In an unexpected but pleasant twist, tonight, I chatted with a friend about what I saw in the images I’d posted to Glass throughout the year. He has an artistic background and was often able to see — and speak to — things that I’d not considered previously. It’s also clear that I’m getting better at explaining and outlining what’s in my images, the common thematics and how they’re developing over time, and able to provide critique to past work.
So a pleasant twist and progress!
This article by Ramani and Wang, entitled “Why transformative AI is really, really hard to achieve,” is probably the best critical economic analysis of the current AI debates I’ve come across. It assesses what would be required for AI technologies to live up to the current hype cycles about how these technologies will massively benefit economic productivity. Based on the nature of AI technologies being developed, combined with the history of economic productivity enhancements over time, the authors conclude that the present day hype is unlikely to be met.
Key to the arguments is that AI technologies do not, as of yet, sufficiently automate a vast set of tasks which are comparatively easy for humans to accomplish, nor are they able to benefit from the latent knowledge and intelligence that guides humans in their daily lives. The authors argue that AI technologies must broadly automate tasks, instead of discretely automating them, in order to achieve cross-industry improvements to productivity. Doing otherwise will merely accelerate aspects of processes which will remain gridlocked in the aggregate by more traditional or less automated processes.
The authors are not dismissing the potential utility of AI technologies, however, but instead just arguing that they are not as likely to achieve the transformative economic miracles that many are suggesting are just around the corner. However, even if AI systems are ‘only’ as significant for productivity as the combustion engine (which discretely as opposed to comprehensively enhanced productivity) this would be a significant accomplishment.
Mark Stenberg has a good assessment of the challenges facing Clubhouse, the newest ‘hot’ social media app that involves individuals having audio discussions in real-time with one another in rooms that are created on the platform. He suspects that Clubhouse may work best in quarantine:
A glimpse of Instagram brings a fleeting burst of serotonin, but a second’s worth of Clubhouse is meaningless. Will you then, at night, leave your family in the other room so you can pop your headphones in and listen to strangers swapping their valuable thoughts on the news of the day?
…
When commutes and daily life return, people will once again have a few parceled-off periods of the day in which they can listen to audio entertainment. If there are no good Clubhouse conversations at those exact times, the app is far less valuable than a podcast platform or music-streaming service. The very characteristic that makes it so appealing — its real-time nature — will make it challenging for listeners to fold it into their lives when reality returns.
Whether a real-time app that depends on relative quiet and available time, and which is unsuitable for multitasking, survives in its current form as people emerge from their relative isolation will be interesting to measure in real-time once vaccines are widely spread throughout society. But, equally interesting (to my mind) are the assumptions baked into that very question: why not just ask people (e.g., essential workers) who continue to commute en mass and inquire about whether they are, or will be, using Clubhouse? Why not ask those who do not have particularly fungible or quiet lives at the moment (e.g., parents who are homeschooling younger children while working their day jobs) whether the app is compelling during quarantine periods?
To put it another way, the very framing of Clubhouse presupposes a number of affordances that really mostly pertain to a subset of relatively privileged members of society. It’s lovely that some tech workers, who work from home, and journalists who have similar lifestyles are interested in the app. But that doesn’t mean that it’ll broadly interest people, just as most people are dismissive of text-based social media applications (e.g., Twitter) and even visual-based apps (e.g., Instagram).
But, at the same time, this may not matter. If the founders are aiming for growing and sustaining the existing platform and not for the typical Silicon Valley viral growth, then their presently suggested modes of deriving profits might work. Specifically, current proposals include, “tipping, subscriptions, and ticketing” which, if adopted, could mean this is a social networking platform that doesn’t rely on the normal advertising or data brokerage models which have been adopted by most social media platforms and companies.
Will any of this work? Who knows. Most social media companies are here today, gone tomorrow, and I bet that Clubhouse is probably in that category. But, at the same time, it’s worth thinking through who these kinds of apps are designed for so that we can appreciate the politics, privilege, and power which are imbued into the technologies which surround us and the ways that we talk about those technologies.
