Anyways, have some cats…

When people think about the history of computing too many people imagine a bunch of hippies in California when they should be thinking of IBM employees working on military funded contracts.

I don’t want to suggest that this is good (or that it isn’t a cause for concern), but it’s worth putting this in historical context. The Defense Department pumped a ton of money into IBM (and other companies) throughout the 20th century. The tech/military relationship is old.

The history of computing in the US is and continues to be closely bound up with military spending. We often like to pretend that these connections don’t exist, or that they’re new, or an aberration—but Big Tech and military spending are (and have been) closely intertwined…

The scene in Dr. Strangelove between the President and the Soviet Premier.

When people on here used to ask Twitter to “do something about the Nazis,” I don’t think this is what they meant…

Yes, AI requires an absolutely massive amount of energy, but you have to keep this in perspective. It also generates terrible images and the worst writing you’ve ever read.
bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

The thing I love about this image is that if you recognize the actor and the mask you go “awwww,” and if you don’t recognize the actor and the mask this image is really unsettling.

If you want to learn more about undersea cables and how important they are to the Internet, I highly (highly!) recommend reading Nicole Starosielski’s book “The Undersea Network.”
theverge.com/c/24070570/int…

It’s all fun and games until this thing is chasing you and your family through the high-tech dystopian future…

Apropos of nothing, last night there was a huge thunderstorm where I live, and in the process of checking in on my cats I discovered that one of them has figured out how to open one of the kitchen cabinets, climb in, and then close it behind him.

Something that this semester has really driven home for me is that a lot of students think it’s cool when you show them documents that used to be classified.

Whenever I say “let’s look at this, now declassified, government report” they perk up.

While everyone is talking about the new AI gadget flopping I keep thinking about how we’ve pretty much stopped hearing anything about Apple’s headset.

On the one hand: the possibility that AI might destroy humanity in the near future is a good reason to hit the brakes on such work immediately.

On the other hand: hyperbolic framing like this mainly just distracts from the harms AI is already causing.
trib.al/w6l4AT9

It
is
later
than
you
think

Kind of interesting how at the moment when it seems that many people are starting to realize much of the talk about AI is hype and BS that we’re getting another wave of comment from tech execs about how AI is actually about to take over the world.

If hope doesn’t work, try fear!

After several weeks in which I managed to get the slide count for my 90 minute lecture down to a manageable 180ish slides, I’m pleased to report that I’ll be going into today’s lecture with 253 slides.

There’s something funny about how university instructors are being bombarded with messages about preventing/catching students using AI, while at the same time those instructors are being pitched all manner of AI tools to use in their classrooms.

A nice salesperson just tried to pitch me some edtech to help me with my grading. When I asked what’s behind the “writing center quality” feedback, the salesperson said AI.

I politely said no thanks.

How can we expect our students not to use AI if we’re using AI to grade them?

You can never have too many black t-shirts with a picture of a guy dressed kind of like a Nazgul and a completely unreadable band logo. Never!