Per Axbom

Swedish communication theorist born in Liberia • Blog and newsletter on wellbeing, ethics and human rights in digital culture • #UX #Designer / #Accessibility Advisor • UX Podcast host • Mechanical heart valve ❤️ • He/him • Will move slowly and brake things.

On January 11, 2023 a migration glitch set many of my followers as pending. If this is you, unfollow and follow again. I have no approval setting.

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Last Notes

2024-08-05 07:04:56

"I added gen AI to my product and 10x:ed my carbon footprint."
https://axbom.me/media/b8697c47-9169-4c93-99a5-ac453fd66eaa/F19F5D46-1581-41EC-99DB-28CF253F924D.png

2024-08-03 15:31:59

I just re-read this post I wrote about the AI hype in March of last year and it's essentially the same things I would write today.
AI is moving so fast it's timeless 😁
You can also listen to this blog post if you want, as it's one of the ones I voiced as a podcast episode. With sound effects! 🔥
https://axbom.com/ai-responsibility/

2024-08-01 08:26:38

Today is Earth Overshoot Day – The day when we have consumed as much of the Earth's resources as it can replenish in a year.
But it's only today because many countries use far less resources than an equal consumption would allow.
If all countries consumed as much as Sweden, for example, the overshoot day would fall as early as April 21.
https://overshoot.footprintnetwork.org/newsroom/country-overshoot-days/

2024-07-31 13:44:40

Organisations when they hire consultancy services: “We need a company credit check and report to ensure your finances are stable and that this will be a sustainable relationship.”
Organisations when deciding on using OpenAI: “We understand you spend $700,000 per day and need $5 billion a year to survive as a company, which is way more than any company has ever raised in history. Please take our money. We will integrate your tool into all our tools now. The lottery is our favorite way of investing in our own future.”

2024-07-20 11:30:28

«[AGI] interprets the Turing Test as an engineering prediction, arguing that the machine “learning” algorithms of today will naturally evolve as they increase in power to think subjectively like humans, including emotion, social skills, consciousness and so on. The claims that increasing computer power will eventually result in fundamental change are hard to justify on technical grounds, and some say this is like arguing that if we make aeroplanes fly fast enough, eventually one will lay an egg.»
– Alan Blackwell in "Moral Codes"
https://moralcodes.pubpub.org

2024-05-04 07:11:56

How people trust this software for decision-making is beyond me…
https://chat.openai.com/share/534ac2bd-332c-43d5-a26c-4b1bd8050c38
https://axbom.me/media/a737c669-324a-4c80-a47c-937481f44521/7E0939CD-C999-4F70-B377-8E11F18353B9.jpeg

2024-04-20 05:34:20

Don't wash the Cybertruck in direct sunlight.
So essentially:
• Keep away from bright lights
• Keep away from water
I'm just waiting on the rule that you can't feed the Cybertruck after midnight.
https://futurism.com/cybertruck-brick-car-wash

2024-03-13 18:08:17

Generative AI can not generate its way out of prejudice
The concept of "generative" suggests that the tool can produce what it is asked to produce. In a study uncovering how stereotypical global health tropes are embedded in AI image generators, researchers found it challenging to generate images of Black doctors treating white children. They used Midjourney, a tool that after hundreds of attempts would not generate an output matching the prompt. I tried their experiment with Stable Diffusion's free web version and found it every bit as concerning as you might imagine.
https://axbom.com/generative-prejudice/
#AIEthics #DigitalEthics

2024-03-11 08:17:00

Quick sketch of an AI being trained on only bits of the world. Makes sense?
https://axbom.me/media/00c81a41-4848-4e5f-8c0a-a8f7ff68984a/image.png

2024-03-02 07:15:01

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@npub1xr8…3q0g Very much so. I think perhaps he has been problematic the whole time, but some of it was 'forgiven' in the beginning, due to worship of some design ideas at the time.

