Ai

Monday

The Spectator

Letters from Spectator readers, July 2024

The cunning of the Democrats’ lawfare On the right flank the aristocrats of the conservative intelligentsia dominated by the likes of Max Boot, David Frum, David French, Bill Kristol and George Will would rather compromise than soil their false pride; the haughty intellectual snobs are thus perfect targets for Alinsky’s “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules” — aristocratic intellectual elites that would rather die than support a judicial and policy juggernaut with bad table manners. As Victor Davis Hanson observed, Marquess of Queensberry Republicans would rather lose nobly than win ugly. — Adler Pfingsten Will Cherelle Parker become the next ‘America’s mayor’ in Philadelphia?

letters

Wednesday

Paul Wood

AI and the new way of war

What is happening in Gaza now provides a glimpse of how all wars may be fought in the future — with artificial intelligence. In The Spectator last November, I wrote about an Israeli airstrike that brought down a six-story building in Gaza City, reportedly killing more than forty civilians. One of the residents, a man named Mahmoud Ashour, dug through the rubble with his bare hands, trying to find his daughter and her four children, a girl aged eight and three boys of six, two and six months — all killed. The Israeli military would not tell me why the building was hit, beyond saying that Gaza’s armed groups put their military infrastructure amid civilians, but Amnesty International said there had been a single member of Hamas living there.

gaza ai war
flavor
Jane Stannus

Summer flavor pairings

Does anything say “June” quite like strawberries and cream? The sweetness of sun-ripened strawberries allowed to remain on the plant until peak maturity, pairs exquisitely with the velvety, ever-so-slightly tart, richness of cream. Taste-wise, it’s a perfect match — and looks-wise, strawberries and cream are one of the prettiest dishes of summer. Some things are just meant to be. But life isn’t all strawberries and cream. Sometimes you have to shake things up with a lively new take: Gorgonzola and white chocolate cheesecake, for instance, or lamb with anchovy, garlic and rosemary. Love it or hate it, at least you’ll have your diners sitting up and paying attention. And sometimes a bit of experimentation can lead to a new favorite. That’s the story behind salt and caramel.

Tuesday

Spectator Editorial

Is the West ready to face the challenges of advancing technology?

The theme of this month’s edition is technology. The advancement of space exploration, defense technologies, artificial intelligence and the like should excite us. Yet the geopolitical issues they present are great and Western governments seem ill-prepared to grapple with them. Watch any congressional hearing where a crusty congressman tries to keep pace with Silicon Valley’s top autists if you need further evidence — and read Spencer A. Klavan’s analysis of the high-skill but low-status rejects uniting into a formidable social class on p.12. The Silent Generation and boomers simply cannot keep up. The Space Race is back on, as tycoons seek to cash in on the final frontier.

space technology

Wednesday

Grace Curley

Biden uses the gilded cage of the White House to his advantage

As much as things have changed since 2020, the campaign styles and strategies of Trump and Biden have mostly stayed the same. On Tuesday, President Biden held a phone call with Xi Jinping, the president of China. The two were set to speak about a host of important issues for the first time since 2022. Keep in mind that the day before, Biden struggled to get through a softball interview with weatherman Al Roker at the White House Easter Egg Roll. But sure, let’s all pretend that Joe’s conversation with Xi about artificial intelligence went smoothly. Often times Joe’s daily presidential duties — phone calls with world leaders, receiving the presidential daily briefing, attending various ceremonies — are the only things on his calendar.

biden gilded cage

Sunday

Ross Anderson

AI music is here and scarily easy to make

In December, I stumbled upon a new AI tool called Suno. The press release and a few fawning articles claimed that in under 30 seconds, it could a make a catchy, compelling song based on your prompt. It couldn’t.  Sure, it made songs, but they were uncomfortably awkward, the lyrics didn’t make any sense and you couldn’t listen to them without feeling deeply uncomfortable. I tried a country song about gay love, and it’s like a bad mirror of what a real song could be. I logged off Suno and didn’t think much about it again. But this month, Rolling Stone wrote a feature on the company and some of their sample songs using Suno’s new version 3 model sounded eerily real —  namely "Soul Of The Machine.

