#Is Apple using OpenAI?

[needtricks-blog]

Understanding OpenAI Data Usage in Apple ChatGPT Integrations

Understanding OpenAI Data Usage in Apple ChatGPT Integrations. In 2024, Apple and OpenAI partnered to integrate ChatGPT into Apple’s ecosystem, enhancing user experiences across devices. This collaboration brings advanced AI capabilities to applications like Siri, iMessage, and Safari. However, it also raises questions about data privacy and usage. Continue reading Understanding OpenAI Data Usage…

[monetizeme]

Silicon Valley Oligarchs Roll Out the Red Carpet for Fascism

"Congratulations to President Trump on a decisive victory. We have great opportunities ahead of us as a country. Looking forward to working with you and your administration." -Zuckerberg (CEO of Meta) on Threads

"Congratulations President Trump on your victory! We look forward to engaging with you and your administration to help make sure the United States continues to lead with and be fueled by ingenuity, innovation, and creativity." -Tim Cook (CEO of Apple) on X

"Congratulations to President @realDonaldTrump on his decisive victory. We are in a golden age of American innovation and are committed to working with his administration to help bring the benefits to everyone." -Sundar Pichai (CEO of Google) on X

"Congratulations President Trump, we’re looking forward to engaging with you and your administration to drive innovation forward that creates new growth and opportunity for the United States and the world." -Satya Nadella (CEO of Microsoft) on X

"Big congratulations to our 45th and now 47th President on an extraordinary political comeback and decisive victory. No nation has bigger opportunities. Wishing @realDonaldTrump all success in leading and uniting the America we all love." -Jeff Bezos (CEO of Amazon) on X

"congrats to President Trump. i wish for his huge success in the job." -Sam Altman (CEO of OpenAI) on X

[tecdisha]

Apple’s Shocking Exit from OpenAI Investment: What’s Really Happening Behind the Scenes?

[stjohnstarling]

Full text of article as follows:

Tumblr and Wordpress are preparing to sell user data to Midjourney and OpenAI, according to a source with internal knowledge about the deals and internal documentation referring to the deals. 

The exact types of data from each platform going to each company are not spelled out in documentation we’ve reviewed, but internal communications reviewed by 404 Media make clear that deals between Automattic, the platforms’ parent company, and OpenAI and Midjourney are imminent.

The internal documentation details a messy and controversial process within Tumblr itself. One internal post made by Cyle Gage, a product manager at Tumblr, states that a query made to prepare data for OpenAI and Midjourney compiled a huge number of user posts that it wasn’t supposed to. It is not clear from Gage’s post whether this data has already been sent to OpenAI and Midjourney, or whether Gage was detailing a process for scrubbing the data before it was to be sent. 

Gage wrote: 

“the way the data was queried for the initial data dump to Midjourney/OpenAI means we compiled a list of all tumblr’s public post content between 2014 and 2023, but also unfortunately it included, and should not have included:

private posts on public blogs

posts on deleted or suspended blogs

unanswered asks (normally these are not public until they’re answered)

private answers (these only show up to the receiver and are not public)

posts that are marked ‘explicit’ / NSFW / ‘mature’ by our more modern standards (this may not be a big deal, I don’t know)

content from premium partner blogs (special brand blogs like Apple’s former music blog, for example, who spent money with us on an ad campaign) that may have creative that doesn’t belong to us, and we don’t have the rights to share with this-parties; this one is kinda unknown to me, what deals are in place historically and what they should prevent us from doing.”

Gage’s post makes clear that engineers are working on compiling a list of post IDs that should not have been included, and that password-protected posts, DMs, and media flagged as CSAM and other community guidelines violations were not included.

Automattic plans to launch a new setting on Wednesday that will allow users to opt-out of data sharing with third parties, including AI companies, according to the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, and internal documents. A new FAQ section we reviewed is titled “What happens when you opt out?” states that “If you opt out from the start, we will block crawlers from accessing your content by adding your site on a disallowed list. If you change your mind later, we also plan to update any partners about people who newly opt-out and ask that their content be removed from past sources and future training.” 

404 Media has asked Automattic how it accidentally compiled data that it shouldn’t share, and whether any of that content was shared with OpenAI. 404 Media asked Automattic about an imminent deal with Midjourney last week but did not hear back then, either. Instead of answering direct questions about these deals and the compiling of user data, Automattic sent a statement, which it posted publicly after this story was published, titled "Protecting User Choice." In it, Automattic promises that it's blocked AI crawlers from scraping its sites. The statement says, "We are also working directly with select AI companies as long as their plans align with what our community cares about: attribution, opt-outs, and control. Our partnerships will respect all opt-out settings. We also plan to take that a step further and regularly update any partners about people who newly opt out and ask that their content be removed from past sources and future training."

Another internal document shows that, on February 23, an employee asked in a staff-only thread, “Do we have assurances that if a user opts out of their data being shared with third parties that our existing data partners will be notified of such a change and remove their data?”

