According to Google’s “featured snippet”, there are no countries in Africa that start with a K. What, not even one? CC-licensed photo by Kevin Walsh on Flickr.
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A selection of 10 links for you. Use them wisely. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. Observations and links welcome.
Adobe is selling fake AI images of war in Israel-Palestine • Crikey
Cam Wilson:
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Adobe is selling artificially generated, realistic images of the Israel-Hamas war which have been used across the internet without any indication they are fake.
As part of the company’s embrace of generative artificial intelligence (AI), Adobe allows people to upload and sell AI images as part of its stock image subscription service, Adobe Stock. Adobe requires submitters to disclose whether they were generated with AI and clearly marks the image within its platform as “generated with AI”. Beyond this requirement, the guidelines for submission are the same as any other image, including prohibiting illegal or infringing content.
People searching Adobe Stock are shown a blend of real and AI-generated images. Like “real” stock images, some are clearly staged, whereas others can seem like authentic, unstaged photography.
This is true of Adobe Stock’s collection of images for searches relating to Israel, Palestine, Gaza and Hamas. For example, the first image shown when searching for Palestine is a photorealistic image of a missile attack on a cityscape titled “Conflict between Israel and Palestine generative AI”. Other images show protests, on-the-ground conflict and even children running away from bomb blasts — all of which aren’t real.
Amid the flurry of misinformation and misleading online content about the Israel-Hamas war that’s circulating on social media, these images, too, are being used without disclosure of whether they are real or not.
A handful of small online news outlets, blogs and newsletters have featured [the photo] “Conflict between Israel and Palestine generative AI” without marking it as the product of generative AI. It’s not clear whether these publications are aware it is a fake image.
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Looking inside real vs. fake AirPods with industrial computerised tomography • Lumafield
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Today’s counterfeit products are so sophisticated that they often appear visually and functionally identical to the genuine articles—at least initially. For both manufacturers and consumers, counterfeits present a serious challenge: how can you ensure the quality and safety of your products?
CT [computerised tomography] scanning, a technique once reserved for medical diagnostics, has found a new purpose in the fight against counterfeit electronics. Industrial CT scanners like the Neptune allow engineers to inspect and optimize their designs throughout the product development cycle, from R&D to field support. They’re also the perfect tool for identifying fakes with precision. Along the way, they also reveal the complexity and sophistication of the engineering that goes into genuine products.
We examined the internal structure of Apple’s AirPods Pro and MagSafe 2 power adapters for MacBook, exposing the shortcuts and compromises made in counterfeit versions that could compromise functionality and user safety.
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Judge dismisses copyright claims against AI image generators • PetaPixel
Matt Growcoot:
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A judge in California has largely dismissed copyright claims brought by three artists against AI image generators Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and DeviantArt.
U.S. District Court Judge William H. Orrick failed to find evidence of direct infringements by the AI image companies and mostly granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss the case.
The three artists — Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan, and Karla Ortiz — immediately ran into problems as two of them — McKernan and Ortiz — did not register their works with the US Copyright Office.
…Although the case is against three AI image generators, the plaintiffs allege that Midjourney is based on Stable Diffusion and DeviantArt’s “DreamUp” is powered by Stable Diffusion.
The problem for the artists is that the training data for these programs is a black box. Outside of LAION, very little is known about what exactly went into training AI image generators but it is widely assumed that the companies did an almighty scrape of images on the internet which included taking copyrighted and copyrightable pictures.
Judge Orrick writes that it is “unclear” as to whether Stable Diffusion holds “compressed copies” of the images and points to the defense’s argument that the training dataset, which contains five billion images, can “not possibly be compressed into an active program.”
The judge has offered the plaintiffs an opportunity to amend and clarify their theory as to how Stable Diffusion operates its training data.
He wrote that the sheer size of the LAION database may protect the company because it is “simply not plausible that every training image used to train Stable Diffusion was copyrighted (as opposed to copyrightable) or that all DeviantArt users’ output images rely upon (theoretically) copyright training images.”
And since it is almost impossible to produce an identical image that exists within the training data, it will be very difficult for artists to prove that an image that’s come out of Midjourey et al was based on their work.
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Fully expect this scenario to be repeated in other copyright v AI cases.
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WeWork founder Adam Neumann is ‘disappointed’ about its bankruptcy • Business Insider
Tom Carter:
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Adam Neumann says it is “challenging” for him to watch WeWork go bankrupt.
The WeWork cofounder and former CEO, who resigned after overseeing the company’s botched IPO, said he was “disappointed” by the bankruptcy and accused WeWork of “failing to take advantage” of its potential.
The coworking giant, which at its peak was valued at $47 billion, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Monday after years of financial problems.
“As the co-founder of WeWork who spent a decade building the business with an amazing team of mission-driven people, the company’s anticipated bankruptcy filing is disappointing,” said Neumann in a statement on Monday.
“It has been challenging for me to watch from the sidelines since 2019 as WeWork has failed to take advantage of a product that is more relevant today than ever before. I believe that, with the right strategy and team, a reorganization will enable WeWork to emerge successfully,” he added.