2024-03-01 16:58:05

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If you appreciated my walkthrough of "generative UI" by Jakob Nielsen, you may also want to read about his obsession with IQ:
https://axbom.com/jakob-nielsen-quotes-about-iq/

2024-02-17 09:56:51

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Interesting stat from the Digital Decarbonisation calculator.
« One person creates 1.7mb of data a second. That equates to 10 full DVDs in a working day. »
Don’t know how old that number is, but imagine the exponential increase with more people starting to generate video.
https://digitaldecarb.org/digital-decarbonisation-calculator/

2024-02-17 09:48:19

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@npub1trd…ussx
> How? You can't "consume" water in the sense you consume energy. Why can't they just reuse the same water?
Data centres consume water directly for cooling, in some cases 57% sourced from potable water, and indirectly through the water requirements of non-renewable electricity generation.
Water used for cooling evaporates, and data centres do not have systems in place to capture that. Water is too cheap. Groundwater depletion is a thing, and data centres compete with farming and with local communities.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41545-021-00101-w
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2342490-how-much-water-do-data-centres-use-most-tech-companies-wont-say/
https://fortune.com/2023/09/09/ai-chatgpt-usage-fuels-spike-in-microsoft-water-consumption/
> 80% of content in data centres could be stuff we never use again, stored by default to consume energy in perpetuity
A hard drive that is powered on consumes electricity. The more hard drives you buy and power on, the more electricity is consumed.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/15/power-grab-hidden-costs-of-ireland-datacentre-boom
https://volume.lboro.ac.uk/digital-waste-polluting-the-planet/index.html
https://theconversation.com/dark-data-is-killing-the-planet-we-need-digital-decarbonisation-190423

2024-02-17 07:38:34

The electricity and water use required by data centres is becoming cause for concern. Iowa and Ireland are calling for moratoriums on new development projects. Microsoft’s global water consumption grew 34% from 2021 to 2022. And estimates say that around 80% of content in data centres could be stuff we never use again, stored by default to consume energy in perpetuity for no purpose at all.
Generative video: Hold my beer.

2024-01-05 20:28:04

Not surprised that the wise @npub1xkg…gph9 is one of the people taking the lead in moving away from Substack.
She also made one of the best choices in my mind to go for an independent home, self-hosting Ghost. And managed to do it with minimum impact for existing subscribers.
I do know this is not for everyone, but also know that you don’t necessarily need a VPS to host Ghost, there is managed hosting available – and many more options than the quite expensive official one.
Molly White’s post on the hows and whys is here:
https://citationneeded.news/citation-needed-has-a-new-home/

2024-01-03 13:06:23

49% of the world will be able to vote in an election this year. Good thing people have these new "AI" companions to help them get smarter about how to vote.
"One third of Bing Chat’s answers to election-related questions contained factual errors. Errors include wrong election dates, outdated candidates, or even invented controversies concerning candidates."
https://aiforensics.org/work/bing-chat-elections

2023-12-20 23:04:18

Remember how it was obvious that we build machines that adapt to human behaviors and needs?
Now look at the millions of humans changing and tweaking the way they write prompts when they don't get the output they expect. Adapting to the machines.
I'd laugh if it wasn't so sad.
#DigitalEthics

2023-12-06 13:45:50

My podcast colleague @npub1c7q…zdj7 alerted me to how Spotify have started attaching automated transcripts to our episodes.
And of course the automated tool gets my name quite wrong: "Hello I'm Pat Axbul".
So I had to check. How can I change that? As it turns out, I'm not allowed to. According to Spotify: "It's currently not possible to edit your transcripts in Spotify for Podcasters."
In my case it's a small thing, but now imagine what harmful faulty text may make it into transcripts and be attributed to a person who has said nothing of the sort. And they are not allowed to change it.
Don't you just love living in this time and age where foresight is 0/0?
(P.S. It got James' name wrong too)
https://axbom.me/media/85fbd4a7-aa5b-45e9-8ac4-f5d3e3894068/CleanShot%202023-12-06%20at%2014.36.57.png
https://axbom.me/media/73098bc0-7cea-425e-8974-bb74b2f465ea/2023-12-06%2014.38.09.jpg

2023-11-27 19:54:04

When technology becomes faster it can also steal time from moments of value.
Imagine a computer taking 90 seconds to start up in the morning. You press the on switch and during the wait you naturally take a moment to exchange pleasantries with your colleagues, ask them about their families, hobbies or more immediate concerns. They reciprocate with a smile.
Fast forward two years and the same computer takes 7 seconds to start. You have barely enough time to sit down and adjust your seat.
Now there’s no need to talk to your colleagues. No need to smile. Because technology has just saved you so much time. Almost 6 hours per year. Per employee
I guess someone somewhere is smiling.