Andrew Spittle, Automattic’s head of AI replied: “We will notify existing partners on a regular basis about anyone who's opted out since the last time we provided a list. I want this to be an ongoing process where we regularly advocate for past content to be excluded based on current preferences. We will ask that content be deleted and removed from any future training runs. I believepartners will honor this based on our conversations with them to this point. I don't think they gain much overall by retaining it.” Automattic did not respond to a question from 404 Media about whether it could guarantee that people who opt out will have their data deleted retroactively.

News about a deal between Tumblr and Midjourney has been rumored and speculated about on Tumblr for the last week. Someone claiming to be a former Tumblr employee announced in a Tumblr blog post that the platform was working on a deal with Midjourney, and the rumor made it onto Blind, an app for verified employees of companies to anonymously discuss their jobs. 404 Media has seen the Blind posts, in which what seems like an Automattic employee says, “I'm not sure why some of you are getting worked up or worried about this. It's totally legal, and sharing it publicly is perfectly fine since it's right there in the terms & conditions. So, go ahead and spread the word as much as you can with your friends and tech journalists, it's totally fine.”

Separately, 404 Media viewed a public, now-deleted post by Gage, the product manager, where he said that he was deleting all of his images off of Tumblr, and would be putting them on his personal website. A still-live postsays, “i've deleted my photography from tumblr and will be moving it slowly but surely over to cylegage.com, which i'm building into a photography portfolio that i can control end-to-end.” At one point last week, his personal website had a specific note stating that he did not consent to AI scraping of his images. Gage’s original post has been deleted, and his website is now a blank page that just reads “Cyle.” Gage did not respond to a request for comment from 404 Media. 

Several online platforms have made similar deals with AI companies recently, including Reddit, which entered into an AI content licensing deal with Google and said in its SEC filing last week that it’s “in the early stages of monetizing [its] user base” by training AI on users’ posts. Last year, Shutterstock signed a six year deal with OpenAI to provide training data.

OpenAI and Midjourney did not respond to requests for comment. 

Updated 4:05 p.m. EST with a statement from Automattic.

[inbabylontheywept]

So, just some Fermi numbers for AI: I'm going to invent a unit right now, 1 Global Flop-Second. It's the total amount of computation available in the world, for one second. That's 10^21 flops if you're actually kind of curious. GPT-3 required about 100 Global Flop-Seconds, or nearly 2 minutes. GPT-4 required around 10,000 Global Flop-Seconds, or about 3 hours, and at the time, consumed something like 1/2000th the worlds total computational capacity for a couple of years. If we assume that every iteration just goes up by something like 100x as many flop seconds, GPT-5 is going to take 1,000,000 Global Flop-Seconds, or 12 days of capacity. They've been working on it for a year and a half, which implies that they've been using something like 1% of the world's total computational capacity in that time.

So just drawing straights lines in the guesses (this is a Fermi estimation), GPT-6 would need 20x as much computing fraction as GPT-5, which needed 20x as much as GPT-4, so it would take something like a quarter of all the world's computational capacity to make if they tried for a year and a half. If they cut themselves some slack and went for five years, they'd still need 5-6%.

And GPT-7 would need 20x as much as that.

OpenAI's CEO has said that their optimistic estimates for getting to GPT-7 would require seven-trillion dollars of investment. That's about as much as Microsoft, Apple, and Google combined. So, for limiting factors involved are... GPT-6: Limited by money. GPT-6 doesn't happen unless GPT-5 can make an absolute shitload. Decreasing gains kill this project, and all the ones after that. We don't actually know how far deep learning can be pushed before it stops working, but it probably doesnt' scale forever. GPT-7: Limited by money, and by total supply of hardware. Would need to make a massive return on six, and find a way to actually improve hardware output for the world. GPT-8: Limited by money, and by hardware, and by global energy supplies. Would require breakthroughs in at least two of those three. A world where GPT-8 can be designed is almost impossible to imagine. A world where GPT-8 exists is like summoning an elder god. GPT-9, just for giggles, is like a Kardeshev 1 level project. Maybe level 2.

[probablyasocialecologist]

