Bot Trained to Provide Students Feedback on Assignments

A communication professor at the University of Washington, developed a custom A.I. chatbot by training it on versions of old assignments that she had graded. It can now give students feedback on their writing that mimics her own at any time, day or night. It has been beneficial for students who are otherwise hesitant to ask for help, she said.  “Is there going to be a point in the foreseeable future that much of what graduate student teaching assistants do can be done by A.I.?” she said. “Yeah, absolutely.” - New York Times

The Importance of Leisure

German philosopher Josef Pieper wrote, “We mistake leisure for idleness, and work for creativity." 

In a world of “total work,” there is no space for contemplation or rest. There is no need for people to be in “harmony with themselves” as long as they are employed. To “know thyself” is a secondary concern, and any sort of break from work is merely in the service of doing more work. 

As Pieper put it:

The simple ”break” from work — the kind that lasts an hour, or the kind that lasts a week or longer — is part and parcel of daily working life. It is something that has been built into the whole working process, a part of the schedule. The ”break” is there for the sake of work. It is supposed to provide ”new strength” for ”new work,” as the word ”refreshment” indicates: one is refreshed for work through being refreshed from work. 

Paul Millerd writing in Quartz

22 Articles about the Business of Running an AI Company

AI Startup Perplexity’s Valuation Surges to $14 Billion in New Funding Round – Wall Street Journal  

Google AI Overviews leads to dramatic reduction in clickthroughs for Mail Online – Press Gazette

How China’s Biggest Chipmaker, SMIC, Could Threaten U.S. AI Dominance - Wall Street Journal

AI Is Not Your Friend How the “opinionated” chatbots destroyed AI’s potential, and how we can fix it – The Atlantic

Reports: US losing edge in AI talent pool - Semafor

Google Plans to Roll Out Its A.I. Chatbot to Children Under 13 – New York Times

Researchers Find Easy Way to Jailbreak Every Major AI, From ChatGPT to Claude -Futurism 

Advanced AI gets more unpredictable - Axios 

Here’s How Big the AI Revolution Really Is, in Four Charts - Wall Street Journal

Sam Altman Admits That Saying "Please" and "Thank You" to ChatGPT Is Wasting Millions of Dollars in Computing Power -Futurism

Immigrant founders are the norm in key U.S. AI firms: study - Axios

Reasoning models don't always say what they think - Anthropic

Nvidia reveals plans to manufacture some AI chips in the U.S. – NBC News 

Oracle to provide cloud computing, AI services to Singapore military – Reuters  

Nvidia to Make AI Supercomputers Entirely in U.S. - Wall Street Journal

AI startup is reportedly aiming for a massive $2B seed round – Tech Crunch

Google unveils Ironwood, its most powerful AI processor yet – ArsTechnica

Meta got caught gaming AI benchmarks to make it appear its new AI model is better than the competition  - The Verge  

Google is in trouble... but this could change everything - and no, it's not AI - ZDnet 

OpenAI and Anthropic are fighting over college students with free AI – The Verge 

Why the AI Revolution Will Require Massive Energy Resources - AEI

Perplexity partners with PayPal for in-chat shopping as AI race heats up – CNBC

Impersonating People with Down Syndrome

AI-generated accounts impersonating people with Down syndrome are spreading across social media. Many of these artificial intelligence-backed profiles are gaining followers faster than real disability advocates — and they're making money from it. For people with Down syndrome, these fake accounts can feel like a new level of discrimination — one where their lived experiences are copied, exaggerated and monetized. -CBS News

The Time Test

If a class of students are allowed an hour to complete an essay test and one student completes her assignment before the time is up, she isn’t penalized, is she? The assignment was to write an essay, not merely to use the time. 

But what if using the time was the assignment? If a person is told to use an entire day profitably, but he becomes bored and diverted by mid-morning, wasting the balance of the day, then his speed is worthless.

The same is true when life is the task. To be finished with life before life has finished with us is to have failed to complete the assignment. 

AI Headphone Translation

A team of researchers at the University of Washington say they have designed an AI headphone system that translates several speakers at once, while preserving the direction and qualities of people’s voices. Read more in this press release

Road rage victim 'speaks' via AI at his killer's sentencing

Chris Pelkey died in a road rage shooting in Arizona three years ago. But with the help of artificial intelligence, he returned earlier this month at his killer's sentencing to deliver a victim's statement himself in what could be the first-of-its-kind use of the technology. -Read more at the BBC

The Backfire Effect

The backfire effect happens when the myth ends up becoming more memorable than the fact. One of the most striking examples of this was seen in a study evaluating a “Myths and Facts” flyer about flu vaccines. Immediately after reading the flyer, participants accurately remembered the facts as facts and the myths as myths. But just 30 minutes later this had been completely turned on its head, with the myths being much more likely to be remembered as “facts”.  The thinking is that merely mentioning the myths actually helps to reinforce them. And then as time passes you forget the context in which you heard the myth – in this case during a debunking – and are left with just the memory of the myth itself. 

