This Coca Cola ad was created with Stable Diffusion. You can’t knock the results as an entertaining advertisement.
It does raise and continue the interesting questions regarding the advance of AI.
Category: Tech
Apple iCloud Migraines
Check the end of this post for updates. Soon after I posted this the issues popped back up. The saga continues.
Oh, Apple. You make it sound so easy. Can’t sign in with an Apple Watch? Devices having syncing problems or lose connectivity to the Continuity/Handoff magic? Sign out of iCloud and then sign back in. Problem solved? Sometimes. For a time. Not every time.
Signing in and out of iCloud to fix issues can create random headaches as nasty as a migraine. You never know when those migraines are going to hit. You live life a bit on edge anticipating and dreading the next reccurence. You know it will happen. Or you fear it will. And when it does hit, well you know what’s coming.
I haven’t blogged about things Apple in awhile. Not since this post on Apple’s Design Trap. But it feels like my pace might pick up a bit given the frequency of new kinks I’m experiencing in the Appleverse. Funny, not funny, how these migraines seem to surface in the run up to Apple’s annual new operating system announcements at WWDC and then continue throughout the summer. It almost feels like whether we sign up for betas or not, we’re all along on the summer beta bus for the ride anyway. Especially if we take advantage of the number of services and features connected to iCloud.
Yes. iCloud. Troubled when launched, it is less, though still troubled now. But though it may be less, it’s actually become more mysterious because it’s tied to so much more than when it had its troubled beginnings. When I say mysterious I’m not just talking about how users feel. Talk to an Apple Support rep about an iCloud issue. Beyond advising signing out and signing back in they are by and large as confused by the mystery as the rest of us.
Here’s the story.
I’m a big Apple fan so I come at my criticisms of Apple from the point of view that I enjoy and prefer Apple’s devices and software. I use a variety of Apple’s computers and products. I also subscribe to iCloud via AppleOne. I like to take advantage of quite a few of the features that require an iCloud subscription to benefit from such as Sign in with Apple Watch, Universal Control, Handoff and Continuity. Prior to last fall’s release of Ventura, iOS16, watchOS9, etc.., iCloud would somehow randomly bungle things up so these features would just stop working. Typically you don’t know that things have stopped working until you go to use one of the features. The problem(s) seemed to be resolved after the Fall 2022 releases of those new OS’s. But as we all know Apple keeps working and releasing updates throughout the year.
After this past spring’s release of Ventura 13.3 the problems appeared again. After the release of Ventura 13.3.1 I didn’t see any of these random cock-ups and dared to breathe a sigh of relief. Premature as it turns out. Even though there were mutliple device categories involved in the 13.3/16.4 round of OS updates I’m pinning this on Ventura because in attempting to track problems down I discovered that there were no issues with any of these features between iPads and iPhones. Turn off the Macs and things worked as designed. Call me crazy but “Turn off your Mac” sounds slightly worse than “you’re holding it wrong.”
Coming back to either of my Macs (MacBook Pro M2 and iMac 24) I could randomly no longer log in with my Apple Watch. That’s a first world problem I know, but hey, it’s my first world so it’s a problem for me if not for any substantial number of users. And of course the error message Apple offers is about as helpful as warm spit.
For those that don’t know there’s no place to “sign in” using the Apple Watch app on your iPhone. To sign out of iCloud on your Apple Watch you actually have to sign out of iCloud on your iPhone and the reverse is true. So this little not so helpful message should tell you to sign out of iCloud for your iPhone. Oh, and the clever little animation in the above GIF is showing the enjoyable experience I would receive when I tried to toggle the control that lets me sign in with my Apple Watch. Top notch support and design. All around.
Once I arrived at this goodness I would then check to see if any other of the Continuity/Handoff features would be disabled and of course they would be.
