The media pundit s pundit. Written by NYC insider Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine covers news, media, journalism, and politics.
On this week’s Intelligent Machines, we cohosts had a spirited disagreement about Anthropic’s watermarking of text, as required by EU regulation. The company just released more detail about how it will work, and now I’m upset for a different reason than I first thought. I’m angry as a writer. Anthropic’s method will alter its models’ word choices in a pattern [ ] The post Words matter. Damnit.…
In response to the spectre of Chinese open-weight AI models haunting America, Dean Ball, OpenAI’s director of strategic futures [are there directors of strategic pasts?], issued a warning more shrill even than the New York Post’s alerts about Mamdani’s bus-and-grocery socialism. One probable outcome of an open-weight-model-dominant world is full AI communism, which is precisely [ ] The post AI…
California is about to hand out $20 million — half from Google, half from the state — to news organizations, and it is wasting a golden opportunity. Instead of building a new and more competitive landscape of news, instead of creating services to benefit the entire news ecosystem, instead of investing in innovation, instead of embracing new [ ] The post California s squandered opportunity appeared…
In an urgent and provocative essay in Die Zeit, journalist Georg Diez calls for a redefinition of progress in the time of AI. Taking lessons from the genesis of progressivism — a response to the Industrial Revolution and the (first) Gilded Age — we cannot now surrender the power to decide society’s future to present technologists. “A notion of [ ] The post To redefine progress appeared first on…
I am delighted that Montclair State University (MSU) has won its bid to take over New Jersey public television, for in this moment I see an opening to reimagine and reinvent public media in a new image — as the public’s media. And nowhere better for that to happen than in New Jersey, where threads have been [ ] The post (The) Public( s) Media: The New Jersey Model appeared first on BuzzMachine .
Artificial Intelligence, though more than a half-century old as a technology, has occupied front-of-mind cultural consciousness for only a few years, since ChatGPT. Yet AI is already profoundly disliked and distrusted in both media meme and apparently in public opinion. The techlash against the internet and then social media took at least two decades to ferment, while [ ] The post AI has a…
Eddie Glaude, Jr., holds a mirror up to America. Look, he tells us, look! How often I have heard him on television, invited to the camera by Nicolle Wallace to lament another American tragedy and sin: racist murders, the shooting deaths of mere babies, the abuse of immigrant children, the bigotry of the president. Do [ ] The post Mourning that which never was appeared first on BuzzMachine .
I am terribly saddened at word of the death of Donald Newhouse, the last great gentleman of the newspaper business. Soft-spoken, unassuming, humble, kind, and generous, Don Newhouse was at the same time a publisher of vast experience, universal respect, and great strength. I had the great privilege of working for him via his sons, [ ] The post Don Newhouse appeared first on BuzzMachine .
Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical, Magnifca Humanitas, is a learned, wise, eloquent, and useful document that is only partly about artificial intelligence. Its lessons should be helpful to many modern institutions — including my own, journalism. For those expecting the Pontiff to declare holy war on AI and Silicon Valley, they will be disappointed. Those who wish to [ ] The post Pope Leo and human…
We will not see Ted Turner s visionary likes again. He broke free of the bounds of broadcast scarcity and recognized the opportunity to use satellite and cable to build national then international networks and brands: not just CNN but his superstation. He invented 24-hour news. Out of nonstop, round-the-clock news came a host of good and bad outcomes. We [ ] The post Ted Turner appeared first on…
Sam Altman just published a set of principles for OpenAI, in which he asserts, “AI will dwarf what people could do with steam engines or electricity.” Uh, history would like a word, Sam. Sam believes that his talkative tool will dwarf powered transportation, powered industry, lighting, electronic communication, amplification, even computation. This is the hubris [ ] The post Technology Does Not…
Bloomsbury Academic is announcing the launch of a new book series: Intelligence: AI and Humanity. I’m humbled, delighted, and honestly amazed to say that I will be the series editor. Intelligence is a venue for writers from a wide array of fields and areas of expertise to reflect on artificial intelligence as a mirror to [ ] The post Announcing Intelligence: AI and Humanity appeared first on…
Jürgen Habermas has died. In memory of the great philosophical provocateur, is a section of my book, The Gutenberg Parenthesis, grappling with his idea of the public sphere and the coffeehouse. Writing and conversation came together in a new institution built for the purpose: the coffeehouse. There, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, especially in England, varied [ ] The post Habermas…
Here is an excellent paper that clearly explains the philosophy that guides Yann LeCun’s research in AI and his new company, AMI Labs. It also perfectly expresses my complaints about the trope of artificial general intelligence — AGI, or BS for short. LeCun et al reject the idée fixe that obsesses the Promethean dreams of too many [ ] The post Rethinking intelligence appeared first on BuzzMachine…
I m back. Here s where I ve been. Most of you should not care, but for those wanting a medical update, here s the tale. Two weeks ago, on Sunday, Jan. 11, I lost a test of strength with bedding on laundry day. As I ve already recounted, My feet flew out from under me; I flew up and [ ] The post Back from a brink appeared first on BuzzMachine .