In Pursuit of Failure

/

When you consider failure, it is important to distinguish between two kinds. There is the failure of giving up, turning around, and walking away. Although this failure holds a certain seductive appeal, you must not let it divert you from the true heart of failure: the triumphant defeat of all your hopes, stratagems, and efforts. This is the ultimate failure that tells you who you are. This is the failure you have had to work hard for, the failure you put everything into—failure so rich with loss and pain that, even years later, it gives you the basis from which to make yourself anew, the scar tissue that deeply confirms your aliveness. Real failure requires real effort and is its own reward.

Andrew Boyd, Daily Afflictions

20 Articles about the business of running an AI

/

AI Scientists Have a Problem: AI Bots Are Reviewing Their Work ChatGPT is wreaking chaos in the field that birthed it.– Chronicle of Higher Ed 

How the Sparkles Emoji Became the Symbol of Our AI Future – Wall Street Journal

Google’s AI Search Gives Sites Dire Choice: Share Data or Die – Bloomberg  

The AI bubble has burst. Here's how we know. - Mashable 

The New A.I. Deal: Buy Everything but the Company – New York Times 

Inside the company that gathers ‘human data’ for every major AI company – Semafor

Websites are Blocking the Wrong AI Scrapers (Because AI Companies Keep Making New Ones) – 404 Media  

A CIO canceled a Microsoft AI deal. The reason should worry the entire tech industry – Business Insider  

Perplexity will soon start selling ads within AI search – Fast Company 

Meet Stability AI's Stable Video 4D, a nuanced take on AI video generation - ZDnet 

Bing’s AI redesign shoves the usual list of search results to the side – The Verge  

OpenAI starts testing prototype of new AI search tool – Axios  

Oops GPT OpenAI just announced a new search tool. Its demo already got something wrong. – The Atlantic  

Big Tech says AI is booming. Wall Street is starting to see a bubble. – Washington Post

Crisis Looms as AI Companies Rapidly Losing Access to Training Data – Futurism   

AI’s Real Hallucination Problem – The Atlantic   

Alphabet Reports 29% Jump in Profit as A.I. Efforts Begin to Pay Off – New York Times  

Google Fails to ‘Wow’ as AI Bills Mount - Wall Street Journal 

Meta Is Offering Hollywood Stars Millions for AI Voice Projects – Bloomberg

San Francisco’s AI startup boom is so big, even international founders who don’t run AI startups are relocating there to help their companies grow – Tech Crunch

Clear Writing vs Legalize

/

MIT cognitive scientists set out to determine why laws are written in an incomprehensible style. Lawyers don’t like it. Your average person doesn’t like it, so why does it persist? The researchers theorized that legal writers start by coming up with a main idea but then they keep finding reasons to qualify the rules, and soon the writing is overly complicated. It turns out that wasn’t it at all. When they had people try to write laws, they immediately adopted a convoluted style of legal language. It’s called the "magic spell hypothesis." The researchers say, “Just as magic spells are written with a distinctive style that sets them apart from everyday language, using legal language appears to signal a special kind of authority.” Academic writing is similar. When students are asked to write something for a class, they immediately adopt the overly-formal writing style of academics.  

More: Study explains why laws are written in an incomprehensible style

16 Great Quotes about the Impact of AI on Jobs

/

On Handshake, a job-search platform for college students, the share of job descriptions that mention ChatGPT and other generative-AI tools has tripled in the past year. While about one-quarter of those roles are tech-related, 16% are in marketing and 12% are in art and media. - Wall Street Journal

LinkedIn data shows that 59% of hiring managers wouldn’t hire someone without AI literacy skills. Professionals can no longer afford to ignore AI. -Fast Company

Valerie Capers Workman, chief talent engagement officer at Handshake, said generative AI is the new Microsoft Office. “The skill set will be ubiquitous 10 years from now, but in the next two to five years, it’s going to be a major asset in getting recruited,” she said. -Wall Street Journal

A Japanese mega-conglomerate says it's using AI to build what one of its designers called a "mental shield" that manipulates angry customers' voices so that call center employees don't have to deal with drama. Softbank insists it won't change customers' words, but instead will do things like make a shrill, angry voice lower, to become less grating, or else, raise the pitch. -ArsTechnica

Some employers have started administering prompt-engineering assessments, which evaluate how well you can instruct generative-AI models to complete a task, during the hiring process. -Wall Street Journal

The Stanford AI Index Report talks about how AI is associated with more productive workers, with work of higher quality, and with workers that are able to get work done in less time. There’s also data that suggests companies that integrate AI see tangible revenue increases and tangible cost decreases. -Big Think

AI has become such an inherent part of the copywriting process that many writers now add personal ‘AI policies’ to their professional websites to explain how they use the technology. They will forgo AI for those who prefer it – but you can expect to pay more. The extra time and mental energy required means AI-free projects come with a higher price tag. -BBC

