The upheavals [of artificial intelligence] can escalate quickly and become scarier and even cataclysmic. Imagine how a medical robot, originally programmed to rid cancer, could conclude that the best way to obliterate cancer is to exterminate humans who are genetically prone to the disease. ~ Nick Bilton I don’t want to really scare you, but … Read more
From Medium: “There is no doubt that AI will become the essential key to success for the publishing industry,” says Colin Lovrinovic, MD of Gould Finch a management consultancy. . . . . Among the popular misconceptions about AI is that it requires considerable investment to implement and that it’s going to take away reporters’ … Read more
From Wired: I don’t know about you, but every time I figure out a way of sharing less information online, it’s like a personal victory. After all, who have I hurt, advertisers? Oh, boo hoo. But sharing your information, either willingly or not, is soon going to become a much more difficult moral choice. Companies … Read more
From ReadWrite: We’re increasingly relying on artificial intelligence (AI) to automate elements of our daily lives, from issuing reminders to follow-up with important work tasks to regulating the temperature of our homes. Already, automation has started to take over jobs in the manufacturing sector, and with the explosion of AI on the near horizon, millions … Read more
From Plagiarism Today: Back in June, behavior scientist Jean-François Bonnefon tweeted about a rejection he had received from an unnamed scientific journal. What made the rejection interesting was that it didn’t come from a human being, but from a bot. An automated plagiarism-detection tool had determined his paper had a “high level of textual overlap with … Read more
From IPKat: As has been recently widely reported (BBC, Financial Times and The Times), a number of patent applications have been filed designating a machine learning (ML) algorithm as an inventor. The aim of the applications appears to kickstart a conversation on how patent law could be changed to take account of AI inventorship. . … Read more
From ReadWrite: Email may not get as much love as channels like social media, but it remains perhaps the most important communication tool for marketers. That’s especially true when you consider that estimates indicate there will be more than 4 billion users by 2023. But the only way for email marketing to be effective is to … Read more
I don’t want to really scare you, but it was alarming how many people I talked to who are highly placed people in AI who have retreats that are sort of ‘bug out’ houses, to which they could flee if it all hits the fan. James Barrat, author of Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and … Read more
From ReadWrite: There has long been a chasm between what we perceive artificial intelligence to be and what it can actually do. Our films, literature, and video game representations of “intelligent machines,” depict AI as detached but highly intuitive interfaces. We will find communication re-imagined with emotion AI. . . . . As these artificial … Read more
Not necessarily about writing or publishing, but an interesting 21st-century issue. From Legal Tech News As more algorithm-coded technology comes to market, the debate over how individuals’ de-identified data is being used continues to grow. A class action lawsuit filed in a Chicago federal court last month highlights the use of sensitive de-identified data for commercial means. … Read more
From Creative Future: On March 30, in an op-ed published in The Washington Post, the man who once coined the phrase “Move fast and break things” made a very public about-face. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg called for the internet to be regulated. “Every day, we make decisions about what speech is harmful, what constitutes political advertising, and how … Read more
On the surface, this article seems to have nothing to do with the types of writing most indie authors pursue, indie publishing, etc., but PG thinks the mental attitude about learning new ways of thinking and different approaches applies equally to tasks involved in being an indie author. SF authors will almost certainly know that … Read more
Not exactly about the writing business, but perhaps a sci-fi writing prompt. From The Wall Street Journal: Raquel Collings often has morning coffee with her management coach. She reviews her goals in her new job as a corporate manager and ponders whether she’s spending her time wisely. The coaching topics are the only part of … Read more
From The Illusion of More: I recently attended a round-table discussion on the subject of artificial intelligence and copyright. The first of several engaging topics I thought warranted a post was the question of “machine learning” . . . . When you read a book, even if we might say, by way of analogy, that … Read more
From The Wall Street Journal: Epiphany Davis arrived at work in lower Manhattan on a recent morning, consulted her cellphone and set off by foot in search of products ordered via text message by wealthy New Yorkers. From her company’s loft-like headquarters, Ms. Davis walked to a health food store to get SmartyPants Kids vitamins, … Read more
Not exactly about books, but an interesting point about unintended consequences of social media. From The Wall Street Journal: Did you document your hair-raising rock-climbing trip on Instagram? Post happy-hour photos on Facebook ? Or chime in on Twitter about riding a motorcycle with no helmet? One day, such sharing could push up your life insurance premiums. … Read more
From The Trichordist: The “Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace“ published in 1996 by John Perry Barlow begins with the words “Governments of the Industrial World I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone.” One reading of this text … Read more
