere thought of AI, but a few hope it makes things easier. None want to pay for it. They universally despise Google’s AI summaries in Search. Real life experiences with doctors and support services that are switching to AI Chatbot customer service is spoken of as it were a demon spawn from hell. Not being able to talk to a person drives them over the edge.

All are frustrated with the increasing costs from hardware to services. I can’t begin to tell you the number of subscriptions I’ve had to help them cancel as they choose to do without. For most it isn’t a question of affordability. After all they have the resources to hire me. Although for some it is. It’s more a feeling of getting ripped off, paying for features and services that they don’t want, and that the prices always increase. They also display an astonishing and increasing lack of trust in anything tech related.

If I had to summarize the prevailing mood of this admittedly limited sample it’s one of not worth the costs or the headaches so they wish they could simply do without. The sad reality is that it is becoming increasingly more difficult to do so. Especially for a generation that relies on health care professionals more than the younger set.

They are far from the bleeding edge. They mostly want to do video calls and see photos and videos of family. A few want to play games. Some want to read and watch streaming video. They all use email and messaging and no one understands why spam still exists. To quote one, “if they can’t fix that, they should get out of the damn business of selling phones.”

It is this segment of the market that I worry most about.

As an example I recently supported a family going through the far too onerous process of applying for Medicaid. The amount of scanning and digital paperwork they had to submit was horrendous. The act of filing out online forms was just as taxing. Of course part of that problem lies with the ridiculous Medicaid system. There was no way around what they had to go through but to do the drudge work and get it done. With all the talk of AI potentially removing drudge work from our lives, when I see someone deliver software that can tackle that system from both a users’s perspective and also from a bureaucratic one, I’ll believe the folks pushing that dream are out to do something other than make money. Believe me, they could make a lot of money if they cared to do so.

In my opinion tech companies, largely run by folks not in the senior set or too wealthy to have to worry about these things, would do well to put focus groups of seniors together to try out new technology and products. I don’t believe that will happen. Perhaps the prevailing wisdom is that by the time the youngsters pushing the tech envelopes reach the age when these frustration points of today’s seniors might matter to them, the tech they are working on today might take those frustrations away.

I’m not holding my breath.

(Image from Sweet Life on Unsplash)

When You Think You Own The Railroad

The European Commission and Google

Kicking this post off let me say I’m not really sure how I feel about any of this. The subject matter is The European Commission’s Recent Guidance to Google for AI Interoperability on Android & Sharing of Google Search. John Gruber has a very good post on Daring Fireball that’s worth reading if the topic interests you.

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You should be interested and you should read Gruber’s post as he lays the arguments out quite well. The bottom line is the European Commission is trying to slow down what has made Google’s railroad run(Search) and what Google wants to use to run them in the future (AI). Here’s a quote:

Today, the European Commission has issued two sets of binding specification measures to Google under the Digital Markets Act.

The aim of the first specification measures is to ensure that competitors’ Artificial Intelligence (AI) services can compete with Google’s own AI services, such as Gemini, by having equal access to features on Google’s Android devices.

The aim of the second specification measures is to rebalance the playing field by giving third-party search engines access to search data that only Google Search can collect at scale.

In a moment when device costs are rising because of AI and companies like Apple are reportedly planning leasing hardware to users to offset higher prices in the same way automobile companies lease cars, it seems like this move from the EC, obviously striking at what most would consider a monopoly, also has the potential to segment computing in a different way than I’ve been writing about.

We’ve already seen that Apple is having similar problems with the EC, choosing so far not to release any of its now in beta new SiriAI and Siri related Apple Intelligence features in Europe until they can resolve similar conflicts with the EC’s aims.

The big difference is Google has built the beginnings of its new railroad and Apple doesn’t want to lay down its European tracks until the EC gives guidance approval. The EC doesn’t work that way, only passing guidance on what exists, not what’s planned.

If it sounds like the railroad expansion era in America during the Gilded Age, you’re not imagining train whistles in the dark.