Consistently Inconsistent
Now here’s the bigger problem. There’s no consistency to the failures. Sometimes the problem would be on both Macs and sometimes on one of the Macs, (it seemed like they were taking turns). Once I rebooted the MacBook Air to attempt and resurrect the lost iCloud features connection and in that case I had success. Only to see that the connection on the iMac had failed in the time it took to reboot the MacBook Air. In almost all instances there was nothing out of the ordinary added to either machine (that I’m aware of) or me using the machines in any new or different way. Other than an operating system update. (*cough*)
Prior to Ventura I had talked with Apple Support and scoured online sources for solutions when this problem would manifest. There were and are as many guesses to solve these problems as there are people looking for answers. Everything from rebooting to rebuilding your device(s). The same is true in this current moment. In some cases a reboot solves the issues. In some cases not so much.
Others solve it with any number of solutions (Bluetooth on/off, logging a user in and out, etc…). Most who get to the point of logging out of iCloud report some success, only to see the problem come back at intervals ranging from a couple of hours to several days.
Currently I’m in that latter “several days” category. It’s almost consistent at three days. Occasionally sooner. Occasionally longer. The range of unpredictability is at least narrowing. But the bottom line here is this: Apple has no idea how to solve this issue.
So there’s a problem. I can only conclude that it’s related to iCloud and something introduced recently in Ventura that affects Macs given that everything seems to work when the Macs are turned off. Signing out and back in to iCloud will solve it. For awhile. That’s the current state of affairs.
What Apple and those who leap to the “Sign out of iCloud” as a solution to this migraine-like nightmare don’t tell you is the potential series of after shocks you’ll encounter along the way back.
Apple does provide a handy list of the services you’ll lose access to when you sign out of iCloud at this link. And when you decide to take that step Apple will also let you know that you’ll lose any credit cards you have set up with Apple Pay. Apple will also give you the option to save some iCloud data on your Mac. But that advice doesn’t cover what you may or may not have to do to get things back up and running the way you want it to. These are some of my experiences:
Things that happen each time I’ve logged out and back in to iCloud.
First, if you happen to use different Apple IDs for purchases/music and iCloud you’ll have to manually reassociate your purchases/music ID with your iCloud account in the same way you do when you set up a new device. I know I’m not the only old geezer who first got an Apple ID back in the day when I used iTunes and an iPod with Windows, so I’m sure others will have to do this as well.
Second, if you use iCloud Photos and have chosen to save originals to your Mac, you’ll have to make that selection again in the settings for Photos. If you do have to reselect this Photos setting that means you’ll burn bandwidth downloading those originals again at some point.
Third, if you’ve downloaded some music to your device you’ll have to redownload those selections again. Again, Apple doesn’t seem to remember what you’ve downloaded previously.
Fourth, As expected all of your Mail, Notes, Reminders, Calendars, and Contacts have to be redownloaded. (More on Contacts in a bit.) This seems to work relatively quickly with the exception of Mail, Notes, and Contacts which can take some time depending on what you’ve accumulated.
Fifth: Apple does warn you that you’ll lose credit cards in Apple Pay. So you know that going in. Having to go through this process so frequently in recent weeks unfortunately flagged my account at my bank necessitating a phone call to explain what was going on. So I’m not re-adding that card back to Apple Pay until or if this problem settles down.
Things that happen sometimes and sometimes not when I logged out and back into iCloud.
Messages: I’ve got several group threads I hide notifications from. I sometimes have to “re-hide” those notifcations. Sometimes not.
Airpods and Bluetooth: I don’t choose the default Airpod setting that allows Airpods to connect to a Mac automatically. I use the “When last connected to this Mac” setting. That setting sometimes holds and sometimes does not.
The image I use for my avatar on my login screen sometimes comes back as normal. Sometimes not.
Contacts: I mentioned that earlier. On some, not all, occasions Sign Out/Sign In Contacts seems to want to rebuild it’s database completely. I only noticed this after one of these episodes when for the first time my M2 MacBook Air got hot to the touch. In trying to figure out the problem I noticed that the AddressBookSourceSync was the culprit eating tons of memory and processor time. Again, this didn’t happen each time, but it did happen multiple times on each Mac. Note: I hardly ever use the Contacts app on my Macs. Typically any contact I add or change comes from my iPhone.