From The New York Times: Robin Sloan has a collaborator on his new novel: a computer. The idea that a novelist is someone struggling alone in a room, equipped with nothing more than determination and inspiration, could soon be obsolete. Mr. Sloan is writing his book with the help of home-brewed software that finishes his sentences … Read more
From The Wall Street Journal: The great wave of globalization is ebbing, or so it seems. Trade barriers are going up, ocean shipping is slower and less reliable than it was two decades ago, and manufacturers and retailers are keeping more inventory just in case their supply chains can’t deliver. But while the loss of … Read more
From MIT Technology Review: On March 31, 1913, in the Great Hall of the Musikverein concert house in Vienna, a riot broke out in the middle of a performance of an orchestral song by Alban Berg. Chaos descended. Furniture was broken. Police arrested the concert’s organizer for punching Oscar Straus, a little-remembered composer of operettas. … Read more
From Fast Company: Have you ever searched for a product online in the morning and gone back to look at it again in the evening only to find the price has changed? In which case you may have been subject to the retailer’s pricing algorithm. Traditionally when deciding the price of a product, marketers consider … Read more
From ReadWrite: Although artificial intelligence does not replace human marketing teams, it does support employees in controlling campaigns or even in content marketing. In the future, AI could increasingly displace a popular means of expressing branding: emotions. The AI threat is becoming a different game. Companies have decided to restructure a number of processes to … Read more
Not necessarily to do with books, but two of PG’s offspring are hearing-impaired, so he follows topics like this. He’s also interested in developments in artificial intelligence, so it’s a double win for him. From The Google AI Blog: The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that there are 466 million people globally that are deaf and hard of hearing. … Read more
From The Deseret News: If you’re one of the 1.5 billion people who use Gmail, you might have noticed last year that your emails suddenly started writing themselves. But did you notice that the autocomplete feature never uses gendered pronouns like she/he or him/her? In May, Google introduced Smart Compose, which helps users finish sentences. … Read more
From Fast Company: As we kick-start the new year, it seems that every conversation we have about the future of business centers around automation, artificial intelligence, chatbots, and the like. All of these innovations streamline our ability to connect with our coworkers, our customers, and our broader communities. However, they move us even further away … Read more
Not exactly about authors and books, but perhaps a writing prompt. From The Intercept: Facial recognition has quickly shifted from techno-novelty to fact of life for many, with millions around the world at least willing to put up with their faces scanned by software at the airport, their iPhones, or Facebook’s server farms. But researchers … Read more
From Copyhype: It’s a new year, and the world is split between those who call it “two thousand nineteen” and those who say “twenty nineteen.” What can we expect in U.S. copyright law and policy over the next twelve months? Let’s take a look. . . . . Among the first set of issues that the … Read more
From Forbes: The sophistication of artificial intelligence (AI) software is giving rise to a healthy debate about human creativity v machine creativity. Whilst there is general agreement that AI will eventually take over many task orientated jobs, there is skepticism over whether occupations that require high creative intelligence will become automated. . . . . … Read more
From Fast Company: There are two ways to view Amazon’s lead in the smart home wars. One involves looking strictly at the numbers. Amazon tells Fast Company that Alexa is now compatible with more than 28,000 devices across 4,500 brands, up from 20,000 devices across 3,500 brands in September. Google Assistant, by comparison, worked with 10,000 devices … Read more
Not exactly to do with books, but tangential and interesting to PG (who is in the midst of a nasty cold this morning). From The Wall Street Journal: Fact-checking live news has one major downside: It’s slow. By the time a fact-checker can verify a claim, any misleading information has already spread and been consumed. … Read more
From The Wall Street Journal: Amazon.com Inc. said Tuesday it was dividing its new headquarters between New York and Northern Virginia, a move largely driven by the need to recruit enough tech talent for its needs. By splitting its new headquarters, the company will spare a single city from having to absorb 50,000 employees over … Read more
From The 1709 Blog: We now learn that auction house Christies will sell in October a work of art titled [ ())] + [( − (()))], Portrait of Edmond de Belamy, from La Famille de Belamy, which was created using AI. It is the work of a Paris-based collective, obvious art, founded by Pierre Fautrel, Gauthier Vernier and Hugo Caselles-Dupré. The work was created … Read more
From The Washington Post: Education activists are increasingly becoming concerned about the computer grading of written portions of new Common Core tests. Can a computer really grade written work as well as a human being? . . . . On April 5, 2016, the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy, Parents Across America, Network for Public … Read more
Perhaps a writing prompt. Also, an example of a 21st-century problem. From Gizmodo: New research shows that children are more likely than adults to give in to peer pressure from robots, a disturbing finding given the rapidly increasing rate at which kids are interacting with socially intelligent machines. An experiment led by Anna-Lisa Vollmer from … Read more
