BLOG – Page 4 – Hello, I'm DK – creative producer and speaker coach

#65 June 2024 | Monthly Digital Breadcrumbs

Taken at a recent trip to Salzburg MOMA.

A bunch of things (which I added to my Tumblr) for your eyes and ears plus brain to spend time on (as no longer on Twitter).

READ

“It’s only when Salim Ismail, SU’s “global ambassador” and the week’s moderator, fails to project his slides that we are reminded that the technological singularity may not be quite as near as predicted. “AI is really easy,” Ismail sighs as he fiddles with the projector connection. “AV is really hard.””
On the exponential curve: inside Singularity University | WIRED

“Research has shown that we don’t consider plants to be important mostly because they grow close together and don’t appear to move. As Wandersee and Schlusser wrote, “Static proximity is a visual cue humans use to group objects, so individual plants and different plant species tend to be de-emphasized.” A vine takes hours to turn toward sunlight, a bristlecone hundreds of years to mature. Each organism’s clock — its sense of time — is so different from ours that we can’t even sense it. In other words, what we call plant blindness is really time blindness: an obliviousness to temporal frames of reference that deviate from our own. And, despite Wandersee and Schlusser’s schoolroom agitprop, the situation is probably worse today than in 1999, exacerbated by our ever-diminishing attention spans, e-commerce, social media and more. The pace of civilization continues to quicken.”
A Clock In The Forest – NOEMA

“While Apple maintains its in-house AI is made with security in mind, its partnership with OpenAI has sparked plenty of criticism. OpenAI tool ChatGPT has long been the subject of privacy concerns. Launched in November 2022, it collected user data without explicit consent to train its models, and only began to allow users to opt out of such data collection in April 2023.”
AI is coming to your Apple devices. Will it be secure? | Apple | The Guardian

“Let’s assume, fast-forward five or six years, that AI is ready,” Yuan said. “AI probably can help for maybe 90% of the work, but in terms of real-time interaction, today, you and I are talking online. So, I can send my digital version, you can send your digital version.” Using AI avatars in this way could free up time for less career-focused choices, Yuan, who also founded Zoom, added. “You and I can have more time to have more in-person interactions, but maybe not for work. Maybe for something else. Why do we need to work five days a week? Down the road, four days or three days. Why not spend more time with your family?””
The future is … sending AI avatars to meetings for us, says Zoom boss | Artificial intelligence (AI) | The Guardian

“A group of current and former employees at prominent artificial intelligence companies issued an open letter on Tuesday that warned of a lack of safety oversight within the industry and called for increased protections for whistleblowers. The letter, which calls for a “right to warn about artificial intelligence”, is one of the most public statements about the dangers of AI from employees within what is generally a secretive industry. Eleven current and former OpenAI workers signed the letter, along with two current or former Google DeepMind employees – one of whom previously worked at Anthropic.”
OpenAI and Google DeepMind workers warn of AI industry risks in open letter | Artificial intelligence (AI) | The Guardian

“Large language models such as ChatGPT are some of the most energy-guzzling technologies of all. Research suggests, for instance, that about 700,000 litres of water could have been used to cool the machines that trained ChatGPT-3 at Microsoft’s data facilities. It is hardly news that the tech bubble’s self-glorification has obscured the uglier sides of this industry, from its proclivity for tax avoidance to its invasion of privacy and exploitation of our attention span. The industry’s environmental impact is a key issue, yet the companies that produce such models have stayed remarkably quiet about the amount of energy they consume – probably because they don’t want to spark our concern.”
The ugly truth behind ChatGPT: AI is guzzling resources at planet-eating rates | Mariana Mazzucato | The Guardian

WATCH

If no video appears please click here: MARSHALL MCLUHAN on ADVERTISING | 24 Hours | Writers and Wordsmiths | BBC Archive

EXPLORE

Get AI to write a whole song via Suno.

This site does one thing: copyshrugemoji.com

Listen via ESA to the scary sound of Earth’s magnetic field.

Cara is a social media and portfolio platform for non-AI artists.

These images of the Eastern Ukraine’s Massive Soledar Mines.

Play old school retro games in browser like the terrific Bomberman.

Jan is a privacy-first, open source, on-device app that runs AI locally on any hardware.

If you want to lace shoes, tie shoes or learn about shoelaces, Ian’s Shoelace Site is the place!

Explore over 30,000 BBC Sound Effects and download to use freely (if for non-commercial use).

Krita is a professional FREE and open source painting program. It is made by artists that want to see affordable art tools for everyone.

A comprehensive resource for anyone interested in the craft of brand manifestos from a writer inside the creative studios at Apple and Meta.

All monthly digital breadcrumbs posts.