Various other settings and preferences seem to come and go. But again, it’s not like I use everything on my Macs every day so who knows when in this cycle of logging out and back in something changed or didn’t.
I get the problem here. Apple has created quite an intricate and appealing series of services that rely on iCloud as a backbone. When things work they work great. But they don’t always just work. Advancing these services and features requires constant development and there’s no real way to make sure every possible detail and permutation is locked down and working on the annual pace that Apple rolls out these operating systems. So, there will be problems. Bugs. Issues. Headaches. Call them what you will. Fix them and move on.
But, if things are moving so fast that your support personnel and documentation can’t keep up then it might be time to re-evaluate the pace. The misleading “fix” in that message in the animated GIF above has been around for at least two generations of Apple operating systems. Frankly at this point, it’s insulting.
iCloud woes date back to its inception. I doubt they will ever truly be solved. But at least give users and your support personnel information that makes sense, explains what your fix may or may not do, and isn’t misleading or sounds ignorant.
Updates: A few hours after posting this the issue happened again after being away from the iMac 24 for a few hours. Nothing going on just the computer normally going into Sleep Mode. As had happened once before, all was working on the MacBook Air until I rebooted the iMac. And then the MacBook Air took the same iCloud dive.
The reboot of the iMac 24 was successful and brought things back on that device. I’ve rebooted the MacBook Air 4 times now and still no luck on that device. That typically means I’ll have to sign out and back in to iCloud. I’ll update again after doing that.
Update 2: Wednesday. I logged out and back into iCloud last night. After the requisite time of letting things settle back in most things that I checked seemed to be working again. Until they didn’t. This morning I tried to open MacBook Air while having coffee and none of the features were working again. So far everything at the moment seems viable on the iMac 24.
Two more reboots of the MacBook Air seemed to right the ship.
Update 3: Thursday. Ran some errands for a few hours today. Returned. Neither Mac would accept Login With Apple Watch and all of the attendant other problems. Rebooting both machines yielded a return of things to the MacBook Air but not the iMac 24.
This is getting old.
*For a variety of reasons this post has been in the creation process over a couple of weeks. During that time the issues I discuss occured mutliple time on both Macs. I anticipate they will continue.
Amazing Story: His Software Sang the Words of God. Then It Went Silent
Every day is a good day when you learn something new. And this amazing story certainly offers something new to me.
TropeTrainer was software that had been taught to sing the words of God.
Then it went silent.
A developer created TropeTrainer, software that helped prepare kids for their bar and bat mitzvahs. He passed away. Due to advances on computers his software abruptly stopped running on new or updated computers and much was lost.
Most magical was the voice synthesis, which featured an adjustable timbre and a playback speed, Buchler boasted on his website, that could be set “from unbearably slow to comfortably fast.”
In a wink to exasperated Torah tutors, he devised the slogan “Software With Infinite Patience.”
That brief description and excerpts here risk trivializing this story. So, go read the story.
Apparently I’m Dead According to OpenAI
The world is continuing to rush headlong into a new universe of Artificial Intelligence but apparently I died before the gold rush began.
At least that’s what WatchGPT an OpenAI based app for the Apple Watch thinks. I decided to give it a try and asked it a simple question: Who is Warner Crocker?
After explaining it wasn’t a search engine it spit out some “facts” including that I died on Christmas Day 2020. I must have missed that.
Although my demise sounds pretty factual I’m still hanging around as far as I know. And sure the years since December of 2020 were kinda sketchy due to the pandemic, so far I have avoided COVID and other life threatening adventures. The cast for my current gig seem to respond to me as if I’m alive and kicking. My family and friends still treat me like I’m walking around and causing trouble.
Granted most of these AI products let you know that they’re still in development. Still, I can imagine quite a few scenarios where folks input a query and get death notices that then get reported as facts in whatever vehicle they’re looking the fact up for.
Let’s list a few flights of fancy here:
- A school paper on a contemporary figure.