Mark Lorch writing in Business Insider  

Our First Duty

We are often worried about teaching doctrine, but we risk forgetting that our first duty is to communicate the beauty and joy of knowing Jesus. - Cardinal Robert Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV

err in the direction of kindness

Below is part of a commencement speech given by George Saunder on May 11, 2013.

Accomplishment is unreliable. “Succeeding,” whatever that might mean to you, is hard, and the need to do so constantly renews itself (success is like a mountain that keeps growing ahead of you as you hike it), and there’s the very real danger that “succeeding” will take up your whole life, while the big questions go untended.

Since, according to me, your life is going to be a gradual process of becoming kinder and more loving: Hurry up. Speed it along. Start right now. There’s a confusion in each of us, a sickness, really: selfishness. But there’s also a cure. So be a good and proactive and even somewhat desperate patient on your own behalf — seek out the most efficacious anti-selfishness medicines, energetically, for the rest of your life.

Do all the other things, the ambitious things — travel, get rich, get famous, innovate, lead, fall in love, make and lose fortunes, swim naked in wild jungle rivers (after first having it tested for monkey poop) – but as you do, to the extent that you can, err in the direction of kindness. 

Do those things that incline you toward the big questions, and avoid the things that would reduce you and make you trivial. That luminous part of you that exists beyond personality — your soul, if you will — is as bright and shining as any that has ever been. Bright as Shakespeare’s, bright as Gandhi’s, bright as Mother Teresa’s. Clear away everything that keeps you separate from this secret luminous place. Believe it exists, come to know it better, nurture it, share its fruits tirelessly.

And someday, in 80 years, when you’re 100, and I’m 134, and we’re both so kind and loving we’re nearly unbearable, drop me a line, let me know how your life has been. I hope you will say: It has been so Wonderful.

The superstar's weakest spot

What's the simplest way to diminish the skills of a superstar talent (short of inflicting an injury)? What would be the surest method of ensuring that LeBron James started clinking jump shots, or that Yo-Yo Ma started fudging chords? The answer: don't let them practice for a month. Causing skill to evaporate doesn’t require chromosomal rejiggering or black-ops psychological maneuvers.

It only requires that you stop a skilled person from systematically firing his or her circuit for a mere 30 days. Their muscles won't have changed; their much vaunted genes and character will remain unaltered; but you will have touched their talent at the weakest spot in its armor.

Daniel Coyle, The Talent Code

Deep Fakes with Little Effort

Fraudsters are able to change their race, facial hair, voice, and more during live video calls using deepfake AI with very little effort. Scammers are already fooling the elderly and verification systems. - 404Media

Sharing photos may subtly change how we remember

When we’re hunting for the perfect Instagram shot, we’re not listening, we’re not smelling, we’re not always paying attention to the beautiful, complex minutiae that make up the moment.  

Powerful experiences in the real world are immersive and often engage all the senses. On your last vacation, can you remember what the wind felt like on your back? Do you remember what was going on internally: Were you thrilled, excited, or scared? When you look back on the Instagram photos from the trip, will you remember what a dinner tasted like, or just that it was pretty?  

Brian Resnick writing in Vox

The Way It Is

I never did give anybody hell. I just told the truth and they thought it was hell. - Harry S Truman (born May 8, 1884)

AI disruption

Saying you played around with AI a year ago and weren’t impressed is like judging this year’s Tesla models based on having studied a Ford Model T. Even if AI development plateaued at the level of the current models, “We would have a decade of major changes across entire professions & industries (medicine, law, education, coding …) as we figure out how to actually use it. AI disruption is baked in.” No one I’ve spoken to in the industry seems to think AI will plateau where it is now. -Megan McArdle writing in The Washington Post

Shame

Shame whispers lies into our soul about who we are. -Lisa Harper

An AI-powered Mathematical Future

A group of mathematicians are now starting to examine what an AI-powered mathematical future might look like, and how it will change what they value. In such a future, instead of spending most of their time proving theorems, mathematicians will play the role of critic, translator, conductor, experimentalist. Mathematics might draw closer to laboratory sciences, or even to the arts and humanities.  Imagining how AI will transform mathematics isn’t just an exercise in preparation. It has forced mathematicians to reckon with what mathematics really is at its core, and what it’s for. - Jordana Cepelewicz writing in Quanta Magazine

Imagine this!

Imagine what we would accomplish together if we left our egos at the door. –Robert Drake

Face the facts

Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are. -Soren Kierkegaard (born May 5, 1813)

The AI-first Trend

Why would CEOs be saying that everyone at their companies should be using AI tools? Do they think their employees are all bad at their jobs? Being “AI-first” shows that a company is participating in the AI trend in the "right" way, by imposing it on workers, rather than trusting workers to judge what tools are useful for them to do their jobs. It's telling that the creators of so many of the AI tools don't even have enough confidence in their offerings to simply let users choose to adopt them, and are instead forcing them into users' faces in every possible corner of their apps and websites. - Anil Dash