Today I met a class of English majors who love writing, and who expressed concern that AI writers will put them out of a job. Human- and machine-generated prose may one day be indistinguishable. But that does not quell academics’ search for an answer to the question “What makes prose human?” […] “Think about what…
I knew it! Busted!! “One night someone made a joke about just taking all these ideas, lumping them together, and saying the Greeks had done it all 2,000 years ago,” Haddlebury said. “One thing led to another, and before you know it, we’re coming up with everything from the golden ratio to the Iliad.” “That was…
Similar:little drops — Why Dove's "Real Beauty Sketches" Video Makes Me Uncomfortable… and Kind …Very insightful…. A reminder that even…AestheticsHad a blast watching all the amazing entries in Pittsburgh's 48 Hour Film Festival, b…PersonalPresidential RhetoricCultureSomeone seems to have slipped this over my transom. Thank you, #foodsubstitutefairy whoeve…PersonalPost Gazette Corrects Headline of Seton Hill iPad FollowupEveryone…
“Professing Criticism” proceeds on the basis that, in order to decipher the present and to prepare for the future, one must first turn to the past. “The study of literature—in the premodern sense of any writing that has been preserved or valued—is very old, the oldest kind of organized study in Western history, excepting only…
Artificial intelligence has been deployed to handle facial recognition, recommend movies, and auto-complete your typing. The news that CNET had been using it to generate entire stories, however, sent a ripple of anxiety through the news media for its seeming threat to journalists. The robot-brained yet conversational ChatGPT can produce copy without lunch or bathroom breaks and…
The story goes like this: A man goes to a morgue in Galilee, RI to look at a body that had been identified as him. “Nope,” he said, “that ain’t me.” Then he left. 84 years after premature reports of his death, the late Charles Keville is going viral. Background on this story from The…
“To begin our hoax scenario, we intended to build participants’ trust in the machine by pretending that it could decode their preferences and attitudes,” the study authors wrote. “The system included a sham MRI scanner and an EEG system, that supposedly used neural decoding driven by artificial intelligence (AI).” […] In other words, participants were…
Ad Fontes Media Similar:Rethinking TV news, Part III: First, kill the stand-upI’ve told my journalism students that TV…DesignIs Superman the next Drudge? Clark Kent quits newspapers in latest issue Even Clark Kent can see through the wri…Current_EventsMicrosoft lays off journalists to replace them with AIMicrosoft is laying off dozens of journa…BusinessWhy the Weather Channel's Hype…
Similar:Letter Grades Deserve an 'F'In a points-based grade book, the studen…AcademiaOh the Overthinks You Can Overthink: Horton the Elephant, the Wickersham Brothers, and Mas…Yesterday, I performed in a school matin…AcademiaIdeology shapes our view of reality, which affects what persuades us. EthicsStage Right's Alice in WonderlandMy daughter shared the role of Alice thi…CultureGrading the MOOC UniversityThe MOOC…
Get a load of the upholstery on that chair! This is a 3D visualization of the bridge of the fantasy interplanetary cruiser I created for an epic, interactive, episodic bedtime story I told my kids from about 2007-2012. Elsewhere the ship has more steampunk elements, but this part of the ship is more neo-Victorian. Something…
YouTube commenter Bob Hepple writes, “Two minds about this. On the one hand – wow! OTOH – my mental imagery (of the original 1977 Crowther and Woods Adventure game, I never played Zork as such) is so strong and precious that I kinda hate watching someone else’s version. Much like how I hate the LotR…
Similar:Before the haircut. PersonalI, Borg (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 5, Episode 23) Adolescent Borg Bonds with LaForge Rewatching ST:TNG When a landing …CybercultureThe Host (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 4, Episode 23) Dr. Beverly Crushes on a SymbiontRewatching ST:TNG Trek explores some …CultureMore rehearsing. More dancing. PersonalAnniePersonalToday's 10 sq cm of #steampunk control panel went pretty fast. At…
Apple has quietly launched a catalogue of books narrated by artificial intelligence in a move that may mark the beginning of the end for human narrators. The strategy marks an attempt to upend the lucrative and fast-growing audiobook market – but it also promises to intensify scrutiny over allegations of Apple’s anti-competitive behaviour. —Guardian Similar:Why Can't…
Rewatching ST:DS9 Bashir is less than thrilled with Garak’s gift of a holographic adaptation of a Cardassian “enigma tale,” and explains he’s testy about his impending 30th birthday. Quark seems relieved when Bashir shoots down a shady client’s hopes of buying “biomemetic gel.” Bashir later finds that same customer (a bumpy-faced reptilian named Altovar) ransacking…
I was born in 1968 and grew up with reruns of TOS. I can only remember seeing a handful of episodes for the first time (and those are some of my earliest memories). Some of the episodes are awful, and the third season is overall very weak. You can be a Trek fan without loving…
This was probably the wealthiest, most powerful group I had ever encountered. Yet here they were, asking a Marxist media theorist for advice on where and how to configure their doomsday bunkers. That’s when it hit me: at least as far as these gentlemen were concerned, this was a talk about the future of technology. Taking their…
Rewatching ST:DS9 The episode starts with O’Brien on the floor, as Bashir exposits that he was exposed to plot contrivance particles. On his way to meet a Romulan delegation, Sisko passes rowdy, drunken Klingons whose ship is in for repairs. O’Brien, trying to relax, talks Quark into setting up a dart board. He’s about to…
Similar:Thinking about physical therapy and cheerful, chatty older gents…I feel like I’m living in a sitcom. A…CultureFinally — the pace at work subsides a bit.PersonalThe Life and Times of ¯\_(ツ)_/¯But, in addition to symbolizing despair,…CybercultureHad a blast watching all the amazing entries in Pittsburgh's 48 Hour Film Festival, b…PersonalSold out opening night of Mamet’s Oleanna.…
Not only is this a fantastic story about language and culture and colonialism, it’s also a great example of how a talented PR writer used journalistic storytelling strategies to turn a scholarly study into an appealing narrative. We start with a very specific, very personal story about a man returning home for his father’s funeral.…
Similar:Why I Like Papers, PleaseAt a certain point, the transit papers w…AestheticsSeton Hill's Latest Interactive Multimodal Communications Technology The other day, a worker was pushing …AcademiaSimulated iceberg, preserved artifacts and re-creations at the Titanic installation. …CultureYou may move your tassels from right to left. #classof2017 PersonalDesk blotters, with procedural leather and wood materials by Blendermada. #blender3dAestheticsAnonymous…