- Checking out info on someone you might want to date.
- Running a check on a perspective employee or employer.
And to think, big companies are jumping into this pool feet first assuming they will be able to save money by cutting their workforce.
I’m wondering if my wife can use this to make an insurance claim?
Ink Diaries: Day Off Day O
There’s really no such thing as a day off when you’re directing a show. But today, Monday, is our day off. The actors do very much need down time to deal with the realities of life and also process a bit. And yeah, I’ll do a grocery run, throw some stuff in the laundry and some other personal stuff. But it’s also a breath when I prep for the week ahead. Sure is nice to be able to get away from all of those other screens and sit on the porch swing with just an iPad to do that.
Makes it almost feel like a day off.
What’s So Artificial About Artificial Intelligence?
Why are we calling this current fad/trend/gold rush into Artificial Intelligence “artificial?” Shouldn’t we be calling it Accumulated Intelligence?
From what I’m reading the output these new services are spitting out is more like a mash-up of what they’ve scraped and collected from around the Internet. You know. Stuff created by humans. Apparently the writings, the artwork, the photos, the music, the code, the thoughts, the you name it, have been collected and are being tumbled and jumbled up and presented as responses. So somebody can charge you for it or sell ads against it.
And knocking the moniker again here, that of course means it’s all been said and done before. There’s not much we can really credit to divine inspiration beyond the talent to discover, describe or display what already exists. Because that’s sorta kinda how we humans evolve (or are intelligently designed) anyway. We gain knowledge and intelligence through our experiences. And through those experiences we become who we are, think what we think, and create what we create based on the knowledge we accumulate.
I’m assuming that’s what the makers of artificial intelligence call real or natural intelligence. But it’s tough to sell ads against that.
Given that we humans are known for both brilliance and the not-so-brilliant in what we say, do, think, create and accumulate, you can say we as a species struggle a bit with the tensions brought about by natural intelligence. Certainly we seem to be hitting a speed bump on the brilliance part as the not-so-brilliant part continues to plow-ahead of late.
But again, this AI fad is taking what exists, shaking and baking, stirring the pot, and presenting it to us in a newly polished form we can get on our smartphones while waiting for the transit apps to give us wrong information about our train’s arrival time.
The very human response when someone learns something new or that an answer is wrong can certainly be “I didn’t know that.” What’s funny with these machine learners though is that in the early going they seem to be spitting out mistakes just like humans do. And taking the same kind of offense when called on it. So nothing new under the sun there.
And apparently these machines need to be governed by rules. Well, that’s only human too. We govern ourselves (well, some of us do) in order to try and remain civil and polite. And protect our profit margins. Again, only human.
So, I’m saying it’s early enough in this game that we should strip away the “artificial” in AI and change it to “accumulated.” Because sure as shooting at some point down the line some big error is going to be spit out by a machine that causes something bad to happen. And we’ll shift the blame to the machines. Just like we humans always do.
But I guess there’s one benefit to this “artificialness.” The machines can’t plead ignorance or “I don’t recall” when things get inconvenient or uncomfortable. At least until we start using “artificial lawyers.”
AI and the Performing Bits
Is it real or is it Memorex? Remember those days? We’ve been treated to questions like those for some time now when it comes to music, film, and other means of arts and entertainment. And the pace of things seem to be quickening as the powers that be in these industries are jumping with both feet into the big tech Artificial Intelligence rush.
New technology is great when it can advance creativity. New technology is also bit scary when we don’t know exactly what it’s going to yield. But the one thing we do know is that if the bean counters think they can save a buck and make two by using a new innovation they’ll take that leap, regardless of the risks it might pose to the creative spirit.
I’ve been talking about Artificial Intelligence a bit here and obviously will continue to do so. It’s the thing of the moment. Which means some hope it’s the thing of the future. And it just might well be. But how that is going to impact the arts is going to be a tricky future to navigate. Perhaps after Google, Mircosoft and any other tech giants get their AI search engines up and running we can ask and find out. (Google calls theirs Bard. Seriously?)