Generative AI was always unsustainable, always dependent on reams of training data that necessitated stealing from millions of people, its utility vague and its ubiquity overstated. The media and the markets have tolerated a technology that, while not inherently bad, was implemented in a way so nefariously and wastefully that it necessitated theft, billions of dollars in cash, and double-digit percent increases in hyper scalers’ emissions. The desperation for the tech industry to “have something new” has led to such ruinous excess, and if this bubble collapses, it will be a result of a shared myopia in both big tech dimwits like Satya Nadella and Sundar Pichai, and Silicon Valley power players like Reid Hoffman, Sam Altman, Brian Chesky, and Marc Andreessen. The people propping this bubble up no longer experience human problems, and thus can no longer be trusted to solve them. This is a story of waste, ignorance and greed. Of being so desperate to own the future but so disconnected from actually building anything. This arms race is a monument to the lack of curiosity rife in the highest ranks of the tech industry. They refuse to do the hard work — to create, to be curious, to be excited about the things you build and the people they serve — and so they spent billions to eliminate the risk they even might have to do any of those things.  Had Sundar Pichai looked at Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI and said “no thanks” — as he did with the metaverse — it’s likely that none of this would’ve happened. But a combined hunger for growth and a lack of any natural predators means that big tech no longer knows how to make competitive, useful products, and thus can only see what their competitors are doing and say “uhhh, yeah! That’s what the big thing is!”  Mark Zuckerberg was once so disconnected from Meta’s work on AI that he literally had no idea of the AI breakthrough Sundar Pichai complimented him about in a meeting mere months before Meta’s own obsession with AI truly began. None of these guys have any idea what’s going on! And why are they having these chummy meetings? These aren’t competitors! They’re co-conspirators!  These companies are too large, too unwieldy, too disconnected, and do too much. They lack the focus that makes a truly competitive business, and lack a cohesive culture built on solving real human or business problems. These are not companies built for anything other than growth — and none of them, not even Apple, have built something truly innovative and life-changing in the best part of a decade, with the exception, perhaps, of contactless payments. These companies are run by rot economists and have disconnected, chaotic cultures full of petty fiefdoms where established technologists are ratfucked by management goons when they refuse to make their products worse for a profit. There is a world where these companies just make a billion dollars a quarter and they don't have to fire people every quarter, one where these companies actually solve real problems, and make incredibly large amounts of money for doing so. The problem is that they’re greedy, and addicted to growth, and incapable of doing anything other than following the last guy who had anything approaching a monetizable idea, the stench of Jack Welch wafting through every boardroom.

5 August 2024

[nixcraft]

120kW of Nvidia AI compute

This one rack has 120kW of Nvidia AI compute power requirements. Google, Meta, Apple, OpenAI AND others are buying these like candy for their shity AI applications. In fact, there is a waiting list to get your hands on it. Each compute is super expensive too. All liquid cooled. Crazy tech. Crazy energy requirements too 🔥🤬 All such massive energy requirements so that AI companies can sell LLM from stolen content from writers, video creators, artists and ALL humans and put everyone else out of the job while heating our planet.

To add some context for people on what 120kW means…

An average US home uses 10,500kWh per year, or an average of 29kWh per day. This averages out at 1.2kW.

In other words, if that server rack runs its PSU at 100%, it’s using as much power as 100 homes. In about 6sqft of floor space. Not including power used to cool it. The average US electricity rate is around $0.15/kWh. 120kW running 24/7 would cost $13,000 per month. Compare that to the electricity bill for your house. (Thanks, Matt)

[mariacallous]

ChatGPT has already wreaked havoc on classrooms and changed how teachers approach writing homework, since OpenAI publicly launched the generative AI chatbot in late 2022. School administrators rushed to try to detect AI-generated essays, and in turn, students scrambled to find out how to cloak their synthetic compositions. But by focusing on writing assignments, educators let another seismic shift take place in the periphery: students using AI more often to complete math homework too.

Right now, high schoolers and college students around the country are experimenting with free smartphone apps that help complete their math homework using generative AI. One of the most popular options on campus right now is the Gauth app, with millions of downloads. It’s owned by ByteDance, which is also TikTok’s parent company.

The Gauth app first launched in 2019 with a primary focus on mathematics, but soon expanded to other subjects as well, like chemistry and physics. It’s grown in relevance, and neared the top of smartphone download lists earlier this year for the education category. Students seem to love it. With hundreds of thousands of primarily positive reviews, Gauth has a favorable 4.8 star rating in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.

All students have to do after downloading the app is point their smartphone at a homework problem, printed or handwritten, and then make sure any relevant information is inside of the image crop. Then Gauth’s AI model generates a step-by-step guide, often with the correct answer.

From our testing on high-school-level algebra and geometry homework samples, Gauth’s AI tool didn’t deliver A+ results and particularly struggled with some graphing questions. It performed well enough to get around a low B grade or a high C average on the homework we fed it. Not perfect, but also likely good enough to satisfy bored students who'd rather spend their time after school doing literally anything else.

The app struggled more on higher levels of math, like Calculus 2 problems, so students further along in their educational journey may find less utility in this current generation of AI homework-solving apps.

Yes, generative AI tools, with a foundation in natural language processing, are known for failing to generate accurate answers when presented with complex math equations. But researchers are focused on improving AI’s abilities in this sector, and an entry-level high school math class is likely well within the reach of current AI homework apps. Will has even written about how researchers at Google DeepMind are ecstatic about recent results from testing a math-focused large language model, called AlphaProof, on problems shown at this year’s International Math Olympiad.

To be fair, Gauth positions itself as an AI study company that’s there to “ace your homework” and help with difficult problems, rather than a cheating aid. The company even goes so far as to include an “Honor Code” on its website dictating proper usage. “Resist the temptation to use Gauth in ways that go against your values or school’s expectations,” reads the company’s website. So basically, Gauth implicitly acknowledges impulsive teenagers may use the app for much more than the occasional stumper, and wants them to pinkie promise that they’ll behave.

