Getting ready to run a ChoiceScript workshop for Computers and Writing 2023. #cwcon #cwcon23
Humans Aren’t Mentally Ready for an AI-Saturated ‘Post-Truth World’
How is AI going to change individuals and society in the not-too-distant future? AI will obviously make it easier to produce disinformation—from fake images to deepfakes to fake news. That will affect people’s sense of trust as they’re scrolling on social media. AI can also allow someone to imitate your loved ones, which further erodes people’s…
Who's ready for some free outdoor Hamlet?
It appears there may be some audience participation in this outdoor production of Richard III.
Influencers overtaking journalists as news source: report
TikTok influencers and celebrities are increasingly taking over from journalists as the main source of news for young people, according to a report published Wednesday by the Britain-based Reuters Institute. The figures were based on interviews with some 94,000 people across 46 countries, conducted for the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, part of…
ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web
Think of ChatGPT as a blurry jpeg of all the text on the Web. It retains much of the information on the Web, in the same way that a jpeg retains much of the information of a higher-resolution image, but, if you’re looking for an exact sequence of bits, you won’t find it; all you will ever get is…
Proofreading matters. (For the record, Blanche actually said, “We most certainly enter a plea of not guilty.”)
I make mistakes on my blog all the time. But I’m not CNN. (Check out the line under the photo.) Yes, that’s right… that blue box is missing an important word.
Who needs the Metaverse? Meet the people still living on Second Life
Years ago I spent some time in Second Life, taking my young son to visit a display of NASA rockets and historical sites from classical history, and for my own amusement wandering through a few Star Trek exhibits, and exploring the mostly empty landscapes. My university bought an island, and I was briefly excited at…
How to promote your laser skin clinic effectively
I rather miss teaching HTML and doing my own web design on the side. These days, when my students propose to make a web page, they have already decided to use Google Sites or Wix. Sometimes I can talk them into using WordPress, but there just isn’t room in my curriculum to teach them everything…
‘Anti-dopamine parenting’ can curb a kid’s craving for screens or sweets
A good article about kids and dopamine. Apps and sweets can hijack the neural pathways we need to survive, triggering tantrums and aggression. The problem describes plenty of adults, too! It’s not actually happiness we feel when we fulfill that craving. While she’s staring into the technicolor images, her brain experiences spikes in dopamine, over and…
We ask 3 Broadway photographers: How do you turn a live show into a still image?
Great story about the art of photographing theatre performances. Given that the choreographers and lighting designers and set designer and costume, hair and make-up people have already done a lot of work, not to mention the contributions of performers themselves, I just love grabbing 1000 or more shots during a show, and culling them down…
The ChatGPT Lawyer Explains Himself
As Mike Edwards notes, “AI doomers will eagerly tweet this article, unaware that it’s not about the dangers of LLMs: it’s about *information literacy*”
In a cringe-inducing court hearing, a lawyer who relied on A.I. to craft a motion full of made-up case law said he “did not comprehend” that the chat bot could lead him astray.
A support sloop on deck and in the landing bay. #steampunk #neovictorian #aesthetics #design #Blender3D #Unity3D
Long Live the LARPers — My daughter plays the antagonist in this award-winning 48 Hour Film Project. (It’s a musical!)
Microsoft has no shame: Bing spit on my ‘Chrome’ search with a fake AI answer
It was time to download Google Chrome on a new Windows 11 computer. I typed “Chrome” into the Microsoft Edge search bar. I was greeted with a full-screen Microsoft Bing AI chatbot window, which promptly told me it was searching for… Bing features. Source: Microsoft has no shame: Bing spit on my ‘Chrome’ search with a…
Not sure whether I should be proud or embarrassed…
As part of a journalism lesson about brand names, I just wrote this sentence: The term “Winnebago Vista” is a rollicking road trip for the ear, and no oath was ever minced with more tangy intensity than we find in the fricative phonemes of “Cheez-It.” I’ll probably murder that darling tomorrow, but right now I’m…
Frisbee is a brand name, but how newsworthy is that?
What would you do? Today I wrote 192 lines of ChoiceScript code to address this journalism lesson.
Making a journalism game to teach myself ChoiceScript
Me: (Making a journalism game to teach myself ChoiceScript.)
Nobody:
Me: Maybe I should add a “current time” display.
Nobody:
Me: And I should code up all the special cases for a.m., p.m., noon and midnight, to match AP Style.
Nobody:
Me: How long could it take?
(Six hours later….)
ChatGPT took their jobs. Now they walk dogs and fix air conditioners.
“In every previous automation threat, the automation was about automating the hard, dirty, repetitive jobs,” said Ethan Mollick, an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. “This time, the automation threat is aimed squarely at the highest-earning, most creative jobs that … require the most educational background.” In March, Goldman Sachs…