We’ve already seen technology create magic in audio and film/TV. De-aging is a popular recent trend in film. Of course that follows the trends of CGI characters and CGI backgrounds and CGI just about everything else.
We’ve got computer generated narrations for eBooks competing with live readers. We’ve been enhancing audio tracks for decades, and in the most recent decade or two we’ve been enhancing live performers.
Yesterday there was a story in Vice about voice actors being asked to sign over the rights to their voices so their clients can use artificial intelligence to generate synthetic versions for future work, perhaps replacing the need for the artist for future work.
Each technology advance gets met with both praise and criticism. Some deserved. Some not so. I’m no luddite or traditonalist who eschews these advancements. But I think we’re heading into tricky ground in this next chapter of entertainment and creativity that parallels what we’re experiencing in real life.
There’s that old and recently accelerating propaganda truism (ha!) that teaches us it’s not about separating fact and fiction. In the Peacock network’s series The Undeclared War there’s a great sequence when a news editor sums it up while explaining the way it is to a younger new recruit:
“The point is to get people used to the idea that everything’s a lie. There is no truth. Once they accept that. Biggest liar wins.”
Who cares if a search result yields a false result? Who cares if Carrie Fisher is dead when she’s still appearing in Star Wars? Who cares if deep fake videos or audio can sabotage a politician or a company? Who cares if the audiobook you’re listening to is read by a human or a computer?
Set aside the labor issues and putting folks out of work. Those are real discussions that need to happen. But what if Tom Hanks, who is pretty darn excited by the de-aging process in film, or rather a digitally created Tom Hanks keeps starring in movies long after he’s gone. Hell, we could have Forrest Gump appearing with world leaders that haven’t been born yet twenty years after they’re dead.
We all had a good laugh at the manipulative creation of boy bands awhile back. Don’t think we won’t see and hear new bands created out of the whole cloth of digital bits and bytes. There’s no question in my mind that we’ll see an entire film created out of an AI prompt some day down the road.
There will be innovation. There will be excitement and celebration and there will be reactions. Some of which might actually be human.
We live in interesting times.
Apple’s Design Trap
There’s an excellent discussion about design vs practicality going on currently within the Apple community that gathers around the Mastodon water cooler. It was kicked off by Matt Birchler responding to a post from Daring Fireball’s John Gruber commenting on how far ahead third party iOS apps for Mastodon were than those on the Android platform. Birchler filled out his thoughts in a post called The Shocking Stage of Enthusiast Apps on Android.
John Gruber continued the thread on Daring Fireball with an excellent post called Making Our Hearts Sing. That in turn prompted Frederico Viticci to pen a post on MacStories called The Practicality of Art in Software. I’d highly recommend you read Matt, John, and Viticci’s posts.
Beyond a brief summary let me just say that I’m in profound agreement with each of the posts. There are differences in the arguments, but they all aim at the same larger point about Apple.
Yes, in my view Android apps for Mastodon pale in comparison to iOS apps. As backed up by my own experiences, I do feel the general design of Android apps also lack what Gruber calls “the artistic value in software and interface design” that he sees in iOS apps. AND, as Viticci says “As a computer maker or app developer, you have to strike that balance between the aspirational and the practical, the artistic and the functional.”
The two cents I’m about to add to the discussion isn’t in contrast to what these three have laid out. Like I said I’m in agreement with the points in each argument. Think of this as tangential to the discussion.
So here’s the tangent.
Design is key to any endeavor that’s creating a product. We can talk form following function, or practicality, or art for art’s sake. Doesn’t matter where you enter the discussion. It’s key. And the posts I’ve mentioned above do an excellent job of hitting those points.
Apple has captured, captivated, seduced and perhaps suckered many of us with its approach to the design of its products. In my opinion I think they’ve largely succeeded. If you “think different” then I won’t question your taste, but I’ll just acknowledge that we sail on two different oceans. That said, Apple is also masterful in the design of the marketing and rollout of products. In many ways the product and the marketing of the product are inseparable.