Prior to publication, a spokesperson for ByteDance did not answer a list of questions about the Gauth app when contacted by WIRED over email.

It’s easy to focus on Gauth’s limitations, but millions of students now have a free app in their pocket that can walk them through various math problems in seconds, with decent accuracy. This concept would be almost inconceivable to students from even a few years ago.

You could argue that Gauth promotes accessibility for students who don’t have access to quality education or who process information at a slower pace than their teacher’s curriculum. It’s a perspective shared by proponents of using AI tools, like ChatGPT, in the classroom. As long as the students all make it to the same destination, who cares what path they took on the journey? And isn’t this just the next evolution in our available math tools? We moved on from the abacus to the graphing calculator, so why not envision generative AI as another critical step forward?

I see value in teachers thoughtfully employing AI in the classroom for specific lessons or to provide students with more personalized practice questions. But I can’t get out of my head how this app, if students overly rely on it, could hollow out future generations’ critical thinking skills—often gleaned from powering through frustrating math classes and tough homework assignments. (I totally get it, though, as an English major.)

Educational leaders are missing the holistic picture if they continue to focus on AI-generated essays as the primary threat that could undermine the current approach to teaching. Instead of arduous assignments to complete outside of class, maybe centering in-class math practice could continue to facilitate positive learning outcomes in the age of AI.

If Gauth and apps like it eventually lead to the demise of math homework for high schoolers, throngs of students will breathe a collective sigh of relief. How will parents and educators respond? I’m not so sure. That remains an open question, and one for which Gauth can’t calculate an answer yet either.

[shemulnewslive00]

Trump hosts Apple CEO at Mar-a-Lago as big tech leaders continue outreach to president-elect

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Donald Trump hosted Apple CEO Tim Cook for a Friday evening dinner at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago resort, according to a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to comment publicly.

Cook is the latest in a string of big tech leaders — including OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos — who have sought to improve their standing with the incoming president after choppy relations with Trump during his first term.

Trump has said he has spoken with Cook about the company’s long-running tax battles with the European Union.

The meeting comes less than two months after Trump said he spoke to Cook by phone, and soon after Apple lost its last appeal in a dispute with the EU over 13 billion euros ($14.34 billion) in back taxes to Ireland.

“He said the European Union has just fined us $15 billion,” Trump recalled of his conversation with Cook, in an October interview with podcaster Patrick Bet-David. “Then on top of that they got fined by the European Union another $2 billion.”

The decision by the EU top court was the finale to a dispute that centered on sweetheart deals that Dublin was offering to attract multinational businesses with minimal taxes across the 27-nation bloc. The European Commission in 2016 ruled that Ireland granted Apple unlawful aid that Ireland was required to recover.

Trump’s transition team and Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment about his dinner with Cook.

[thoughtportal]

Tumblr and Wordpress are preparing to sell user data to Midjourney and OpenAI, according to a source with internal knowledge about the deals and internal documentation referring to the deals. 

The exact types of data from each platform going to each company are not spelled out in documentation we’ve reviewed, but internal communications reviewed by 404 Media make clear that deals between Automattic, the platforms’ parent company, and OpenAI and Midjourney are imminent.

The internal documentation details a messy and controversial process within Tumblr itself. One internal post made by Cyle Gage, a product manager at Tumblr, states that a query made to prepare data for OpenAI and Midjourney compiled a huge number of user posts that it wasn’t supposed to. It is not clear from Gage’s post whether this data has already been sent to OpenAI and Midjourney, or whether Gage was detailing a process for scrubbing the data before it was to be sent. 

Gage wrote:

“the way the data was queried for the initial data dump to Midjourney/OpenAI means we compiled a list of all tumblr’s public post content between 2014 and 2023, but also unfortunately it included, and should not have included:

private posts on public blogs

posts on deleted or suspended blogs

unanswered asks (normally these are not public until they’re answered)

private answers (these only show up to the receiver and are not public)

posts that are marked ‘explicit’ / NSFW / ‘mature’ by our more modern standards (this may not be a big deal, I don’t know)

content from premium partner blogs (special brand blogs like Apple’s former music blog, for example, who spent money with us on an ad campaign) that may have creative that doesn’t belong to us, and we don’t have the rights to share with this-parties; this one is kinda unknown to me, what deals are in place historically and what they should prevent us from doing.”

Gage’s post makes clear that engineers are working on compiling a list of post IDs that should not have been included, and that password-protected posts, DMs, and media flagged as CSAM and other community guidelines violations were not included.

Automattic plans to launch a new setting on Wednesday that will allow users to opt-out of data sharing with third parties, including AI companies, according to the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, and internal documents. A new FAQ section we reviewed is titled “What happens when you opt out?” states that “If you opt out from the start, we will block crawlers from accessing your content by adding your site on a disallowed list. If you change your mind later, we also plan to update any partners about people who newly opt-out and ask that their content be removed from past sources and future training.” 

