Cogent – Curated – Updated || Since 1999 || Information you need-produced by humans
Background: Right now, artificial intelligence is a complete mess–economically, socially, politically, culturally, environmentally, etc., and especially in the United States. Is this just a sign of an immature technology that has been labelled and presented in a very confusing way? Presented as a monolith, when it is not that at all? Maybe. Is this a sign of an immature technology foisted upon society by huge…
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Theodore J. Kury, University of Florida (from The Conversation) Many major tech companies have pledged to pay their fair share of the costs associated with generating and transmitting more electricity to serve large data centers. But ratepayers across the United States are worried about the potential costs they might have to bear. That’s because it’s not immediately clear how the cost of data centers’ energy…
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Neha Gour, George Mason University; Ed Maibach, George Mason University, and Luis Ortiz, George Mason University (from The Conversation) Every internet search, streamed video and AI-generated response depends on a data center somewhere. Driven by rapid growth in artificial intelligence, cloud computing and cryptocurrency, data centers have become the backbone of the modern digital economy. But though their key role is in enabling virtual and…
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Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the most important issues of our time … and it will remain so for the foreseeable future. Whether for good or for ill, it will likely impact virtually every facet of our society (technology, culture, jobs, wealth, poverty, politics, environment, democracy, education, psychology, and more) … Message #1: A story — I began my career as a librarian and…
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In a world increasingly filled with AI-generated slop of all kinds and a social media landscape dominated by an outrage machine that is engineered to addict people and steal their attention and privacy, it is important to know there is an alternative. And that alternative does not mean burying your nose in other media 24 hours a day. The alternative is simple … but can…
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Is there any humanity in the words/text that come from large language models (LLM) and AI? ‘The most astonishing thing about ChatGPT and every subsequent AI chatbot has always been that these programs are the first nonhumans to be fluent in our language. That simple fact is also, as Deb Roy argues in an essay in The Atlantic, among the most alarming things about these…
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Should information be shared freely? That is, should content (text, images, videos, etc.) be shared without heavy external control (usually aimed at making as much money or gaining as much power as possible)? And should the information be able to be accessed and shared at no additional cost? Is transparency and free access a part of the common good? Or, at the other end of…
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“… AI tools to generate and edit content are getting more advanced, easier to operate, and cheaper to run—all reasons why the US government is increasingly paying to use them. We were well warned of this, but we responded by preparing for a world in which the main danger was confusion. What we’re entering instead is a world in which influence survives exposure, doubt is…
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Amid the hype about the capabilities of artificial intelligence, there are assertions that AI can replace humans in situations where empathy and caring are especially important. But, is that true? Think about John Haugeland’s famous quote “the trouble with artificial intelligence is that computers don’t give a damn.” As Chris Tessone commented — “The philosopher John Haugeland explained why we should not trust software with…
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Francesco Agnellini, Binghamton University, State University of New York (from The Conversation) The line between human and machine authorship is blurring, particularly as it’s become increasingly difficult to tell whether something was written by a person or AI. Now, in what may seem like a tipping point, the digital marketing firm Graphite recently published a study showing that more than 50% of articles on the…
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