Jeremy Wagstaff: ex Reuters/BBC/WSJ etc. Now consulting and writing. Blogging here since 2001
It’s hard to disagree with Jason Hickel here: Jason Hickel on X: “It’s not ”artificial“ intelligence, it’s human intelligence. It is the collective knowledge of humanity, produced by countless generations of people, anyone who has ever published a text or created an image, as well as their teachers and their teachers’ teachers. And as such,… Read More
As AI generated content gets ‘better’ — in the sense of feeling, appearing realistic — does that mean we will more readily accept it? Or will we more readily dismiss it — and all content that might appear to be generated by AI? What happens when we start to suspect that everything is AI generated?… Read More
It’s been a long time since I did Directories of apps here. Indeed, the last one on RSS readers was this one: A Directory of The Best RSS readers which was started in 2004: 21 years ago. I’ll try to get round to updating that at some point. I feel the time has come to… Read More
DEVONthink, my favourite database since the demise of Evernote, as added some features to version 4 that may not appear that significant, but which I believe offer a real boost to those of us trying to stay organised. They involve tweaking PDF and Markdown files to make them easier to navigate and to find stuff… Read More
tl;dr: How to control your Substack overload and reclaim your inbox These are difficult times, and staying up to speed is a full-time endeavour. Ironically, the explosion of newsletters from individuals has made this harder rather than easier, I have found myself swamped by newsletters, despite efforts to bring some order to them (more of… Read More
This is the first of a series of pieces based on Mary Meeker's recent deck about AI. The first is an overview of the technology and its current impact.
(No AI was used in the writing or illustrating of this post. AI was used in research but its results have been checked manually. This is another in a series of pieces exploring the frontiers between human and AI work. Here s another.) AI is here to stay, and it s moving fast. We are a little… Read More
I’m changing my mind about generative AI. I don’t think hallucination is the show-stopper anymore. I think we are. Perplexity.ai, which I’ve been using as my main AI research assistant, has this month launched a Deep Research tool, essentially an upgraded version of itself, which doesn’t just do a cursory web search and build its… Read More
I assumed that by now we’d be using something better than email. (Remember Google Wave? No, I don’t either.) But we aren’t. So it’s probably time for me to make a confession: I’m still struggling to find the perfect email app. After a recent spate of embarrassing moments when important emails just passed me by, I… Read More
Drones are changing the way wars are fought, but they’re also changing the way we experience those wars. Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room. Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America — not on the battlefields of Vietnam. — Marshall McLuhan (1975) Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar… Read More
Accusations that some big name musical acts have been miming their vocals raises some tricky questions. Popular music is in danger of becoming a parody of itself. Where once we dreamed of a fairer, more equitable landscape, big money is ever more concentrated in the hands of a shrinking group of artists and record companies.… Read More
If your revenue model relies on misleading, impoverishing and gaslighting your customers, then you probably should rethink your model. That would seem to be a reasonable statement to make, and one most businesses might agree with. But the reality is that companies are falling over themselves to charge people for things they didn’t ask for… Read More
This is the second in a series of pieces I am writing on dystopian movies — — broadly defined — and what they tell us, or could tell us, about our own condition and what prescriptions they might offer for a way forward. In this piece I offer a different interpretation of the two Blade Runner movies and the… Read More
I finally braced myself to see Alex Garland’s Civil War earlier this month, unable to watch in more than 10 minute chunks, and so found myself flipping between fictional scenes of American carnage and real-world assaults on the Holiday Inn in Rotherham. I learned an unpleasant lesson Burning bin at Holiday Inn Express in Rotherham,… Read More
Sir Clive Sinclair mosaic, made with original keys from Sinclair computers, Charis Tsevis, 2011 (Flickr) Technology-wise, we’re presently in what might be called an interregnum. There is no clear outcome for AI, especially generative AI. We can’t tell whether it’s a saviour, a destroyer, or a damp squib. More importantly, generative AI — and a… Read More
We’ve been poor about trying to predict the real, lasting impact of generative AI. It’s not through lack of trying: some have talked about rethinking the way our economies run and how we think about our lives, to treating it as an existential risk, to treating AI as a foundational, or general purpose, technology that will change everything. I’m… Read More
Artificial intelligence puts us in a bind that in some ways is quite new. It s the first serious challenge to the ideas underpinning the modern state: governance, social and mental health, a balance between capitalism and protecting the individual, the extent of cooperation, collaboration and commerce with other states. How can we address and wrestle… Read More
It s easy for most people journalists included to look the other way as Julian Assange s case grinds to its (likely) grim end. He doesn t fit neat holes is he a journalist? An activist? A political operator? A source? An intermediary? A publisher? A whistleblower? This means that those who are supporting his… Read More