Weeknotes 222; GPT-3 as a personal coach

By Iskander Smit in weeknotes — Jan 17, 2023

"A man on the couch of an AI therapist", by MidJourney

Hi all! Another week full of ChatGPT and comparable AI explorations. Below are some new examples. I will keep the update short this week. Working on the startup and keeping track of the news. This week there are some events planned that I might attend so will report on this next week.

This is the second newsletter I sent out via Ghost instead of Revue. This is a symptom of what is happening with Twitter; winding down in a way. Or crashing in a race to the bottom... Next to the newsletter saga, now my favorite Twitter client Tweetbot is broken due to new API rulings of Twitter. Getting everyone on their own apps is an understandable strategy for commercial reasons maybe but it might break trust in the tool even more… The open character of Twitter stimulating the platform to grow as a messaging platform was once a strong strategy. But that was when Twitter was more of a community and communication tool, nowadays it has become more of a publication platform…

It is easy to make a connection with ChatGPT. You can make the case that the tool is in the same phase of opening up to all makers to create their own new applications or at least find their own applications in an open platform. Not exactly the same, of course, 15 years later, the baseline of use of platform tooling has changed. Nevertheless, we might see a more closed strategy as soon as the business model becomes dominant. I wonder if this timeline from an open platform to a closed system is described in the literature… The first pilot of ChatGPT professional just started.

Events this week

I might check out the network Newyear drinks of Amsterdam Trade, who we are in contact with for the MUC AMS Cities of Things field lab
On Wednesday there is an event on Action design for urban futures organized by some scholars I know from Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences and Technical University Eindhoven
Back in the day, I attended Product tank Amsterdam quite regularly. Tonite, there is another meetup (I will miss).
London IoT Meetup is also tonite. Next week in London you can visit Design for Planet.
Sensemakers AMS is having an Arduino workshop on Wednesday if you are into that.
I used to be more connected to the Digital Society School in Amsterdam; this Wednesday, there is a showcase event.

News of last week

GEN AI - Via https://www.theverge.com/23553406/radioactive-data-malicious-ai-detection, where Casey Newton noticed the conclusion of this paper: "The emergence of global-scale social networks during the past decade offered state actors a rich new canvas on which they could attempt to shape public opinion."

THINGS THAT MATTER - Mentioned last week that Matter protocol is ramping up with a lot attention at CES, in this article some more overview and status.

AUTONOMOUS - Rumours on the next iteration of Autopilot to be released soon (however, soon can mean different things with Musk).

HELPING AI - Also for personal development as a human GPT-3 tooling might help is the experience of Dan Shipper.

AI ENHANCED LIFE - What will embracing AI tools mean for how we live our lives? I was and am always a believer in design for friction. Not as a barrier but to experience what you need. This is the next iteration of this I reckon.

AI TAIL - Is this indeed a potential problem? "One is that ChatGPT and other generative AI models are currently created by scraping content made by humans from the web, but are increasingly contributing to the text and images found online."

ROBOT SPECIALISTS - An intriguing specialized form and operations.

MISUSE - That was to be expected; there are a lot of not-so-nice applications possible with AI-power...

RIGHTS OF THE MACHINES - Does this make sense and a chance? "Thaler said in his Tuesday federal court filing that the Copyright Act "does not restrict copyright to human-made works, nor does any case law," and that the office's ruling was based on outdated precedent."

HUMAN ROBOTICS - Especially for medical assistants.

RUMOUR GALORE - The yearly rumors around new introductions of Apple have started. Next to the AR/VR glasses that are expected soon to be announced, there are more incremental predictions...

Some links that did not generate a preview:

https://www.theverge.com/23550834/exxonmobil-climate-change-predictions-shockingly-accurate on how ExxonMobile did predict climate change back in the 1970s.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3572808 "Living intimacy with Machines; can AI be disabled?
https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/16/23557098/generative-ai-art-copyright-legal-lawsuit-stable-diffusion-midjourney-deviantart "A trio of artists have launched a lawsuit against Stability AI and Midjourney, and platform DeviantArt, which recently created its own AI art generator, DreamUp.
Don't ban ChatGPT in schools, teach with it... https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/12/technology/chatgpt-schools-teachers.html

Paper for the week

“The concentration of global business power within two states, combined with the increasing capacity for these states to leverage and direct platform activities for their own geopolitical–economic ends, has catalyzed the rise of ‘state platform capitalism’ (SPC). This paper develops the notion of SPC as an emergent logic of competition for both states and firms – in particular, the ways in which Beijing and Washington instrumentalise and mobilise domestic platform firms in pursuit of geopolitical–economic objectives, while platforms become increasingly interdependent with their home state institutions.”

Rolf, S., & Schindler, S. (2023). The US–China rivalry and the emergence of state platform capitalism. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Spacehttps://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X221146545

Events this week

News of last week

Paper for the week

See you next week!