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)

We Need a Spartacus Moment on Classified Documents

I’m disappointed. This classified documents imbroligo has emeshed us in another make it worse everyday mess. In my not-so-humble opinion it needs to stop. But before it does I think we can make a little hay.

We need a Spartacus moment (if for some reason you don’t know, use Google or ChatGPT, although ChatGPT may give you the wrong answer.) The way it’s going quite a few folks who have ever had access to classiifed documents need to come clean, clean out their files, or cleanly escape to a country without extradition. Why they haven’t trashed these documents is…well…stupid. But their stupidity could be our gain.

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I know it won’t be popular with those who thought the decaying orange turd’s mishandling of classified documents would be the quickest way to an indictment and possible conviction. I’d join you in that camp. But let’s get real. It’s turning out that even folks in high places that shy away from orange makeup don’t play by the rules because hey, rules are for suckers.

So, in the end we’ll most likely end up changing the rules.

But before we do, I think those who’ve taken a top secret souvenir or two ought to come clean. Publicly. Loudly. Turn it into a telethon or a game show. Folks can appear in person or call in remotely and confess. I’d say they could confess on Twitter, but no one believes anyone is really who they say they are on that site anymore. Raise a ton of money for some noteworthy cause (maybe toss a few bucks to Reality Winner.)

You could probably turn it into a limited streaming series by gamifying it the way we do elections. I’m sure Steve Kornacki would have fun with the math and the maps.

Things need to move quickly though. The shelf-life probably won’t be long and the streaming services would probably cancel realtively quickly. Interest is already waning. You can tell the media is just about over this story the way they’re covering it. They thought they had a big one and the air went out of that balloon.

So before the wind goes completely out of the windbags have some fun. I mean it’s all just a reality show anyway these days. No matter how unreal it seems to get.

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.

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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.

Tolerance for Intolerance

I’ll tolerate your intolerance. But there are conditions.

I’ll get to those in a shortly. But first a bit of personal context. If you know me you’d describe me as “leans to the left.” While leaning one way or the other seems to fit the way the world wants to define everyone these days it’s not a distinction that matters to me. As a few of my “lean to the right” friends have found to their dismay I actually hold a few opinions on a few things that make their views look left of Karl Marx.

The labels and the leanings don’t mean spit to me because it’s all a circle. Lean left enough and you end up on the right and vice-versa. What goes around comes around as long as you can convince enough folks in the center that you’re on the up side of the curve and not the down side. It’s enough to make one see red. A color that proves this knock-down, knee-slapping funny point. The only place we’ve seen as much red as that adorning everything on the American right these days was in the old Soviet Union in a Moscow whore house off Red Square. Matadors and bulls are having a tough time keeping up. Oh, wait. Not a popular sport these days. Sorry.

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Regardless of the ridiculous games we play with left and right, everyone (both sides?) find themselves currently playing the change the language, change the discourse game thinking or pretending they’ve come up with something new and relevant (again.) Those that think they have just haven’t been around enough to know better. Those that pretend know better. But they do it anyway.

Banning books is popular (again.) Limiting and condeming speech is popular (again.) Banning artists is popular (again-although this time around we call it “canceling”.) Banning the teaching of the full breadth of history is popular (again.) And again, and again, and again ad nauseam.

There’s nothing new under the sun and certainly the human capacity to forget or set aside the past is right up there with all of our other failings. The only innovation is the technology that allow us to observe, comment, and take advantage of our forgetfullness more quickly. I used to think that technology would help us somehow hang on to our past a bit easier, learn from our mistakes and create a better world. That was a false hope. It’s easier and more profitable to serve ads to the ignorant.

So, with the above context in mind, back to the beginning.

I’ll tolerate your intolerance. And here are my conditions.

1. If you’re intolerant of some “other” go right ahead and be so, say so, and speak what you’re going to do about it. But before you puff yourself up with righteous indignation think it through.

That “other” isn’t going to go away. The “other” was probably here before you or whomever taught you to hate them. You can pass all the laws you want, but “others” will continue to do their “othering” regardless of your existence. They always have. They always will. You be you. They will be they.

The only way you change that, and bear with me here, is if you wipe all those “others” out of existence. If that’s what you want, have the chutzpah to stand up and say so. Sure, you’ll be ostracized and maybe punched in the face or tossed into prison. And then you too can be an “other.”

2. Admit you’re afraid. You’re not standing for anything. You’re not preserving anything. You’re not advancing a cause. You’re just scared shitless, retreating and running from ideas that challenge yours like a terrified mouse into a hole. It’s scary to suspect that someone else’s ideas feel like they’re shaking the ground beneath your feet. I’ve got news. The ground isn’t shaking. It’s your knees that have gone wobbly.

