1. Hey Siri, what does “oligarchy” look like?
It looks like this, my friends. It looks like this. If there was a doubt that the nastiest people in America have seized control of the Federal government and are going to use it to enrich themselves still further, this should put it to bed.
2. AI in the classroom is a disaster (redux)
Students cheating is nothing new. Students using AI to cheat at an industrial scale with little chance of any consequences even if caught? Yeah, that’s new. If you don’t come out of this wonderful long-form piece in New York magazine feeling a little depressed, you probably didn’t read it closely enough.
Part of the problem is that education has come to be seen as transactional, as a golden ticket to a better paid job, rather than as an opportunity to get knowledge and skills. This is especially true in places like the UK, where a university student will leave with nearly £50,000 of debt on average.
So why shouldn’t students do whatever is necessary to get out with a good grade, when their ability to pay back that loan and have a decent income is dependent on it?
For employers, though, this is a potential disaster. Yes, the ability to use AI will be a useful skill to have. But if graduate hires don’t have the kind of critical and creative skills which are vital in business and can only be learned by doing your own work, that means employers will have to teach them.
But there’s a wider question too: in the age of AI, what is education for? When you can ask an AI to research something for you, do you even need research skills of your own? Is the real skill knowing what questions to ask – and how do we teach that?
Rote learning is dead. It caught a cold when Google changed the world, and AI has pushed it into a coffin and buried it.
3. Soundcloud rips off its users
It looks like the company has quietly sneaked in a clause allowing it to take your creative work and, without giving you a penny, use it to train AI. Now I’m not anti-AI – but I am very much anti-creative-people-not-getting-paid.
Related: how many examples of big platforms shafting people is it going to take before we realise that big platforms can’t be trusted?
4. Game footage is reality
You might have noticed that two nuclear-armed states are currently lobbing drones and missiles at each other. I will be very annoyed with Silicon Valley if the first full-scale nuclear war happens because of misinformation and AI-generated footage distributed by social media.
5. No, you really can use Emacs (probably)
My chum and super-talented individual Matt Gemmell has been on a bit of a journey recently, moving away from the iPad and back to the Mac, and now swapping Ulysses (which is a great writing tool) to… Emacs. Now Emacs isn’t for everyone, but it has the advantage of just working with ordinary text files, which Ulysses does not. He’s documented his thoughts – and some details of his setup – on his blog, and it’s a fascinating read. As Matt says, Emacs isn’t for everyone, but if you’re the kind of person who (1) loves tinkering with software, (2) wants everything in a format which will stand the test of time, and (3) are driven by keyboard shortcuts more than anything else, it’s worth considering.
6. A history of the all-in-one Mac
The wonderful Dr Howard Oakley has written a brief history of the all-in-one Mac, from the original through to the various iMacs. Damn, that first iMac was lovely. Occasionally I get a strong desire to replace my Mac mini with one.
7. So you bought a URL for millions?
Ahh, NFTs. “Digital goods” which you “own” but which someone else can just accidentally delete by not paying their hosting bill. Whoops.
8. Merlin Mann’s wisdom project
“It’s only advice for you because it had to be advice for me.” Genius, from a genius.
9. How has Danielle Steele written 179 books?
The answer will shock you! Actually, it won’t – she gets to her desk in her home office at 8.30 every day and just keeps writing. I love these profiles of authors who are nothing like what I want to be.
10. Did Pope Leo name himself after an early computer?
You know the answer to this (I hope). But interestingly, one of the reasons he chose the name is to honour Pope Leo XIII, who presided over the church at the start of the industrial revolution – and New Leo noted that we currently face“developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defence of human dignity, justice and labour.” When you're responsible for an organisation that’s getting on for a couple of thousand years old, you probably have a bit of a different perspective to that of Silicon Valley.