ai artificial intelligence

Sunday

Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky

How AI helps the tech giants

Artificial intelligence (AI) and its related technologies — machine learning and the metaverse — represent a watershed in the evolution of the global economy. Like other such shifts, its emergence is likely to favor certain interests, notably a handful of technology giants, the media and a small cadre of highly skilled programmers. Everyone else faces economic danger, certain to roil domestic and international politics in coming years. Eighty-two percent of millennials fear AI will reduce their earning ability — and they are right to be worried. The first group to lose will be the usual suspects: factory and warehouse workers as well as professionals with largely routinized occupations suited to automation.

ai
gemini
Stephen L. Miller

Why everybody should have seen the Google Gemini blunder coming

Has it ever bothered you that all the Founding Fathers were white? Fear not: Google Gemini AI is here to save the day. In February, Google updated its artificial intelligence LLM, or Large Language Model, releasing one called Gemini. The hope was that tech companies could build off each other’s platforms and that Google’s new AI would correct earlier mistakes made by Microsoft’s Bing, which in turn corrected mistakes made by OpenAI. Shortly after Google released Gemini to the public, internet users began quizzing the AI. Immediately problems were apparent, especially within Gemini’s image creation. When asked to replicate portraits of medieval British kings, for example, Gemini provided images containing historically inaccurate ethnicities.

Friday

Ross Anderson

Could AI ruin the election?

The artificial intelligence space is strange. Significantly overfunded, overhyped and overcovered — in part because AI can easily produce bad, generic copywriting, which is how many journalists presently earn their livelihoods. Though AI tools have rapidly advanced over the past year, few look to be truly society-morphing, and it’s fairly obvious when something is a product of AI, or it hasn’t mattered. Do you really care if a cliché-ridden cover letter was produced by an unimaginative human mind or a chatbot? But Thursday’s announcement of OpenAI’s new video-creating tool, Sora, is something different.

openai elections

Tuesday

Ross Anderson

The tech I’m looking forward to in 2024

The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the first and biggest tech convention of the year, took place earlier this month, where the strangest, newest products were shown off. As usual, there was a lot of fluff — pointless gizmos that work on a show floor but never make it to stores — but there were also core signs of the technology trends we’re going to see this year, and products I’m excited to try. Screens are always a strong point at CES, and this year proved no different, from pure quantum dot prototypes, translucent televisions and yet another laptop with a glasses-free 3D display; but it’s the arrival of great OLED screens to mainstream laptops that truly excites me.

tech

Friday

Mark Piesing

The gap between technotopia and dystopia are never far apart

Broken Arrow isn’t just the title of a mediocre 1996 film, but the term for a serious accident involving a nuclear weapon. Over the last seventy years, the United States has officially experienced thirty-two Broken Arrows, where a nuclear weapon has been in a crash or fire, accidentally been dropped — or just disappeared. Incredibly, six have been lost and never recovered. Artificial intelligence (AI) pioneer Mustafa Suleyman tells one such story in his new book, The Coming Wave: Technology, Power and the 21st Century’s Greatest Dilemma. In 1961, a B-52 bomber carrying two live hydrogen bombs broke up in the skies above Goldsboro, North Carolina. One bomb disintegrated when it plunged into a muddy field.

Suleyman

Wednesday

Alexander Larman

What does the end of the WGA strike really mean?

At last, there is the Hollywood equivalent of white smoke in the Vatican. After nearly five months, the writers’ strike has at last — tentatively — been resolved, as the Writers’ Guild of America have agreed to terms with the studios, as represented by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). The terms have not yet been publicly disclosed, but are said to be surprisingly generous, and favor the writers. It has been suggested that their major demands have all been met, including improved residual payments on streaming services, an increased number of writers employed on shows and, most importantly for many both financially and artistically, a curb on the way in which AI might be used to generate scripts and screenplays.

wga

Wednesday

The Spectator

The (r)evolution of Lauren Boebert

Lauren Boebert first gained notoriety back in 2019 as the pint-sized, gun-toting citizen who confronted Beto O’Rourke over his “hell yes” pledge to take our AR-15s and AK-47s. Since then, of course, Boebert has been elected twice to the US House of Representatives, where her behavior — “clashing with Capitol Police after setting off metal detectors,” feuding with Marjorie Taylor Greene on the House floor — habitually makes headlines.   Yesterday, news broke that Boebert and a companion had been escorted out of a musical adaptation of Beetlejuice in Denver for “vaping, singing, recording and ‘causing a disturbance’ during the performance.

