For the time being, at least, when using ChatGPT and other AIs, we need to remember a simple rule: trust, but verify.
I dislike the political baggage associated with the phrase, but there's not much I can do about that. It's good advice.
As a curious person, ChatGPT is an incredible resource. When I want to debug a computer programming problem or get into the weeds of a philosophical issue, I often start by engaging with the chatbot. I've learned important things this way, but I've also noticed ChatGPT making major mistakes. In one particularly bad “hallucination,” as they're called, ChatGPT invented a horrific quote and attributed it to someone who said no such thing.
These things happen, and technologists don't currently have a solution. For that reason, I strongly recommend double-checking any important claim made by one of these mechanical minds. Trust, but verify.
Grief is not as it appears in movies. It's confusion and disbelief, it's dull and numb, with periods of intense, breathless sadness when one is least expecting it.
I started using Signal years and years ago, back when it was called TextSecure. I've always appreciated its commitment to privacy, including its use of end-to-end encryption, and its focus on usability. Precursors like Enigmail were great, but few people used them. Glenn Greenwald famously couldn't be bothered to set up a secure communication channel when Edward Snowden implored him to do so. When he finally got around to it, Snowden sent him the documents that changed his career forever.
Now, I'm finally replacing some Google services with equivalents from Proton, another company that aims to make privacy easy. I'm impressed with their growing product line, and I don't want to fuel the attention economy any more than I have to. Consider checking them out! A healthier internet awaits.
In recent weeks, I've spotted one Etsy retailer and one physical retailer selling art under their own names that I'm almost certain were wholly generated by AI. (For now at least, it's sometimes not hard to spot when you know what you're looking for.)
My phone is perpetually in Do Not Disturb mode, with few exceptions. It only just occurred to me how strange that name is. If the unobtrusive mode is called Do Not Disturb, what is the ordinary mode called?
For years, I’ve tried to remind myself of this. Work expands to fill the time allotted, and with so many distractions vying for our attention every minute of every day, it’s easy to see how the things we care most about sometimes go undone.
Many years ago, my dad discovered a manual ad-blocking technique for TVs: when commercials start playing, mute the device. It's surprisingly effective. The otherwise captivating ads immediately become uninteresting.
To my surprise, my dad wasn't the first to come up with the idea. In The Attention Merchants, Tim Wu explains that the Zenith Flash-Matic, the first wireless remote control, was partly designed to “shoot out” the sounds of commercials. Clever!
