Controversial Reads 012023


As this technology is perfected, AI writing may render most of the English composition curriculum and other writing skills irrelevant. Like penmanship being displaced by word processors, and memorization by books or databases, writing itself may soon be seen as an archaic novelty.


How to properly balance the commercial rights of a complainant with the free speech rights of a respondent has challenged a generation of Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) panelists.


New York City Mayor Eric Adams responded to criticism over increasing the use of facial recognition technology by declaring, Big Brother is protecting you!


Whether someone will get a loan for buying a house is dependent on the opaque policy instantiated in some black box algorithm. Ditto whether someone’s parole application will get approved, some startup entrepreneur will get capital for his venture, or someone on an organ donation waitlist will get his life-saving treatment.


Blaise Arcas, the head of Google’s AI group in Seattle, recently argued that although large language models (LLMs) may be driven by statistics, statistics do amount to understanding.


Crypto bros still blather on about how their Bitcoin, Ethereum or what have you will go to the Moon. They also insist that with their diamond hands, they’re going to Hold On for Dear Life (HODL) no matter what happens.


I believe the conventional idea of “writing a program” is headed for extinction, and indeed, for all but very specialized applications, most software, as we know it, will be replaced by AI systems that are trained rather than programmed.


omona College business and investments prof Gary Smith warns Salon readers not to be too gullible about what human-sounding chatbots really amount to.


I don’t know about you, but there are days when I wake up with an urgent need to escape from this digital jungle, this plastic world, in which we have exchanged feelings for tons of made-up ones and zeros.