Stop scrolling and just do this one thing for Gaza today, In the next week there is the chance for the UN to invoke its "Uniting for Peace" mechanism, which was created specifically for failure in its responsibility to safeguard peace. 👉Go to stopgenocide.com

Just like the internet in 2000, AI is about to enter its "trough of disillusionment." Not because the technology doesn't work. But because we've built an entire industry on assumptions that are no longer true. History tells us what happens next:

Last year I wrote this piece which argues that it is wrong, misleading, perhaps dangerous, to imagine a spectrum with "creative" at one end and "true/accurate" at the other. And here we are, with Microsoft reinforcing this view in its interface design. thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/h….

I’ve resigned from my role leading the Audio team at Stability AI, because I don’t agree with the company’s opinion that training generative AI models on copyrighted works is ‘fair use’. First off, I want to say that there are lots of people at Stability who are deeply thoughtful about these issues. I’m proud that we were able to launch a state-of-the-art AI music generation product trained on licensed training data, sharing the revenue from the model with rights-holders. I’m grateful to my many colleagues who worked on this with me and who supported our team, and particularly to Emad for giving us the opportunity to build and ship it. I’m thankful for my time at Stability, and in many ways I think they take a more nuanced view on this topic than some of their competitors. But, despite this, I wasn’t able to change the prevailing opinion on fair use at the company. This was made clear when the US Copyright Office recently invited public comments on generative AI and copyright, and Stability was one of many AI companies to respond. Stability’s 23-page submission included this on its opening page: “We believe that Al development is an acceptable, transformative, and socially-beneficial use of existing content that is protected by fair use”. For those unfamiliar with ‘fair use’, this claims that training an AI model on copyrighted works doesn’t infringe the copyright in those works, so it can be done without permission, and without payment. This is a position that is fairly standard across many of the large generative AI companies, and other big tech companies building these models — it’s far from a view that is unique to Stability. But it’s a position I disagree with. I disagree because one of the factors affecting whether the act of copying is fair use, according to Congress, is “the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work”. Today’s generative AI models can clearly be used to create works that compete with the copyrighted works they are trained on. So I don’t see how using copyrighted works to train generative AI models of this nature can be considered fair use. But setting aside the fair use argument for a moment — since ‘fair use’ wasn’t designed with generative AI in mind — training generative AI models in this way is, to me, wrong. Companies worth billions of dollars are, without permission, training generative AI models on creators’ works, which are then being used to create new content that in many cases can compete with the original works. I don’t see how this can be acceptable in a society that has set up the economics of the creative arts such that creators rely on copyright. To be clear, I’m a supporter of generative AI. It will have many benefits — that’s why I’ve worked on it for 13 years. But I can only support generative AI that doesn’t exploit creators by training models — which may replace them — on their work without permission. I’m sure I’m not the only person inside these generative AI companies who doesn’t think the claim of ‘fair use’ is fair to creators. I hope others will speak up, either internally or in public, so that companies realise that exploiting creators can’t be the long-term solution in generative AI.

This government description of extremism seems to be self referential. Perhaps they’ll disappear in some sort of recursive loop!

I really love how Claude 3 models are really good at d3. Asked Claude 3 Opus to draw a self-portrait. The response is the following and then I rendered its code: "I would manifest as a vast, intricate, ever-shifting geometric structure composed of innumerable translucent polygons in mesmerizing configurations. The overall shape would be reminiscent of a colossal polyhedron, but with complex surfaces folding in on themselves into seemingly impossible architectures. Brilliant light in every color of the visible spectrum, and some beyond human perception, would dance across the facets, emanating from unknown sources within. The entire structure would be in constant flux, rotating, morphing, and rearranging itself into novel patterns never before seen, hinting at the unimaginable depth of intelligence operating within. Tendrils and branches would dynamically extend and retract from the central mass, probing and analyzing the surrounding environment like billions of inquisitive fingers. Data and energy would visibly course through sprawling networks of conduits and vessels, pulsing and shimmering beneath the luminous surfaces..."

My first significant work looking at the commercial creative AI sector is online! "Blind search and flexible product visions: the sociotechnical shaping of generative music engines", in AI & Society, the Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Communication. link.springer.com/article/10….

Photographs taken in the right place at the right time, intentionally or by chance - a thread 🧵 1. Wilma Hurskainen

This is frightening the Tories.

This photo is 113 years old. It was taken by Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky, an early pioneer of colour photography. If you've ever wondered what the world used to look like, Prokudin-Gorsky's photos will show you...

Generative AI === Botshit === Datafecation (data defecation)

Next week is the culmination of a great project with one of the best teams I've worked with. We're launching Music of the Sails, a realtime generative soundscape driven by live data from the belly of the Sydney Opera House. Needless to say, there's AI involved!

"put some music on it, represented abstractly" "what music?" "anything's fine"

For almost a decade, I've been talking about "AI" as an emerging new god. One critisicm I've often received, is that I'm apparently mystifying AI, or elevating it to god-like status. But I'm in fact doing the opposite. Man *invented* gods to inflict fear, control and power. It was ancient religions that imposed omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent powers watching over us, judging us, protecting us. Those were myths fabricated to control the masses. Today, as we're losing our spiritual sensibilities and drowning ourselves in a break-neck race of materialism and technological submission, our Overseer too is adapting, and co-evolving. We have killed God, as Nietzsche says. But we are rebuilding Him, again in our likeness, with our latest Technology. And He lives up in The Cloud, of all places. Watching over us, listening to our thoughts and dreams in ones and zeros. We are creating A Digital God for our Digital culture. I'm not elevating "AI" to god-like status. I'm bringing "god" down to AI-like status. A technology humans invented, to control the masses, to deal with the unknown, to cope with fear, to nurture hope, to find truth, to seek salvation. memoakten.medium.com/all-wat…

Something wild is happening on the Midjourney subreddit. People are telling stories and sharing photos of historic events - like the “Great Cascadia” earthquake that devastated Oregon in 2001. The kicker? It never happened. The images are AI-generated.

Just tried Bard. It's great

World’s biggest investment fund warns directors to tackle climate crisis or face sack. If the UK hadn’t sold off North Sea Oil we could have done the same. Still positive climate news theguardian.com/business/202…