#87: Her Consent, Speak No Evil

+ Lego’s Green Game Plan, Limited Power, Algorithmic Memberberries, A Populism Problem…

The Week that Was:

A look back at the tech world of the past week.

Her Consent:

So I guess we know how ChatGPT lost ‘Her’ voice the other week, at least according to rather scathing accusations by actress Scarlet Johansson. If you’ll recall, amidst the hype and enthusiasm last week for the new model 4o (omni) one of my colleagues got in touch with me and was like “uh…they disabled the voice” more specifically, the ‘Sky’ voice. OpenAI now stands accused by Johansson of non-consensual voice cloning.

Johansson is the voice of Samantha, an interactive, audio-based operating system in Spike Jonze’s 2013 movie ‘Her.’ This movie is about a depressed, disillusioned writer learning to dream and love again thanks to his interactions with Samantha.

Many people latch onto the fact that Jonze was supposedly inspired to make the movie by reading an article about AI chatbots. Many more focus on the fact that Samantha is the apotheosis of not only voice assistant technology, but also something you can point to and yell ‘Her!’ when asked just what a ‘human-like’ AI would practically be like.

I’m not going to give plot spoilers for Her. It’s a good movie that you should watch for yourself. I will say though that one of the things that Silicon Valley acolytes of the movie can’t seem to grasp is how heavily issues of consent and human connection feature at the very heart of the movie.

And hey, since we’re talking about taking walks down memory lane anyway, let’s look back at newsletter #81, where I talked about the possibility of using AI to expedite conservation efforts for cultural heritage at risk of vanishing. After publication, a reader asked me for clarification on how this might be handled responsibly, my answer being that it would need to be handled with great care, with proper, legally binding protections in place to ensure that the people remained in control of their culture and history. In other words, it was all about consent.

It'll likely be up to courts whether or not OpenAI stole ‘Her’ voice or not, but suppose consent comes to be seen as vital to success rather than as a sign of weakness, as continues to be the case in Silicon Valley. That would be how language preservation could be sustainably and ethically supported by AI. Just Indonesia alone has 700 languages, for example, the bulk of which could do with some (voice) assistance. LINK

Speak No Evil:

There was an AI safety summit in Seoul this past week in which several companies from around the world agreed to a rudimentary code of conduct which was generally seen as "a step in the right direction" but only the first step of a thousand-mile journey.

Fran Bennet, interim director of the Ada Lovelace Institute worded the general sentiment succinctly to The Guardian’s Alex Hern:

“People thinking and talking about safety and security, that’s all good stuff. So is securing commitments from companies in other nations, particularly China and the UAE. But companies determining what is safe and what is dangerous, and voluntarily choosing what to do about that, that’s problematic.

It’s great to be thinking about safety and establishing norms, but now you need some teeth to it: you need regulation, and you need some institutions which are able to draw the line from the perspective of the people affected, not of the companies building the things.”

To more concretely outline why such low-stakes, open-ended commitments aren’t enough, we’ve got another ‘fun’ little bit of news from OpenAI, namely why things were so oddly quiet as OpenAI’s super alignment team bled out. Turns out there was a brutal Non-Disparagement Agreement (NDA) at work.?

This past week, though, the lid got blown off of that as OpenAI co-founder and chief scientist Illya Sutskever quit alongside super alignment co-team leader Jan Leike. Their high-profile departures served as something of a windshield for others.

Numerous former employees - and current insiders under veil of anonymity - were willing to corroborate Leike’s claims to Vox’s Kelsey Piper and Sigal Samuel. The claims are yet more accusations that OpenAI abandoned ethics in pursuit of profits both monetary and reputational.

One can’t help but wonder whether or not the recent ChatGPT icon change to a ‘black hole’ was an ominous glimpse beyond the event horizon of ClosedAI. Might the company have further mutated from a black box into a black hole? It would appear so.

Black holes devour even the light of the brightest stars with ease. One can’t help but wonder whether or not Sutskever and Leike, themselves considered two of the best and brightest stars in the algorithmic sky, found this out the hard way. LINK

G’Day Climate!

Covering tech’s impact on the climate and our environment.