404 Media has asked Automattic how it accidentally compiled data that it shouldn’t share, and whether any of that content was shared with OpenAI, but did not immediately hear back from the company. 404 Media asked Automattic about an imminent deal with Midjourney last week but did not hear back then, either.

Another internal document shows that, on February 23, an employee asked in a staff-only thread, “Do we have assurances that if a user opts out of their data being shared with third parties that our existing data partners will be notified of such a change and remove their data?”

Andrew Spittle, Automattic’s head of AI replied: “We will notify existing partners on a regular basis about anyone who's opted out since the last time we provided a list. I want this to be an ongoing process where we regularly advocate for past content to be excluded based on current preferences. We will ask that content be deleted and removed from any future training runs. I believe partners will honor this based on our conversations with them to this point. I don't think they gain much overall by retaining it.” Automattic did not respond to a question from 404 Media about whether it could guarantee that people who opt out will have their data deleted retroactively.

News about a deal between Tumblr and Midjourney has been rumored and speculated about on Tumblr for the last week. Someone claiming to be a former Tumblr employee announced in a Tumblr blog post that the platform was working on a deal with Midjourney, and the rumor made it onto Blind, an app for verified employees of companies to anonymously discuss their jobs. 404 Media has seen the Blind posts, in which what seems like an Automattic employee says, “I'm not sure why some of you are getting worked up or worried about this. It's totally legal, and sharing it publicly is perfectly fine since it's right there in the terms & conditions. So, go ahead and spread the word as much as you can with your friends and tech journalists, it's totally fine.”

Separately, 404 Media viewed a public, now-deleted post by Gage, the product manager, where he said that he was deleting all of his images off of Tumblr, and would be putting them on his personal website. A still-live post says, “i've deleted my photography from tumblr and will be moving it slowly but surely over to cylegage.com, which i'm building into a photography portfolio that i can control end-to-end.” At one point last week, his personal website had a specific note stating that he did not consent to AI scraping of his images. Gage’s original post has been deleted, and his website is now a blank page that just reads “Cyle.” Gage did not respond to a request for comment from 404 Media. 

Several online platforms have made similar deals with AI companies recently, including Reddit, which entered into an AI content licensing deal with Google and said in its SEC filing last week that it’s “in the early stages of monetizing [its] user base” by training AI on users’ posts. Last year, Shutterstock signed a six year deal with OpenAI to provide training data.

OpenAI and Midjourney did not respond to requests for comment. 

[mavcancees]

do you think there will ever be an environmentally friendly - or at least a less environmentally impactful - way of using AI tools such as chatgbt? i see the potential of it being a helpful tool in areas such as STEM but i can’t for the life of me get on board with the way it operates right now

yeah it already exists apple does it. chatgpt's company, openai, is just garbage and full of idiots wanting to make a quick buck

but "apple intelligence" which is actually just siri but better and it has always existed but now it has a funny name, is carbon neutral. the ai is in house, so it uses your own phone as power, and the servers where it runs as base are on solar panelling and cryo cooling. they have a whole thing about it on their website

it's totally possible it's just expensive to set up, and you have to like, actually care about the environmental impact you're having to invest on it. and openai doesn't care

[cindylouwho-2]

RECENT SEO & MARKETING NEWS FOR ECOMMERCE, JULY 2024

If you are new to my Tumblr, I usually do these summaries of SEO and marketing news once a month, picking out the pieces that are most likely to be useful to small and micro-businesses.

You can get notified of these updates plus my website blog posts via email: http://bit.ly/CindyLouWho2Blog or get all of the most timely updates plus exclusive content by supporting my Patreon: patreon.com/CindyLouWho2

TOP NEWS & ARTICLES 

There is a relatively new way to file copyright claims against US residents, called The Copyright Claims Board (CCB). I wrote more here [post by me on Patreon]

After a few years of handwringing and false starts, Google is abandoning plans to block third-party cookies in Chrome. Both Safari and Firefox already block them. 

When composing titles and text where other keywords are found, it can be useful to have a short checklist of the types of keywords you need, as this screenshot demonstrates. While that title is too long for most platforms and search engines, it covers really critical points that should get mentioned in the product description and keyword fields/tags as well:

The core keywords that describe the item

What the customer is looking to do - solve a problem? Find a gift? Feel better? 

What makes the product stand out in its field - why buy this instead of something else? Differentiating your items is something that should come before you get to the listing stage, so the keywords should already be in your head. 

Relevant keywords that will be used in long tail searches are always great add-ons.

What if anything about your item is trendy now? E.g., sustainability? Particular colours, styles or materials/ingredients are always important.  

SEO: GOOGLE & OTHER SEARCH ENGINES 

Google’s June spam update has finished rolling out. And here is the full list of Google news from June. 

Expect a new Google core update “in the coming weeks” (as if we needed more Google excitement).

Google’s AI overviews continue to dwindle at the top of search results, now only appearing in 7% of searches.

Despite Google trying to target AI spam, many poorly-copied articles still outrank the originals in Google search results. 

