Artificial Intelligence – Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3

Getting Used To The Phrase: “Without Human Involvement”

Like shouting at the wind

John Gruber links to an interesting story about Dutch regulators fining Uber almost $1 billion for suspending dishonest drivers “without warning or human involvement.”

Jon tyson tEVKC91Qm6c unsplash. A neon sign saying For Humans By Humans

Say what you want about Uber’s practices, dishonest drivers, scams, and what have you. That’s not my interest in linking to the story. What struck me this morning was that phrase “without warning or human involvement.

It struck me because I’ve been dealing with a similar issue with one of my prescriptions that keeps getting changed. According to my pharmacy and my doctor, it appears that the change keeps happening without “any human involvement” because they are seeing this happen with other patients and customers on the same medication.

A few thoughts.

1. There is always “human involvement.” Someone made a decision at some point in the process. Otherwise it wouldn’t be happening. If the robots are capable of making these decisions on their own, I guess we’re headed to a world where the only legal remedy is to pull the plug. And we all know that ain’t happening.

2. We’ll never be able to track these decisions back to whomever is culpable. Although maybe we will if the AI responsible for note taking and code changes can actually do that job and maintain the logs responsibly, “without any human involvement.”

3. This kind of thing is going to replace the usual bullshit excuses we used to get when various customer service operations actually had humans you could talk to. Computers hang up more easily on customers than humans do, so the day-to-day customer service battles are going to become more frustrating than they are already. Who knew that AI was an acronym for avoiding interaction?

Looks like we’ll all be blaming the AI robots more and more in the future. For the record, I’m not a fan of shouting at the wind.

(Image from Jon Tyson on Unsplash

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.

MacStories: Trouble In Apple Pundit Land

Changing, challenging, and sad times.

There’s no question that many of us are facing challenging times these days. On so many fronts. Given how nothing that once seemed remotely stable feels anywhere close to that anymore, I find myself alternating between being angry, sad, and numb with an increasing frequency that tends toward the numb end of the scale.

However, there’s disconcerting news in Apple pundit land that leaves me more sad than numb or angry. MacStories, an Apple-centric blog I’ve followed and subscribed to for a long time is undergoing some changes that rub me the wrong way.

From what I’ve been able to gather from social media, and in a belated explanation post from the blog’s founder, Federico Viticci, several of the team’s members have quit over a recent decision by the organization to resurface the MacStories presence on Elon Musk’s X, which used to be Twitter, and remains nothing short of cesspool of depravity.

To give you an idea of the turmoil this is causing internally for the site that belated explanation post doesn’t appear on MacStories as of this writing, but on Viticci’s own blog. MacStories also didn’t put out its regular end of the week newsletter and several of its podcasts are on hiatus.

I’ll share some links from some of the employees leaving MacStories.

A blog post from Devon Dundee.

A Mastodon post from Jonathan Reed.

A Mastodon post from Niléane.

From the sound of things it sounds like the MacStories decision was made without consulting other team members. That’s never a fun time. I know. I’ve experienced it myself. From both sides of the table.

I can’t and don’t pretend to speak to any more than what I’ve shared above regarding the decision making and the internal machinations. I can say that one of the reasons I’m saddened is that it points to puzzling moment for website that also hosts and generates several podcasts in which its talent feels free to judge and criticize corporate and tech screwups, with at times gleeful abandon. To my mind, this feels like one of those screwups, but who knows?

If I wanted to I guess I could gather some AI generated transcripts from past podcasts and offer some pretty damning quotes about Elon Musk and other tech titans as examples, but I won’t.

I guess this decision proves just how difficult it is to learn from the oft-repeated mistakes of others. At least I hope that’s what it means. Otherwise it borders on hypocrisy.

Perhaps this turnabout shouldn’t come as that much of a surprise. In the early days of this AI boom, MacStories was at the forefront of calling out how the industry was built on the outright theft of intellectual property. Going so far as to writing a letter to U.S. Senators saying that AI needed to be regulated.

