The guitar company Fender has won a default judgment protecting the iconic shape of its Stratocaster models – and is applying it. CC-licensed photo by Xoran Sorvor on Flickr.
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A selection of 9 links for you. Highly strung. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. On Bluesky: @charlesarthur.bsky.social. Observations and links welcome.
The new Luddite movement • Financial Times
Camilla Cavendish:
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Fear and distrust of AI has grown substantially since the release of ChatGPT over three years ago. Half of Americans now believe that AI will reduce our ability to form meaningful relationships, and almost three quarters feel AI development is moving too fast, according to YouGov. In the UK, a new King’s College London study finds only 24% of citizens think AI is positive for humanity and a third of university students believe that AI will eliminate jobs fast enough to provoke civil unrest. The students who booed ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt’s graduation address this week may be first to mount the barricades.
It might help if we asked what society actually wants from this transformative technology. What problems could it solve for the benefit of all? Could we employ AI to finally crack the problem of nuclear fusion, to bring abundant clean power in a world being rocked by climate change? Or to find a cure for Alzheimer’s, a source of so much human misery? Yet companies devote more time launching consumer products than talking about such quests.
There is also an opportunity to make public services more efficient. AI can relieve social workers, doctors and nurses of form filling, boost personalised learning and speed up information delivery.
Despite the chance to use AI for good, the reality is that things are spinning out of control. The tech bosses feel compelled to go faster, despite being fully aware of the risks. Anthropic’s claim that its latest Claude Mythos model was too dangerous to release to the public has one upside: it has shown how close the world could be to an AI accident. The White House’s proposed new executive order on AI safety may be only voluntary, but it shows the libertarians are waking up.
…the Luddites were against not just the new technologies but the lower pay and poor working conditions which came along with them. Strong arguments can be made for workers to collaborate with AI, not be replaced by it: this has already happened in radiology. If politicians want to give at least some reassurance to citizens they should ban civilian autonomous vehicles. There are simply too many people who rely for their income on driving jobs, and the benefits of replacing them are unconvincing.
Nerdy geniuses who wax lyrical about science fiction don’t help, by conjuring dystopias whose common theme is the loss of human control. As the most visible incarnation, it’s hardly surprising that data centres have become the focus of public discontent.
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The hate of data centres really is interesting, and it’s probably right that their visibility makes them the focus of all the disquiet about everything else around AI – the job loss possibilities, the occasional anger about copyright that they hear from creators, and so on.
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AI-slop, GrantaGate and bad writing • Tuhin’s Substack
Tuhin Chakrabarty:
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The last two days have been a bit crazy, thanks to a certain short story published in Granta magazine that has now been awarded a prize by the Commonwealth Foundation. Nabeel Qureshi was the first on my feed to highlight that it was AI-generated. As I write, his tweet has 1.5M views which is roughly 1.4M more than anything I have ever written. For us fortunate, or if I may say unfortunate, professors whose inboxes are inundated by AI-written emails, it is not exactly detective work to recognize that this short story was completely AI-generated.
Pangram’s AI detection confirmed this. For those who don’t know me, I should admit I am a bit of an AI-detection maximalist, so obviously I got into arguments on X with people who were quick to dismiss the detection results and insist detectors don’t work.
Now putting that aside, a journalist from El País asked me yesterday, “Why did we suddenly decide, as in the case of this award, that a text is AI-generated when there’s no reliable detection tool available?” My reply was brief. I pointed to the stylistic tics and patterns prevalent in AI writing. Last year I won a best-paper honorable mention award for writing a paper characterizing idiosyncrasies in AI writing. It should not be surprising that I, of all people, have now been trained on an inordinate amount of AI slop.
A few days ago, my very smart PhD student came up to me with a point that stuck with me. In her words, bad AI writing, or low-quality AI writing, can be attributed to how much text it memorized from pre-training. Kind of a brilliant hypothesis. After all, LLMs are not conscious. They do not have a perfect sense of embodiment. They are autoregressive models that generate text by sampling, more or less, from a very large pile of things other people wrote. In simpler terms, it is what my colleague Najoung Kim (a linguistics professor at BU) calls word salad.
