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…

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…

Dennis G. Jerz | Associate Professor of English -- New Media Journalism, Seton Hill University | jerz.setonhill.edu Logo

An English professor tries to help ChatGPT write and revise a sonnet

Shortly after my online AmLit survey began, I received two obviously AI-generated submissions. The responses did not address the prompt, there was no textual annotation and brainstorming assignment that was supposed to lead up to the written response, and the student did not take me up on my offer to meet to discuss how the…

They grew up in a mostly analog/paper world and squirmed with joy the first time they clicked a hyperlink that they created

Today’s students have many strengths. They are great at collaboration, introspection, and remixing. While my students are very familiar with phone apps, even the English majors who want to be professional writers are not very familiar with the conventions of writing for the World Wide Web. Because their sense of “being online” mostly entails interacting…

Parrots learn to make video calls to chat with other parrots, then develop friendships, Northeastern University researchers say

A new study from researchers at Northeastern University, in collaboration with scientists from MIT and the University of Glasgow, investigated what happened when a group of domesticated birds were taught to call one another on tablets and smartphones. The results suggest that video calls could help parrots approximate birds’ communication in the wild, improving their…

NPR quits Twitter after being falsely labeled as ‘state-affiliated media’

NPR will no longer post fresh content to its 52 official Twitter feeds, becoming the first major news organization to go silent on the social media platform. In explaining its decision, NPR cited Twitter’s decision to first label the network “state-affiliated media,” the same term it uses for propaganda outlets in Russia, China and other…

Will ChatGPT Kill the Student Essay? Universities Aren’t Ready for the Answer | The Walrus

I’m still grappling with exactly how the rise of AI writing apps will affect my teaching. I don’t think it’s reasonable to ban technology from the classroom. While I will likely assign more in-class, hand-written activities, that strategy won’t work for online classes — and I am just not interested in requiring students to use…

There are two factions working to prevent AI dangers. Here’s why they’re deeply divided.

We are assigning more societal decision-making power to systems that we don’t fully understand and can’t always audit, and that lawmakers don’t know nearly well enough to effectively regulate. As impressive as modern artificial intelligence can seem, right now those AI systems are, in a sense, “stupid.” They tend to have very narrow scope and limited computing…

Evolution of Gambling: Pay by Phone Casino

What will we use our phones for next?     Image Source The online casino world is consistently evolving. New technologies are transforming the way these platforms operate and how people use them. The biggest evolution occurred when smartphone popularity reached mainstream consumers. People were able to play online casino games no matter where they were.…

Dennis G. Jerz | Associate Professor of English -- New Media Journalism, Seton Hill University | jerz.setonhill.edu Logo

In August, 2002, I was blogging about ebook readers and email in teaching; how urban legends spread; tales of a plush Chthulu; no, the creator of D&D was not on drugs; a paperless library; Marilyn Monroe; liveblogging an epileptic seizure

In August, 2002, I was blogging about Educational technology spending that doesn’t benefit students; ebook readers that students don’t like; email as a tool in online course (all free at the time, but now behind the Chronicle of Higher Ed’s paywall) A prof spreading bad papers in order to catch plagiarists Expensive goose tracker leads…

Dennis G. Jerz | Associate Professor of English -- New Media Journalism, Seton Hill University | jerz.setonhill.edu Logo

In July, 2002, I was blogging about military close reading, weblogs in journalism, UX evangelism, Walker on links and power, Lileks on a realistic WWII game, and QUERTY vs Dvorak keyboards.

In July, 2002, I was blogging about Intelligence Officers Read Between the Enemy Lines A great headline for an LA Times story about interrogation and document analysis during the military campaign in Afghanistan. Weblogs: Put Them to Work in Your Newsroom Journalism was still a print-first medium at the time, and local TV reporters were…

Microsoft “lobotomized” AI-powered Bing Chat, and its fans aren’t happy

Microsoft limits long conversations to address “concerns being raised.” […] These deeply human reactions have proven that people can form powerful emotional attachments to a large language model doing next-token prediction. That might have dangerous implications in the future. Over the course of the week, we’ve received several tips from readers about people who believe…

The AI Mirror Test: Why Even the Smartest People Keep Falling Short

What is important to remember is that chatbots are autocomplete tools. They’re systems trained on huge datasets of human text scraped from the web: on personal blogs, sci-fi short stories, forum discussions, movie reviews, social media diatribes, forgotten poems, antiquated textbooks, endless song lyrics, manifestos, journals, and more besides. These machines analyze this inventive, entertaining,…