Ten Blue Links, All Your Computer Screengrabs Are Belong To Us edition
What a weird week. You might have noticed Microsoft had a few announcements. I’m not going to dwell on them – but what I will say is that moving AI from the cloud to the device while preserving privacy is hard, but a lot easier than keeping AI in the cloud. And so to the links…
1. Privacy sandbox is coming, and publishers might be in (more) trouble
Does Google hate publishers? You should know all about “privacy sandbox”, its not-really-private way of using aggregate data to target ads to people, which will just cement its position as Lord of The Ads. One thing that still isn't clear is if, in fact, publishers that don't use it will get downranked in search. At a time when AI answers and Google's general love of all things Reddit are already making them suffer. It will neither confirm or deny this. Which usually means it's going to do exactly that. If you're a user, Kagi is over there (and it's incredibly good).
2. Speaking of the media apocalypse…
This is one of the most depressing things I have read in quite some time. Audience from social media: dying. Audience from Google: dying. CPMs: Hilariously bad. One slight positive: Journalism has always existed with various business models, and it's not always been about scale and advertising.
3. Ben and Satya talk cricket. Oh, and AI
I've always loved Ben Thompson's work, even though I often don't agree with him these days. This long interview with Satya Nadella is worth a read in its entirety, and no, it doesn't feature cricket. Well only a bit. Related: I recently set up a new PC. What sport did it automatically show me in the widgets? Cricket. I see what you did there, Satya.
4. Twenty-four hours
Did you know that the Japanese used to have their own system of timekeeping which had longer or shorter segments depending on the time of year? And they built beautiful, elaborate clocks to tell time in it? I didn't, and now I really want to use that time system myself.
5. Not sent from my iPad
MG Siegler -- who, I am glad to say, is back writing regularly about tech -- hits the nail on the head about the latest iPad, and iPads more broadly. It's frustrating when you hit a wall with software like Safari, and you hit a wall far too often.
6. Reading comprehension and the age of AI
It's not just AI that threatens the truthfulness of our politics and culture: we have also lost, in some cases, the ability to read and comprehend long-form, detailed content. We have become the tldr; society.
7. The coming apocalypse in UK universities
Unless you work in the sector, you might not realise quite how stuffed UK universities are. And when I say “stuffed”, I mean “pretty close to technical bankruptcy and no longer able to carry out their core function”. It's yet another thing which the inevitable Labour government is going to have to pick up and fix, with both short and long-term measures required.
8. No, today's AI isn't sentient (but this article is rubbish)
There are few people with any knowledge of AI who claim that today's large language models (LLMs) are sentient, but that's the straw man this article starts with. Worse, though, is to follow. Despite it being co-written by a proper professional philosopher, the writers seem blissfully unaware that its insistence human-style embodiment is required for AI is one of those points that has been debated for longer than computers have existed. Read, but then read some proper philosophy of AI.
9. Media companies are making the same mistakes with AI they make with all new tech
Jessica Lessin has written a good piece for The Atlantic on how media companies' rush to make deals with the likes of OpenAI to provide access to their content is short-sighted and stupid. She's right: it is. When are media companies going to learn that when tech companies refer to “media partners” they mean “suckers”?
10. How do you become a writer? You write
Oh Ursula, how right you were. She was talking about fiction, but the same is true of any kind of writing. How do you become a journalist? Write journalism.