I really love the social media billboards that Mike Campau has created. Just stunning pieces to look at while providing always-needed critical introspection of social media services themselves.
Nasim Mansurow at Photography Life:
Don’t be a victim of The Hype. Don’t be a cameraholic and a brainless consumer. Stop yourself from the Internet hysteria that surrounds cameras, lenses and other gear. Instead, spend time learning about photography techniques and improving your skills. Travel more, see more, shoot more. And when I review a piece of camera gear, don’t buy it because I praised it. Only buy what you truly need, not what you want. That’s all I have to say for today.
Mansurov’s article spends a lot of time explaining the economics that drive individual ‘influencers’ and websites to get people excited about buying the new ‘best’ camera equipment. By drawing on Photography Life’s website analytics and the marketing material that he receives, he lays bare the economic incentives to focus of gear instead of techniques, skills, and neat locations to visit. In the process he also makes it very clear how the commercial aspects of selling equipment work in a way that most people may think or believe is happening but don’t have evidence or data to substantiate those thoughts or beliefs. It’s not a shocking read but does serve as a reminder that companies are actively attempting to manipulate consumers into buying the newest lenses or body with the hope or dream that it will turn us all into master photographers.
People are worried that someone’s going to steal their data or secretly access their personal devices. Border agents are accessing devices with worrying regularity. Travellers are being separated from their devices and electronic when they fly. Devices are stolen with depressing regularity. And then there’s the ongoing concern that jealous spouses, partners, or family members will try to see with whom their partner’s been emailing, Snapchatting, or Whatsapping.
Few people are well positioned to defend against all of these kinds of intrusions. Some might put a password on their device. Others might be provided by updates for their devices (and even install the updates!). But few consumers are well situated to determine which software is better or worse in terms of providing security and user privacy, or make informed decisions about how much a security product is actually worth.
Consider a longstanding question that plagues regular consumers: which version of Windows is ‘the most secure’? Security experts often advise consumers to encrypt their devices to prevent many of the issues linked to theft. Unfortunately, only the professional or enterprise versions of Windows offer BitLocker, which provides strong full disk encryption.1 These professional versions are rarely provided by-default to consumers when they buy their laptops or desktops — they get the ‘Home’ editions instead — because why would everyday folks want to encrypt their data at rest using the best security available? (See above list for reasons.)
Consumers ask the same security-related questions about different applications they use. Consider:
Password managers all generally offer the same kind of security promises: use the manager, generate unique passwords, and thus reduce the likelihood that one website’s security failure will result in all of a person’s accounts being victimized. ‘Security people’ have been pushing regular consumers to adopt these managers for a long time. It’s generally an uphill fight because trusting a service with all your passwords is scary. It’s also a hill that got a little steeper following an announcement by AgileBits this week.
AgileBits sells a password manager called ‘1Password’. The company has recognized that people are worried about their devices being seized at borders or about border agents compelling people to log into their various services and devices. Such services could include the 1Password, which is pitched as a safe place to hold your logins, credit card information, identity information, and very private notes. Recognizing the the company has encouraged people to store super sensitive information in one place, and thus create a goldmine for border agents, AgileBits has released a cool travel mode for 1Password to reduce the likelihood that a border agent will get access to that stash of private and secret data.
But that cool travel mode that’s now integrated into 1Password? It’s only available to people who pay a monthly subscription for the software. So all those people who were already skeptical of password managers and who it was very hard to convince them to use a manger in the first place but who we finally got to use 1Password or similar service? Or those people who resist monthly payments for things and would rather just buy their software once and be done with it? Yeah, they’re unlikely to subscribe to AgileBit’s monthly service. And so those users who’ve been taught to store all their stuff in 1Password are effectively building up a prime private information goldmine for border agents and AgileBits is willing to sell them out to the feds because they’re not paying up.
People who already sunk money into 1Password to buy the software are, now, users the 1Password Home version. Or to be blunt: they get the segregated kinds of security that Microsoft is well known for. It’s disappointing that in AgileBits’ efforts to ‘convert’ people to ongoing payments that the company has decided to penalize some of its existing user base. But I guess it’s great for border agents!