2023-11-22 19:56:45

Being a bit creative today. The only AI involved is the subject area. 😁
I've always wanted ChatGPT to meet the Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland.
I'm guessing it would go something like this.
The Mad Hatter would force the algorithm into a never-ending loop.
#AIEthics #AIHype
https://axbom.me/media/bfa0fc1b-702d-4a90-9ed9-87994500ea18/chatgpt-mad-hatter.png

2023-11-22 17:27:04

Been working on a "Artificial Imperialism" sticker. 🤖🌍
Something to hand out when I do human rights talks.
https://axbom.me/media/bc172646-13f3-4d7c-8b2e-0ab7dcc56471/ai-imperialism-sticker.png

2023-11-17 21:25:05

Sam Altman fired.
The grift can only go on for so long.
https://openai.com/blog/openai-announces-leadership-transition

2023-11-08 09:09:51

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@npub18kf…npv5 @npub19ya…pcz6 @npub1fpr…axm5
Love seeing my graphics in the wild. Thanks for sharing. 🥰

2023-10-28 09:00:17

Imagine a computer following its programming and its programmers getting away with calling unwanted outputs a ”hallucination”.
And then other people start calling anything they didn’t want or expect from the computer a hallucination. As if the programmers are completely unaccountable for their programming.
It’s happening every single day and its like an adventure in Wonderland.

2023-10-27 08:17:24

Gotta consider how you may be training AI tools for your job just by performing your everyday work.
That is: Your employer forces you to use AI tools. Said AI tools are simultaneously trained on your work as you are using them. At some point the tool simply replaces you.
"Enter corporate spyware, invasive monitoring apps that allow bosses to keep close tabs on everything their employees are doing—collecting reams of data that could come into play here in interesting ways. Corporations, which are monitoring their employees on a large scale, are now having workers utilize AI tools more frequently, and many questions remain regarding how the many AI tools that are currently being developed are being trained.
Put all of this together and there’s the potential that companies could use data they’ve harvested from workers—by monitoring them and having them interact with AI that can learn from them—to develop new AI programs that could actually replace them. If your boss can figure out exactly how you do your job, and an AI program is learning from the data you’re producing, then eventually your boss might be able to just have the program do the job instead."
https://www.wired.com/story/corporate-surveillance-train-ai/

2023-10-22 08:19:08

Here's what happens when machine learning needs vast amounts of data to build statistical models for responses. Historical, debunked data makes it into the models and is preferred by the model output. There is much more outdated, harmful information published than there is updated, correct information. Hence statistically more viable.
"In some cases, they appeared to reinforce long-held false beliefs about biological differences between Black and white people that experts have spent years trying to eradicate from medical institutions."
In this regard the tools don't take us to the future, but to the past.
No, you should never use language models for health advice. But there are many people arguing for exactly this to happen. I also believe these types of harmful biases make it into more machine learning applications than language models specifically.
In libraries across the world using the Dewey Decimal System (138 countries), LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex) topics have throughout the 20th century variously been assigned to categories such as Abnormal Psychology, Perversion, Derangement, as a Social Problem and even as Medical Disorders.
Of course many of these historical biases are part of the source material used to make today's "intelligent" machines - bringing with them the risk of eradicating decades of progress.
It's important to understand how large language models work if you are going to use them. The way they have been released into the world means there are many people (including powerful decision-makers) with faulty expectations and a poor understanding of what they are using.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41746-023-00939-z
#DigitalEthics #AIEthics

2023-10-17 05:39:59

Nope, I won't write an analysis of Andreessen's manifesto. Attention is what he craves. He'll live rent-free in my head for as briefly as possible.
I'll just leave this emoji here and let that be my final word on the matter…
🤮
Shut the door on your way out, Marc.

2023-10-14 14:28:11

We've really made things efficient for highway robbers if they can just put a traffic cone on the hood, or place their own bespoke stop sign on the road, to stop the self-driving cars and rob whoever is inside.
At least it's efficiency for everyone.