But I think Apple has designed itself into a predicament in the same way many tastemakers do. Once you embody an asthetic and it becomes not only your brand but your essence you create almost impossible semiotic expectations. You’re no longer designing just your next creation, you’re designing to meet the expectations you’ve created. It can be a trap when you follow that path OR if you deviate from it.
And that’s where the trap gets tricky. Be real with me here. When you see amazing and beautiful screenshots of a new app I’m sure you’re often as tempted as I am to push the Buy button before you even read and understand the description of what the app offers. Especially if the App is from a developer you’ve had good experiences with in the past. It’s no different than following any other artist in any other medium. Favorite singer, buy the next album. Favorite author, buy the next book.
Don’t get me wrong I’m not saying all app developers, Apple, or other artists are trying to pull one over on us. (I’m sure some are but that’s another topic for another day.) Using a combined appeal to our senses and our reservoir of good feelings from past experiences is what designing products is all about. The successful designers know just how to reach us and build a following. Some would call it maniuplation. They’re correct. The intent of most art is to maniuplate a response.
Take Weather apps for example. Goodness knows how many of those I tried just because those radar displays looked gorgeous in screenshots. The well worn cliché of not buying a book by its cover certainly applies to App marketing and we all know how clichés get started.
And then there are the artists and designers that break the mold. Try something new. Take a different, sometimes radical approach. That may work in the long view once a more full body of work can be viewed from a distance. But it’s risky in the immediate market of expectations, which is why its viewed as a departure. But strike gold and the risk can pay off.
Play to our attactions to the pretty. The shiny. The well designed. The well packaged. Play to our desires for something familiar while yearning for something new. Create tension with those competing desires and debut that “departure” inside a wrapping of the familiar and you get a double bang for the buck. And here’s where Frederico Viticci’s long, and well documented struggle with Stage Manager works so well as the prime example in this tangent.
Stage Manager is Apple’s attempt at a windowing solution for iPads and Macs. iPad users have been yearning for a windowing or multi-tasking solution for awhile. What they’ve been yearning for is something most are already familiar with from experiences with laptops and desktops. Surely this would be beautiful in a “think different” sort of way. But not too “think different” in the practical mechanics.
If you’re an iPad user I am reasonably sure you were awed by the demo of Stage Manager when you first saw it. It looked magical. It looked magical in that Apple way. It looked like the solution many iPad users have all been waiting for. I know it did for me. And it was rolled out in all the ways we’ve all become accustomed to.
But the practicality of Stage Manager on the iPad largely failed to live up to the promise of those expectations once users got their hands on it. Frankly, I find it more than a dissapointment. But the design from demo to packaging of the idea was certainly alluring and seductive enough to get us (me) in the door.
I won’t go into the ways and wherefores of that beyond linking to Viticci’s excellent chronicling of his experiences. His feelings and thoughts are shared by me and many others.
So to wrap this up and get back to the points about design asthetics, practicality vs pretty, and Mastodon Apps on competing platforms let me say this. I’ve downloaded and followed the development of many of the iOS Apps for Mastodon. I’m genuinely excited by what I see and feel. Although there are differences, some are starting to morph a bit into the same look and feel but the feature sets (currently) set them apart.
After giving a spin to some of the Android Mastodon apps I’ve been dissappointed in the smaller selection available and also the lack of strong design statements in those that do exist. And again, features sets give them distinction. I’m sure others feel differently and vive la differénce.
This difference though cements my thinking that the expectations and semiotic differences between Apple and Android design philosophies are baked in at this point in the game. Apple has created such a deeper dependency on design prowess. Android’s “come as you are” approach leaves more room for less when it comes to the art of visual design. Fundamentally there’s nothing wrong with ether approach from a user perspective. Choose what you’re attracted to and have fun with your choice.
The larger and more precarious point with this tangent is that Apple’s rich design expectations, as powerful as they are, are also Apple’s Achilles heel. Great artists aren’t afraid to fail. Great product makers who use great art as a selling point need to tred more carefully to avoid the level of disappointment that can turn a legacy into a burden.