From The Verge: Walmart’s ongoing battle with Amazon for the retail crown is expanding well beyond retail, and it’s forcing one of the largest companies in the world to reexamine its DNA. In the last six months alone, Walmart has partnered with scores of tech firms to better compete with Amazon and make progress in … Read more
From The Literary Hub: At a book reading in Kolkata, about a week after my first novel, The God of Small Things, was published, a member of the audience stood up and asked, in a tone that was distinctly hostile: “Has any writer ever written a masterpiece in an alien language? In a language other than … Read more
From The New Yorker: A lot of people are worried that robots are going to take their jobs. Doctors are worried that they’ll be replaced by robot doctors. Chefs are worried that they’ll be replaced by robot chefs. But me? I’m not worried. I do certain things at work that a robot would never be … Read more
From The New York Times: Many booksellers on Amazon strive to sell their wares as cheaply as possible. That, after all, is usually how you make a sale in a competitive marketplace. Other merchants favor a counterintuitive approach: Mark the price up to the moon. “Zowie,” the romance author Deborah Macgillivray wrote on Twitter last … Read more
From c/net: AI [artificial intelligence] software reportedly uncovered suspected GDPR breaches by Alphabet, Amazon and Facebook. The software — created by EU Institute researchers and a consumer group — looked at the privacy policies of 14 major technology businesses in June, the month after the EU’s new data privacy laws went into effect, according to Bloomberg. Researchers named the … Read more
From Medium: With all this talk of machine learning, augmented reality, and artificial intelligence, everyone’s focus is usually on the technology itself. Which makes sense, given that someone has to actually build those experiences. But your experience as a user of this world-changing tech hinges on whether or not you know how to use it. That’s where my team … Read more
From Bloomberg: Botnik is creating an unusual predictive keyboard—suggesting words based on what’s been typed—to generate everything from scripts for new episodes of Seinfeld to funny Valentine’s Day recipes. The results are by design weird as hell. . . . . Art created by artificial intelligence has become a reliable success in the finicky world of viral … Read more
From The New York Review of Books: A few days before I left for a trip to Japan with my husband, I signed up to rent a translation device called Pocketalk. According to a press release from January, when the device debuted at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Pocketalk “learns as you go, fits in your pocket, … Read more
Not exactly about books (except for scifi), but, for PG, an interesting topic. From The Wall Street Journal: Over the centuries, humans have created countless technologies to save ourselves from backbreaking physical labor and mindless routine. AI continues that progress by taking over many rote cognitive tasks that don’t require human judgment, strategic planning or creativity. Whether … Read more
Not the sort of writing prompt PG necessarily enjoys. From The South China Morning Post: Government-backed surveillance projects are deploying brain-reading technology to detect changes in emotional states in employees on the production line, the military and at the helm of high-speed trains On the surface, the production lines at Hangzhou Zhongheng Electric look like … Read more
From Fast Company: Imagine, if you will, being tasked with categorizing and connecting 200 years of science fiction literature, art, television, and films–and condensing it into six hour-long episodes. Such was the Dantesque labor of love James Cameron tackled for his new AMC series. . . . . The series–the second installment of the cable … Read more
From CNBC: Facebook did not read the terms and services of the app that improperly shared user data with Cambridge Analytica, the company’s chief technology officer said Thursday. “We require that people have a terms and conditions and we have an automated check there at the time — this was in 2014, maybe earlier,” Mike … Read more
From Quartz: Universities don’t like change. But as the breakneck pace of technology speeds up the modern economy, these ancient institutions are starting to break the rules. To adapt to the needs of future workers, some colleges are moving their courses online; others are doubling down on artificial intelligence. The latest school to offer a nontraditional approach to … Read more
The Passive Voice is not a political blog and won’t become a political blog, but PG found the following fascinating. From The New York Times: At one point during the 2016 presidential election campaign, I watched a bunch of videos of Donald Trump rallies on YouTube. I was writing an article about his appeal to … Read more
From Wired, Tech companies are rushing to infuse everything with artificial intelligence, driven by big leaps in the power of machine learning software. But the deep-neural-network software fueling the excitement has a troubling weakness: Making subtle changes to images, text, or audio can fool these systems into perceiving things that aren’t there. That could be a big problem … Read more
From LiveMint: In 18 short years, David Shelley has gone from being an editorial assistant and then publishing director at independent publisher Allison and Busby, to becoming chief executive of Hachette UK last month—a career that’s nothing short of phenomenal. Along the way, the Oxford graduate in English literature has also been the CEO of … Read more