#nilaypatel — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #nilaypatel, aggregated by home.social.
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Nilay Patel on Software Brain
Every now and then someone crystalizes a lot of the thoughts that spin around discussions, debates, and dialogues about a topic. When those topics are of great import, when the crystallization shows up, it is not only wise, but essential to pay attention. Call it a benchmark. Call it a new starting point for the conversation going forward. Nilay Patel has delivered just a benchmark to pay attention to with his monologue of sorts on his Decoder podcast. If you’re not up for a listen, you can give it a read on The Verge.
For the clear thinking presented there is a confusing array of headlines to choose from depending where you look, Including The People Do Not Yearn For Automation, and Why People Hate AI, but the one I think should stick shows up in my browser tab: Beware Software Brain.
Patel takes a well considered tour through the arguments and discussion that are scattered about and pulls them together nicely. If you ask for a core theme, I’d say that he argues that there are two schools of thought. One rushing to turn AI into what controls our lives. The other isn’t buying the sales pitch.
To me it’s always been a tough sell to foist this innovation on people if one of your selling points is that it will make their jobs unnecessary, let alone create environmentally hazardous data centers to run the machines that are going to eventually unemploy them. I know a few folks who, after training themselves up on AI to do what they do, only to be dismissed in favor of the AI once that training is complete. I don’t think it’s going to be much longer before that predicament touches someone everyone knows.
Getting inside what makes the folks pushing AI’s thinking, Patel defines “Software Brain” as follows:
So what is software brain? The simplest definition I’ve come up with is that it’s when you see the whole world as a series of databases that can be controlled with the structured language of software code. Like I said, this is a powerful way of seeing things. So much of our lives run through databases, and a bunch of important companies have been built around maintaining those databases and providing access to them.
He later goes on:
Anyone who’s actually ever run a database knows this. At some point, the database stops matching reality. At that point, we usually end up tweaking the database, not the world. But the AI industry has fully lost sight of this, because AI thrives on data. It’s just software, after all. And so the ask is for more and more of us to conform our lives to the database, not the other way around.
You need to read or listen to the whole piece.
While I think “Software Brain” well defines the mindset of those celebrating and working towards an AI future. The crux of the matter for me, on perhaps a larger scale, is that for some reason, as ambiguous and arbitrary as we humans can be, we seem to shy away from our own ambiguity in favor of looking for a binary solution. On or off. Right or wrong. Correct or incorrect. We get angry with the shades and shadows of grey that muddy our yearning for black and white.
Perhaps a binary approach to everything seems like it would make life easier. It certainly helps avoid the danger zones of responsibility.
These are certainly early days of whatever Artificial Intelligence may or may not become. Even so, it appears to me it’s just going to be yet another way humans develop, market, and use to avoid facing the tough choices life tosses at us, or we toss at each other. I’m glad to see there is increasing skepticism.
I don’t build or code things with AI, so I can’t speak to that degree of what seems so exciting to so many. That said, the one thing I keep coming back to in my own, very rudimentary experiments with AI is this. At the moment it’s as error prone, and often as ambiguous and obsequious as any human in correcting itself. It seems to be a very human response etched into the code by its creators, knowing things don’t add up. Much like apparently, our DNA. The machines and the math behind them just don’t care.
I don’t think the humans running this race do either.
You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above. This site does not use affilate links.
#ArtificialIntelligence #Decoder #NIlayPatel #Tech -
⭐ Why tech billionaires want a ‘corporate dictatorship’ - Guest host Jon Fortt and The Nerd Reich author Gil Duran discuss the Dark Enlightenment and the rise of tech authoritarianism.
Highly worth listening to. -
"That’s the fun part about the fediverse — it’s a lot of old ideas about the web being open and interoperable, but there’s still a lot of new things yet to be invented on top of that foundation. At this point I’m not sure any social platform that launches without an eye towards federation stands a chance, really."
#NilayPatel, April 2024
https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/22/24137296/ghost-newsletter-activitypub-fediverse-support
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From #NilayPatel (@reckless1280): "America now has an unelected defense contractor sitting in the White House doing ketamine and twiddling the algorithmic knobs of an influential right-wing echo chamber while fulminating against traditional standards-based journalism, threatening to revoke network broadcast licenses, and suing advertisers who don’t want to spend their money on his dwindling user base. What could go wrong?"
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»#TheVerge #NilayPatel breathes fire on #ElonMusk and #DonaldTrump's #BigTech enablers: "All of these men are now hopelessly trapped in a problem their own platforms and algorithms created."« https://www.status.news/p/nilay-patel-donald-trump-big-tech-interview?eicker.news #tech #media
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Logitech erwägt ‘Forever Mouse’ mit Abo-Gebühr
Laut Logitech-CEO Hanneke Faber könnte Logitech an einer "F
https://www.apfeltalk.de/magazin/news/logitech-erwaegt-forever-mouse-mit-abo-gebuehr/
#News #Zubehr #Abonnementgebhr #ForeverMouse #HannekeFaber #Innovationszentrum #iPhoneUpgradeProgramm #Irland #Langlebigkeit #Logitech #LogitechCEO #Maus #NachhaltigeHardware #NilayPatel #Peripheriegerte #Podcast #Recycling #SoftwareUpdates #TheVerge #Videokonferenzdienste #Wiederaufarbeitung -
Zoom CEO envisions AI deepfakes attending meetings in your place - Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)
Zoom CEO Eric Yuan has a vision... - https://arstechnica.com/?p=2028754 #largelanguagemodels #teleconferencing #machinelearning #simonwillison #aiskepticism #tedunderwood #nilaypatel #videocalls #ericyuan #theverge #chatgpt #chatgtp #biz #zoom #ai
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Spannende Unterhaltung zwischen Kyle Chayka und Nilay Patel. https://andrepitz.de/2024/05/31/kyle-chayka-ueber-die-rettung-der-kultur-vor-den-algorithmen/
#algorithmen #decoder #kultur #kunst #KyleChayka #NilayPatel #tech #TheVerge
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"I think the defining economic reality of the modern platform media world is that all the platforms realized that an infinite supply of teenage creators are cheaper to deal with than media companies or groups of media individuals or powerful creators."
