I’ve been writing about the human side of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) for a while now. What I mean by this is are questions like, what happens to human artists when an algorithm can create good-enough art for a crappy piece of email marketing? Or how can we function when we no longer have a shared reality because A.I.s hyper personalize what we see?
Here in reverse chronological order are the newsletter issues (please subscribe; it’s free!) and other articles that I’ve written on this topic:
Flyrt, a Microfiction (September 1, 2024) — Can an AI-powered digital intimacy assistant help a shy man finally talk with the woman of his dreams?
We Need New AI Analogies (June 23, 2024) — Tomorrow’s AIs are both more embodied than HAL from 2001 and less robotic than Rosie or Data. A better analogy comes from a surprisingly old story.
Chatting with Chat (June 9, 2024) — Access to ChatGPT’s new voice interface turned into a long conversation while I walked in the summer sun. The results were mixed.
Democratizing Digital Deception (May 19, 2024) — Will bad actors use digital duplicates of our dead loved ones against us?
Hacking the Dead: a Microfiction (May 12, 2024) — When a company planning an IPO wants to influence a skeptical analyst, they go about it in a sneaky way that involves Generative AI.
Who Am I This Time? (April 28, 2024) — New developments in Generative AI promise that we’ll all have digital BFFs to help us live our best lives, but is this really possible?
What is Real? (April 14, 2024) — Generative AI makes it effortless to create photorealistic images (and soon videos), but sometimes the question is more complicated than whether something is fake.
Retro Futures: “Wag the Dog” and Deep Fakes (February 11, 2024) — A classic 1997 movie about technology-fueled misinformation shows how democratized deception has become in 2024, and why we shouldn’t call them “deep fakes” in the first place.
Dueling Intelligences (December 17, 2023) — How realistic is the idea that flesh and blood actors will soon find themselves performing alongside long-dead movie stars?
The Only Living Boy, a Microfiction (December 10, 2023) — What happens when real and virtual actors join forces in a new production of Shakespeare’s “Othello” on Broadway?
What Will an AI Hardware Device Look Like? (October 22, 2023) — Sam Altman, Jony Ive, and Masayoshi Son have announced a new “iPhone of Artificial Intelligence,” but what will such a device actually look like?
AI and the Productivity Lie (October 15, 2023) — Think twice about the pervasive idea that Generative AI is going to make you more productive. A look back on how email transformed our lives gives a hint about what’s coming with Gen AI.
Amazon, AI, and Ads on Prime Video (October 1, 2023) — The trillion dollar ecommerce giant is adding ads to its Prime Video streaming service because everybody else is, but the secret story is about Amazon’s growing AI capabilities.
The Hollywood Strikes, AI, Strategy, & Overfocusing (August 6, 2023) — The organization on the other side of the negotiating table from the striking writers and actors is the AMPTP, but how can one organization represent studios with such divergent interests?
AI, SCOTUS, and Affirmative Action (July 2, 2023) — Colliding Trends: as the Supreme Court changed college admissions, Chief Justice Roberts argued that personal essays will be more important, but are applicants learning to write in the age of ChatGPT?
Generative AI, Misinformation, and the Plausibility Loophole (May 7, 2023) — By now, it’s common knowledge that programs like ChatGPT say things that just aren’t true, but why do we believe the lies so readily? The answer is F.A.B.S.
The Start of the English Major (March 12, 2023) — In the A.I. revolution, figuring out the contours of our human intelligence has never been more important. Who is best equipped to do this work?
Retro Futures: AI and Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics (February 26, 2023) — Older sci fi can help us see the difference between where we are as a culture and where we thought we’d be. A look back at Isaac Asimov’s 1940s robot stories can help us make sense of AI today.
Microsoft’s New A.I.-Powered Bing and Shakespeare (February 19, 2023) — Pundits panicked last week when oddball chats with the new Bing pushed back the frontiers of weirdness, but were those conversations a fair test in the first place?
Retro Futures, ChatGPT, & More (January 19, 2023) — In this short, Thursday-night bonus issue, I dig into why a podcast about a teacher using (rather than banning) OpenAI’s ChatGPT program seemed eerily familiar…
Artisanal Crap (January 15, 2023) — As generative AI makes first-pass creation faster and easier, an unintended consequence is that humans may become less able to make great things.
What’s Curious about Microsoft and OpenAI (January 12, 2023) — In a Thursday night bonus issue of The Dispatch, I dig into some non-obvious reasons why a ChatGPT integration with 365 and Bing would be a big win for Microsoft.
My 2023 Prediction… or Prayer (December 25, 2022) — Many thinkers end each year with a cluster of predictions for the next year. I have just one—and it’s more of a prayer than a prediction—about trust.
Scarier than Skynet: AI and Persuasion (December 11, 2022) — Most dystopian fantasies concern monsters we can see conquering us, but with new technologies will we even know if we’ve been conquered?
When A.I.s Compete with Human Artists (September 28, 2022) — Last week, the CEO of Getty Images pushed all AI-generated pictures off the platform, but the real reason he did it isn’t the reason he shared.
Poetry & the Anxiety of AI (April 26, 2019) — Why a piece from Fast Company reminded me of Harold Bloom’s classic Anxiety of Influence.
Daimler’s Ambitious Vision for Self-Driving Trucks (April 28, 2016) — “I’m most intrigued by how the Inspiration reimagines — and reengineers — the role of the human driver into half driver and half logistics manager…”