For Those Who Want To Tell Better Stories #13 | Thumping & Plucking The Bass, Informational For Buying A Car, and Drumming Blind

A few chosen narrative examples, to uncover forms, inspire the soul and stir the creative spirits.

Bass player, Larry Graham, taking us through a musical story of how he established the slap bass technique we’ve all come to know (and love). It’s a case of showing / illustrating whilst telling which simply adds a literal underscore to the narrative being shared. And check out the integrated microphone on the guitar itself. Phat!

The pure amount of information crammed into this video about buying a used car is intensely cool. Think about any ‘how to’ videos you’ve watched recently or ones you develop to share knowledge and now see it through the lens of this approach. More is definitely more in this case.

As an ex-skin-basher I found this a wonderfully intriguing plus awe-inducing. From the ‘blind listen’ to the reveal / education of using a lead sheet right through to the exploration of improvisation. Removing an instrument track or an element from an existing creation and asking someone with mastery to complete it is a fascinating example of creative exploration, recording it and sharing it with the world is bold as. What would this look like in your industry / sector?

Check out all the ‘For Those Who Want To Tell Better Stories’ posts.

Image credit.

#64 May 2024 | Monthly Digital Breadcrumbs

A bunch of things (which I added to my Tumblr) for your eyes and ears plus brain to spend time on (as no longer on Twitter).

READ

“A little-discussed detail in the Lavender AI article is that Israel is killing people based on being in the same Whatsapp group [1] as a suspected militant [2]. Where are they getting this data? Is WhatsApp sharing it?“
Meta and Lavender

“Maybe AI art is the future. Maybe I can create so much more, express myself, and do everything I never had the energy to do,” you say. Your AI therapist wholeheartedly agrees with you. You are inspired. You are powerful. You are spending twenty dollars per month on ChatGPT Plus.”
The Seven Stages of AI Grief (for Artists) – McSweeney’s Internet Tendency

“As I’ve argued previously, we — with good reason — continually complain about the state of Twitter under Elon Musk, but I’d argue Raghavan (and, by extension, Google CEO Sundar Pichai) deserve as much criticism, if not more, for the damage they’ve done to society. Because Google is the ultimate essential piece of online infrastructure, just like power lines and water mains are in the physical realm.”
The Man Who Killed Google Search

“Social networks have become “the web” for many people who rarely venture outside of their tall and increasingly reinforced walls. As Tom Eastman once put it, the web has rotted into “five giant websites, each filled with screenshots of the other four”.1 Within those enclosures, the character limits, neutered subset of web functionality, and constant push to satisfy the enigmatic desires of an algorithm tuned to keeping eyeballs on the platform encourage sameness, vapid engagement farming, and rage bait while stifling creativity.”
We can have a different web

“The real moment of change, he believes, came some months before the crash south of Stockholm, when a conversation took place in his office. It was during a visit from Ines Uusmann, the minister for infrastructure, and Tingvall’s political boss. At one point she turned to him and asked, simply: “How many deaths should we have as our long-term target in Sweden?” Tingvall replied: “Zero.” To his surprise, Uusmann said she was interested and would like to hear more. This was the beginning of an approach to road safety known as “Vision Zero”.”
More than a million people die on roads every year. Meet the man determined to prevent them – BBC Future

“The results reveal that internet access, mobile internet access and use generally predicted higher measures of the different aspects of wellbeing, with 84.9% of associations between internet connectivity and wellbeing positive, 0.4% negative and 14.7% not statistically significant.”
Internet use is associated with greater wellbeing, global study finds | Internet | The Guardian

“Aside from the fact that everyone has hated this corporation for years, what is the actual case against Live Nation? The argument is that the corporation violated Federal and state laws against monopolization, unlawful tying, and/or exclusive dealing in multiple markets, from primary ticketing services to concert and artist promotion to venue management. And they are seeking a divestment of Ticketmaster, an end to its unfair contracts and anti-competitive practices. According to the Department of Justice’s complaint, Live Nation has built a ‘Flywheel,’ dominating a bunch of different parts of the live entertainment industry through a bunch of different coercive techniques, such as threats, exclusive contracts, and acquisitions. It then uses its power to harm certain artists, and to impose a ‘Ticketmaster Tax’ via fees on consumers.”
Antitrust Enforcers to Break Up Ticketmaster and End the “Ticketmaster Tax” (finally)

“This is a comprehensive excavation of The Gateway Process report. The first section provides a timeline of the key historical developments that led to the CIA’s investigation and subsequent experimentations. The second section is a review of The Gateway Process report. It opens with a wall of theoretical context, on the other side of which lies enough understanding to begin to grasp the principles underlying the Gateway Experience training. The last section outlines the Gateway technique itself and the steps that go into achieving spacetime transcendence. Let’s go.”
How to Escape the Confines of Time and Space According to the CIA