Freelance jobs that require basic writing, coding or translation are disappearing across postings on job board Upwork. The number of freelance jobs posted on platforms, in the areas in which generative AI excels, have dropped by as much as 21%. -Wall Street Journal

Certain sectors are expected to experience growth due to AI advancements, particularly in healthcare and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields. However, the majority of job impacts will be concentrated in four main categories… -India Today

Job seekers are using AI to craft cover letters and résumés in seconds, and deploying new automated bots to robo-apply for hundreds of jobs in just a few clicks. In response, companies are deploying more bots of their own to sort through the oceans of applications. The result: a bot versus bot war -Wall Street Journal

Microsoft released its annual Work Trend Index in partnership with LinkedIn, surveying 31,000 people. The report suggests 66% of business leaders wouldn't hire someone without AI skills, and 71% of leaders would prefer to hire a less experienced candidate with AI skills than a more experienced candidate without them. -ZD Net

You're not going to be replaced by AI; you're going to be replaced by somebody who knows how to use AI. -Abran Maldonado, community liaison for OpenAI

Which types of positions are being replaced by AI the fastest? In the past two years, “the number of writing jobs declined 33%.” Meanwhile, “Video editing/production jobs are up 39%, graphic design jobs are up 8% & Web design jobs are up 10 percent." -Inc. Magazine

For years, people working in warehouses or fast food restaurants worried that automation could eliminate their jobs. But new research suggests that generative A.I. will have its biggest impact on white-collar workers with high-paying jobs in industries like banking and tech. -New York Times

A recent survey found 4 out of 10 employers are actively looking for people with AI development qualifications—and they would be willing to “hike pay levels for AI-skilled workers across business functions” with salaries potentially rising by an average of 35-43%. -Higher Ed Dive

When it comes to using ChatGPT at work, some business leaders believe that soft skills will be crucial in the age of AI. Earlier this month, Aneesh Raman, a vice president at LinkedIn, said that communication, creativity, and flexibility are skills that will set employees apart in the workforce as opposed to technical skills like coding. Perhaps doubling down on what makes you human may be what saves you from being replaced by AI. -Business Insider

16 Recent Articles about AI’s future

/

A Personal Notebook

/

Successful people track their progress, set goals, reflect, and learn from their mistakes. And they often use some kind notebook to accomplish this. If you want to get somewhere in life, you need a map, and this notebook is that map. You can write down what you did today, what you tried to accomplish, where you made mistakes, and so forth. It’s a place to reflect. It’s a place to capture important thoughts. It’s a place to be able to track where you’ve been and where you intend to go. It’s one of the most underused, yet incredibly effective tools available to the masses.

Angel Chernoff

Setting Goals

/

Self-regulation begins with setting goals - not big, life-directing goals, but more immediate goals for what you're going to be doing today. In the research, the poorest performers don't set goals at all; they just slog through their work. Mediocre performers set goals that are general and are often focused on simply achieving a good outcome - win the order; get the new project proposal done. The best performers set goals that are not about the outcome but rather about the process of reaching the outcome. 

The best performers are focused on how they could get better at some specific element of the work, just as a pianist may focus on improving a particular passage.

With a goal set, the next step is planning how to reach it. Again, the best performers make the most specific, technique-oriented plans. They're thinking exactly, not vaguely, of how to get where they're going. So if their goal is discerning the customer's unstated needs, their plan for achieving it on that day may be to listen for certain key words the customer might use, or to ask specific questions to bring out the customer's crucial issues.

Geoff Colvin, Why Talent is Overrated  

27 Articles about Politics & AI

/

FCC pursues new rules for AI in political ads, but changes may not take effect before the election - Associated Press

As AI entrenches itself in the political world, discerning real from fake is critical – NBC Boston

Mayoral candidate vows to let VIC, an AI bot, run Wyoming’s capital city – Washington Post

Brands Love Influencers (Until Politics Get Involved) – New York Times

What AI is doing to campaigns - Politico

See why AI detection tools can fail to catch election deepfakes – Washington Post

Saudi Arabia Spends Big to Become an A.I. Superpower – New York Times

Trump's crowd-photo claims speed AI-driven truth decay – Axios  

The brewing storm over California’s AI bill – Semafor

Secretaries of state urge Musk to fix AI chatbot spreading false election info - Washington Post

With Smugglers and Front Companies, China Is Skirting American A.I. Bans - New York Times 

A neurological disorder stole her voice. Jennifer Wexton takes it back on the House floor – Associated Press  

A Kamala Harris Presidency Could Mean More of the Same on A.I. Regulation - New York Times 

California is a battleground for AI bills, as Trump plans to curb regulation - Washington Post 

Censorship slows China's AI advances – Axios  

US agents shut down huge Russian AI bot farm as fears over misinformation grow – Semafor  

A Hacker Stole OpenAI Secrets, Raising Fears That China Could, Too - New York Times 