2023-10-12 20:10:26

What the world needs is more content. In fact, you should be able to produce video at the speed of light and release at least one compilation per day. You should be writing blog posts by the bucket each week.
For some reason this appears to be the vision that great minds have set out to pursue. More content. Because there is just too little of it?
I don't remember asking, or even wishing, that there was more text and multimedia content. That I kept running out of it. Wondering if I could please have some more.
But here we are. In the future.
Let's generate more content. Apparently it's the epitome of innovation. So says the news.
Which of course will soon be generated in a never-ending stream of consciousness.
Because it's possible.
Perhaps not because it's desired…

2023-10-12 07:24:54

My audio recording and editing software is named Hindenburg and every time I open it my mind visualises a huge burning zeppelin. In black-and-white. You know the clip.
Every time.
It’s good software, but wow do I wish they changed their name.

2023-10-12 06:18:13

Was talking to @npub1c7q…zdj7 about the “amazing” feat where ChatGPT passed the bar exam. We agreed that if you feed all the relevant content for the bar exam into ChatGPT there really should be no big surprise about it being able to spew out statistically relevant content.
The fact that it still got such a relatively low score should be a cause for worry, not celebration(!) It’s evidence that the tool has no understanding of what it is doing. It has the answers, it’s just not able to use them in the right way. It’s like a student sitting with a textbook with all the answers to the test and not being able to understand which answer fits where.
As Paris Marx wrote in March:
"it’s so funny to me that the AI people think it’s impressive when their programs pass a test after being trained on all the answers”

2023-09-26 17:03:33

Today is Stanislav Petrov Day. It's a day when I take some time to reflect on the importance of questioning technology. Because that is what Stanislav Petrov did when he averted nuclear war on September 26 in 1983.
"We can't wait anymore."
"7 minutes until the first warhead is in the observation zone."
"We won't have time to retaliate. You have to make a decision!"
"You see it?"
"Could be."
"No. That's not heat from a missile."
"Damn!"
"Let's keep looking."
"THE COMPUTER CAN'T BE WRONG!"
"I don't understand it."
"Damn it! They have to confirm this damn attack."
"All thirty levels of security levels confirms the attack!"
"Infrared devices verify heat from all five launched missiles!"
"What are we going to do?"
Stanislav Petrov: "Nothing. I don't trust the computer. We'll wait."
This dialogue is from a re-enactment in the documentary The Man Who Saved the World.
Last year I wrote about three learnings I take away from his story.
1. Embrace multiple perspectives.
Petrov was educated as an engineer rather than a military man. He knew the unpredictability of machine output.
2. Look for multiple confirmation points.
To confirm our beliefs we should expect many different variables to line up and tell us the same story. If one or more variables are saying something different, we need to pursue those anomalies to understand why. If the idea of a faulty system lines up with all other variables, that makes it more likely.
3. Reward exposure of faulty systems.
If we keep praising our tools for their excellence and efficiency it's hard to later accept their defects. When shortcomings are found, this needs to be communicated just as clearly and widely as successes. Maintaining an illusion of perfect, neutral and flawless systems will keep people from questioning the systems when the systems need to be questioned.
https://axbom.com/lessons-from-stanislav-petrov/

2023-09-25 15:47:20

A backdoor can be meticulously documented, have limited access, include a variety of security measures, and be carefully developed with the best of intentions. But it's still…
…a backdoor.
https://axbom.me/media/df0e0de5-77ec-4614-817b-a8c00a4f162b/798AD717-77A6-431C-A46A-3D95130F85DE.png

2023-09-16 19:03:36

I can’t even begin to express how much I love Extraordinary Attorney Woo.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Attorney_Woo
#ExAttyWoo

2023-09-14 06:50:59

When I scroll back through two decades of blogging I can discover having written and created some really interesting stuff that I'd forgotten about.
I'm realising I'm often in too much of a hurry onwards to the next topic or subject of interest, never stopping to appreciate and celebrate my own work. My curiosity makes me jump ahead.
Always impressed by people who can stick with the same topic or even framework for years and years.I'm even bad at marketing my book because my brain has left those ideas behind - writing them down for me meant finishing that train of thought - and moved on.
Not sure what I want to say with this. I think we're all just different and that's okay.

