Winding Down
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net, technology, science and other news
by Alan Lenton
25 June 2023
Just a short issue this week. It’s too hot to think straight. So there’s an essay on time, a piece on AI and copyright, plus stuff on the dangers of employing people to enter facts into AI databases at minimal rates. There is also a piece about the dangers of time travel. Pictures are from the Maasai Mara Wildlife reserve in Africa, an underground city, and a quote about orcas.
Scanner includes pointers to material on fusion, the benefit of admitting you don’t know something, conspiracy theories, a ‘fish doorbell’, and a famous experiment!
Enjoy!
Alan Lenton
Publishing schedule: Next issue will be published on 2 July.
Credits: Thanks to Fi for editing, correcting errors, etc.
Essays:
One of the more interesting essays I’ve seen over the past few months is one about time being fundamental to life. In other words you can’t have the evolution of life without realising that time (and memory) must exist. The Conversation has a fascinating essay by Sara Imari Walker, Professor of Physics, School of Earth and Space Exploration, Arizona State University.
As she points out, Newton’s physics saw time as an immutable backdrop against which everything moves. Then came Einstein and his understanding reduced time to just another dimension. Thermodynamics then gave time its arrow, which always moves forward.
Professor Walker then goes on to look at evolution, which requires both time and memory. A fascinating theory, and well worth a read.
https://theconversation.com/life-modern-physics-cant-explain-it-but-our-new-theory-which-says-time-is-fundamental-might-203129
Artificial Intelligence:
AI has suddenly become the biggest section in my notes for possible stories in Winding Down, but two of them stood out for recommendation.
The first is a piece from the Conversation about the implications of AI for copyright law. Who owns the resulting ‘art’ (using art in its widest sense to include essays, pictures, poetry and such like)? Could they be owned by the AI system, perhaps?
Definitely not, in the US at any rate. The US Copyright Office has clearly stated that only humans can hold copyrights.
In order to try to unravel the problem the authors take the evolution of photographic copyright law, and try to derive some concepts from that. It’s a useful primer on a topic which is full of thorny issues. Highly recommended.
https://theconversation.com/generative-ai-is-a-minefield-for-copyright-law-207473
One of the lesser known requirements for AI is human input to create the huge databases used. These databases are produced by many thousands of low paid workers. It’s boring, repetitive and hard work, but there is, at least at the moment, no other way to do it.
However, it seems not to have occurred to the people designing and building databases, that those doing this boring, low paid scut work of looking up facts to feed into the database might themselves turn to the likes of ChatGPT to speed up the work, allowing more ‘facts’ to be entered in a given time and therefore more renumeration!
But this means that the database becomes more and more tainted and eventually the human element needed to function properly becomes so dilute that the AI becomes in the best case unreliable, and in the worst case totally useless offering ‘facts’ invented by the AI...
https://techxplore.com/news/2023-06-ai-contaminates-vital-human.html
https://techxplore.com/news/2023-06-ai-death-spiral.html
Books:
I don’t normally do book reviews – especially when I haven’t read them yet! But... This book sounds fantastic. I bet that like me, most of you would like to do a little bit of travelling back in time – in which case this looks like the book to read – ‘How to Survive History: How to Outrun a Tyrannosaurus, Escape Pompeii, Get Off the Titanic and Survive the Rest of History’s Deadliest Catastrophes’ by Cody Cassidy.
As soon as it’s available in a Kindle version, I will be reading it and will give you a proper review.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/could-you-survive-the-black-death-the-sack-of-rome-and-other-historical-catastrophes-180982313/
Pictures:
Those of you who live in London might like to consider dropping in to the photo exhibition on the Maasai Mara Wildlife photo exhibition, which is open now till 2 July. Superb pictures – here’s a sample and some background!
https://www.matthewwilliams-ellis.com/journal/individuals-maasai-mara-wildlife-photography-exhibition-london
And here are another set of interesting pictures – this time of the underground opal mining city of Coober Pedy in South Australia. Some of you will have seen the town before – it’s where they filmed ‘Mad Max – Beyond Thunderdome’. Some great pictures of over-, and underground living in the Australian desert.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/unearthing-coober-pedy-australias-hidden-city-180958162/
Quotes:
“If you encounter a killer whale, there are some important rules to follow, first and foremost being, never enter the water with them.”
https://www.sciencealert.com/unusual-orca-encounters-and-attacks-now-happening-daily-tracker-says
Scanner:
World’s largest fusion project is in big trouble, new documents reveal
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/worlds-largest-fusion-project-is-in-big-trouble-new-documents-reveal/
The benefits of admitting when you don’t know
https://behavioralscientist.org/the-benefits-of-admitting-when-you-dont-know/
Many companies are banning ChatGPT. This is why.
https://www.sciencealert.com/many-companies-are-banning-chatgpt-this-is-why
Conspiracy theories aren’t on the rise – we need to stop panicking
https://theconversation.com/conspiracy-theories-arent-on-the-rise-we-need-to-stop-panicking-208033
Ring the ‘Fish Doorbell’ to help fish migrate in the Netherlands
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/fish-doorbell-netherlands-website-utrecht
It’s one of history’s most famous experiments. The drawings are hilarious.
https://www.sciencealert.com/its-one-of-historys-most-famous-experiments-the-drawings-are-hilarious
Footnote:
Please send suggestions for stories to alan@ibgames.com and include the words Winding Down in the subject line, unless you want your deathless prose gobbled up by my voracious Thunderbird spam filter...
Alan Lenton
alan@ibgames.com
25 June 2023
Alan Lenton is a retired on-line games designer, programmer and sociologist (among other things), the order of which depends on what he is currently working on! His web site is at http://www.ibgames.net/alan/index.html.
Past issues of Winding Down can be found at http://www.ibgames.net/alan/winding/index.html.
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