Not my flip-phone … which has no camera and no internet connection and upon which I have to type “7” four times to get the letter “s” …
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Very interesting discussion. I have no intelligent input to make that hasn’t been said already, but…
I know this is meant in jest, but to take it seriously for a moment…
Over my dead body! And I mean that… even if the whole world goes AI and outlaws normal creativity I’ll just go outlaw and make pictures with charcoal and a camera obscura deep in the Australian High Country. No one will find me there…
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You are right, there seems to be a system of “proof of stake” with less energy demands in the works, but it is definitely a bad idea for this problem.
Nothing has infuriated me more than Microsoft Copilot. It somehow weasels its way into what you are trying to do? Alphabetically it’s right before Copy, so every time I go to copy with the right click menu, I head to the copy button, but then right as I approach the menu, the Copilot graphic finally loads and the whole menu has to shift to make way for it… then Bam! Copilot activated! Aaaaaaaaaaaa!
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Whoa clippy never claimed to know anything, he just tried to help
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Yeah, Clippy can go [CENSORED] [CENSORED] [CENSORED] [CENSORED] with a [CENSORED] [CENSORED]!
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I have one of those newfangled “Copilot Plus PCs”. It even comes with a dedicated keyboard key for Copilot (replacing the equally useless “Context Menu” key). But I wouldn’t even know what that button does. I haven’t yet pressed it.
Honestly I would use thick superglue (high-viscosity cyanoacrylate) on it to prevent an accidental key press.
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I am using Linux, but the more keys, the better… I rebind the “Windows” key to a lot of useful shortcuts (in Emacs, and the compositor). I would love an extra key, regardless of what it says on the top 
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I do wonder what that key is even called in Emacs. The Alt key is “Meta”, the Windows key is called “Super”, but what is the Context Menu key, and what on earth is the Copilot key?
Does the Meta key open Facebook or Instagram?
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Apparently it just replaces the menu key, so we are not getting a new key. On some keyboards it just crowds out right Ctrl. Meh.
(This, of course, is considered to be a revolutionary change by most of the tech press.)
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No, it opens Book α.
Oh, it’s a μετά key…
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Funny news story (in Hungarian, but Google translate does a decent job).
TL;DR: A contemporary pop star was recognized in a photo from 1918 (First World War soldiers) in a recent exhibiton. The likeness was perfect. The explanation turns out to be ML-based “sharpening” algorithms filling in blurry images with whatever they can get their hands on.
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The glint in his right eye is a perfect match! Maybe he wandered into one of these:
By Dan Sellers via Wikimedia, CC BY-SA 3.0
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MS Copilot? I have no idea what it is, and hope to remain that way.
OK, I have an idea, now. Some sort of Clippy 2. A huge No Thanks!
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Reminds me of that time AI chose to denoise a noisy photo by pasting Ryan Gosling into the shadows: https://petapixel.com/2020/08/17/gigapixel-ai-accidentally-added-ryan-goslings-face-to-this-photo/
I also loved that time when Lightroom’s AI generated fill replaced an annoying potted plant with a disembodied hand in my own editing. This sort of thing happens pretty regularly with generative fill. It’s mostly hilarious, and sometimes faintly disturbing.
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Axe to grind warning but Gary Marcus thinks GenAI bubble is bursting:
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77% say these tools have actually decreased their productivity and added to their workload
That said, this describes 90% of commercial software. It is a fine business model that can stay lucrative for decades.
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