2023-09-14 05:10:26

"Do the languages we speak shape the way we think? Do they merely express thoughts, or do the structures in languages (without our knowledge or consent) shape the very thoughts we wish to express?
Take "Humpty Dumpty sat on a...
Even this snippet of a nursery rhyme reveals how much languages can differ from one another. In English, we have to mark the verb for tense; in this case, we say "sat" rather than "sit." In Indonesian you need not (in fact, you can't) change the verb to mark tense.
In Russian, you would have to mark tense and also gender, changing the verb if Mrs. Dumpty did the sitting. You would also have to decide if the sitting event was completed or not. If our ovoid hero sat on the wall for the entire time he was meant to, it would be a different form of the verb than if, say, he had a great fall.
In Turkish, you would have to include in the verb how you acquired this information. For example, if you saw the chubby fellow on the wall with your own eyes, you'd use one form of the verb, but if you had simply read or heard about it, you'd use a different form.
Do English, Indonesian, Russian and Turkish speakers end up attending to, understanding, and remembering their experiences differently simply because they speak different languages?"
The answer is yes.
In a world of sharing ideas across languages, understanding how and why languages make us think, behave and reason differently from each other is increasingly important.
"All this new research shows us that the languages we speak not only reflect or express our thoughts, but also shape the very thoughts we wish to express.
The structures that exist in our languages profoundly shape how we construct reality, and help make us as smart and sophisticated as we are."
« Watch Lera Boroditsky's talk. Lera Boroditsky is an associate professor of cognitive science at University of California San Diego and editor in chief of Frontiers in Cultural Psychology. She previously served on the faculty at MIT and at Stanford. Her research is on the relationships between mind, world and language (or how humans get so smart).
She once used the Indonesian exclusive "we" correctly before breakfast and was proud of herself about it all day. »
https://www.ted.com/talks/lera_boroditsky_how_language_shapes_the_way_we_think
The quotes above are from her 2010 Wall Street Journal article Lost in Translation:
http://lera.ucsd.edu/papers/wsj.pdf
Also read:
The myth of language universals: language diversity and its importance for cognitive science
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19857320/

2023-09-13 18:14:54

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@npub1hpc…hjn3 Ah, yes. This is of course true.

2023-09-13 18:05:41

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@npub1hpc…hjn3 Yes, they say ”it gets worse before it gets better”. But they never say if that phrase actually has a turning point or just keeps being true. 😅

2023-09-13 17:58:18

People around me talking about ”co-existing” with AI. Meanwhile, human activities have caused the world's wildlife populations to plummet by 68% in 50 years, as reported by the World Wildlife Fund several years ago.
I did not sign up for this timeline.
I think the Fediverse gained traction at exactly the right time for me. Being able to host my own social media platform is comforting. But more than that, so happy that I never stopped seeking refuge in writing and blogging. I really want to do more of that…
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/10/911500907/the-world-lost-two-thirds-of-its-wildlife-in-50-years-we-are-to-blame

2023-09-07 03:42:39

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I did some further reading after sharing this, and it turns out that ”sexual activity” is actually mentioned verbatim in the Nissan USA privacy notice.
Fromt Nissan’s very real Privacy notice, under ”Categories of information we collect and disclose”:
”Sensitive personal information, including driver’s license number, national or state identification number, citizenship status, immigration status, race, national origin, religious or philosophical beliefs, sexual orientation, sexual activity, precise geolocation, health diagnosis data, and genetic information.”
Not only that… as Mozilla Foundation writes:
”They also say they can share and even sell "Inferences drawn from any Personal Data collected to create a profile about a consumer reflecting the consumer’s preferences, characteristics, psychological trends, predispositions, behavior, attitudes, intelligence, abilities, and aptitudes" to others for targeted marketing purposes. Yes, Nissan says they can infer things like how smart you are, if you have a predisposition to drink, if you are acting depressed, and if you are any good at chess (we're guessing that's what they can infer..it could be even worse than that), and then they say they can make as much money off that very personal information as they can. Nissan, you suck.”
https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/nissan/

2023-09-06 09:57:06

“According to Mozilla research, popular global brands — including BMW, Ford, Toyota, Tesla, Kia, and Subaru — can collect deeply personal data such as sexual activity, immigration status, race, facial expressions, weight, health and genetic information, and where you drive.
Researchers found data is being gathered by sensors, microphones, cameras, and the phones and devices drivers connect to their cars, as well as by car apps, company websites, dealerships, and vehicle telematics.
Brands can then share or sell this data to third parties. Car brands can also take much of this data and use it to develop inferences about a driver’s intelligence, abilities, characteristics, preferences, and more.”
https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/privacy-nightmare-on-wheels-every-car-brand-reviewed-by-mozilla-including-ford-volkswagen-and-toyota-flunks-privacy-test/

2023-09-04 20:27:25

Heads up, because this will start happening more regularly in the next six months:
If a person sends a bot (will be marketed as an ”AI assistant”) to participate in their place at an online meeting you are hosting, your safest option is to kick it out. That bot will be recording everything and using it for things that meeting participants have not consented to.