3. Follow the money. You may not be making any, but folks sure are making bank off of your outrage.

4. Have a sense of humor. If you’ve lost yours I’m sorry. Go find another one. Otherwise the joke’s on you. Life is comedy. It only turns to tragedy when folks forget, that in the end, we’re all punch lines.

Trust Me: Don’t Trust Anyone

Continuing on the theme of Trust

I do technical support for several older family members. I shouldn’t really call it technical support because it’s really more like telling them to “Just Say No” when it comes to how they use the Internet and in a couple of cases  landline phones. Bottom line? Don’t trust anyone or anything.

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Does that sound overly paranoid? Perhaps. But let’s get real. Companies with big names like PayPal, Amazon, AT&T, T-Mobile and many others, have surrendered their identities and don’t care that spammers impersonate them in phishing emails and scam calls. There are no real government regulations to protect consumers in these cases regardless of the PR. The bet is that no one will pursue the bad guys, so the good guys they impersonate act with impunity.

Something changes when life is viewed through our large and small screens that seems to strip away gut instinct bullshit detection folks have in the face-to-face world. Maybe it’s lack of eye contact and other non-verbal clues. But I’ve seen folks who can smell a scam in real life too easily tempted by online and phone scams, regardless of the warnings.

This is not new news I’m talking about here. The lack of trust in just about every aspect of life is astonishing. Online, doctors, lawyers, politicians, the media, religious leaders… it’s a long list. Yet many continue to try and make their way through this world assuming some level of trust might still be out there.

We’re all just Charlie Brown and the world is full of Lucys.

Twitter’s Burning Down the 3rd Party App House

Watching the silliness and seriousness of Twitter’s continuing continuance is both entertaining and distressing. The plot seems to unfold anew, but it’s actually old stories mashed up enough to make them feel new, or a least new adjacent. Pick your myth and if you’re screaming “spoiler alert” you need a little more mileage on you before you protest too much. Icarus irony abounds.

The latest chapter featuring the shutdown of API’s essentially killing off a number (but not all) of third party Twitter clients was certainly predictable. But the handling of it just feels cheap and cowardly.

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For those not in the know, Twitter decided to pull the plug on some 3rd party apps that allowed far better Twitter experiences than Twitter ever pretended to offer in the past or promises in its new future. Ok, fine. Musk owns the company, he can do what he wants with it, and he needs cash to continue pouring into the burn pit he’s created and these apps (via Twitter’s own doing) don’t bring in the ad revenue Musk needs. Make a change.

But this change was made unannounced in the middle of the night, without notice to the developers of those apps or users. And as of the writing of this blog post Twitter has still not issued any comment regarding the situation. (Apparently they are working on “comms” about it according to one report from The Information (sorry, paywalled.)

What’s saddest about this situation is embedded in the history of Twitter. In fact, many might rightly claim they define the history of Twitter if not the service itself, given that the previous ownership never did anything resembling a good job at that little essential duty. The makers of Twitterific, the iconfactory, are credited with coining the label “tweet” for every post. This history of 3rd party apps defining the Twitter experience is rich, but also fraught with turmoil. (You can read a quick but thorough summary here.) I’d also recommend iconfactory founder Craig Hockenberry’s farewell post about this.

Bottom line, everyone knew this was coming. Hoped against hope it wouldn’t. Sort of like watching what everyone knows is a bad marriage distegrate before our eyes and then it goes bust. We’re already moving into the “it will be the best thing for everybody” phase. But in an interesting way.

Given that some 3rd-party Twitter app developers are also beta-testing apps for Mastodon and newer players are also doing the same thing I personally find this wacky moment to be encouraging and possibly hopeful. Speaking selfishly, in testing some of these new apps I’m seeing the best of the familar blended with fresh new ideas in ways I haven’t seen in any category of mobile app development in quite some time. It’s actually exciting in the same way that the early days of Twitter and Twitter apps was. Out of the ashes…?

And don’t overlook the new foundation those developments are building on. Mastodon and the larger Fediverse show interesting promise as social networking backbones. Yes, there’s the potential for peril there as well. But at this point in the story the tensions seem borne out of a desire not to repeat the same mistakes.

Addendum: The Verge has a nice summary of this Musk/Twitter debacle so far. 

Update: Just prior to noon CST Twitter finally released a statement of sorts.

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Whew. Must have taken some best minds to work that up over the last 5-6 days.

Ink Diaries: The Muddle

I’m in The Muddle.

No, I’m not talking about mixing ingredients into a cocktail. I’m talking about preparing for rehearsal. Muddling typically implies confusing or mixing things up into a bit of disorder. And that’s exactly where I am in process as we’re about 5 weeks out from starting rehearsals for James Graham’s Ink at Playhouse on the Square. So, it’s time to pick up my pace on preparation. That means reading the play more times than any play should be read, making notes and typically reviewing research. It’s a bit different for this production. Because timing.

