Communications of the ACM
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How the “Frontier” Became the Slogan of Uncontrolled AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) has been billed as the next frontier of humanity: the newly available expanse whose exploration …
From Geeking with Greg
AI letter signers not worried about doomsday AI
An article in Wired, "A Letter Prompted Talk of AI Doomsday. Many Who Signed Weren't Actually AI Doomers": A significant number of those who signed were, it seems...
From Geeking with Greg
Challenges using LLMs for startups
Someone (not an AI expert) was asking me about applying large language models (LLMs, like ChatGPT) to a particular product. In case it's useful to others, here's...
From Geeking with Greg
Attacking the economics of scams and misinformation
We see so many scams and so much misinformation on the internet because it is profitable. It's cheap to create bogus accounts. It's cheap to use hordes of accounts...
From Geeking with Greg
Optimizing for the wrong thing
Many companies that think of themselves as data-driven underestimate how easy it is for metrics to go terribly wrong. Take a simple example. Imagine an executive...
From Geeking with Greg
Why did wisdom of the crowds fail?
Wisdom of the crowds summarizes the opinions of many people to produce useful results. Wisdom of the crowds algorithms -- like rankers, recommenders, and trending...
From Geeking with Greg
Netflix and their new streaming with ads
I was curious about how well Netflix's new ad-supported plans are doing. There hasn't been a lot of criticial reporting on it, and I'm sure others are wondering...
From Geeking with Greg
Only as good as the data
The Washington Post reports on the data used for ChatGPT and other large language models (LLMs): We found several media outlets that rank low on NewsGuard’s...
From Geeking with Greg
The biggest threat to Google
Nico Grant at the New York Times writes that Google is furiously adding features to its web search, including personalized search and personalized information recommendations...
From Geeking with Greg
Ubiquitous fake crowds
The Washington Post writes: "The Russian government has become far more successful at manipulating social media and search engine rankings than previously known...
From Geeking with Greg
Are ad-driven business models bad?
There's been a lot of discussion that ad-driven business models are inherently exploitative and anti-consumer. I think that's both wrong and not a helpful way to...
From Geeking with Greg
NATO on bots, sockpuppets, and shills manipulating social media
NATO has a new report, "Social Media Manipulation 2022/2023: Assessing the Ability of Social Media Companies to Combat Platform Manipulation". Buying manipulation...
From Geeking with Greg
Too many metrics and the Otis Redding problem
The "Otis Redding problem" is "holding people, groups, or businesses to too many metrics: They can’t satisfy or even think about all of them at once." The problem...
From Geeking with Greg
Superhuman AI in the game Go
For a few years now, AI achieved superhuman game playing abilities for Go. It was quite a milestone for AI. When I was in graduate school, people used to joke that...
From Geeking with Greg
Huge numbers of fake accounts on Twitter
It seems like this should get more attention, "hundreds of thousands of counterfeit Twitter accounts set up by Russian propaganda and disinformation" that are "still...
From Geeking with Greg
Details on personalized learning at Duolingo
There's a new, great, long article on how Duolingo's personalized learning algorithms work, "How Duolingo's AI learns what you need to learn". An excerpt as a teaser...
From Geeking with Greg
Massive fake crowds for disinformation campaigns
The Guardian has a good article, "'Aims': the software for hire that can control 30,000 fake online profiles", on fake crowds faking popularity and consensus to...
From Geeking with Greg
How can enshittification happen?
Cory Doctorow has a great piece in Wired, "The ‘Enshittification’ of TikTok. Or how, exactly, platforms die." It's about that we regularly see companies make their...
From Geeking with Greg
Layoffs as a social contagion
Stanford Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer wrote about the recent layoffs at tech companies, saying that it hurts the company in the long-term, but CEOs can't avoid the...
From Geeking with Greg
Are ad-supported business models anti-consumer?
Advertising-supported businesses are harder to align with long-term customer satisfaction than subscription businesses, but they make more money if they do. A common...
From Geeking with Greg