Last year we wrote a paper, now accepted to ICLR, on how seemingly novel n-grams are often nonsensical or non-pragmatic. There are perfect examples of this in the short story. Consider certain phrases: “she had the kind of walking that made benches become men” or “the girl smiled like sunrise over a sink.” Like, what does it even mean?
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Chakrabarty’s insight is that in “creative writing”, LLMs stitch together little bits of their training data and throw it back at you.
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AI is learning to fly airplanes — and aviation is starting to embrace it • CNN
Pete Muntean:
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The small Cessna Caravan accelerates down the runway and climbs into the air, all while the pilot beside me keeps his hands off the controls.
“Let’s see those jazz hands,” jokes Tim Burns, chief technology officer at startup Merlin Labs, over the airplane’s intercom from a back seat.
On this flight, test pilot Matt Diamond in the left seat beside me is not controlling the airplane at all. Many of the normal tasks of piloting are instead being handled by artificial intelligence.
I am, legally speaking, a test subject — even the airplane is labeled “experimental.” The Merlin Pilot system handles much more than a traditional autopilot, using a natural language processing model to listen to instructions from a mock air traffic controller and responding over the radio using a computerized female voice. Test pilot Diamond says, “Authorize,” and the airplane begins turning to a new course.
As a pilot myself — and admittedly a bit of a control freak — surrendering control to a computer did not come naturally. But the demonstration is an important one as more aviation companies are looking to AI to usher in a new evolution in air travel by using it to automate tasks for pilots and perhaps one day enable fully autonomous flights.
Our flight is taking place as airlines worldwide are facing a growing pilot shortage. Boeing estimates that carriers will need more than 600,000 new pilots over the next two decades. At the same time, aviation safety officials are confronting increasing pressure on an already strained air traffic control system following a series of high-profile close calls and deadly accidents in recent years.
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Self-driving cars, self-flying aircraft?
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Ebola outbreak now third largest recorded and “spreading rapidly” • Ars Technica
Beth Mole:
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The Ebola outbreak erupting from the Ituri province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo continues to escalate wildly, with cases nearing 750, deaths reported at 177, and around 1,400 contacts now being traced, the World Health Organization reported in a press briefing Friday. The latest numbers already place the outbreak as the third largest on record, though it was only first reported a week ago, on May 15. And WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the outbreak is still “spreading rapidly.”
A revised WHO assessment has moved the risk level from “high” to “very high” at the national level, while risk remains “high” at the regional level and “low” at the global level, Tedros added.
WHO officials have acknowledged that a delay in detecting and responding to the outbreak enabled it to balloon, and that they are now racing to get ahead of the virus.
WHO representative Dr. Anne Ancia spoke during today’s briefing from the DRC, saying that when officials got to the area, they found the virus was “already rampant and silently disseminating for a few weeks already.” In the outbreak investigation so far, the earliest known suspected case was in a health worker, who developed symptoms on April 24 in Bunia, the capital city of Ituri. WHO only got word of a potential outbreak on May 5, with news of a cluster of deadly, unidentified infections that led to the deaths of four health workers. By the time a WHO team arrived, there were already 80 cases.
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*puts head in hands* Not now, Ebola
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Number of air conditioned UK homes doubles to more than 4m in three years • The Guardian
Zoe Wood:
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An estimated 4m homes in the UK now have air conditioning, double the figure from three years ago as Britons complain of “unliveable” conditions during high temperatures.
Portable units with power ratings around 1kW are slightly more common than the more powerful built-in versions that can guzzle 2.7kW of power – more than an electric oven.
Experts suggest the increase in ownership is the result of more people working from home and rising summer temperatures. Some of the UK’s warmest summers have been in recent years, and the UK’s hottest day was in July 2022, when temperatures hit 40ºC.
Aria Toupchi, who runs London air conditioning specialists Debonair Cooling, said demand for its cooling systems, which cost about £2,500 per room, was coming from owners of both period and new-build properties. “They are struggling to sleep at night, or have children with breathing problems,” he said, adding that loft conversions were also posing problems. “I’ve seen loft rooms go up to 50 degrees C. It’s unliveable.”