2023-09-02 11:42:24

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@npub1hpc…hjn3 @npub1r8w…v4k6 @npub1px2…aame I've understood knugen to be a way of making fun of his dyslexia, but also that most people aren't aware of how the "nickname" came to be.

2023-09-02 04:44:16

AI won't steal your job.
A person using AI to fake your skills will.
Then the AI will cause them to make a devastating mistake.
And they won't know how fix it.
That's when you get your job back.
Remember to request a higher salary.

2023-08-30 05:06:08

Vikten av att offentlig sektor och nationelll media återuppbygger förmågan att informera medborgare via egna plattformar illustreras kanske bäst av situationen i Kanada just nu, där Meta strypt alla kanadensiska nyhetskällor på Facebook.
https://www-aljazeera-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2023/8/29/stupid-and-dangerous-metas-news-ban-fuels-anger-amid-canada-wildfires

2023-08-13 09:01:47

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@npub1hpc…hjn3
Friend of a friend of the publisher? 😉
Do you find it surprising that this is published in Time?

2023-08-12 20:19:46

Judy Estrin is on fire in her op-ed for Time Magazine.
“What is happening is not just a battle for market control. A small number of tech titans are busy designing our collective future, presenting their societal vision, and specific beliefs about our humanity, as theonly possible path. Hiding behind an illusion of natural market forces, they are harnessing their wealth and influence to shape not just productization and implementation of AI technology, but also the research.“
She goes on to talk about the politics of inevitability and how we are tricked into thinking the future dictated by big tech is unavoidable. (Pro tip: it isn’t)
But this sentence actually caught me off-guard: “On the current trajectory we may not even have the option to weigh in on who gets to decide what is in our best interest.“
Do read it.
https://time.com/6302761/ai-risks-autonomy/
#DigitalEthics

2023-08-08 14:22:07

If you are seriously considering new default software for video meetings, don’t discount Signal.
Signal allows up to 40 people in the same meeting.
Using Signal Desktop, you can share a screen or separate window while on a call. You can share your screen if no one else is presenting. Your own video will not be shown while you are presenting.
To start or stop sharing while on a call, select the presenting icon with the box with an arrow pointing up.
Why Signal?
”State-of-the-art end-to-end encryption (powered by the open source Signal Protocol) keeps your conversations secure. We can't read your messages or listen to your calls, and no one else can either. Privacy isn’t an optional mode — it’s just the way that Signal works. Every message, every call, every time.”
https://signal.org/
#VideoMeetings #VideoConferencing

2023-07-19 08:39:43

The Deutsche Telekom video reminding parents not to share photos of their child on social media is powerful. With all the research I’ve done into deepfakes over the past months it feels overwhelmingly important to boost awareness of online misuse and abuse of online content…
This goes for everything you’re sharing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4WZ_k0vUDM

2023-07-17 08:01:26

The reason I recommend @npub1naz…t4p3 as your default search engine is not only about privacy.
Did you know that DuckDuckGo can transfer your query to many thousands of different, subject-specific online search engines?
This could be Google, Wikipedia, IMDB or beyond that: media, forums, shopping or research sites. Or even XKCD.
You control where the search ends up… with a !bang.
https://axbom.com/duckduckgo-bangs/
#Privacy #SearchEngine

2023-07-07 09:03:44

The way that you delete your Threads account is that you also delete your Instagram account. Quite unclear whether these two services will split or get even more integrated in the future…
https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/06/threads-delete-profile-instagram-meta/

2023-07-02 06:37:54

This is a great walkthrough of the ways generative AI is stealing (and storing!) content. And placing clear efforts on stealing (removing watermarks for example).
Long read, 3 parts. Entertaining and maddening. Lots of reference links.
With the ongoing lawsuit against OpenAI it’s good to boost awareness.
https://johancb.substack.com/p/sam-altman-and-the-sorcerers-stone
#DigitalEthics #AiEthics