Lego’s Green Game Plan:

I am quite a fan of the Lego x Fortnite collaboration. I talk a lot in this newsletter about business decisions or strategic moves that make no sense, are actively backward, and are frequently both. The Lego x Fortnite collaboration is both extremely sensible and forward-thinking. It is also, at least for now, mutually beneficial. Allow me to explain.

First of all, there’s the fact that User Generated Content (UGC) will only grow in prominence and impact as time goes on. Gameindustry.biz contributor Mike Stubbs explains this well.

Fortnite was originally focused on building. This is optional in the present state of the game, but the underlying infrastructure is what makes Fortnite so flexible and desirable for brands. Lego is similar in its flexibility and brand desirability. Both are popular for their ‘sets’ as well as being loved for their more freeform means of self-expression.

What Lego and Fortnite gain here is a bridge into each other’s literal and proverbial worlds. Fortnite gains a physical foothold and credibility through association with the Lego legacy. Lego gains a robust set of tools that have already been made and paid for, as well as access to a research and development team numbering in the tens of millions (Lego Fortnite’s players).

The problem with Lego bricks is that they are made out of plastic, which is an oil product. Lego is also the world’s 3rd largest tire manufacturer.

This is both a ticking reputational time bomb, and a ticking financial time bomb. Lego is in real danger due to ongoing legislative efforts to make pollution culprits legally liable for climate change’s impact. ?

Fortnite, if handled well, can free Lego from the plastic noose around its neck, or at the very least buy it precious time to find a viable plastic alternative. So I don’t think Lego sees its gaming future in Fortnite, but rather, as a safe route towards securing its overall future. LINK ?

Limited Power!

Countries such as Vietnam and Thailand are gradually attracting more and more foreign investments for their budding tech sectors, and that is mostly good. However, there’s a rather awkward problem that they share with India. How are you going to meet the power needs of all these tech companies?

The answer to that question has so far been a resounding “oh…shit….we do need to power them don’t we?” Aside from being another way in which I can remind you all of how vital infrastructure is, this is also a funny way to interpret a ‘car battery’ showcase given by General Motors (GM) this past week.

At an expo in Los Angeles, GM showed off a car that was able to power a Beverly Hills mansion during a power outage. And if it can power a Beverly Hills mansion, it could probably power half of rural Thailand as well. Jokes aside, mobile power stations loosely based upon similar principles could be an interesting stop-gap of sorts whilst insufficient energy infrastructure is addressed.

Even in countries where the infrastructure is far more developed and resilient, the basic reality of grid capacity as industrial bottleneck remains true. Thus, efficient resource management frameworks would benefit Vietnam and Thailand well past the point at which they’d need to rely on what I’ll call mobile powerplants.

Come to think of it, perhaps mobile powerplants would actually be more desirable for rural areas where it may be too complex and costly to establish stationary facilities. I doubt it’d be feasible to address the industrial needs of companies with this solution, but decoupling consumer electricity from those grids would indirectly help. That’s where I think the biggest gains could be had.

Wouldn’t that be hilarious, GM tries to sell a luxury toy to rich people and accidentally solves an energy bottleneck for developing nations instead? I’m actually kind of eager to see such General use Motors. Go on GM do it, actually be the first entity in the newsletter to live up to its name! LINK

Rules of Engagement:

Ethics and legal matters regarding tech engagement.

Algorithmic Memberberries:

I distinctly remember a South Park episode where sentient grapes called ‘memberberries’ were used to recall specific pop culture and historical events, albeit with the memberberries’ own biases. Users that consume memberberries inherit the ‘berry biases.’

I don’t ‘member what episode or season this was from. I suppose I’ll have to google that! That’s right, this item is about search, specifically about searching the past. It’s about ‘Microsoft Recall’ and Google’s ‘Search Generative Experience’ (SGE).

Microsoft just had a showcase where it unveiled new Arm-based versions of its Surface hybrid product line. As predicted, this product line will be the tip of the spear for Microsoft’s Arm-based chip push, with partnered manufacturers also rolling out Arm-based laptops.

But more important than that is how it will also serve as the tip of the spear for Microsoft’s Copilot + PC initiative. That’s where Recall comes in. This is the name of an upgraded AI search function that is described as constantly observing and recording everything you do on your PC. If you then need to ‘recall’ something, the system promises to be able to find it for you.