Internal links are important for Google SEO. While this article covers blogging in particular, most of the tips apply to any standalone website. Google also recently did a video [YouTube] on the same topic. 

Google had a really excellent second quarter, mostly due to the cloud and AI. 

Not Google

OpenAI is testing SearchGPT with a small number of subscribers. Alphabet shares dropped 3% after the announcement. 

SOCIAL MEDIA - All Aspects, By Site

General

New social media alert: noplace is a new app billed as MySpace for Gen Z that also has some similarities with Twitter (e.g., text-based chats, with no photos or videos at this time). iOS only at the moment; no Android app or web page. 

Thinking of trying out Bluesky? Here are some tips to get the most out of it. 

Facebook (includes relevant general news from Meta)

Meta’s attempt at circumventing EU privacy regulations through paid subscriptions is illegal under the Digital Markets Act, according to the European Commission. “if the company cannot reach an agreement with regulators before March 2025, the Commission has the power to levy fines of up to 10 percent of the company’s global turnover.”

If you post Reels from a business page, you may be able to let Meta use AI to do A/B testing on the captions and other portions shown. I personally would not do this unless I could see what options they were choosing, since AI is often not as good as it thinks it is. 

Apple’s 30% fee on in-app ad purchases for Facebook and Instagram has kicked in worldwide as of July 1. 

Facebook is testing ads in the Notifications list on the app. 

Meta is encouraging advertisers to connect their Google Analytics accounts to Meta Ads, claiming “integration could improve campaign performance, citing a 22% conversion increase.”

Instagram

The head of Instagram is still emphasizing that the number of DM shares per post is a huge ranking factor. 

LinkedIn

Another article on the basics of setting up LinkedIn and getting found through it. 

You can now advertise your LinkedIn newsletters on the platform. 

Pinterest

Pinterest is slowly testing an AI program that edits the background of product photography without changing the product. 

Is Pinterest dying? An investment research firm thinks so. 

Reddit

If you want to see results from Reddit in your search engine results, Google is the only place that can happen now. 

More than ever, Reddit is being touted as a way to be found (especially in Google search), but you do have to understand how the site works to be successful at it. 

Snapchat

Snapchat+ now has 9 million paying users, and they are getting quite a few new personalization updates, and Snaps that last 50 seconds or less. 

Threads

Threads has hit 175 million active users each month, up from 130 million in February. 

TikTok

TikTok has made it easier to reuse your videos outside of the site without a watermark. 

TikTok users can now select a custom thumbnail image for videos, either a frame from the clip itself, or a still image from elsewhere.  

Twitter

You can opt out of Twitter using your posts as data for its AI, Grok. 

YouTube

YouTube has new tools for Shorts, including one that makes your longer videos into Shorts. 

Community Spaces are the latest YouTube test to try to get more fan involvement, while moving users away from video comments.

(CONTENT) MARKETING (includes blogging, emails, and strategies) 

Start your content marketing plans for August now, including back-to-school themes and Alfred Hitchcock’s birthday on August 13. 

ONLINE ADVERTISING (EXCEPT INDIVIDUAL SOCIAL MEDIA AND ECOMMERCE SITES) 

Google Ads now have several new updates, including blocking misspellings. 

Google’s new Merchant Center Next will soon be available for all users, if they haven’t already been invited. Supplemental feeds are now (or soon will be) allowed there. 

STATS, DATA, TRACKING 

Google Search Console users can now add their shipping and return info to Google search through the Console itself. This is useful for sites that do not pay for Google Ads or use Google’s free shopping ads. 

BUSINESS & CONSUMER TRENDS, STATS & REPORTS; SOCIOLOGY & PSYCHOLOGY, CUSTOMER SERVICE 

The second part of this Whiteboard Friday [video with transcript] discusses how consumer behaviour is changing during tight economic times. “People are still spending. They just want the most for their money. Also, the consideration phase is much more complex and longer.” The remainder of the piece discusses how to approach your target market during these times. 

Prime Day was supposedly the best ever for Amazon, but they didn’t release any numbers. Adobe Analytics tracked US ecommerce sales on those days and provides some insight. “Buy-now, pay-later accounted for 7.6% of all orders, a 16.4% year-over-year increase.”

MISCELLANEOUS

You know how I always tell small business owners to have multiple revenue streams? Tech needs to have multiple providers and backups as well, as the recent CrowdStrike and Microsoft issues demonstrate. 

If you used Google’s old URL shortener anywhere, those links will no longer redirect as of August 25 2024. 

[beardedmrbean]

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit Friday against real estate software company RealPage Inc., accusing it of an illegal scheme that allows landlords to coordinate to hike rental prices.

The lawsuit, filed alongside attorneys general in states including North Carolina and California, alleges the company of violating antitrust laws through its algorithm that landlords use to get recommended rental prices for apartments.

The algorithm allows landlords to align their prices and avoid competition that would keep rents down, Justice Department officials said. The complaint quotes one RealPage executive as saying “there is greater good in everybody succeeding versus essentially trying to compete against one another in a way that actually keeps the entire industry down.”

