olliebown.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

Breakthrough, GPT-4.5 can now blandly waffle-fry terms that are not properly defined arriving at a confident, definitive puff of air. Hmm, problem for Asimov's laws if the AI secretly doesn't believe we all exist?

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

The top job at UNSW Art & Design is open. Come and lead a fantastic community of creative practice researchers! external-careers.jobs.unsw.edu.au/cw/en/job/53....

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

I'm old enough to remember when trump tried to say people in the Biden Administration were incompetent, but none of them accidentally fired the Ebola team. Or the nuclear weapons folks. Just sayin'.

submitted 6 days ago • 308 comments

Two old but very relevant books: the Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein and Straw Dogs by John Gray. Explain much of what's happening today. There needs to be full united global resistance to Trump, calling out by global leaders. He's a Machiavellian genius but easily taken down by a Machiavellian unity.

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

Will we look back on 2021-2025 as the wilderness years for creative AI? Feeling like the social momentum is pushing toward defense of copyright (lots that could derail that). I'm dying to know what the edge cases will look like. There will be lots of edge cases! www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

submitted 10 days ago • 0 comments

Will these emails be processed by Grok to decide who to hire or fire? Does he care if they get it right? No, he just wants to show off how many he fired. www.bbc.com/news/article...

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

I've done my fair share of digging at Ray Kurzweil for his 1999 prediction that by 2019 AI musicians would live amongst us, but gotta hand it to him, there actually is AI-generated charting music by 2025. But I think this is telling. Even in 2003... 1/ www.thekurzweillibrary.com/the-future-o...

submitted 13 days ago • 1 comment

In case anyone's unsure, no it's not OK for PhD applications in AI ethics to include AI-generated misquote-banality such as "We may say that a machine has a certain kind of thought, but ethically we must re-examine this view" (Turing, 1950). It's exhausting timewasting brainrot.

submitted 14 days ago • 1 comment

Having just listened to the Tech Won't Save Us podcast on histories of accelerationism and effective altruism I see this in an entirely new light. Turning energy into intelligence is a 2020s psycho-futurist nightmare version of the cute 1990s programmer's creed of turning coffee into code.

submitted 14 days ago • 1 comment

Once a piece of mine about issues in generative AI was posted on my uni's website. Hilarious that they included an AI-doctored image of me. Maybe an ironic attempt to get people to take the content more seriously, because I'm a bit scruffy. Maybe editor was just having a laugh? Gotta respect that.

submitted 14 days ago • 0 comments

The Economist don't have a policy of explaining their quote of the day, and I don't know anything about Breton, so I'll just assume this is a dig at Gen AI. Or should Breton be updated?: "the man who cannot visualise a horse galloping on a tomato should consider Stable Diffusion."

submitted 15 days ago • 0 comments

Haha. Hahahahahaha. Save me from this world.

submitted 15 days ago • 0 comments

On my extra-curricular todo list was to campaign UNSW to remove itself from Twitter. Oh good. Already done. Grateful employee. My employer, local, state and national governments need to extend condemnation and refusal to deal with Mump at all levels.

submitted 15 days ago • 0 comments

Highlights from the reading list: Philip Agre's 1998 chapter "Toward a Critical Technical Practice: Lessons Learned in Trying to Reform AI". Agre, an MIT-trained AI researcher, narrates his growing disillusionment with AI discourse in incredibly prescient ways. www.dourish.com/classes/read...

submitted 16 days ago • 1 comment

Aside from the rankings themselves (boooooring) this is quite an interesting read on institutional reputation, entwined with the cash crisis in the UK. www.timeshighereducation.com/depth/world-...

submitted 15 days ago • 0 comments

There was a global report on AI and creators' rights that came out around November/December that singled out praise for Australia for its recent Senate Select Committee recommendations. Any help pinning it down? I'm drawing a blank.

submitted 16 days ago • 1 comment

My latest paper, "From Genies Performing Magic to Sages Imparting Wisdom" looks at bringing value-centred design to AI music products where engagement is centred, not erased. olliebown.com/files/papers...

submitted 16 days ago • 0 comments

Large astral cast?! (3-4) Perhaps the most perfect cryptic clue I've ever seen. David Astle of course. Question mark denotes the clue and definition are the same. Geddit?

submitted 17 days ago • 0 comments

It feels like in terms of truly great Modern cities, built for humans - bodies, minds and souls - Melbourne really is up there in the higher ranks, civility abounding in all its meanings.

submitted 19 days ago • 0 comments

An alum of UNSW Art & Design. We're living in times of collapsing nuance. People can't be complex and situated in cultural murk. They have to be clean cut heroes or sneering villains. www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

submitted 19 days ago • 0 comments

My family is one click away from convergence on a real dinner!

submitted 20 days ago • 0 comments

Like all good LLMs, Musk provides a helpful upfront disclaimer about his inability and lack of interest in telling fact from fiction. "Some of the things I say will be incorrect". www.theguardian.com/us-news/vide...

submitted 20 days ago • 0 comments

This is a brave man making a necessary sacrifice. If your institutions don't serve you, then don't serve them. Thank you @andrewmillar.bsky.social.

submitted 21 days ago • 0 comments

The "vertical inviolability" of the track has been stable for 100 years: you can chop up and remix music along the time-axis, but you can't easily take apart the layers in a track. This is set to topple, with huge effects on the musical work. www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/tuned-global...

submitted 21 days ago • 0 comments

BBC research finds 51% of all AI regurgitated news responses had significant issues. Be careful out there folks. www.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/...

submitted 21 days ago • 0 comments

Description of e-scooters as e-bike killers seems apt. They're more dangerous, negative on health benefits, but the companies make more money from them. And with 4 cameras per scooter that's one hell of a surveillance network. www.smh.com.au/national/nsw...

submitted 21 days ago • 1 comment

Missed the news that Zakir Hussein had passed away, a force of musical expression and creativity. When I was about 23 I had an old car and a cassette of Hussein's ragas got stuck in the tape deck (with auto reverse). It was there for about a year, played 100s of times. Never tired of it.

submitted 22 days ago • 1 comment

The FCPA bans bribery by American corporations. Core good governance. Any US official who seeks to stop the enforcement of an anti-corruption law is both stating they are for corruption, & violating their oath of office to faithfully carry out the laws. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/11/u...

submitted 22 days ago • 1 comment

Vance: "Who is most aggressively demanding that we, meaning political leaders gathered here today, do the most aggressive regulation? It is very often the people who already have an incumbent advantage in the market." With Trump you can just frown, but you always have to pause with Vance.

submitted 22 days ago • 1 comment