Courtenay Bird

NYC, tech, marketing, history, books, dogs M.S. Digital Media, Georgia Tech

[courtenaybird]

"We see technology as a tool; we don't necessarily see it as the solution in and of itself."

Yahoo: Tech workers in Silicon Valley are sending their kids to a $28,000-a-year private school that shuns technology

[courtenaybird]

Iced tea maker soars 500% after pivot to blockchain

FT.com, 2017 (archived link)

.This eruption in speculative activity in the more esoteric corners of the US stock market has been inspired by a surge in the value of cryptocurrencies this year that has captured the imagination of retail investors."

[courtenaybird]

"Big Tech is harming kids on an industrial scale. ... They will be treated like any industry that knowingly harms children and lies about it. History will judge them as harshly as the tobacco industry. This bellwether case tested a new legal theory: the harm is not just what algorithms show children, but rather that these products were designed to foster addiction. The companies knew they were harming children by the millions—and did it anyway. They were negligent and dishonest."

Jonathan Haidt | x.com

[courtenaybird]

"Security experts have expressed fears in recent months that Russia is trying to seed chatbots such as ChatGPT and Gemini with pro-Russia narratives by feeding them large volumes of disinformation, a process called “LLM grooming”."

The Guardian | Hundreds of English-language websites link to pro-Kremlin propaganda

[courtenaybird]

"TikTok plucks niche digital aesthetics out of obscurity and serves them up to an audience that might not have known or cared in the first place. While aesthetic components were once integral to the formation of traditional subcultures, they’ve lost all meaning in this algorithmically driven visual landscape. Instead, subcultural images and attitudes become grouped under a ubiquitous, indefinable label of a “viral trend” — something that can be demystified, mimicked, sold, and bought."

Vox: Trends are dead (archived link)

[courtenaybird]

“Social media is a cancer on our society right now. And I would encourage people to log off, turn off, touch grass, hug a family member, go out and do good in your community.” “We can return violence with violence; we can return hate with hate. That’s the problem with political violence. It metastasizes. We can always point the figure at the other side. At some point we have to find an off ramp, or else it’s going to get much worse.”

Politico | Utah Gov. Spencer Cox

[courtenaybird]

America is truly a land of opportunity. Now anyone can spout moronic nonsense regardless of gender and find their niche in the GOP. I think it's past time to rethink how we talk about the Marjorie Taylor Greene's of this world (female or male). For too long, we've used the label 'conservative' to describe their politics. Conservatism connotes a respect for existing institutions and a desire to preserve them. A reverence for good order and sound government. These folks are radical, right-wing for sure, but radical to the core. Contempt for government has morphed into ant-government conspiracy mongering and violence. It's time we drop the 'conservative' label and call them right wing zealots.

From the comments // NYT: The Women Who Paved the Way for MTG

[courtenaybird]

"As a creative, what I hear the author saying is that AI will take away the best part of the job—the doing and we can make suggestions to help until it gets smart enough that it no longer needs us at all. How utterly depressing this new world is going to be."

From the comments // NYT: A.I. Might Take Your Job. Here Are 22 New Ones It Could Give You.

[courtenaybird]

"It’s bad for us to live inside of boxes, staring at screens, wrecking nature. It’s a perverse degradation. It has made us stupid, angry and sick. We are characters in a vast tragedy. Now we have AI, which surpasses us, digests us, generates lies, and makes it impossible to distinguish between real life and its utterly meaningless simulacrum. People worry AI will kill us. They should worry it will make us want to die."

From the comments // NYT: A.I. Might Take Your Job. Here Are 22 New Ones It Could Give You.

[courtenaybird]

"The ideal of college as a place of intellectual growth, where students engage with deep, profound ideas, was gone long before ChatGPT. The combination of high costs and a winner-takes-all economy had already made it feel transactional, a means to an end. ... In a way, the speed and ease with which AI proved itself able to do college-level work simply exposed the rot at the core."

Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College: ChatGPT has unraveled the entire academic project (archived)

[courtenaybird]

"Generative AI excels at producing competent-sounding content ... that bears the signs of human creation without that spark of ingenuity." "The danger is not that AI will fail us, but that people will accept the mediocrity of its outputs as the norm. When everything is fast, frictionless and 'good enough,' there’s the risk of losing the depth, nuance and intellectual richness that define exceptional human work."

The Conversation | Is AI sparking a cognitive revolution that will lead to mediocrity and conformity?

[courtenaybird]

"But Mr. Trump has never clearly defined exactly when America was great, and when it stopped being great. What period of American history is he trying to recapture?"

NYT: From Science to Diversity, Trump Hits the Reverse Button on Decades of Change

[courtenaybird]

“They know that they’re targeting a marginalized group. By suggesting that you’re actually waging a class war when you do this, by suggesting trans people are the product of the corporate elite—antisemitic dog whistles and all—you make yourself look like the David against the Goliath rather than the bully running around and shoving kids’ faces in the dirt.”

The New Republic: The Shadowy Right-Wing Think Tank Pushing Transphobia (archived link)

[courtenaybird]

"Turns out the Deep State largely takes on dedicated, educated people that want to make America better."

From the comments / Reddit: America Has Pulled Off the Impossible. It Made Getting a Passport Simple.

[courtenaybird]

"The loneliness economy[:] Technology makes people lonely, then sells them a solution in the form of technology. Endless profit possibility. AI mirrors you. You're being sold back to yourself. It will only increase hyper-individualism and isolation."

Samantha Rose Hill / x.com/samantharhill

[courtenaybird]

"I don’t think it’s sufficiently appreciated how much the insular circles of the extremely online have fostered a generation of smart people talking about unworkable futures based on plausible but unhinged fan fictions about how the world actually works."

Christopher Mims / x: mims

[courtenaybird]

"So AI can create the assignments, do the work, and grade them. What is the point of this? Why are humans so eager to render ourselves obsolete?"

From the comments | NYT: Welcome to Campus. Here’s Your ChatGPT.