The government’s climate advisers said in a report this week that British homes would need air conditioning to survive predicted levels of global heating, as measures such as drawing curtains, opening windows and growing trees for shade were unlikely to be enough.
Air conditioning should be installed in all care homes and hospitals within the next 10 years, the Climate Change Committee said in its findings on adapting to the impacts of global heating. With heatwaves expected to exceed 40ºC in all parts of the UK by 2050 and about nine in 10 UK homes were likely to overheat.
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It’s been baking this weekend. People with heat pumps might be able to cool their houses as well as heat them?
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Škoda DuoBell: a bicycle bell that outsmarts even smart headphones • Škoda Storyboard
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The redesign of a safety feature that is more than 100 years old originated from a simple need. “Bicycle bells have remained almost unchanged for over a century, but the world around them has not. Škoda DuoBell is the first bell ever designed to penetrate noise-cancelling headphones. It is a smart analogue trick that outsmarts the artificial intelligence algorithms in these headphones. It is a small adjustment that will improve safety on city streets,” said Ben Edwards from AMV BBDO, the agency involved in developing the concept. The idea was also supported by the agency PHD, while production company Unit9 contributed to the development of the prototype.
The number of cyclists in major cities worldwide is increasing. For example, in London, the number of cyclists is expected to surpass the number of car drivers for the first time in history this year. At the same time, however, the risk of collisions between cyclists and inattentive pedestrians is also rising. In 2024 alone, according to data from Transport for London, the number of such incidents increased by 24%.
This trend is partly driven by the growing popularity of headphones equipped with active noise cancellation, which reduce pedestrians’ ability to perceive and respond to their surroundings. In the streets of London, up to half of pedestrians wear such headphones. Many of them are so effective that even the ringing of a conventional bicycle bell does not penetrate them.
The response is DuoBell: an analogue solution to a digital problem – a fully mechanical bell that deceives smart headphone algorithms and significantly increases the likelihood that pedestrians will detect its sound.
The key to the success of the new design lay in understanding how noise-cancellation algorithms in headphones operate and how they can be overcome. Scientists from the University of Salford, in collaboration with Škoda Auto, therefore conducted one of the first studies to examine how ANC technology affects the audibility of traditional bicycle bells.
Through acoustic testing, the research team identified a narrow frequency band – a “safety gap” – capable of penetrating ANC headphone filters. This range lies between 750 and 780 Hz. The bell therefore emits sound at this frequency. It also features an additional resonator (hence the name DuoBell), tuned to a higher frequency, and, thanks to a specially designed hammer mechanism, produces rapid and irregular strikes. This generates sound waves that ANC algorithms are unable to process quickly enough to suppress.
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This feels like a variant of the old joke. Man drives into a petrol station with his Skoda. “Would you give me a petrol cap for my Skoda?” he asks the owner.
The owner thinks for a moment, then says “OK, it’s a fair trade.” (There is a YouTube video. It sounds like a bicycle bell.)
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Bluesky says Kremlin is hacking its platform to spread propaganda • The New York Times
Steven Lee Myers:
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Ben Gilbert describes himself on Bluesky, the social media app, as an “economist, lit and guitar nerd, rugby fan, owner of excessive pets.” A professor at the Colorado School of Mines, he rarely posts, but when he does, the subjects reflect his expertise in natural resources.
So it was odd when a video purporting to be a news report appeared on his account last month, blaming France’s financial and political support for Ukraine for police staff shortages at home.
Without his knowledge, Mr. Gilbert said, he had fallen victim to Russia’s latest tactic to try to spread its propaganda in the West.
His account, like hundreds of others on Bluesky, had been hijacked and used to post fake news articles, according to the company and researchers at Clemson University working with a collective of internet monitors who track Russian influence operations and call themselves the dTeam.
The compromised Bluesky accounts included those of people who are influential in their fields, though perhaps not famous. They were journalists and professors, a pollster in Texas, an anime artist and a filmmaker in Hollywood, whose account posted a video doctored by artificial intelligence to impersonate a Canadian police official criticizing France’s president, Emmanuel Macron.
The campaign, which the researchers at Clemson linked to the Social Design Agency, a company in Moscow, shows how Russia continues to seek new ways to erode public support for Ukraine, which Russian forces invaded in 2022.
