The real threat of generative AI is not that it will outsmart us. It's that we'll misuse it.
My story on what the AI backlash gets wrong:
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Will Oremus
@WillOremus
writing about tech and its discontents for the . focused on AI, algorithms, social media, and platforms. dm for signal.
Joined June 2010
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Some good news: two new studies by Oremus, Frank et al. find the strict laws the US passed in 1996 to stop overfishing have actually worked, rebuilding the country's depleted fisheries and creating a sustainable domestic fishing industry.
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Generative AI doesn't need to get that good in order to do enormous damage.
and I spoke with , Ted Chiang, and about its flaws and its future:
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TikTokker Mercury Stardust has a book coming out in August. Someone took the cover, put their own name on it in small print and published a book on Amazon; several readers were scammed into purchasing.
The content is also written by AI. It's... not good. tiktok.com/@mercurystardu
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I went on a quest to find out if AI is already secretly writing a lot of the stuff we read online. I found more than I ever imagined.
From recipes to grill reviews to horoscopes, human writing is fast becoming the exception on the internet, not the rule. washingtonpost.com/technology/202
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In the past, Jaffe said, “We published a celebrity profile a month. Now we can do 10,000 a month.”
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I went on a quest to find out if AI is already secretly writing a lot of the stuff we read online. I found more than I ever imagined.
From recipes to grill reviews to horoscopes, human writing is fast becoming the exception on the internet, not the rule. washingtonpost.com/technology/202
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One local news site churned out a series of articles on a recent day whose sub-headlines all read, “As an AI language model, I need the original title to rewrite it. Please provide me with the original title.”
on our degraded present
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A bleak possible future for online media: thousands of publishers competing to create the content most likely to be cited in an answer by Bing or Bard. theatlantic.com/technology/arc by
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Ever wonder just how many of the websites you see in Google search results are written partly or entirely by AI?
The leading SEO platform, , surveyed its customers for us. The results were somewhat stunning... washingtonpost.com/technology/202
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I went on a quest to find out if AI is already secretly writing a lot of the stuff we read online. I found more than I ever imagined.
From recipes to grill reviews to horoscopes, human writing is fast becoming the exception on the internet, not the rule.
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AI-written content isn’t the web’s future. It’s already here: "From recipes to product reviews to how-to books, text generators like ChatGPT are quietly authoring more and more of the internet." -
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For years Google treated AI as a science. Now it's treating it as a competition. washingtonpost.com/technology/202 by &
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ChatGPT has escaped the box and is running rampant in society. I knew we shouldn’t have given it API access.
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oh man this rules
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I’m all about having fun playing a kids game, but yea, I don’t like this at all from Wander Franco
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anyway, fun convo w/ of Slat, and if you enjoyed it you can sign up to follow my work at the Washington P washingtonpost.com/newsletters/fo
as well as her excellent and concisely named podcast
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tfw you realize your job title is too long
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And we're live! Catch host of @Slate's What Next: TBD @lizzieohreally and @washingtonpost tech writer @WillOremus at the @Crosscut Festival talking big tech's midlife crisis
Tune in here: crosscut.brandlive.com/2023-Crosscut-
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If you're looking for "how has Elon Musk changed Twitter" in a nutshell...
Prominent anti-trans accounts have gone from being suspended under Twitter's "hateful conduct" policy to getting free promotion at the top of the Notifications feed for people who don't even follow them.
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Man if this couple couldn’t make it what hope is there for the rest of us
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Jack Dorsey says Elon Musk shouldn't have bought Twitter
A year ago, called Musk "the singular solution I trust" to steer the company forward. "I trust his mission to extend the light of consciousness."
Now: "It all went south."
washingtonpost.com/technology/202
w/
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say what you will about twitter’s alleged “decline,” but it remains undeniably the world’s premier destination for real-time updates about what's happening on bluesky
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Jerry Springer taught me it was ok to point and laugh. to say “look at that freak!” to encourage people to hit each other. that there was nothing wrong with being whipped up into a nice frenzy
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ME IN 2022: hm i wonder how elon running twitter will go
TIME TRAVELER FROM 2023: bad
ME: how bad
TT: you know that "decentralized social media" thing jack dorsey's working on?
ME: lol yeah
TT: you're gonna be on that
ME: i... what? oh wow
TT: and you're gonna like it
ME: jesus
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*when i join a brand-new social network*
ahh, this is great, so refreshing
*when other people join*
damn this place has really gone downhill
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Something inherently funny about the phrase "Disney regrets that it has come to this"
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News: Disney has filed a lawsuit against Ron DeSantis, alleging a "targeted campaign of government retaliation" over "protected speech" that "threatens Disney's business operations" and "violates its constitutional rights."
"Disney regrets that it has come to this."
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if you told me this would be my bookmarks bar one year ago
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Here you go
🎶 3 eggplants peeled and thinly sliced
6 cups of spaghetti sauce is nice
1 package of some shredded mozzarella
Breadcrumbs are an important part
The ingredient love comes from the heart
Make the oven 350 to cook your eggplant parma 🎶
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new: Voice actors are getting replaced by AI. These often faceless pros narrate audio books + commercials. Now, companies can buy clones of their voice, use AI tools to make them say anything + save thousands. The samples aren't perfect, but many may quit.
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new twitter policy: it will now cost you $8/month to *not* have a blue check next to your name
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at some point if you're still on here every day hooting and hollering about what a clown car this place has become, don't you have to consider that maybe you're part of the clown car
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"those of us left have made a conscious choice to reside on Musk’s global whoopee cushion."
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NEW: Elon Musk tells me Twitter has now dropped all media labels. Asked why, Musk says: “This was Walter Isaacson’s suggestion.”
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Say what you will about Elon, he's always thinking a step ahead. For instance, he made sure to jack up the price of the Twitter API before turning the blue check into a mark of shame, so now no one can easily build a tool that lets you autoblock all the Twitter Blue subscribers.
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If you love your blue check, let it go. If it returns it's yours; if it doesn't, it never was
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Google just announced it's merging its top two AI research labs: London-based DeepMind, which it acquired in 2014, and Mountain View-based Google Brain.
The merged team will be called Google DeepMind and be led by DeepMind CEO .
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