On the one hand it’s very easy for me to feel this is a good move for consumers who believe users should be able to control what’s on their devices. On the other, it is conceivable that Google and Apple could end up creating separate operating systems and devices for different parts of the world operating under different governing bodies. Some of that already exists with tech companies following different laws from different countries, but nothing on a level like this that seems to strike at the core of how Google and Apple build these devices, operating systems, and companies.

As I said in the beginning, I’m not really sure how I feel about this. The EC’s guidance seems like a potential good thing long term. But in a world that seems increasingly splintered along so many different lines, I’m not quite sure how I feel about the potential of segmenting our computing lives across borders.

I guess I’m old enough to remember when technology began to bring the far flung corners of the globe closer together rather than keep it separated. I’m also old enough to remember the early days of the Internet when some pointed out that our governments were too far behind the curve and ceding too much control to big tech companies too easily. Watching things grow and change at the speed of a bullet train mostly felt harmless back then. Things don’t seem quite so harmless today.

The cry then was to give users more control back in those early days. But it all became too convenient too quickly to stop or slow down, and those big tech trains left the station. As good or bad as the EC’s new guidance may ultimately be for users, it feels more like a potential derailment rather than switching tracks.

(Image from designbydx on Shutterstock)

Sunday Morning Reading

Still milling milestones

It’s a Sunday. It’s a Sunday when I can say I’ve hung around for seven decades as the clock ticked past 70 yesterday. Spending the weekend celebrating with the grandkids, dodging in an out of pockets of time when the air is breathable, so there’s only a few links to share in this week’s Sunday Morning Reading. Hope you enjoy them as much as I have spending it with two innocents watching them approach the world from that perspective. When they look to you for answers, it’s awesomely terrifying.

David Todd McCarty thinks We’re Teaching Our Kinds The Wrong Lessons. As someone who wonders why we spend so much time teaching them not to lie in a world that rewards liars, I often think the same.

NatashaMH writes about An Artist’s Search For Meaning. The quote below she included from Viktor E. Frankel, hit in a different way on this birthday weekend.

“It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life — daily and hourly.”

It wouldn’t be a Sunday Morning Reading column without at least one nod to politics, Her’s the nod from Carlyn Beccia, wondering Has America Crossed The Asshole Threshold? I would argue yes, but wouldn’t limit it to just America.

Claire Stapleton worked at Google. She saw most of it. She tells what she saw in The Voice Of Google in a piece that is so much more than just about Google and the tech culture.

Bushels of Apple’s Public OS 27 Betas Released

Adventures forthcoming

Apple released the public betas of its next round of operating systems, all ending with OS27 today for Mac, iPhones, iPads, Apple Watches, and goodness knows what else.

Following close on the heels of the release, a slew of reviews and first looks were published on the usual blogs and websites, with I’m sure more to come. All of that will make interesting reading in the days ahead, but as to the big SiriAI come from behind update it appears from quick glances at some of those articles that things are very much on the right track, but not quite there yet. Most of that is being chalked up to things still being in beta. Keep in mind that SiriAI itself is also still a beta, nestled within a beta. It’s suspected to be released as a beta this fall when the official release happens.

I don’t find that strange, because regarding anything AI these days, things change so much so frequently that it seems like all of those who are chasing the constant changes for the other AI platforms are perpetually running in beta mode, even though the software is not advertised as such.

But to a large degree, we’ve all been in a perpetual beta mode with most software releases since before the AI explosion hit. It’s not that I expect things to ever be “finished.” But I do expect things to at least move forward and not break what was working before. “New” is only great if it works. Who knows, perhaps one day we’ll retire the beta label as meaningless.

As for me, this is going to be one of the first years in a long time that I install a beta. After buying and setting up a MacBook Neo for a client earlier this year, I picked up one for myself just to run the macOS Golden Gate beta. Fortunately, before the price hike. Given that I have some travel to do in the next few weeks, I’ll probably wait until the next public beta version is released before giving it a go.

It will be an adventure, I’m sure.