Resisting AI: A Review

What should we think about AI? To corporate boosters and their camp followers (an army of relentless shouters) , so-called artificial intelligence is a world altering technology, sweeping across the globe like a wave made from the plots of forgotten science fiction novels. Among critics, thoughts are more varied. Some focus on debunking hyped claims,…

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Letter to an AI Researcher

[In this post, I imagine that I’m writing to a researcher who, disappointed, and perhaps confused by the seemingly unstoppable corporate direction their field is taking, needs a bit of, well, not cheering up precisely but, something to help them understand what it all means and how to resist] My friend, Listen, I know you’ve…

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A Bank in Flames, A Career Born

I’m writing this quickly, as if it’s a dispatch from the front because ideas – and memories – are flowing rather freely and I want to get it all down while synapses are hot. A bit of establishing preamble… This post is inspired by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank – today’s topic for social…

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Marlowe in Silicon Valley: On Tech Industry Critique

A few years ago, I started this very blog, devoted, as the subtitle reads, to  “AI industry analysis without hype and techbro-ism.” Writing, when seriously pursued (whether money is exchanged or not) is a demanding activity, requiring time and often, a reduced number of social interactions, things that are becoming ever scarcer in our decaying…

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ChatGPT: Super Rentier

I have avoided writing about ChatGPT as one might hurriedly walk past a group of co-workers, gathered around a box of donuts who’re talking about a popular movie or show; to avoid being drawn into the inevitable. In some circles, certainly the circles I travel in, ChatGPT is the relentless talk of the town. Everyone…

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Twitter – Agonistes

There’s a temptation, if you are, or were, a Twitter user (and perhaps, even if you aren’t since we all must comment on everything, everywhere all the time now) to have an opinion about that platform and its current state. For some, it’s a tale of paradise lost, of all yesterday’s parasocial parties, ruined by…

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Magic is an Industrial Process, Belching Smoke and Fire: On GPUs

AT THE END of ´The Wizard of OZ´, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer´s 1939-released, surrealist musical fantasy, our heroine Dorothy and her loyal comrades complete a long, arduous (but song filled) journey, finally reaching the fabled city of OZ. In OZ, according to a tunefully stated legend, there’s a wizard who possesses the power to grant any wish, no…

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On Kludges

As I type this, it’s hot here in Amsterdam. In the past, one might have said ‘unseasonably warm’ a phrase that, in our current circumstances, seems like a form of wishful thinking, an echo of an earlier time – not more innocent but not as burdened with the hyper-problem of C02. I mention the temperature,…

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Grapes of Metallic Wrath?

There are words, such as ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ which get tossed around like a cat’s toy, tumbling between meanings depending on the speaker. To this list of floating signifiers, we can add ‘automation’ which, when mentioned by business types, is meant to depict a bright and shining future but, when used by people on the…

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