MacStories was also quite vocal when it chose to leave Twitter and later Meta. Those choices fit well with the ethos Viticci and his co-editor John Voorhees had established in their writings and podcasts on their way to becoming legitimate superstars in the Apple pundit community. I eagerly anticipated their annual reviews of Apple operating systems, adventures with Shortcuts, coverage of apps that I might find of interest, and their news coverage.

But since those early days of AI skepticism, MacStories has become increasingly known for a site where Viticci and Voorhees have immersed themselves deeply in AI. To say they’re pushing the cutting edge would be accurate, and the website, and some of their other content has increasingly become more about those adventures.

More power to them if that’s where they want to take their endeavors. It’s their website and business. I will say though that this shift for MacStories feels as abrupt and expedient as how the tech bro community switched horses from essentially supporting the Democrats in the U.S to kneeling to Trump before and after his second election.

That said, I’ll admit I do enjoy reading about and listening to their recent AI exploits, even though I’m not directly interested in participating in the way I did with some of their pre-AI days.

I mean, I hate to say it, but this AI-shit on is on us, whether we like it or not, and my interest in listening is that I’d rather understand what it is I don’t like about it than not.

But the sadness I feel about this moment (and I think it will come to be seen as a defining moment in Apple punditry), has to do more with a bigger picture than just a potential shift in Apple tech coverage.

These mid-2020’s going into the 2030’s are going to be defined by and large by the tech oligarch takeover. We can yell all we want to about how corrupt, evil, and incompetent our politicians are, but what I think we’re just coming to realize is that in the end the politicians don’t matter. These new age robber barons have bought all the government(s) they need to essentially do whatever they want. Elon Musk in my view is the worst of the worst. I don’t support anything that supports anything he touches.

I’ve been saddened by watching more than I thought possible migrate back to X-Twitter after the great migration away from it. I think I’ve been successful in unsubscribing from most publications that still use that platform to promote their material. I’m not going to spend my money for a subscription that will put more pennies into the pocket of a man who thinks allowing the creation of nonconsensual child and other pornography on his website is free speech and not a crime, much less one who revels in the power to destroy anything and everything his drug addled brain takes a fancy to.

I’ve made business decisions in my life I’m not proud of and lived to regret them. We all have choices to make and we’re defined by them. I’d like to say that I try not to judge a person or a business for making one they feel they need to even when those decisions disappoint me. That’s not always true. When a decision is made or being planned under what feels like the cover of darkness, it feels like all that’s being hidden might be their own sadness and guilt. At least I hope so.

So, I’m sad to dissociate myself with MacStories. I wish them well. I also wish good things in the future for those who obviously made the tough decisions to leave the publication in the midst of all of this. I wish more of us had that kind of courage.

All things must pass.

Jason Kelce, Liquid Death, and Garage Beer Want To Send Your Pee To AI Data Centers

“Let’s pee on computers together”

This might actually be an effective ad in the campaign against data centers. It’s certainly a good piece of satire. The makers of Liquid Death and Garage Beer have enlisted former pro-footballer Jason Kelce in as an anti-data center campaign that pisses on the entire concept.

Called We Want Your Pee the clever ad offers a satirical take on how to deal with the voluminous cooling requirements these data centers require by mailing your pee to the data center near you. Given the anti-data center outrage that still seems to be growing, it certainly can’t hurt to use add a little vulgar humor into the mix. I can imagine the lyric, let’s pee on computers together catching on.

While I’m sure some may find it vulgar, it certainly isn’t any more vulgar than the way these companies and politicians are trying to visit these monstrosities on communities. For my money we could certainly use a lot more of this kind of ad making taking the piss on all sorts of topics and tech and political personalities in the days ahead.

The only thing is, I’m sort of surprised some tech bro or financial guru hasn’t already thought of this. Here’s hoping it doesn’t give them any ideas.

You can watch the video below.

Throwing Rocks At The Internet

Eventually, someone breaks a window.

The Internet was never perfect. It was always a work in progress. That’s usually considered a phrase with a good connotation. But that depends on the side of the coin you’re looking at. It always begs the question, progress for whom?

A young boy getting ready to toss a rock

Calling it enhshittification is apt, but it’s also an insufficient description. It implies that the mess can be cleaned up. I don’t think that’s the case. We’re too deep in the shit.

