Regarding the supposed furor over #WokeGemini…

If we saw generative AI as a creative tool, then I’d say imagining the founding of America with women & Black people at the table and the Catholic Church headed by Black women and Native Americans is a proper revision of history the way it should have been.

The reaction to #WokeGemini says more about society than the tool itself; that’s what fascinates me about AI: its reflections. Right-wing columnists fear the anti-white machine programmed by commisars of what we used to call political correctness.

And the extremist Murdoch media and pols hunt for enemies: technologists who dare to recognize “white privilege.” Their strategy of projection works in media today: calling anti-racism racism to deflect from their deep racism, just as calling Biden old and doddering deflects from the truly doddering Trump. In today’s credulous media, it works.

Ultimately, this little episode shows the folly of “guardrails” in AI, for a tool can be made to do anything and what it is proscribed from doing — and reaction to that — can be more revealing and risky than the tool alone. It is like telling Gutenberg what movable type must never say. The Church tried to do just that with his successors as, at first, the technology was held responsible for what it produced: printers were beheaded and behanded for what their machines produced. Then booksellers were held liable and controlled via licensing and the Stationers Company in Britain. Finally, authors were the responsible parties — and Foucault says that is the birth of the author. 

We debate responsibility over the technology of AI today: Some want the model makers to be responsible for everything that could (or now could not) be produced from their machine. Some try to blame an application of the model (looking at you, Air Canada). Some want to blame the technology for making just what it was asked to make (looking at a certain lawyer and a certain reporter). 

The episode also reveals the fraud in associating generative AI with truth. If it were seen instead as a concordance of all society’s biased text and images and a creative tool that can be told to remake that, then there’d be no story here, only interesting reflections of ourselves, our aspirations, our faults, and our fears. 

The post Reflections in the ‘woke’ mirror appeared first on BuzzMachine.

Just a quick post to highlight my third and most recent appearance on 20VC with the amazing Harry Stebbings (Spotify, YouTube).

It is always, always a pleasure to speak with Harry. He’s such an effective interviewer that you quickly get into detail and stories that others miss. So you end up with very rich content, which in this case lasts significantly longer than 20 minutes. (More like 72, but who’s counting?)

In this episode we hit on a wide range of topics including:

• The metrics that matter in SaaS today
• Why CAC Payback is flawed and CAC ratio is better
• Why you need to hire sales reps three-at-a-time (aka, modulo 3)
• How to forecast in 2024 and in general (keyword: triangulate)
• The biggest mistakes made in forecasting, and how sales management practices can confound the forecasting process
• Why renewals are harder than ever to get (but alas easier to forecast)
• What all this means for Customer Success (both the disicpline and the department)

I’ve embedded the video of the episode below. I hope you can make time to watch or listen to it. And thanks again to Harry for having me.

The post My Most Recent Appearance on 20VC with Harry Stebbings appeared first on Kellblog.

2023 is over, so it’s time to go through everything! In a special year-end episode, we review the biggest stories of 2023, what we’re thinking of the AI hype, how science fiction makes us think about the future, the worst villains in the tech industry, and what we’re watching in 2024.
 
Gita Jackson is a journalist and cofounder of Aftermath. Molly White is the creator of Web3 is Going Just Great. Aaron Thorpe is co-host of Everybody Loves Communism.
 
Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.
 
The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.
 
Also mentioned in this episode:

• If you become a Patreon supporter before the end of the year, you’ll be entered into a giveaway for five signed copies of Joanne McNeil’s Wrong Way and Paris Marx’s Road to Nowhere. Sign up now!
• Gita recently launched Aftermath, and you can go subscribe!
• Molly is getting started on TikTok. Go follow her!
• Aaron posts a lot of cool science fiction art over on Twitter. Give him a follow!
• You can see the Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos photos we discuss in the Worst Person in Tech segment on Twitter, Bluesky, and Mastodon.
• Paris was mistaken: Enya sang “May It Be” for Fellowship of the Ring, not “Gollum’s Song” for the Two Towers. That was Emilíana Torrini. But Paris listened to both of them too much.

Paris Marx is joined by Émile Torres to discuss Silicon Valley’s recent obsession with effective accelerationism, how it builds on the TESCREAL ideologies, and why it shows the divide at the top of the AI industry.
 
Émile Torres is a postdoctoral fellow at Case Western Reserve University. They’re also the author of Human Extinction: A History of the Science and Ethics of Annihilation.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.
 
The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.
 
Also mentioned in this episode:

• Emile wrote about the TESCREAL ideologies and AI extinction scaremongering.
• Timnit Gebru also did a great presentation on TESCREAL.
• Paris wrote about the religious nature of Marc Andreessen’s techno-solutionist manifesto and about Sam Altman’s (temporary) ouster from OpenAI.
• The Year In Tech livestream for Patreon supporters is on December 17 at 1pm PT / 4pm ET / 9pm GMT. More details on Patreon or Twitter.
• The Information did a great profile on effective accelerationism.
• Forbes revealed the man behind the e/acc moniker Beff Jezos.
• 972 Magazine reported on Israeli’s use of AI to expand targets in Gaza.
• UK plans a “hit squad” to replace public servants with AI. Paris wrote about the threat it poses.

Today’s interview is with Shafqat Islam, Chief Marketing Officer at Optimizely, a digital experience platform software as a service provider. Shafqat joins me today to talk about their recently released Personalised to Personal report, why they think that personalization has officially reached its maximum maturity level, what’s standing in the way of marketers delivering a more personalised experience to customers and their position on marketers gathering zero-party data to further enhance/progress their personalisation efforts amongst some other things.

This interview follows on from my recent interview – Paul Weller, the Scots word ‘gallus’ and their relation to delivering an award-winning customer experience – Interview with John Devlin of Ascensos – and is number 487 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Earlier this week, I led an Avasant panel discussion on Generative AI and the New Data-Driven Productivity Paradigm. You can watch the entire video here. 

I started with a brief introduction to set the stage, comparing today's generative AI (GenAI) services with earlier forms of AI, which date back several decades. The panel then discussed a number of important elements of generative AI: 

• Why GenAI has gotten so much attention over the past year. 
• Where we see GenAI delivering productivity gains as well as top line revenue growth. 
• Data quality as a prerequisite for realizing GenAI benefits as well as issues around confidentiality and data privacy. 
• The regulatory landscape around GenAI, even today with GDPR as well as in the future. 
• The enterprise risks for enterprises to consider in implementing GenAI systems. 

We ended with a lightning round about practical steps for organizations to take in getting started with GenAI. 

What is Generative AI?