The big elephant in the room here is that Recall will seemingly have users under 24/7 surveillance even during the most sensitive operations such as handling classified files. That’s a tough sell when even Google is talking shit about your credentials as data custodian.

Speaking of Google, The Verge’s Nilay Patel interviewed Google CEO Sundar Pichai again this past week. I’m always a big proponent of letting everyone plead their own case within reason. So why not read (or listen via the podcast version) to Pichai’s take on things?

What he seems to want is for us to ‘member a time when Google was a thought leader and foundational element of industry and government alike. How convincing you find his arguments is something I’ll leave up to you. But ‘member to mind those tinted glasses. LINK

Europe’s Populism Problem:

Dutch populists recently had to be reminded that the shared rules and guidelines of the European Union aren’t optional. Whilst this might seem self-evident at face value, the fact that it isn’t points to a critical nuance separating the European Union’s economic dreams from reality.

Europe never fully recovered from World War 2 and that wound of history still bleeds, though evidently not enough for some. That’s why, though technically long capable of breaking its over-dependence on other economic blocs, the EU has only now started to get its act together.

This has been spurred on by the fact that everyone keeps getting caught in the crossfire between the US and China. This is quite like another country with a prominent position in the computer chip production process, but that is its own can of worms so let’s not dawdle.

In the EU’s case, an excess of checks, balances, and failsafe measures are meant to ensure beyond all doubt that something like Nazi Germany can never happen again. The natural consequence is policies that can come across as clumsy and contrarian. Born as they are from both individual ambition and collective fear.?

Member states often want conflicting things, which makes things even more convoluted. This issue is made worse by periodic upsurges in populist sentiment that prey upon the resulting friction and division. Those populist waves inevitably end up crashing upon the shares of reality, yet they always take their toll.

Such a tool is not being able to protect and develop key strategic assets. That’s where ASML and Taiwanese TSMC enter the picture. Though situated in different countries, their problem is the same. Vital to both the US and China, yet at risk of a ‘if I can’t have you, no one can!’ style reckoning if they play their cards wrong. Technically speaking, an economic bloc like the EU should have vastly more power to protect a vital asset of a member state than a single, largely geopolitically isolated island.

But therein lies the rub. European populism is such a technological impediment because only a united EU can contest the economies of scale at which the US and China operate. Thus, petty infighting makes the EU equal to its weakest link, rather than the sum of its parts, or greater than the sum of its parts. LINK

A Nice Cup of Serendipity:

Cool bits and bobs from around the web.

Being Salty LINK

Folk Songs LINK

Reading Habits LINK

Michelin Tacos LINK

Bonfires LINK

Sword Logic LINK

Verhoeven History LINK

iPad Surgery LINK

A Surface Glance LINK

Dolby Doubts LINK

Zelda 64 Recompiled LINK

The Deep End:

A weekly batch of long-form content recommendations.

City (Data) Blocks:

Creation of memory-memory entanglement in a metropolitan quantum network. LINK ?

Reverse Jenga:

Strategic links save buildings from total collapse. LINK

Legacy of Thrones:

Prominent directors reflect upon the impact of the Game of Thrones TV adaptation. LINK

Cockroach Conquerors:

How the cockroach conquered the world. LINK

Roleplay:

Games as a means of self-expression. LINK

One More Thing…

Apparently it wasn’t enough for a storm to hit the tech industry again this past week, oh no. Dear readers, have you ever just been minding your own business at a flea market only to witness a random tornado rob a dude?

It was crazy! There I was with my mother, minding our own business as we calmly strolled past the many different stalls of a local flea market. I hear streams and a great racket, turning around to see a large tent upside down…3 meters off the ground, going further up instead of coming back down as one might reasonably expect.

Arranged in a violent, ascending spiral were all manner of former wares turned debris. The wind looked as if it was ‘wearing’ all stall’s clothing items. And to be fair, the wind wore them well enough. I’ve seen more chaotic ensembles come down fashion runways.

I briefly pondered the deep philosophical analogies of this event. Like oh, maybe any one of us could be that poor napkin, helplessly and ruthlessly uprooted without warning by forces beyond our control!

Or…I could cackle with amusement wondering what kind of shock someone would get as a doll suspended by a giant bra resembling tablecloth dropped in on them out of nowhere. Flea markets are wild.