Well, this week was… something else. Last week I didn’t put together a proper news overview because I went skiing, and while I was up in the mountains I’d occasionally check the news on BlueSky – and it wasn’t looking very happy. Elon Musk claimed all sorts of data and systems for himself, all development aid was put on hold, and research funding was decimated. I can’t just take a week off for vacation when everything’s falling apart! But anyway, on to this week’s AI news.
Boing Boing:
Boing Boing reports this week on a 2023 study showing that CAPTCHAs don’t work at all. I wanted to include it here, but it turned into a full-blown story, so I wrote a longer piece on it here (in Dutch).
The Verge:
Scarlett Johansson has made a strong call to the U.S. government to crack down on deepfakes after a video of her and other celebrities went viral. It’s unlikely anything will change overnight, but it’s great to see her continuously weighing in with her perspective!
Nature:
I also came across a fascinating paper in Nature this week that shows real-world math skills (like doing calculations at a market) don’t automatically transfer to academic math in the classroom – and vice versa! Not directly related to AI, but it is in a way, because anyone who thinks that chatting with AI will actually teach young people valuable skills is missing the point about the “transfer” of learning.
There’s also a another research study by my former colleague Advait Sarkar (among others) that will soon appear at CHI. Their research, involving over 300 knowledge workers, shows that using AI doesn’t stimulate critical thinking – it actually hinders it! In fact, heavy reliance on AI might even lower your problem-solving skills.
Wired:
Wired remains a beacon of light in these days of relentless tech coup stories from the Trump era, but this week I particularly enjoyed a light, thought-provoking piece on AI and dating apps. It may not have a lot of heft, but it does raise some interesting questions: is it okay to use AI to chat with a potential partner? And how do you handle those first dates “without” it?
Economist:
Online scams are, as expected, spiraling out of control – and they might already be as big a revenue source as online drug sales. This long article does a great job explaining how even the scammers themselves are often victims from low-wage countries.
NRC:
You may have seen it on LinkedIn already, but I also had my say with an op-ed in NRC about the (im)possibility of politically neutral AI! (in Dutch)
Good News, by Popular Request:
Here’s some uplifting news! English science museums have scanned and digitized their entire collections – that’s 500,000 objects! In an extensive report, they detail how they tackled the project. Or go ahead and explore the collection yourself – check out the stunning difference engine by Babbage or the Jacquard loom, for instance.
And finally:
In the U.S., it’s been decided that images created with AI—even those generated with complex prompts—cannot be protected by copyright (although they do note that this might change in the future).