The Paradox of Artificial Intelligence is Feeling More Paradoxical
The tech word, the academic world, the business world and a few other worlds are having a moment over ChatGPT and other Artificial Intelligence innovations. For those not in the know, ChatGPT is an Artificial Intelligence product created by a company called OpenAI that allows users to input a query or a request. It’s trained on the bazillion words that exist on the Internet. And it can generate output that can be anything from an essay to a poem, computer code, a piece of digital art, typed text that can turn into script, something resembling an answer to a search query, to a play. Below is play I generated with the simple request: “write a short play about shepherds.” (click on the image below to enlarge it.)
Some are thrilled. (I’m sure the sheep in the story are not.) Some are concerned.
It’s illuminating quite a paradox. Educational institutions see benefits and also as a potential tool for students to cheat when it comes to writing assignments. Artists see this as potentially crowding them out of work and entire new ways for new artists to express themselves. In the journalism world we’ve already seen CNET start to use this form of AI to generate content (and get criticized for not disclosing it.) Buzzfeed says it’s going to be using it in some capacities to “personalize” some of its content.
I’m not quite sure about the PR spin on that one. Sounds like it might have been generated by a ChatGPT PR request instead of a thinking human. But then again, most PR speak is formulaic anyway.
It’s not just text either. There are now tools to generate AI digital art, music, computer code and who knows what else.
And yes, there are accuracy problems. And context problems. And plagarism problems. And…problems.
But AI is all the rage and it’s stoking rage from those that see this as a harbinger of doom vs those who see it as the future. There are some who think (and hope) this might mean the beginning of the end for Google’s search dominance. Microsoft has made a huge investment in ChatGPT prompting some to envision a more intelligent Clippy dancing across our desktops. The Chicago Tribune is wondering if ChatGPT can replace restaurant critics. Apparently Real Estate Agents are seeing dollar signs.
Maureen Dowd of the New York Times took things out for a spin and wordsmithed the description AI: Actually Insipid Until It’s Actively Insidious. (or at least her headline writer did.) That was after doing an interview with with an AI Shakespeare. Zounds!
A friend of mine, Sumocat, is generating fake Mastodon posts using a few of the tools and some iOS shortcuts to create fake Mastodon posts. (He labels them as such.)
So there’s fun and games and then there’s maybe not so fun and games.
The labor issue is a legitimate concern in the same way we’ve seen technology innovations create labor issues throughout history. (Anyone still selling printing presses?) Unfortunately no artificial or non-artificial intelligence has yet to figure out how to get companies to put some distance between announcements of large layoffs and new technology investments. Timing issues aside, the cold cruel economics of innovation always surface when something cool comes along.
I can’t and won’t judge whether or not this is a good or bad thing at this point. One never can tell how the day is going to turn out when it first dawns. But it’s a thing. And it’s a paradox.
Let me tell you a short story about my field, the theatre. Years ago electronic, synthesized and digital music technology advanced to the point where producers could replace entire orchestras with a digital track of the score. Instead of a conductor or music director all you needed to run the show was a sound engineer to push the go button and voila, the theatre filled with the booming sound of a full orchestra. Heck, you could even digitally enhance the singing during particularly strenuous dance numbers.
The change didn’t happen overnight. First orchestras started reducing their numbers as digital instrumentation meant that fewer players needed to be hired. Purists howled. Bean counters cheered. I don’t think any of that is news to anybody. But here’s the story part:
I directed a tracked musical for a dear friend and colleague. We were standing in the back of theatre watching the audience enjoy the show as it neared its final moments. He turned to me and asked what I thought of the music quality. I answered that I thought it was decent but not great and it didn’t allow the show to breathe properly. (The tracks he’d rented weren’t the best and this was in the early days of this trend.) He said that he didn’t think anyone would notice. And then he delivered the punchline: “But I hate it that I need to do this.”