Saturday

John Pietro

The advent of AI-piloted planes

The US Air Force conducted the first flight test of the XQ-58A Valkyrie drone, from Kratos Defense and Security Solutions, piloted by artificial intelligence, on July 25. The test was part of a years-long effort headed up by the Air Force Research Lab designed to integrate advanced technology into the Air Force’s arsenal. The lessons learned and data gathered from the test will be applied to the Collaborative Combat Aircraft program, which seeks to procure an unmanned combat drone capable of working — collaborating — with manned systems, like a traditional fighter jet.  Bringing AI into the fold offers numerous benefits to the modern warfighter.

The Kratos XQ-58 Valkyrie ai drones

Friday

Oliver Wiseman

Here comes Kamala

One of the few notable things about the low-key launch of Joe Biden’s reelection bid earlier this year was the prominence of his unpopular deputy. Kamala Harris featured heavily in the video in which he announced his run.  At the time, White House insiders acknowledged sotto voce that Biden’s age meant his vice president would have to take on a bigger role than is normal for running mates. An octogenarian candidate might not be able to handle the punishing campaign trail schedule, and voters would need to be comfortable that the woman only a heartbeat away from the presidency was up to the job.  For the White House, acknowledging the need for a bigger role for Harris meant addressing her unpopularity: Joe needed a Kamala relaunch.

Monday

Lewis M. Andrews

How AI could shrink government

Recent advances in artificial intelligence have led many observers to worry that computers will soon replace far more jobs than imagined just a few years ago. The World Economic Forum now predicts that over 85 million positions could be lost to automation by the year 2025, many in law, medicine, accounting and other fields once thought immune to electronic substitution. Industry experts like IBM CEO Arvind Krishna argue that the worries about this dramatic change are vastly overblown. Like every past technological innovation, he says, AI will eventually create many more employment opportunities than it eliminates, producing jobs in which a person’s productivity will be enhanced by his or her ability to use smart and dexterous machines.

ai artificial intelligence

Wednesday

Robert Barron

Mrs. Davis makes getting off grid seriously tempting

Mrs. Davis, currently streaming on the Peacock network, is my favorite show. It is quirky as all get out, featuring a quest for the Holy Grail, an imprisoned Pope, a journey inside the intestines of a whale, an exploding head (don’t ask) and a rollercoaster of death. The lead character is a committed religious sister who regularly communes with Jesus and who manages, more or less, to save the world. Now if you’re looking to Mrs. Davis for theological precision, you will be severely disappointed (and please don’t write me letters reminding me of how weird its theology is; I know), but there is indeed a spiritual motif of supreme importance that stands at the very heart of the show, and it is well worth plowing through all of the intense oddness to grasp it.

mrs. davis

Sunday

William Newton

What museums can learn from contemporary technology

"I grew up wanting to be an astronaut,” Robert Stein, the National Gallery of Art’s recently appointed chief information officer, tells me. “I studied electrical engineering, and I got a job doing high-performance computing. And then one day, I did a project with an art museum, and I thought, ‘Wait a second, this is an area of the world that needs more technology in order to connect more people together.’ And the rest was kind of downhill from there.” The National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC — the NGA — is now ranked the most popular art museum in America.

museums

Thursday

Spectator Editorial

Make tech great again

Mark Zuckerberg has dubbed 2023 Meta’s “year of efficiency.” The slogan is a corporate euphemism for layoffs, of course — and not an especially subtle one. Zuckerberg’s company has parted ways with tens of thousands of employees this year. Other tech firms are following suit. Crunchbase estimates that US tech firms fired more than 118,000 employees in the first quarter of 2023. These are lean times in Silicon Valley — and, as Joel Kotkin explains in this month’s cover story, there is more to this tale than Big Tech belt-tightening after a pandemic-era hiring spree. The Valley, Kotkin explains, is in trouble. A place that America, and the world, once looked to for an ambitious and optimistic vision of the future, has grown sclerotic.

tech
metaverse
Matt Purple

Good riddance to the metaverse

So pack it all in then. Away with the wisecracking butterfly that sits on your shoulder during work meetings. Out with the Gamorrean Guards who play Texas Hold’em with you around a floating table. The metaverse, Mark Zuckerberg’s fever dream of a virtual-reality infused world, is dead. That’s assuming it was ever alive and kicking in the first place. To assess just how “real” the metaverse ever was, we need to go back to its inception in the fall of 2021. That was when Zuckerberg released a video of himself in suspiciously Steve Jobs-esque garb — black shirt and pants, sneakers — tooling around what he called a “home space” that brimmed with holographic bric-a-brac.