We actually began work on this production in 2020 and it has been on again/off again due to the pandemic. So a lot of the research gathering took place back in 2020. So instead of hunting and gathering I’m actually in more of a reviewing mode. Although I still keep finding new things and adding them to the muddle.

I call this phase of my preparation The Muddle because as I’m moving towards making decisions that will set us on course I still have the liberty of changing that course. I frequently do as I bounce ideas off of ideas to see what sticks. It’s a bit of muddling about because at this point almost anything is fair game and rhyme doesn’t necessarily have to follow reason. Out of disorder eventually comes order.

But it’s not all a blank slate. We’re in the design process and we’re mostly cast (still two roles to go) so some decisions are being made or have been made. But that’s actually when The Muddle gets the most intriguing. Decisions are choices and choices eliminate other choices and open up others. And when I find myself backed into a corner there’s either an undiscovered way out, or it’s time to revisit that choice.

Reading the play with certain choices in mind opens it up as it closes it down. And if you think that statement is contradictory or doesn’t make sense, welcome to The Muddle.

Bloomberg: Apple Working on Touchscreen Macs for 2025

Oh my.

Mark Gurman of Bloomberg has published a rumor that Apple is working on touchscreen Macs aiming at 2025. Already the socials are filling up with excitement, consternation and predictions. This rumor/news will launch a half-zillion blog posts and fill up hours of podcast time between now and whenever, if ever, Apple does this.

Apple, Inc is working on adding touch screens to its Mac computers, a move that would defy long-held company orthodoxy and embrace an approach that co-founder Steve Jobs once called “ergonomically terrible.”

Apple engineers are actively engaged in the project, indicating that the company is seriously considering producing touch-screen Macs for the first time, according to people familiar with the efforts. Still, a launch hasn’t been finalized and the plans could change.

Already those who don’t like iPads are are jumping on the doom wagon for that class of devices. There’s room for plenty of speculation on that, but if and when this comes to be I doubt very seriously we’ll see the iPad disappear. And while Gurman talks about this defying company orthodoxy I find it a little tough to swallow that Apple hasn’t had a touchscreen Mac or two floating around its design studios until now.

But I’m not going to play the prediction game on any of this. It’s time to sit back and enjoy the show regardless of what device you’re enjoying it on.

Don’t Trust This Post

I wish American liars and propagandists were more original. But perhaps when it comes to lies, propaganda and “fake news” there’s no real improving on what Goebbels said about the big lie:

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

And then there’s Steve Bannon’s infamous and more contemporary marching order to “flood the zone with shit.” 

But when it comes to being able to trust, Shakespeare’s Nurse in Romeo and Juliet nailed it:”There’s no trust, No faith, no honesty in men; all perjured, All forsworn, all naught, all dissemblers.”

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Yes, this post could be just about politics, but when it comes to trust, there are not too many avenues in public life remaining when you can trust the road markings. Not when we’ve reached a point when trust apparently matters less than the ability to lie with no shame and the most shameless dissemblers seem to be the most rewarded. 

Every entity we know floods the zone: governments, the media, sports teams, financial institutions, public utilities, corporations, religious instiutions, and the list could go on and on. And the crazy thing about it: Everyone knows it. Which is terribily funny to me because it’s not like they give out awards for being good at barking bullshit to willing audiences who know that’s what you’re up to. 

I’ve often maintained that we need to stop the farce of teaching our children not to lie. That’s just another lie they find out their elders visit on them once they get out into the world. If we were honest about it (ahem) we could probably reduce some of the need for therapy bills and legal fees by teaching youngsters to be more proficient liars an early age.

I mean there’s no Blue Fairy coming to the rescue. 

 

 

 

 

Nothing New Under the Sun

Breathless. I tell ya folks are breathless and shrieking their lungs out about all the things the Republicans are doing now that they’ve organized the House of Representatives. I’m not sure why. They’ve been telling us their plans for quite some time. And lo and behold they are carrying them out. Shocker!  Evil people are doing evil things!

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We’re living in an age where we can’t find a good measuring stick to gauge against, because nothing is the same as it was pre-COVID and pre-decaying orange turd. So we need to adjust our shock guages or find new ones.

But actually we don’t. This is the way the world works, has always worked and (gasp!) will continue to work. There’s always going to be gambling in here! It may be in a new world that we haven’t begun to figure out yet, but the players are still the same. It’s just less of a game at the moment. If there’s anything remotely shocking it’s that the folks controlling the game in the House aren’t pretending to play nice anymore. They’re being bold, brazen and big-footed about what they’re up to. And though I don’t like so much of what they’re doing, I have to say it’s oddly comforting.

How so comforting? Well we know exactly what’s happening and we don’t really need to look too hard to discover their aims. Yes, that takes all the fun out of the game when you know what your opponent is going to do. But it is at least more honest. Better to be stabbed in the chest then shivved in the back while your assailant is smiling at you.