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NOTE: Remember that vacation I was on a few weeks ago? It already feels like it’s been years, and I’m exhausted again. Is it too soon to start counting down to Memorial Day?
_ONE
“AI-first” is the new Return To Office | Anil Dash
If you think your workers and colleagues are too stupid to recognize good tools that will help them do their jobs better, then… you are a bad leader and should step down. Because you’ve created a broken culture.
I love it when Dash pulls out the brass knuckles on his tech colleagues, and he pulls no punches here, calling out executives who are shoving AI everywhere imaginable, whether there’s a legitimate use case or not. This time, the bizarrely beloved Duolingo became the Main Character for a few days across multiple platforms after publicly announcing their “AI-first” policy, which includes explicitly replacing some contractors and evaluating AI usage in remaining employees’ performance reviews.
While I’ve still yet to meet an AI tool that is remotely useful for me, I respect (some) individual experimentation with them, particularly rational people who share the pros and cons of their own actual experiences. (Pundits love hypotheticals and rarely have a specific example when pressed; many times, there’s an easier way for experienced professionals to do the thing they’re experimenting with using existing tools.) While most are simply chasing attention, some are genuinely taking one for the team as early testers. What I don’t respect and will always resist is being mandated to experiment with AI tools, especially when there’s no clear use case for them. It’s not a new approach to new technology, and blind adoption has never been a successful strategic approach, either.
If you don’t know exactly why you want someone to use a particular tool (or worse, don’t even have a specific tool and a use case for it in mind), and your employees don’t believe that tool can help them in any useful way, they shouldn’t waste their time on that experiment. More importantly, you shouldn’t want them to waste that time, either, because even the worst leader understands that time is money. (aka, opportunity costs)
__TWO
Perception Is Reality | David Gallaher
In the end, it’s not about rejecting technology. It’s about refusing to sacrifice people at its altar.
There’s a misleading belief that you’re either pro- or anti-AI, but Gallaher offers a great example of how companies could be approaching AI usage from a human-first perspective instead. Most aren’t, and it shows in their public and internal announcements, and we’ve already seen instances where it has predictably backfired through inferior products, services, and user experiences.
It can also hurt employee morale and engagement, but since so many companies are using AI as an excuse to lay people off anyway, some might see that as a fringe benefit.
Personally, I remain unconvinced by the vast majority of AI use cases in most industries, and believe the rush to adoption is a combination of banal FOMO and relentlessly unscrupulous PR. It feels “inevitable” because it’s being pushed everywhere — by default and often without any way to opt out — but that doesn’t mean YOU have to find ways to make it useful, nor entertain pundits or bosses who want to convince you otherwise.
___THREE
Perplexity CEO says its browser will track everything users do online to sell ‘hyper personalized’ ads | Julie Bort
“On the other hand, what are the things you’re buying; which hotels are you going [to]; which restaurants are you going to; what are you spending time browsing, tells us so much more about you,” he explained.
____FOUR
Blue Shield of California shared the private health data of millions with Google for years | Zack Whittaker
Blue Shield said it used Google Analytics to track how its customers used its websites, but a misconfiguration had allowed for personal and health information to be collected as well, such as the search terms that patients used on its website to find healthcare providers.
The Internet is a hellscape, but as ridiculously stupid as this scenario ultimately is, it’s also a great example of how easy it is to do the wrong thing online, even if you have zero bad intentions.
This also seems particularly relevant to libraries, especially after last year’s debunked claim that OverDrive was sharing patron data, when it turned out to most likely be the library’s own website instead, via Google Analytics and/or Facebook tracking codes. Google Analytics is practically the default for measuring website traffic, and way too many libraries still rely on Facebook Pages and Groups to engage their patrons. Plus, libraries that allow patrons to read their OverDrive (Libby) ebooks on Kindles are also sharing personal data directly with Amazon.
We’re inching closer and closer to the laziest cyberpunk future imaginable.
_____FIVE
In ‘Sinners,’ the blues is a portal between this world and the next | Sheldon Pearce
God is present — he is simply out of reach. The juke is depicted as lively and liberatory, the church staid and constrictive. Though all the problems still follow them in, there is solace to be found at the barrelhouse, however briefly.
I’m still thinking about Sinners a week later, as it’s joined Get Out and Hereditary as one of my all-time favorite horror movies, with the added bonus of the whole musical angle that I’m still unpacking. I want to see it again, but I don’t think that’ll happen until the Blu-Ray comes out, which I absolutely will be buying whatever Special Edition they come up with on day one.
In the meantime, I’m collecting thought pieces and recommendations for additional reading, and Pearce’s take on the blues is one of the best I’ve found so far. While a spoiler warning is required, I daresay Sinners would still be effective even if you read the whole script in advance, because what Coogler put on the screen is so much greater than its individual parts.
______BONUS (SPOILER-ISH)
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It’s not too soon; I’m myself counting down to after ::gestures:: and hoping (given I don’t pray) that most of us who were alive in January will make it through, despite the hateful efforts of the mofos in charge.
I myself don’t see why the vast majority of people should have ever had access to banal so-called GenerativeAI “tools”. I’m sure AI has uses in science, where vast amounts of data must be processed quickly, and where guardrails have been there from the start to forestall the programs from confabulating bullshit, but otherwise, all that’s happening is that huge numbers of people who view technology in the same way as they do magic (they don’t know how or why it works, but they blindly believe what they’re told it works, even against the evidence of their own dealings with it), are helping tech bros burn down water and send noxious emissions out around where all these large data centers are operating, while accelerating the heating up of the planet.
The fact that governments, specifically the U.S. Congress, are so far behind in understanding technology–between their age and a system that isolates from regular life, and rewards them for remaining in their little marble complex year round, if not physically at least mentally–it the thing that will bring the end of Humanity sooner rather than later. People have been warning them about this for a good forty-plus years (see Carl Sagan, to name but one).
/rant
(apologies for the anger)