#NilayPatel, 2024
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@medvidekpu
To je docela škoda. Nikdy jsem nebyl nějak zvlášť aktivním uživatelem, ale CEO (který je btw. CEO Dropboxu po celou dobu od založení) v podcastu u šéfredaktora The Verge zněl rozumně.https://www.theverge.com/24128606/dropbox-drew-houston-ai-remote-work-virtual-organization
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Listening to the #Vergecast episode about #WBD’s presentation, #NilayPatel got it right and #AlexCranz got it wrong about the #HarryPotter show. Yes, there’s a level of toxicity in the #HarryPotter community, but #HogwartsLegacy literally shattered records for the most purchased game on #Steam.
#WBD cares about making money above all, and it’s worth the controversy if making the content makes them money.
This is a lot different than an ad-revenue based company because they don’t need to please advertisers, only a fraction of a fraction of their revenue likely comes from advertisers. So they have this freedom, because now the only people they really need to please are the viewers.
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I've been listening to #NilayPatel's interview with #ChrisBest about #Substack and #SubstackNotes.
I feel like the #moderation discussion starting at about 42 minutes (listen to Nilay's introductory comments for context) makes a really good argument NOT to use a centralised social service.
I added a trimmed audio clip to this post.
People who may switch to #SubstackNotes from #Twitter (hypothetically), are just exchanging one nightmare for another potential problem space.
At least with a federated network, you can make your own choices and not have to suffer through someone else's moderation choices.
You can read the transcript and find the full recording here: https://www.theverge.com/23681875/substack-notes-twitter-elon-musk-content-moderation-free-speech
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@lmorchard #nilaypatel ,👏👏. It's tiring to watch the same corporate/tech lines about free speech, building things that might break and listening to our users...
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Really enjoying this episode with @Gargron — a level-headed, thoughtful and humble dude, even as a Benevolent Dictator For Life! (Confession: I personally have always liked the BDFL model 🤷♂️)
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On his Decoder podcast #NilayPatel says he joined Mastodon. Is @reckless the real Nilay? Or @nilaypatel?
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“By the way, much as I love bookstores and booksellers, we sit in the second rung beneath public libraries and public librarians. They’re the true heroes of our industry, and they don’t sell a single book. They’re sitting in there doling them out for free.”
Barnes & Noble CEO #JamesDaunt in a #Decoder interview with #NilayPatel (#TheVerge) in 2023.Yours truly, for a number of years:
“#Librarians are the superheroines and superheroes of the #InformationAge.”https://www.theverge.com/23642104/barnes-and-noble-amazon-bookshop-ecommerce-decoder-podcast
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SN: "So we’ve been at it. In fact, I’ll never forget my first query I did on the model, which, I think for me, growing up, I always felt, if only I could read Rumi translated into Urdu translated into English, that is my dream. I just put that in as one long query, and it was magical to see it generated. And I said, “Man, this is different.” I could have programmed it, done some multi-
NP: "That was your first query?
SN: "That was the query that changed–
NP: "You are one of the classiest people I’ve ever met in my entire life. That’s a very complicated–
SN: "Poetry is great, man."
This is my favourite part of the exchange between #SatyaNadella and #NilayPatel in the #Decoder interview about #Microsoft's AI-assisted search initiatives this week.
https://www.theverge.com/23589994/microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-bing-chatgpt-google-search-ai
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"But look, at the end of the day, they’re the 800-pound gorilla in this. That is what they are. And I hope that, with our innovation, they will definitely want to come out and show that they can dance. And I want people to know that we made them dance, and I think that’ll be a great day." - #SatyaNadella on competing with #Google in Search
This is one of my favourite quotes from this interview with #NilayPatel of #TheVerge
https://www.theverge.com/23589994/microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-bing-chatgpt-google-search-ai
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Thanks to #NilayPatel and #Decoder I have belatedly discovered #OnWithKaraSwisher @karaswisher what a great #podcast
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This is a really good interview between Nilay Patel (of The Verge) and Matt Mullenweg about Matt's experiences running Tumblr.
Listening to Matt speak always reminds me that there are really good people with good perspectives on social media and content moderation.
#Decoder #MattMullenweg #Tumblr #ContentModeration #NilayPatel #Podcast
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"...the problems with Twitter are not engineering problems. They are political problems. Twitter, the company, makes very little interesting technology; the tech stack is not the valuable asset. The asset is the user base: hopelessly addicted politicians, reporters, celebrities, and other people who should know better but keep posting anyway. You! You, Elon Musk, are addicted to Twitter. You’re the asset. You just bought yourself for $44 billion dollars."