AI-created Video vs Human-made Video

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Researchers recently tested how audiences liked three types of video: human-made, partly automated and fully automated video. The human-made video did best with audiences, but only slightly better than the partly AI video. Both did much better than the fully AI-made video. The researchers think this supports the use of the hybrid form over fully automated since "audiences like their videos to have a human touch." A key part of making this work, I believe, will be identifying what the audience perceives as indicating a piece of media is AI or human-made. For instance, the researchers note that the audience associated nat sound with video that was (at least partly) human-created. This may translate to other forms of media creation as well. The study is published here and read more about it here.

Stephen Goforth

Learning Wisdom

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Taking our cue from the machinery and the data that dominate our world, we usually view knowledge as something that accumulates piecemeal over time. You start out with a little, and then you gradually pick up more and more. It’s like possessions: they pile up over time. But passive accumulation isn’t the way that you learn the most important things that you know about the world. First you are immersed in the knowledge, then you get distance from it (and even deny it) and then you return to a new relation with it.

William Bridges, The Way of Transition

The Impact of AI on Creativity in a Dozen Recent Articles

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The experiment that got out of control

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Philip Zimbardo is one of the most controversial figures in psychology, said Katie Kilkenny in Pacific Standard. In 1971, the Stanford professor conducted a now notorious psychological experiment that placed 24 student volunteers as prisoners and guards in a simulated prison. The experiment quickly spun out of control, as the student guards became increasingly sadistic toward their prisoners and Zimbardo—who acted as prison superintendent—was accused of subjecting his volunteers to psychological torture. Four decades on, Zimbardo stands by his study—if only because it taught the world that anyone can be seduced by evil under the right circumstances. “[We like to think] our personality is relatively fixed, we are who we are, that we are not influenced by things around us,” says Zimbardo, 82. “This study says no, that might be true sometimes, but other times when you’re put in an unfamiliar situation where you don’t have any guidelines or rules that contain who you are, you could be anything.” He insists we’ve all witnessed this phenomenon: “Somebody you know suddenly begins to change because they’ve been given a certain role or authority.” Zimbardo admits that he, too, was corrupted by his prison role. “I lost my sense of compassion,” he says. “I totally lost that.”

The Week Magazine, August 7, 2015

17 Articles about Running an AI Company

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The Residue of the Relationship

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When individual members leave a family, whether through death, marriage, relocation, or a cutoff, the system will generally be quick to replace the person who is lost. Whoever the replacement is, new child or new spouse, new in-law or new boarder, clergyman or clergy woman, in the same generation or the next, he or she will replace in all the family triangles the person who has left. They will have grafted onto them all the expectations associated with the predecessor, and the un-worked-out problems that may have contributed to the predecessor’s leaving (or becoming symptomatic) are likely to resurface in the new relationships. Replacement is a function of grief, and grief is always proportional to the un-worked-out residue of the relationship that was lost.

Edwin Friedman, Generation to Generation

What to let go of

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What it is time to let go of is not so much the relationship or the job itself, but rather the hopes, fears, dreams, and beliefs that we have attached to them. If you let go only of the job or the relationship, you’ll just find another one and attach the same hopes, fears, dreams and beliefs to it. A loss is best seen as the cue that it is time to let go of the inner thing.

William Bridges, The Way of Transition

Where AI Might Take Journalism

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Imagine having a written news story converted into a video by AI. The AI would not be taking away from the journalism but providing more options to access the information. Perhaps the story can be adjusted based on preferences. For instance, perhaps the reader doesn’t know much about economics and wants the material delivered in simple economic terms. Or the reader might want more detail in a story related to their field. AI would be used to adjust the complexity of the delivery. This may be the kind of journalism we are headed toward.

Resisting change

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We resist transition not because we can't accept the change, but because we can’t accept letting go of that piece of ourselves that we have to give up when and because the situation has changed. We also resist transition because it takes longer (often much longer) than change, and so it leaves us in limbo—or in the neutral zone, as I prefer to call it—while a replacement reality and a new self is gradually being formed.