I’m sure AgileBits and 1Password will survive, just as Microsoft does, but it’s certainly is a sad day when some users get more security than others. And it’s especially sad when a company that is predicated on aggregating sensitive data in one location decides it would rather exploit that vulnerability for its own profit instead of trying to protect all of its users equally.
NOTE: This was first published on Medium on May 24, 2017.
Never let the facts get in the way of a good Cronkite moment:
Lost in all the boosterism and talk of 9/11, solidarity and resolve was another inconvenient fact: A lot of the so-called ‘iron-clad’ reporting about what allegedly took place last Wednesday has turned out to be crap.
We were told that there were two or more shooters. Wrong. We were told that Wednesday’s shooting was likely “linked” to the hit and run death of Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent in St. St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec and hence that some sort of wider conspiracy was afoot. Wrong. We were told that shooter Michael Zahef-Bibeau was on a high-risk travel list. Wrong. We were told that Zahef-Bibeau wanted to travel to Syria. Wrong. (He hoped to go to Saudi Arabia – one of Canada’s best buddies in the Middle East.) We were told that the 90-odd individuals supposedly on a CSIS “watch” list were being “rounded up” by authorities. Wrong.
Even the “hero” Sergeant-at-Arms “story” is collapsing. Reportedly, Zahef-Bibeau was shot at least a dozen times and possibly dead before Kevin Vickers fired his gun.
The NYT has an incredibly depressing view of the way that Brasil is moving forward; while much of it is shared by the citizens of that country the article is overly one-sided and generally lacks a comprehensive understanding of why some of the cost overruns and setbacks have happened. We read that environmental protections and efforts to work with aboriginal people’s have led to railroads being delayed: why were there such expectations of a smooth and quick development of such railroads in the first place? Perhaps because the ‘frictions’ of such development (i.e. environment and people living on the land) had been cast aside?
What is largely missing throughout the piece is the context: why were certain projects put forward and then abandoned? In the absence of such context we’re left with the impression that the setbacks are the result of poor management and bureaucracy but is this the case, or simply the projection of American values onto specific South American infrastructure decisions?
So, I pointed to some of the issues with Steve Paikin’s comments a few days ago. Recap: he posted to his blog that he had significant problems getting women onto his program, and used some insensitive/poorly considered language in expressing why he thought TVO was facing challenges.
TVO’s put on a show that (more or less) takes Paikin to task. It’s worth a watch, and it reveals both how Paikin views the challenges of booking as well as a set of women who take him to task. More discussions like this need to happen, and at length, in more of our popular media venues.
Talking with Salmon, Goodman said she has an “enormous amount of evidence, including evidence which is not public,” persuading her Dorian Nakamoto is the right guy. “Goodman has not decided whether or how she might publish that evidence… What’s more, she has also made it clear that she was in possession of evidence which other journalists could not obtain,” Salmon wrote.
And that’s a problem, because many aspects of the story already look like a caricature of journalism gone awry. The man Goodman fingered as being worth $400 million or more is just as modest as his house suggests. He’s had a stroke and struggles with other health issues. Unemployed since 2001, he strives to take care of basic needs for himself and his 93-year-old mother, according to a reddit post by his brother Arthur Nakamoto (whom Goodman quoted as calling his brother an “asshole”).
If Goodman has mystery evidence supporting the Dorian Nakamoto theory, it should have been revealed days ago. Otherwise, Newsweek and Goodman are delaying an inevitable comeuppance and doubling down on past mistakes. Nakamoto’s multiple denials on the record have changed the dynamic of the story. Standing by the story, at this point, is an attack on him and his credibility.
Ars Technica has written one of the better critiques of the Newsweek story which (likely incorrectly) identified the man believed to have invented Bitcoin. It’s worth the read, if only to have the current state of debate over Newsweek’s story nicely summarized.
Source: The colossal arrogance of Newsweek’s Bitcoin “scoop”
Excited Pixels