The sad reality boils down to economics. It’s so much cheaper for a producer to rent tracks than to hire musicians to rehearse and play the score live. Licensing agencies are making a decent piece of change from that business.
Back in the day to engage an orchestra or a pit band or just a piano player, producers would rent the score from the licensing house. Hard copy scores would be distributed via mail or delivery service. Those scores would get used by musicians. By used I mean they also got marked up with notes, pages were dog-eared and worse. And then when the show concluded those markings had to be erased and folded pages straightened before sending them back to the licensing house.
That evolved into electronic distribution of scores, which simply transferred the cost of re-producing those scripts from the licensing agency to the producer.
The point I’m sure you’ve grasped behind this story is that innovation induces change all along any chain of production. Lives and professions are affected. Some lose out, others gain.
It seems almost inhumane to replace humans with the output of machines. But we’re well practiced at it and the almighty dollar eventually erases our memories of the tensions or dulls the pain these moments of human ingenuity create to replace humans.
But in our age of misinformation, when trusting what we see, hear, and read requires developing new skill sets because humans who have always been adept at creating misinformation have figured out how to really profit by doing so, the beginnings of using Artificial Intelligence to create “news” we see, hear, and read eerily feels like it has the potential to be too far a step over a line that maybe we shouldn’t cross.
Which ultimately is a paradox. AI is computer science. The essence of which is simply bits that are on and bits that are off. 1’s and 0’s. True. False. One would think that distinction reduced to that binary response could be helpful in sorting out fact from fiction.
It’s not. It’s not simply because it takes humans to create it. And it’s not because those humans are training these AI robots against all of the accuracies and inaccuracies, truths, lies, facts and fiction humans have created along the way.
It’s an endless paradox.
And here’s what ChatGPT has to say about that: (click to expand)
Ivory for Mastodon Brings Out the Cheers!
Toot the Horns!
iOS and Mac developer Tapbots gladdened the hearts of many today with the iPhone and iPad release of Ivory, a new app for using the social network Mastodon.
I won’t go into much detail about the app itself because Frederico Viticci has covered it brilliantly on Macstories.net. Here’s a sample of that review from the opening paragraph.
There’s an intangible, permeating quality about Tapbots apps that trascends features and specs: craftsmanship. With Ivory, launching today on the App Store for iPhone and iPad, you can instantly appreciate that level of care and refinement that the Texas-based duo is well known for after more than a decade on the App Store. But there’s something else, too: for the first time in a few years, it feels like Mark and Paul are having fun again.
He covers the ins and outs of the features of the app well, so if you’re interested check out that review.
What I will spend a few mintues on is the rich journey the developers Paul and Mark have gifted all of us interested in the app and its development.
Tapbots is a premium app developer for Apple devices. Its Twitter client Tweetbot set many a standard along with the other great apps that have come out of that company. (I’ve used them all.) When things began going sideways with Twitter after Elon Musk’s purchase many became concerned about the longevity of the third-party Twitter apps that we used to access that social network. (Twitter’s own app has never been liked, only tolerated.)
Sure enough, Musk and his minions unceremoniously cut off access for Tapbots, IconFactory, and other 3rd-party app developers for his newly acquired plaything. When I say unceremonius-think kicked to the curb without so much as a fare thee well.
As Paul and Mark (and other developers for other apps) began working on apps to access Mastodon, they all created quite a bit of excitement along the way. But the Tapbots team not only treated us to a beautiful first beta version of the app, but with wonderful glimpses into some of their process along the way.
I can tell you that the journey was keenly followed, supported and encouraged. As will be the new Ivory app. I can speak for myself and only speculate for others, but their efforts in sharing the journey add an intangible yet very real extra-special value to the lovely finished product that exceeds anything I’ve ever felt or seen surrounding the release of a piece of sofware.
Let me just say this. Tapbots has long been a favorite developer of software for Apple devices. Paul and Mark capitalized on that hard won and much deserved loyalty and took what could have been a crushing blow and turned it into what I believe will be an extraordinary success story by letting their users participate along the way.
Any company, regardless of product, should take note.
Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3 