Bluesky has grown more prominent as a rival platform to X since X’s owner, Elon Musk, threw his political support behind President Trump before the 2024 election. With 42 million users, though, Bluesky trails far behind X’s nearly 600 million.
While Russians have long flooded social media platforms with fake accounts and content, hacking into real accounts appeared to be a novel strategy.
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Amazing that Russia thinks Bluesky accounts are worth hacking at all. Perhaps there are so many MAGA types on Twitter that they don’t think it needs doing there. (Thanks Gregory B for the link.)
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What do Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems truly mean? • Quanta Magazine
Natalie Wolchover:
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In 1931, by turning logic on itself, Kurt Gödel proved a pair of theorems that transformed the landscape of knowledge and truth. These “incompleteness theorems” established that no formal system of mathematics — no finite set of rules, or axioms, from which everything is supposed to follow — can ever be complete. There will always be true mathematical statements that don’t logically follow from those axioms.
I spent the early weeks of the Covid pandemic learning how the 25-year-old Austrian logician and mathematician did such a thing, and then writing a rundown of his proof in fewer than 2,000 words. (My wife, when I reminded her of this period: “Oh yeah, that time you almost went crazy?” A slight exaggeration.)
But even after grasping the steps of Gödel’s proof, I was unsure what to make of his theorems, which are commonly understood as ruling out the possibility of a mathematical “theory of everything.” It’s not just me. In Gödel’s Proof (opens a new tab) (a classic 1958 book that I heavily relied upon for my account), philosopher Ernest Nagel and mathematician James R. Newman wrote that the meaning of Gödel’s theorems “has not been fully fathomed.”
Maybe not, but six decades have passed since then. Where are we with these ideas today? Recently, I asked logicians, mathematicians, philosophers, and one physicist to discuss the meaning of incompleteness. They had plenty to say about the implications of Gödel’s strange intellectual achievement and how it changed the course of humanity’s unending search for truth.
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Gödel’s work is very abstract, and yet as this article shows, there are implications in it about the limits of what physics (which relies on maths) can tell us about the universe.
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Fender wins legal battle over Stratocaster shape in Germany: is it the end for S-type guitars in the EU? • Guitar.com
Cillian Breathnach:
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Fender has claimed victory in a recent intellectual property case in Germany against a Chinese guitar manufacturer, stating that its win in the case sets a new legal precedent that strengthens Fender’s protection over the Stratocaster shape.
The case was against the Chinese-based Yiwu Philharmonic Musical Instruments Co., and took place in the Düsseldorf Regional Court in Germany. According to Fender, the decision made by the court agrees with Fender’s claim that the company had imported guitars that “reproduced” Fender’s Stratocaster body design, and that the design in question is not just a functional trademark but is instead a “a copyrighted work of applied art”, according to German and European law.
Aarash Darroodi, Fender’s general counsel and chief administrative officer, said in a press release: “This ruling is a meaningful affirmation of the Stratocaster as an original creative work and an important step in continuing to protect the integrity of Fender’s designs and intellectual property. It reinforces our commitment to originality, supports fair competition, and helps ensure that when players encounter these iconic Fender guitar shapes, they can trust the craftsmanship, quality, and heritage behind them.”
While the ruling is clearly bad news for Yiwu – a Chinese maker that seems to primarily sell budget guitars and other instruments via AliExpress and other online marketplaces – the potential wider impact of the case is yet to be tested.
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Fender has laid down the gauntlet in its protection of the Stratocaster body shape, sending a cease and desist to a US firm, ordering it to stop production of its S-style electric guitars.
As per documents obtained by YouTubers Phillip McKnight and Tone Nerd, Fender sent the cease and desist letter via its lawyers, Bird & Bird, to a small family-run guitar company based in the US, LsL Instruments.
The letter is allegedly part of a number of cease-and-desists sent to a range of US-based builders ordering them to halt production. McKnight claims to have heard from at least half-a-dozen firms who have received such correspondence.
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Iconic guitar shapes! Who’d have thought it would take this long for Fender to take this sort of action. Gibson, the other big name in guitars, is doing something similar.
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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. |
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