Minnesota just passed a law specifically targeting x.ai tools that allow you to put someone's head on a nude picture. Don't other AI graphics tools let you accomplish the same thing? Don't the AI graphics tools merely automate what you could previously accomplish if you were a skilled Photoshop user? Of course there are legitimate uses for this technology like creating memes.
Wouldn't it make much more sense to mandate that machine id and IP address be encoded into the image itself? Don't they ultimately wish to punish the person who created the image?
Heard a radio show last evening where they interviewed the author of the bill. All they talked about was X.ai and Elon Musk. Definitely left the impression that is the only company they targeted. It was clear that both of them did not like Elon Musk so perhaps that is who they chose to highlight?
A lot of the (publicly discussed in the news) cases about this topic trace back to X.ai and Grok and suits against them. So it kind of makes sense that, in defending the law, they'd reference the company and implementation that seem to be getting used for it the most.
It's salesmanship, you want to sell the people on something (this law), you relate it to something they're already hearing about (X.ai and Grok being used to create sexualized and nude images of people).
Here in Michigan opponents of AI data centers are spreading lies and misinformation. I am baffled why the data centers think that operating in secret is the best option. Because they refuse to answer opponents people think they're hearing the truth. This secrecy is a bad plan that clearly is not working.
I know some professors who rely heavily on software that shows if a paper was written by AI. Imagine being a non-English native speaker getting their college essay flagged as AI when that is not the case? I will bet the professors do not know this software isn't infallible.
I do not agree with the author but I thought that it was worth a discussion. As someone who lived through the late nineties crash while running a startup this does not feel all that similar. Yes values are a bit frothy and there will certainly be a reset it does not need to be a crash.
In the late nineties venture money funded some companies that stood zero chance of ever being profitable yet they were able to go public. I don't see that happening this time. True some venture firms will take big hits but that is the nature of the business. The healthy companies will acquire some of the losers to get both their talent and control of their data center capacity.
They have a saying in aviation that their rules are shaped by blood. The entire safety system in aviation was created as a result of this crash. The pilot successfully landed the plane in the ocean. But staff could not persuade most of the shocked passengers to undo their seatbelts and leave the plane. Rescuers arrived quickly and everyone onboard should have survived but did not.
In the early PC days back in the eighties the bible was PC Magazine. They had a number of really talented columnists but towering above all of them was John C. Dvorak. He wrote so well, he was at times opinionated and other times intensely funny. Whether you agreed with that weeks opinion or not you felt you were better for having read it and that is truly rare.
Then along came PC TV and he got introduced to an entirely new audience. He had a blog for awhile and then I lost track of him. Then he reentered my world when he started a SubStack, actually several. One I didn't read and that was where he pontificated on things political.
Then during COVID he touched a live wire on his political SubStack, detailed why he didn't get 'the shot' and why you should too. He also correctly called out the players and what was really going on with COVID. He discovered a third new audience and became an enemy of the administration at the same time. That people was one hell of a career. He will be missed.
Well, look I don't want to discuss such miserable topics about the man in this context; i'll look elsewhere for understanding
He was a contrarian when it came to tech; I thought he had terrible taste, little sense of what others saw in computation, and little empathy overall; but, he articulated himself well. He was a good writer and occasionally had good jokes. I'll miss him; RIP.
Thanks for the link. His decades of tech columns were so well-served by his skeptic curmudgeon style. There's danger in bringing that persona to all topics, I now see, shown by this regrettable chapter of his blogging life.
Sadly this worthwhile project is paused because the Trump administration has cut its funding. For less than a million dollars we could place names on soldiers who fought the revolutionary war. Our nation has been pretty good about using DNA to identify soldiers from the second world war on but not before.
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