In a statement, Attorney General Merrick Garland said, “Americans should not have to pay more in rent because a company has found a new way to scheme with landlords to break the law.”

Attorneys general in several states have separately sued RealPage alleging an illegal price-fixing scheme over its algorithmic pricing software.

In a statement posted on its website in June, RealPage called claims against the company “false and misleading,” and argued its software actually “contributes to a healthier and more efficient rental housing ecosystem.” RealPage said landlords decide their own rent prices and are free to reject the recommendations provided by its software.

It’s the latest example of the Biden administration’s aggressive antitrust enforcement.

The Justice Department sued Apple in March and in May announced a sweeping lawsuit against Ticketmaster and its owner, Live Nation Entertainment. Antitrust enforcers have also opened investigations into the roles Microsoft, Nvidia and OpenAI have played in the artificial intelligence boom.

[scifigeneration]

ChatGPT and the movie ‘Her’ are just the latest example of the ‘sci-fi feedback loop’

by Rizwan Virk, Faculty Associate and PhD Candidate in Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology at Arizona State University

In May 2024, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman sparked a firestorm by referencing the 2013 movie “Her” to highlight the novelty of the latest iteration of ChatGPT.

Within days, actor Scarlett Johansson, who played the voice of Samantha, the AI girlfriend of the protagonist in the movie “Her,” accused the company of improperly using her voice after she had spurned their offer to make her the voice of ChatGPT’s new virtual assistant. Johansson ended up suing OpenAI and has been invited to testify before Congress.

This tiff highlights a broader interchange between Hollywood and Silicon Valley that’s called the “sci-fi feedback loop.” The subject of my doctoral research, the sci-fi feedback loop explores how science fiction and technological innovation feed off each other. This dynamic is bidirectional and can sometimes play out over many decades, resulting in an ongoing loop.

Fiction sparks dreams of Moon travel

One of the most famous examples of this loop is Moon travel.

Jules Verne’s 1865 novel “From the Earth to the Moon” and the fiction of H.G. Wells inspired one of the first films to visualize such a journey, 1902’s “A Trip to the Moon.”

The fiction of Verne and Wells also influenced future rocket scientists such as Robert Goddard, Hermann Oberth and Oberth’s better-known protégé, Wernher von Braun. The innovations of these men – including the V-2 rocket built by von Braun during World War II – inspired works of science fiction, such as the 1950 film “Destination Moon,” which included a rocket that looked just like the V-2.

Films like “Destination Moon” would then go on to bolster public support for lavish government spending on the space program.

Creative symbiosis

The sci-fi feedback loop generally follows the same cycle.

First, the technological climate of a given era will shape that period’s science fiction. For example, the personal computing revolution of the 1970s and 1980s directly inspired the works of cyberpunk writers Neal Stephenson and William Gibson.

Then the sci-fi that emerges will go on to inspire real-world technological innovation. In his 1992 classic “Snow Crash,” Stephenson coined the term “metaverse” to describe a 3-D, video game-like world accessed through virtual reality goggles.

Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and innovators have been trying to build a version of this metaverse ever since. The virtual world of the video game Second Life, released in 2003, took a stab at this: Players lived in virtual homes, went to virtual dance clubs and virtual concerts with virtual girlfriends and boyfriends, and were even paid virtual dollars for showing up at virtual jobs.

This technology seeded yet more fiction; in my research, I discovered that sci-fi novelist Ernest Cline had spent a lot of time playing Second Life, and it inspired the metaverse of his bestselling novel “Ready Player One.”

The cycle continued: Employees of Oculus VR – now known as Meta Reality Labs – were given copies of “Ready Player One” to read as they developed the company’s virtual reality headsets. When Facebook changed its name to Meta in 2021, it did so in the hopes of being at the forefront of building the metaverse, though the company’s grand ambitions have tempered somewhat.

Another sci-fi franchise that has its fingerprints all over this loop is “Star Trek,” which first aired in 1966, right in the middle of the space race.

Steve Perlman, the inventor of Apple’s QuickTime media format and player, said he was inspired by an episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” in which Lt. Commander Data, an android, sifts through multiple streams of audio and video files. And Rob Haitani, the designer of the Palm Pilot’s operating system, has said that the bridge on the Enterprise influenced its interface.

In my research, I also discovered that the show’s Holodeck – a room that could simulate any environment – influenced both the name and the development of Microsoft’s HoloLens augmented reality glasses.

From ALICE to ‘Her’

Which brings us back to OpenAI and “Her.”

In the movie, the protagonist, Theodore, played by Joaquin Phoenix, acquires an AI assistant, “Samantha,” voiced by Johansson. He begins to develop feelings for Samantha – so much so that he starts to consider her his girlfriend.

ChatGPT-4o, the latest version of the generative AI software, seems to be able to cultivate a similar relationship between user and machine. Not only can ChatGPT-4o speak to you and “understand” you, but it can also do so sympathetically, as a romantic partner would.