The AI Industry starts to focus on a potential Trump presidency – Semafor  

Forget deepfake videos. Text and voice are this election’s true AI threat. – The Hill

The AI election is here. Regulators can’t decide whose problem it is. - Washington Post 

Generative AI poses Threat to election security, intelligence agencies warn – CBS News

The Low-Paid Humans Behind AI’s Smarts Ask Biden to Free Them From ‘Modern Day Slavery’ – Wired

UN adopts first resolution on artificial intelligence – Associated Press

Few AI deepfakes identified in EU elections, Microsoft president says – Reuters

The danger of deepfakes is not what you think – Financial Times 

J.D. Vance’s A.I. Agenda: Reduce Regulation – New York Times 

Over 80% of China’s businesses already use generative AI - Fortune

Trump Promotes A.I. Images to Falsely Suggest Taylor Swift Endorsed Him - New York Times

22 Articles about AI & Academic Scholarship

/

AI tools for researchers: Key insights for librarians to enhance academic support – Springer Nature

OpenResearcher: An Open-Source Project that Harnesses AI to Accelerate Scientific Research – Marktechpost

Has your paper been used to train an AI model? Almost certainly - Nature

Flood Of 'Junk': How AI Is Changing Scientific Publishing - Barrons

How do I cite generative AI in MLA style? - Modern Language Association

AI scientists are producing a host of new theories of how our brains learn – The Economist 

Should scientists be paid when AI chatbots use their work? – Chemistry World

Artificial intelligence in scientific medical writing: Legitimate and deceptive uses and ethical concerns – Science Direct  

Revisiting the ‘Research Parasite’ Debate in the Age of AI – Undark  

AI is complicating plagiarism. How should scientists respond? – Nature

Woefully Insufficient Publisher Policies on Author AI Use Put Research Integrity at Risk – Scholarly Kitchen  

Academic authors 'shocked' after Taylor & Francis sells access to their research to Microsoft AI – The Bookseller 

Research findings strongly argue against the use of free AI detectors to detect fake scientific images - arXiv

Another paper with an anatomically incorrect image has been retracted – Retraction Watch 

Universities Don’t Want AI Research to Leave Them Behind – Wall Street Journal

AI Finds That AI Is Great In New Garbage Research From Tony Blair Institute – 404 Media  

Delving into ChatGPT usage in academic writing through excess vocabulary - arXiv 

AI threatens scientific research with fake papers – The Saturday Paper  

The role of ChatGPT in developing systematic literature searches: an evidence summary - Journal of the European Association for Health Information and Libraries

A Look Under the Hood of Scopus AI: Elsevier’s search tool for scholarly testing – Scholarly Kitchen  

How to cite ChatGPT in APA Style –  American Psychological Association

10 Best AI Tools for Research – BeeBom

How do AI Checkers Work?

/

AI checkers will break down text, removing punctuation then use a technique called vectorization to convert it into a mathematical hash code for comparison to other text. Phrases and grammatical structure are assigned weights with uncommon language rated as more likely human-written. The AI detector also looks across the internet for use of the same language. The comparison identifies exact matches and paraphrases. This means data-rich companies like OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and Meta are more likely to successfully identify AI-written material. Read more about this process on ZDnet

Setting Boundaries

/

Many people feel that they are “people persons,” able to attract others and connect with them. At the same time, however, people persons often feel overwhelmed, anxious and frustrated about the obligations and responsibilities that their bonded relationships demand.  

Setting boundaries is the primary tool for strengthening your separateness and developing an accurate sense of responsibility.  The essence of boundaries is determining where you end and someone else begins, realizing your own person apart from others, and knowing your limits.  

A good way to understand this is to compare our lives to a house. Houses have certain maintenance needs, such as painting, terminate control and roof repairs. If, however, we’re spending all our time putting roofs on our neighbor’s houses while neglecting our own roof or we run the risk of a leaky roof or worse by the time we get back home.  

Think of all the different caring acts you performed over the last 24 hours. How many did you do grudgingly because you were under the threat of someone’s criticism or abandonment?  How many did you do under compulsion because you feel guilty if you don’t keep people happy?  And how many were from a cheerful heart, from the overflow caused by knowing you are loved by God and people in your life?   

John Townsend

Courses & Guides on Using AI

/

20 Articles about the Limitations of AI

/

Creating your own misery

/

As long as you live in a society with other fallible humans you will be frustrated and hassled - not merely occasionally - all of your life. The best way to avoid feeling miserable about virtually anything that will ever occur in your lifetime is to admit that you create your own misery.

(Irrational beliefs that interfere with emotional health include..)

  • I must do well... win the approval of others... or else I will rate as a rotten person.

  • Others must treat me with considerately and kindly... Other people must not behave incompetently or stupidly.

  • The world (and the people in it) must arrange the conditions under which I live so that I get what I want when I want it.

Albert Ellis