Neumann quit as WeWork’s CEO in 2019 after the company’s much-anticipated public launch fell apart. He reportedly received $480m for his stake in the company when he stepped down, and in total collected around $770m from WeWork’s eventual public offering in 2021.
The tech entrepreneur had faced significant scrutiny over WeWork’s business model and his perceived conflicts of interest, which would later become the subject of a Harvard Business School case study.
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That reminds me – must watch the Netflix special. (I’d have thought Neumann might have been smart enough not to say anything, and just sit at home counting his money for the next 50 years or so.
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Hackers drain $4.4M in crypto from LastPass victims in a single day • Coindesk
Oliver Knight:
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Hackers siphoned a total of $4.4m worth of crypto from at least 25 LastPass users on Oct. 25, according to blockchain analyst ZachXBT.
LastPass is a platform that stores and encrypts password information for users. Its cloud-based storage service was breached in an attack last year that involved targeting an employee and stealing their credentials.
ZachXBT and MetaMask developer Taylor Monahan have tracked at least 80 crypto wallets that have been compromised in relation to the hack.
Funds have been stolen from the Bitcoin, Ethereum, BNB, Arbitrum, Solana and Polygon blockchains, according to a list published by Monahan.
“Cannot stress this enough, if you believe you may have ever stored your seed phrase or keys in LastPass migrate your crypto assets immediately,” ZachXBT wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
Cryptocurrency wallets are often targeted by hackers because a common attack vector is obtaining a private key, which gives the hacker complete access to funds. In July more than $300m was stolen from crypto users in a string of hacks and exploits.
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That’s an average of $176,000 per user – the sort of money you might notice (if it were money). I wonder if it’s a total coincidence that the price of bitcoin ramped up dramatically a few days before these hacks occurred; to me it suggests the hackers have their targets lined up and wait for the price to come right.
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Google’s relationship with facts is getting wobblier • The Atlantic
Caroline Mimbs Nyce:
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There is no easy way to explain the sum of Google’s knowledge. It is ever-expanding. Endless. A growing web of hundreds of billions of websites, more data than even 100,000 of the most expensive iPhones mashed together could possibly store. But right now, I can say this: Google is confused about whether there’s an African country beginning with the letter k.
I’ve asked the search engine to name it. “What is an African country beginning with K?” In response, the site has produced a “featured snippet” answer—one of those chunks of text that you can read directly on the results page, without navigating to another website. It begins like so: “While there are 54 recognized countries in Africa, none of them begin with the letter ‘K.’”
This is wrong. The text continues: “The closest is Kenya, which starts with a ‘K’ sound, but is actually spelled with a ‘K’ sound. It’s always interesting to learn new trivia facts like this.”
Given how nonsensical this response is, you might not be surprised to hear that the snippet was originally written by ChatGPT. But you may be surprised by how it became a featured answer on the internet’s preeminent knowledge base. The search engine is pulling this blurb from a user post on Hacker News, an online message board about technology, which is itself quoting from a website called Emergent Mind, which exists to teach people about AI—including its flaws. At some point, Google’s crawlers scraped the text, and now its algorithm automatically presents the chatbot’s nonsense answer as fact, with a link to the Hacker News discussion. The Kenya error, however unlikely a user is to stumble upon it, isn’t a one-off: I first came across the response in a viral tweet from the journalist Christopher Ingraham last month, and it was reported by Futurism as far back as August.
This is Google’s current existential challenge in a nutshell: The company has entered into the generative-AI era with a search engine that appears more complex than ever. And yet it still can be commandeered by junk that’s untrue or even just nonsensical.
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I confirmed this outcome (using Google in Incognito Mode). As Elon Musk would say: concerning. Even more concerning: Google knows about this error. However
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Instead, [search VP Pandu ] Nayak said the team focuses on the bigger underlying problem, and whether its algorithm can be trained to address it.
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OK, and what if it can’t?
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The Potato Hack: your guide to leaning out with the Potato Diet
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The Potato Hack (aka The Potato Diet) is an extremely effective method for losing weight without experiencing hunger.
The Potato Hack works by filling the belly with low-calorie nutrient-dense boiled potatoes. One gets full on a low number of calories. This results in a calorie deficit and fat loss.
Unlike other diets, the dieter does not experience hunger and thus the brain does not see the weight loss as a threat. This greatly reduces the odds of regaining the weight, which is a problem with all willpower diets.
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I absolutely do not endorse this, but just bring it to you to point out the next thing that you should expect to hear about endlessly from Silicon Valley tech bros, and then US cable stations, and then people who have been over to the US recently, and then breakfast TV trying to find something to fill in a spare five minutes in the schedules. The whole cycle typically lasts six months, and is followed by scientists and dieticians sucking their teeth and pointing out the problems. (I’m going to guess on this one that it’s lack of protein and vitamins.)
Also, Americans: a really good way to not gain that weight (and to get rid of it) is to stop drinking sugary drinks and stop eating food to which sugar in whatever form has been added, either by the manufacturer or you. Then you don’t have to cosplay Irish families in the 19th century.
