It has been a crazy week for OpenAI and ChatGPT. Sam Altman announces customizable GPTs and then he gets let go by his board. I have no idea if these events are related and information is scarce. It appears that Altman may be negotiating with the board so it is difficult to know what to expect.
I am very interested in the new GPT opportunities. I have found applying an AI client to investigate content I specify to be one of the most immediate opportunities and this appears to be the benefit of some of the customizations. You do need to pay for the $20 a month plan to apply any of these options. When I tried I found that the system is overloaded and interested users are now on a waiting list.
I am making a change to the collection of resources I share with readers. Since I began operating a server, I have been collecting bookmarks for my own use and I have shared most of these resources in one way or another. Folks who read one of my blogs may have missed this effort as it appears on my general home page. The following shows the updated home page with the area containing the link to my new social bookmarking effort surrounded by the red box.
The old collection of bookmarks was huge and possibly still useful. It did contain many bookmarks to sites that were no longer active. I have decided to move on to a new service and identify newer material I have been reading.
The new system, called Memex, attempts to encourage sharing individual links or collections of links. The collections are labeled as spaces. Because Memex allows access to individual spaces, but not the entire collection, I have had to create a workaround. I have created a page with links to the different collections I am developing and this is the page I link from my home page.
Within a given collection, you will find links to articles and a way to access an AI generated summary of that article and my individual highlights/notes. The following image shows what you would see while exploring a given collection. Memex is not the only bookmarking system I use, but I will use it more consistently now that I am sharing these bookmarks.
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The President has signed an executive order to regulate AI. The order addresses many different issues, but educators are probably most interested in the focus on Foundation Models (e.g., GPT-4, Claude) because this category of AI might be something they or their students use. The regulations use GPT-4 level services as a baseline and require companies developing more powerful applications to require experts to conduct Red Team safety tests and publicly share the results. A Red Team would be what many call white hat hackers and these individuals would be charged with getting a service to violate various risks. Risks include defeating cybersecurity protections and dangerous information such as the production of biological or chemical weapons.
The way “more powerful” is defined is interesting. GPT-4 was trained using 10 to the 26th power mathematical operations and models using more operations will be required to be thoroughly evaluated before being released to the public.
We have been traveling on a Viking Expedition ship to Patagonia. During the voyage, there have been various presentations and some have involved technology. While I am an experienced iPhone user, I did attend a session on the iPhone camera, and as is so often the case I learned something I had overlooked because I tend not to explore new capabilities.
The new techniques makes use of the “shutter” button while in camera mode. It turns out that this button can be moved and the different movements accomplish different things. Slide the button to the left to enter “burst” mode. Slide the button to the right to take video even when taking photos. Slide the button up and down to zoom in and out. Maybe you already knew this, but it was new to me.
When in burst mode, the number of images captured is indicated in the space where the shutter button used to be. Note that when shooting bursts only one image will appear in your photo collection, but click on this image and you will see the entire sequence.
What is burst mode useful for? I think of it as “whale mode”. It is so difficult to capture that perfect whale picture because it takes some time for a camera to respond and the perfect time is never predictable. You see the whale arch its back to dive and by the time you get the photo at best what you capture is the tail. Burst mode allows a sequence of images to be collected and you can then select the shots you want. Action shots such as sports photos would be another good example of an application.
Finally, the use of the “shutter” button to zoom in and out. This move is especially useful while shooting video in order to get smooth transitions. You don’t have to pinch to zoom allowing one-handed operation and smooth transitions.
I don’t own an android phone to explore, but similar actions are available within the camera app on these phones.
Net neutrality is a topic I wrote about frequently some years ago. If required, net neutrality would be a policy required by the FCC that ISPs (Internet Service Providers) would have to carry all content at the same speed. The original concern was that ISPs might prioritize their own content (a common situation would be a cable service that provides Internet and cable who might prioritize their own subscription video over video such as YouTube content) or offer a special speed priority for content providers who would pay the ISPs for such service. The concept was that the companies that carry content to consumers would function as common carriers.
Movement on the provision was stopped during the Trump administration and when Biden was elected his nomination to the FCC was blocked. The FCC decisions are made by a 5 person committee with 2 individuals affiliated with each party and the fifth by the party in power. A new individual has just been and the now Democratic-controlled committee is again intended to move on net neutrality.
While it is true that ISPs did not ever take advantage of their opportunity to take advantage of their freedom, it is argued to be a positive development for consumers that the Internet would be run as a common carrier.
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Brave is my browser of choice and I have used it now for a couple of years. I used to write about it frequently, but I have neglected constantly explaining why I think it is until I read the news I will describe shortly. For the uninitiated, Brave is based on nearly the same basic code as Chrome which means it can run the same extensions. What makes Brave my choice is the system it provides for compensating content creators while maintaining security against cookies. I object to ad blockers because while they provide protection of personal data collection, view traditional ads also provide a way to compensate those who provide online content and the services we all use online. Simply put, it seems unethical to block ads while taking advantage of the work and creativity of others.
Brave does offer an option for viewing ads, but the selection is not based on personal data sent back to an ad company.
This article from TechCrunch indicates that Brave is having revenue problems and is laying off 9% of its workforce. I admit this situation does not surprise me. The ads I see are nearly all related to cryptocurrencies and security products and services. I consider these niche markets and not the type of information likely to interest most users. My guess is that Brave is struggling to attract the type of advertisers that would be making use of Google ad services. This almost seems a classic chicken and egg problem. If Brave is not regarded as a productive advertising environment, it will not attract ad money. If Brave cannot attract ad money, it will not be displaying ads a large proportion of Internet users would click.
I am not immediately impacted because Brave works just fine. It is just the company’s financial situation that concerns me. Give Brave a try, it works great and provides an approach I believe provides an ethical compromise between personal security and the legitimate needs of content and service providers.
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