AI isn't magic, Timnit Gebru's paper, and Proton Mail
Relevant Roundup, It's News to Me, Tech Beyond the Valley + Unplug from Tech
🔥Enough to be Dangerous
Talk tech, don’t code it, so you can talk about all kinds of other stuff.
Stay Savvy
Curated links and commentary at the intersection of tech, business, and culture.
Relevant Roundup
Things that are relevant to the current business and/or cultural zeitgeist
How AI-generated art is changing the concept of art itself from The LA Times
I haven’t talked about generative AI at all thus far, but I’m sure you’re being taken care of elsewhere ;-) The article itself is what I’d call a visual read, but two things stood out to me as I read it in my current state of mind - copyright and not forgetting it’s not magic.
There’s a long section on the issue of copyright, which is currently very top of mind for me as I write my baby, the SaaS Savvy course, and establish my own catchphrases and frameworks for understanding tech as a non-technical person. Like the artist of a painting, I wouldn’t want those to get scrambled up into something new (that then someone else could go on to copyright.) But at the same time, I’ve also been benefitting a lot from the scraping and vectorizing of all the internet’s content as I write the course myself and search for answers.
Which brings me to the resonating point - I understand at a high level how this thing works. Hashtag not an expert, but sometimes Jasper spits out text that looks sewn together from sources I’ve already seen. But they quote Cosmopolitan’s video editor:
“I felt like I was witnessing magic,” she says. “Now that it’s been a few months, I’m like, ‘Well, yes, of course, AI generates anything.’”
It’s more important than ever that we as human beings feel empowered to understand at a high level how all this AI works under the hood so that we don’t forget it is not magic. It’s technology. It can be tweaked and altered and turned on and turned off or even run out of power. It’s still human beings and 0s and 1s behind this whole thing, and the more jaded we become (which happens enormously quickly) or the more we given into fantastical feelings of awe, we give away more of our ability to collectively shape what it will do for us, how, and the limits we can - and will - impose.
It’s News to Me
Profound, perhaps never thought-about things RE internet, cloud, and business
We read the paper that forced Timnit Gebru out of Google. Here’s what it says. from MIT Technology Review
AI computer scientist and ethicist Timnit Gebru was fired from Google in 2020 after the publication of a paper entitled, “On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?” I kept reading about it, and I was curious to know just what was written in this paper that pushed Google to fire her. MIT Tech Review summarizes many of its points in this article. Aside from the ethical implications posed by unfettered AI, I was most taken aback by the environmental and financial costs of AI - just training a version of Google’s BERT alone one time through is equivalent CO2-wise to a round-trip flight between NYC and San Francisco.
I need to read more about internet emissions, which according to the BBC make up 3.7% of all global emissions. But it’s another moment to reflect on the non-magic, very human-made internet that poses earthly consequences. As I wrote in The alluring intrigue of internet infrastructure, “It’s all just teetering on the edge a bit, isn’t it?”
Tech Beyond the Valley
Things happening in tech in literally anywhere else
Inside the Face-Off Between Russia and a Small Internet Access Firm from The New York Times
Earlier this year I was exploring Gmail alternatives, and Switzerland-based Proton Mail was one of them that was specifically touted for its privacy and security features. It was a little beyond what I felt that I needed, but clearly there are plenty of people who require such features for both courageous and nefarious purposes. Beyond an email client, they offer free virtual private network (VPN) software that masks a person’s identity and location online, and this article details how has made them a foe to Russia. Proton employees may live in blissful Switzerland, but on the internet, there are no borders. Scary.
Unplug from tech
Not tech-related, but fodder for more stimulating small talk or captivating an audience.
Why Is This Generation Struggling So Much? from The Modern Wisdom podcast ft. Professor Scott Galloway
I discovered Scott Galloway on Eva Longoria’s Connections podcast (which I linked to in Internet Landlords + Data Centers). Described by the NY Times as the “Howard Stern of the Business World” and perhaps a healthier alternative for young men put off by current Joe Rogan, Galloway both critiques and loves Big Tech, teaches marketing at NYU, and wants to create more economically viable men in society. I’m all for it.
In Case You Missed It + Follow Up
Subscriber Emily wrote in, “What do ‘computing computers’ look like?”
If you don’t work in IT or systems engineering, you’re probably only familiar with desktop PCs, monitors, and smartphones. Computing computers are mostly hidden from view in data centers or server rooms. So let me unveil some for you …
That’s all for now. Thanks for reading!
Up next week, it’s Alice Egan is SaaS Savvy - my self-ordained platform for thoughts and musings on all things web, SaaS, and cloud
Alice Egan, Founder & Educator, SaaS Savvy.
I teach B2B SaaS salespeople the technical SaaS + cloud concepts they need to sell SaaS smarter + talk tech with confidence. Learn about my online course.