Implementing Artificial Intelligence into everything has mucked up most things the same way that inserting ad-tech into everything did back in the early days of that craze. I’d wager that in the days of the ad-tech explosion 8 times out of 10 most of the updates we downloaded or were subjected to dealt more with ad-tech than “bug fixes and improving reliability.”

It reminds me of the early days of DRM when there was a constant wack-a-mole game, trying to maintain and protect media copy protection schemes. I want to think that it cost more to keep fixing things than it ever yielded in profits, but that’s obviously naive on my part.

We’re currently seeing the same with AI. The models are changing so rapidly that today’s new release or bug fix is probably outdated by the time it reaches most computers or smartphones. The pace is maddening and the disruptions for every day users even more so, including those who don’t even use the stuff.

Given how things are going I don’t think even the purveyors of AI know what they are actually releasing. They feel like little kids trying to see who can throw a rock the farthest. Eventually, someone breaks a window.

We really never know when a web service chooses to update, things just break. (Looking at you WordPress.) We rarely know what most updates to apps really mean. It’s becoming a rare thing to see a real list of bug fixes published alongside a release. The developers who do so deserve your business.

The difference in this rock throwing frenzy is that many of the geeks who in the past worked hard to defeat copy protection and ad-tech are only too eager to help the AI purveyors throw their rocks further. There’s a lot of would be Oppenheimers out there.

Set aside the potential dangers of using this tech for military use and malicious attacks. For everyday users of the Internet, the bitch of it is many of the AI changes we’re starting to see and those we will certainly see more of the in the future will be to further serve ad-tech as the AI industry inevitably pours that on to try and recoup some of its out of control costs.

That’s an incestuous marriage that I’m not looking forward to seeing the rock throwing delinquents it spawns.

(Image from on Kristine Jones on Shutterstock)

Sunday Morning Reading

A moment to breathe differently

The road to our time at the family lake house is a mile long and a bumpy washboard filled with twists and turns. Arriving after shaking out a filling or two, there’s a leveling out that leads to a sort of peace, even if only for a few days. I’m not sure I leveled out fully this weekend, but the moments to breathe differently sure helped. Even if the weather only cooperated for a few hours.

Thanks to science, apparently the human origin story is being rewritten according to Ross Anderson in The Human-Origin Story Is Being Radically Revised. Probably a good thing given that today’s story tellers keep rewriting recent history. So it begs the question as to who might listen to any new version science rewrites.

Speaking of science, and also how we might define the human story and its origins, Claire L. Evans takes a look at the creation of brains in labs in AI Is Dead. Organoids Are Alive.

Whatever the twists and turns, bumps and bruises of history, science, and the stories that make up different versions of our lives, I happen to agree with Lauren Leek that everything is being flattened to feel all the same. Check out Temperature Zero For Culture: Why Everything Is Starting To Look The Same.

Given the intermittent rain storms, it was a battle to keep most of us away from our phones this weekend. Neil Steinberg suggests maybe adults need to adopt the practice of some schools in Maybe Adults Should Follow Students In Setting Down Our Phones.

Natasha MH takes a look at crippling anxiety is Sunshine After The Rain. Be the sunshine.

Dealing with anxiety can be painful. Lots of that to go around these days. David Todd McCarty examines The Upside Of Pain.

Disunion by Kurt Anderson is a terrific short story. It may be speculative fiction, but it feels all too real. I don’t know why, but reading this does not make me feel anxious or cause me pain.

With things flattening out, I believe the extreme edges are where things always matter. Robin Ince writes How I Became An Extremist.

Using quotes from throughout history, literary and otherwise, Jordan Dworkin built a fascinating webpage that tours through the ordinary things of an apartment, reminding us that the things we take for granted were once new and invented somewhere along the line and that “we remain restless in the midst of progress,” and our lives today are “a gallery of past generations’ heroic efforts to do the same.” Check out Ordinary Abundance. It’s a lovely piece and worth your time. I wish I felt the same about the things we’re trying to create today.

(Photo by the author)

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.

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.

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)

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.

Sweet life axYZum3rdMY unsplash.

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)