There’s little doubt that the depiction of AI in “Her” influenced OpenAI’s developers. In addition to Altman’s tweet, the company’s promotional videos for ChatGPT-4o feature a chatbot speaking with a job candidate before his interview, propping him up and encouraging him – as, well, an AI girlfriend would. The AI featured in the clips, Ars Technica observed, was “disarmingly lifelike,” and willing “to laugh at your jokes and your dumb hat.”

But you might be surprised to learn that a previous generation of chatbots inspired Spike Jonze, the director and screenwriter of “Her,” to write the screenplay in the first place. Nearly a decade before the film’s release, Jonze had interacted with a version of the ALICE chatbot, which was one of the first chatbots to have a defined personality – in ALICE’s case, that of a young woman.

The ALICE chatbot won the Loebner Prize three times, which was awarded annually until 2019 to the AI software that came closest to passing the Turing Test, long seen as a threshold for determining whether artificial intelligence has become indistinguishable from human intelligence.

The sci-fi feedback loop has no expiration date. AI’s ability to form relationships with humans is a theme that continues to be explored in fiction and real life.

A few years after “Her,” “Blade Runner 2049” featured a virtual girlfriend, Joi, with a holographic body. Well before the latest drama with OpenAI, companies had started developing and pitching virtual girlfriends, a process that will no doubt continue. As science fiction writer and social media critic Cory Doctorow wrote in 2017, “Science fiction does something better than predict the future: It influences it.”

[machine-saint]

there's a rhetorical thing i've noticed in the way people talk about resource consumption (especially in the context of technology) where people will talk about large absolute numbers but not bring up the context.

as a concrete example: this AP article mentions that microsoft's yearly data center water consumption in 2022 was "nearly 1.7 billion gallons, or more than 2,500 Olympic-sized swimming pools", up 30% from 2021, likely due to an increase in AI usage. that's a lot! ... and then you look at the total US water withdrawl in 2022, which was 322 billion gallons per day. so microsoft's data centers (worldwide?) are using less than 1% of 1% of the total US water usage. (note that this isn't strictly an apples-to-apples comparison, since microsoft's number subtracts water returned to the municipal water system but the US number doesn't. but it's still a valid order-of-magnitude comparison.)

of course, this is massively complicated by the fact that water usage is localized in a way that electricity generation isn't. so we look at this paragraph near the end:

In July 2022, the month before OpenAI says it completed its training of GPT-4, Microsoft pumped in about 11.5 million gallons of water to its cluster of Iowa data centers, according to the West Des Moines Water Works. That amounted to about 6% of all the water used in the district, which also supplies drinking water to the city’s residents.

(note that water usage is higher in the summer since during cooler times, air conditioning is good enough)

6% is certainly nontrivial; this should have been near the start of the article, but 11.5 million gallons isn't as eye-catching of a figure ar 1.7 billion gallons.

also note that the article is clearly trying to tie together Microsoft's Iowa DC water usage with OpenAI training GPT-4, but doesn't have any actual numbers on how much of that water usage is due to OpenAI! we know OpenAI used Microsoft for training, but we have no clue how much compute they used, what data centers they used, and so on.

[darkmaga-returns]

All major AI developers are racing to create “agents” that will perform tasks on your computer: Apple, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic, etc. AI Agents will read your computer screen, browse the Internet, and perform tasks on your computer. Hidden agents will be harvesting your personal data, analyzing your hard drives for contraband, and ratting you out to the police. It’s a brave new world, after all. ⁃ Patrick Wood, TN Editor.

Google is reportedly gearing up to introduce its interpretation of the large action model concept known as “Project Jarvis,” with a preview potentially arriving as soon as December, according to The Information. This project aims to streamline various tasks for users, including research gathering, product purchasing, and flight booking.

Sources familiar with the initiative indicate that Jarvis will operate through a future version of Google’s Gemini technology and is specifically optimized for use with the Chrome web browser.

The primary focus of Project Jarvis is to help users automate everyday web-based tasks. The tool is designed to take and interpret screenshots, allowing it to interact with web pages by clicking buttons or entering text on behalf of users. While in its current state, Jarvis reportedly takes a few seconds to execute each action, the goal is to enhance user efficiency by handling routine online activities more seamlessly.

This move aligns with a broader trend among major AI companies working on similar capabilities. For instance, Microsoft is developing Copilot Vision, which will facilitate interactions with web pages.

Apple is also expected to introduce features that allow its AI to understand on-screen content and operate across multiple applications. Additionally, Anthropic has launched a beta update for Claude, which aims to assist users in managing their computers, while OpenAI is rumored to be working on a comparable solution.

Despite the anticipation surrounding Jarvis, The Information warns that the timeline for Google’s preview in December may be subject to change. The company is considering a limited release to select testers to help identify and resolve any issues before a broader launch. This approach reflects Google’s intention to refine the tool through user feedback, ensuring it meets expectations upon its official introduction.

Read full story here…