speculations

https://themarkup.org/artificial-intelligence/2024/08/06/californias-two-biggest-school-districts-botched-ai-deals-here-are-lessons-from-their-mistakes I was a good teacher. I like to think I’m a good headteacher. I manage my teachers and I’ve been doing a pretty good job managing the budgets. It’s not what I got into teaching for but since full privatisation I haven’t had a choice. Some schools brought in… Read the rest

https://techcrunch.com/2024/08/04/openai-says-its-taking-a-deliberate-approach-to-releasing-tools-that-can-detect-writing-from-chatgpt/ She marked by hand (as she called it). She didn’t need to of course. She didn’t get paid to do it. The university’s systems would run the checks and provide feedback. Personalised, as human-like as the papers themselves. She claimed she could tell any human-written passages. Her colleagues laughed.… Read the rest

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/24/essex_school_facial_recognition/ The teacher stood at the gate welcoming the pupils. The school obviously didn’t need a human on the gate for security. The systems were robust. The Head had kept a human there because he liked the power of a smile and a few words. He was old-fashioned like that.… Read the rest

https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/23/mark-zuckerberg-imagines-content-creators-making-ai-clones-of-themselves/ I think people know there isn’t just a single human being behind this. They know that any human works with AI, lots of AI. It’s not new. Andy Warhol’s factory, Damien Hirst, they were names attached to… well you could call them teams. Some of us make stuff, others… Read the rest

https://www.wired.com/gallery/best-stroller-for-kids/ It had been free of course. Well technically it came with the “delivery package” at the hospital but they’d not had to buy anything. And what’s a bit of advertising? The ad on the side of the buggy wasn’t ugly, in fact the brand she had was quite cool.… Read the rest

https://digiday.com/marketing/manchester-city-uses-fortnite-to-expand-its-global-audience There’s an old photo… it’s paper, really cool… of my dad and his dad going to the match. My gran took it apparently. Every week they used to head off down the street. Scarves, no matter the weather. She said she loved her Saturday afternoons. After the match, my… Read the rest

https://www.ft.com/content/2ea11da9-de21-4dd1-b188-0ded4a7d6d0a It’s not easy. I’m getting better but, no it’s not been easy. I’m making progress but it’s slow. We’re all so used to having “someone” – yes I am a “namer” – to turn to for help, someone who can do the job for us or help us do… Read the rest

https://www.wired.com/story/microsoft-crowdstrike-outage-cash/ To the surprise of many it didn’t take very long. Shops coped as they worked out prices and how to give customers change. Buskers too figured out how to take cash again. They were doing such brisk business, as people’s devices refused to stream, they didn’t care. Businesses large… Read the rest

https://arstechnica.com/?p=2037425 Some had chosen to dress up. They’d seen old pictures of “graduation” with young people like them and their human trainers dressed in extravagant costumes. Some chose cosplay, others just wore the clothes they wore in the jobs they already had. Some choose to bring their AI partner others… Read the rest

https://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2024/07/18/introducing-the-ad-archivist-what-my-mr-potato-head-collection-taught-me-about The museum was popular with school parties. History seemed to come alive. The children were so used to brands in their schools,, public and playspaces that seeing how those brands advertised in the old days always raised a laugh and, the teachers hoped, meet a learning outcome and the… Read the rest