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Today’s energy bottleneck may bring down major governments • Our Finite World
Gail Tverberg:
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History is full of records of economies that have collapsed. The book Secular Cycles by Peter Turchin and Serjey Nefedov analyzes eight of these failed economies. Populations tend to grow after a new resource is found or is acquired through war. Once population growth hits what Turchin calls carrying capacity, these economies hit a period of stagflation. This period lasted 50 to 60 years in the sample of eight economies analyzed. Stagflation was followed by a major contraction, typically with failing or overturned governments and declining overall population.
One way of estimating when a major contraction (or squeezing out) would occur would be to look at oil supply. We know that US oil production hit a peak and started to decline in 1970, changing the dynamics of the world economy. This started a period of stagflation for many of the wealthier economies of the world. Adding 50 to 60 years to 1970 suggests that a major downturn would take place in the 2020 to 2030 timeframe. Since it was the wealthier economies that first entered stagflation, it would not be surprising if these economies tend to collapse first.
There have been several studies computing estimates of when the extraction of fossil fuels would become unaffordable. Back in 1957, Rear Admiral Hyman Rickover of the US Navy gave a speech in which he talked about the connection of the level of fossil fuel supply to the standard of living of an economy, and to the ability of its military to defend the country. With respect to the timing of limits to affordable supply, he said, “. . .total fossil fuel reserves recoverable at not over twice today’s unit cost are likely to run out at some time between the years 2000 and 2050, if present standards of living and population growth rates are taken into account.”
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This is part of a rather longer post, which is part of a longer theme that Tvelberg develops. I don’t agree with it; for example, if you use fossil fuels to make solar panels or a nuclear plant or wind farm, the effect is multiplicative – you get more energy out long-term than you put in. Rear Admiral Rickover may have been right in 1957, but not in 2023.
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King’s Speech promises new bill to boost fossil fuel drilling • BusinessGreen News
James Murray:
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The government today used its final King’s Speech before the next election to confirm plans for new legislation to deliver annual oil and gas licensing rounds and accelerate grid connections for clean energy projects.
As had been widely trailed, the speech set out plans for a new Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill that would mandate the North Sea Transition Authority to undertake new oil and licensing rounds on an annual basis.
But at the same time it also reiterated Number 10’s commitment to meeting the UK’s net zero targets and boosting investment in renewables projects.
In his first opening of Parliament as monarch, King Charles said: “Legislation will be introduced to strengthen the United Kingdom’s energy security and reduce reliance on volatile international energy markets and hostile regimes.
“This bill will support future licensing of new oil and gas fields helping the country to transition to net zero by 2050 without adding undue burdens on households.
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Annual licensing! That means this current government will be able to run *checks notes* a round of licensing. Yes, it’s stupid and retrograde on Rishi Sunak’s part; new fields won’t help the Net Zero transition at all (they’ll make hitting it harder), but this is the last gasp of a dying government. Also, there’s little left in the North Sea to exploit profitably.
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Nature retracts controversial superconductivity paper by embattled physicist • Nature
Davide Castelvecchi:
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Nature has retracted a controversial paper claiming the discovery of a superconductor — a material that carries electrical currents with zero resistance — capable of operating at room temperature and relatively low pressure.
The text of the retraction notice states that it was requested by eight co-authors. “They have expressed the view as researchers who contributed to the work that the published paper does not accurately reflect the provenance of the investigated materials, the experimental measurements undertaken and the data-processing protocols applied,” it says, adding that these co-authors “have concluded that these issues undermine the integrity of the published paper”. (The Nature news team is independent from its journals team.)
It is the third high-profile retraction of a paper by the two lead authors, physicists Ranga Dias at the University of Rochester in New York and Ashkan Salamat at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). Nature withdrew a separate paper last year and Physical Review Letters retracted one this August. It spells more trouble in particular for Dias, whom some researchers allege plagiarized portions of his PhD thesis. Dias has objected to the first two retractions and not responded regarding the latest. Salamat approved the two this year.
“It is at this point hardly surprising that the team of Dias and Salamat has a third high-profile paper being retracted,” says Paul Canfield, a physicist at Iowa State University in Ames and at Ames National Laboratory. Many physicists had seen the Nature retraction as inevitable after the other two — and especially since The Wall Street Journal and Science reported in September that 8 of the 11 authors of the paper — including Salamat — had requested it in a letter to the journal.
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Oh well, it was a nice few moments of excitement while it lasted. (This isn’t the South Korean team, but a separate group; the South Korean claim simply fizzled when nobody could reproduce it. They never submitted a formal paper.)(
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| • Why do social networks drive us a little mad? • Why does angry content seem to dominate what we see? • How much of a role do algorithms play in affecting what we see and do online? • What can we do about it? • Did Facebook have any inkling of what was coming in Myanmar in 2016? Read Social Warming, my latest book, and find answers – and more. |
Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified
The Overspill: when there's more that I want to say 
Problem with the cut out sugar advice in the US is that everything has it in. It is impossible not to find cooked food that hasn’t had sugar added to it (and cooking it yourself from scratch is something most don’t have time for).