Data Science

Digital identification is one of the most interesting Web3 use cases, and many consider the concept central to the evolution of Web3. In theory, each of us would have a non-transferable token known as a self-sovereign ID (SSI) or a decentralized ID (DID). These smart contracts would allow us to control our data destiny, deciding for ourselves what data we wished to share with others. Continue Reading →

My Sunday essay, "ChatGPT In Its Own Words," was mostly written by ChatGPT. It's impressive by every measure. I was remiss, though, in not reminding everyone that the system is designed as a research tool and that it is also in "free" pre-release mode. Continue Reading →

AI is experiencing a very visible growth spurt. At the moment, only a handful of companies have the computational power to deal with large models. Is there a plateau coming? And, if so, will it advantage big tech or will AI tools evolve to democratize the industry? Continue Reading →

Let's imagine the fan experience of the future. If there were no technological or financial restrictions, how would you want to attend a sporting event or a concert? What will "attending" evolve to mean? Continue Reading →

At a dinner party the other night, a very accomplished business person told a story about how he and his wife were certain that their devices were listening to their conversations. “I was talking to my wife about a pair of designer shoes that she wanted to purchase, and not 10 minutes later while she was doing some online research for work, she saw an ad for that exact pair of shoes. She hadn’t searched for the shoes; the ad just appeared. Clearly, our computers or our phones are listening.” Some people nodded in agreement, and others began to chime in. Continue Reading →

According to Nature, by the 2030s, the world will generate around a yottabyte of data per year — that's 10^24 bytes, or the amount that would fit on DVDs stacked all the way to Mars. Continue Reading →

CNN obtained an internal memo to Meta's (formerly Facebook's) content moderation team that noted that “political speech is ineligible for fact-checking. This includes the words a politician says as well as photo, video, or other content that is clearly labeled as created by the politician or their campaign.” The memo was in direct response to requests for guidance from Meta's internal and external fact checkers. Continue Reading →

DeviantArt, the "largest online social network for artists and art enthusiasts," announced DreamUp, an AI-powered text-to-image generator service powered by Stable Diffusion. The new service has seriously angered some members of the community, so much so that DeviantArt announced that all hosted images will be "automatically labeled as NOT authorized for use in AI datasets." Continue Reading →

Social media platforms Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok are all over the news today. Facebook is continuing to implode and is about to lay off a lot of staff. I've been writing about Twitter every day. TikTok, because it is owned by a Chinese company, is under intense scrutiny after admitting that its workers can see the data they collect. Continue Reading →

I've been joking that my blog has become the "Elon Channel," where it's "All Elon, All the Time." In case you missed it, the organization we knew as Twitter is gone. It took Elon less than a week to fire half the staff and demolish years of goodwill. All that remains is a tech stack and a skeleton crew. Oh, and the threat of thermonuclear name & shame. Continue Reading →