2023-06-02 11:38:32

While a misleading narrative of doom is being widely pushed, I want to contribute to bringing attention to the real harms and risks of AI. And I do this, honestly, with an intent to show how the harms are tangible and can be addressed.
This is a good thing.
If we can be open and honest about the actual risks then we stand a better chance of owning them and acting to evade or mitigate them. If we don't talk about them, our chances of managing them responsibly are zero.
All the harms are human-made and hence are under human control. What we need to do is demand more transparency around each issue, and acknowledge how all teams that deploy or make use of AI need a mitigation strategy for many different types of harms.
I give you The Elements of AI Ethics, which borrows from and builds on my chart from 2021, The Elements of Digital Ethics.
Read about it here and download the chart in PDF format for your own, free, use: https://axbom.com/aielements/
Let me know what you think.
#AIEthics #DigitalEthics

2023-05-28 15:14:34

1) Get an idea.
2) Open phone to note down idea.
3) Get distracted by a notification or app.
4) Spend 5-10 minutes dealing with something else entirely.
5) Lose track of what I was actually trying to do.
6) Repeat.
This is how my phone makes me bit dumber, step-by-step, every day.

2023-05-17 06:49:30

Good reminder of how it's often a small number of people who manage to ruin the wellbeing of many others.
"Data scientists at Stanford recently found that 74% of the conflicts on Reddit were instigated by only 1% of the users. And worse than that, the researchers found that most of these online conflicts were not fought by those who started them. They were fought by the innocent bystanders that got sucked into them."
https://markmanson.net/most-people-are-good

2023-05-06 07:30:00

”By donning a second-hand hat, a 74-year-old man is about to become monarch of a small island kingdom”
As expected, the best reporting on today’s coronation comes from @npub1m07…we8q
While many mentioned atrocities are well-known, this part of erased African history is rarely talked about:
”While England has records of who lived in what village in 1068, its empire was quick to destroy the histories of those it colonised. These could then be overwritten with Protestant orthodoxy and white exceptionalism, banning things like queer love, once part of Africas cultural fabric.”
https://www.thecontinent.org/
#Coronation
https://axbom.me/media/0c0c1093-edc9-4ec6-83cf-5a7405be42c0/A209A36F-1446-40F2-88DE-A2AA5F2DFFE5.jpeg
https://axbom.me/media/d21d89e1-9e8d-4108-b0f3-7ee190f7942a/582D31D6-9FB6-4D35-9049-CE1B65B34836.jpeg

2023-04-19 09:04:50

Way more dangerous than a jerk is a billionaire jerk who feels offended. Completely unpredictable with unjustified power and impact.
I'm not afraid of AI (not in the sense the manufacturers would have you be) but I am afraid of the inappropriate power of the billionaires backing their development.
Suppose it's time to write an open letter calling for a pause on giant billionaire experiments.

2023-02-04 06:24:38

- reply

Speaking of podcasts, I had missed how @npub1hyk…3p33 has recently written about exactly this.
"Where others were cautious, Spotify was reckless. It bought popular podcasts and podcast networks, then severely enshittified their programs by locking them inside Spotify's walled garden. Audience numbers plummeted, demoralizing podcast creators who were uninterested in the future date when Spotify and its Magic Underpants Gnomes would figure out how to wring more money out of the tiny cohort that stuck around."
Yes, even the Obamas broke off their deal with Spotify.
https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/27/enshittification-resistance/
#podcasting

2023-02-03 11:36:18

More and more coming across "podcasts" that can only be listened to on a specific platform, not in my podcatcher (any app for listening to podcasts via RSS feeds).
If a podcast doesn't disclose its RSS feed, is it really a podcast, or just an audio show that happens to be published on a specific platform?
In my mind podcasting is about the listener experience and mode of consumption as much as the production experience. If I can't listen to it like I do 99% of all podcasts, then for all intents and purposes it is not a podcast.
I know most people don't think about RSS feeds at all when listening but I had to mention it here as it's the mode of distribution that makes everything I just mentioned possible, with regards to freedom of listening where I want. Not where someone else wants.
#podcast #podcasting