William Bridges, The Way of Transition

14 Recent Articles about How AI is Impacting Jobs

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Living in the Past

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Every day I am discovering that people are depressed and defeated because of their past failures and mistakes. They allow their past failures to dominate their present thinking. Because of some past failure, they have convinced themselves that they are no good and they are incapable of doing anything worthwhile. Not only do they doubt their abilities to accomplish anything, but they also down their worth as human beings. Anyone who lives in the past, brooding over past mistakes, will have a difficult time living in the present. If you want to be unhappy, then constantly rethink your past failures. If you want to live victoriously, leave your past failures and disappointments in the past where they belong.

Larry Kennedy, Down with Anxiety!

21 Recent Articles about Journalism & AI: Uses, Ethics, & Dangers

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Yahoo News debuted a fresh A.I.-powered news app – Wired

Ten big questions on AI and the news – Columbia Journalism Review  

It Looked Like a Reliable News Site. It Was an A.I. Chop Shop. – New York Times

NYT issues guidance on its A.I. principles – InPublishing

AI companies freeze out partisan media – Semafor

AI newsroom guidelines look very similar, says a researcher who studied them. He thinks this is bad news - Reuters Institute  

WSJ editor Emma Tucker on how publishers can protect themselves from AI challenge – Press Gazettte

For the first time, two Pulitzer winners disclosed using AI in their reporting – Harvard’s Nieman Lab

AI for Data Journalism: demonstrating what we can do with this stuff right now – Simon Willison

The media bosses fighting back against AI — and the ones cutting deals – Washington Post

A national network of local news sites is publishing AI-written articles under fake bylines. Experts are raising alarm - CNN

What does the public in six countries think of generative AI in news? | Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism - Reuters Institute  

USA Today is adding AI-generated summaries to the top of its articles - The Verge  

Google’s and Microsoft’s AI Chatbots Refuse to Say Who Won the 2020 US Election – Wired

Julia Angwin on trust in journalism and the future of AI and the news – Journalist’s Resources

AI’s coming inverted pyramid moment for journalism – Poynter

Does AI Have a Place in Journalism? 6 Ways It Helps Us Craft Our Original Work – PC Magazine

Why TikTok star Sophia Smith Galer created an AI tool to help journalists make viral videos – Journalism.co  

Newsrooms are experimenting with generative AI, warts and all – The Conversation

Media Companies Are Making a Huge Mistake With AI – The Atlantic

‘Devastating’ potential impact of Google AI Overviews on publisher visibility revealed - Press Gazette

The Secret Power

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You may think that your rehearsal of a job interview was flawless, but your opinion isn't what counts. Or you may believe you played that bar of the Brahms violin concerto perfectly, but can you really trust your own judgment? In many important situations, a teacher, coach, or mentor is vital for providing crucial feedback.

Deliberate practice is above all an effort of focus and concentration. That is what makes it "deliberate," as distinct from the mindless playing of scales or hitting of tennis balls that most people engage in. Continually seeking exactly those elements of performance that are unsatisfactory and then trying one's hardest to make them better places enormous strains on anyone's mental abilities.

The work is so great that it seems no one can sustain it for very long.

Doing things we know how to do well is enjoyable, and that's exactly the opposite of what deliberate practice demands. Instead of doing what we're good at, we insistently seek out what we're not good at.

Then we identify the painful, difficult activities that will make us better and do those things over and over. After each repetition, we force ourselves to see - or get others to tell us - exactly what still isn't right so we can repeat the most painful and difficult parts of what we've just done. We continue that process until we're mentally exhausted.

If it seems a bit depressing that the most important thing you can do to improve performance is no fun, take consolation in this fact: It must be so. If the activities that lead to greatness were easy and fun, then everyone would do them and no one could distinguish the best from the rest.

The reality that deliberate practice is hard can even be seen as good news. It means that most people won't do it. So your willingness to do it will distinguish you all the more.

Geoff Colvin, Why Talent is Overrated