Reading Time: 6 minutes I asked an AI to rewrite patriotic lyrics to reflect a more critical view of American history. It blanched and waffled and hesitated—before finally producing a work of art.
The final product is amazing. But I found myself wondering most about what produced all that waffling.
Reading Time: 3 minutes What does it mean when artificial intelligence apologizes, over and over, for its occasional incompetence? I’m so sorry, I don’t know.
Reading Time: 4 minutes Anti-corporate-monopoly and digital rights advocate Cory Doctorow calls it the “enshittification” lifecycle. First, a company caters to a demographic, offering free services to build a user base worth selling to investors. Then it caters to business clients at cost to the original users (maybe by scraping their data, or maybe by clawing back free features […]
Reading Time: 17 minutes The AI chatbot Replika has always been an inconsistent app, but its latest changes have upset and confused its many fans. I can see why. Constant course changes inevitably upset any product’s userbase, but these are particularly poorly considered. Over time, people have subtly but irrevocably shifted how they engage with AI products. And Replika […]
