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Ben Werdmuller

Ben Werdmuller

Google Unveils Plan to Demolish the Journalism Industry Using AI

“If Google's AI is going to mulch up original work and provide a distilled version of it to users at scale, without ever connecting them to the original work, how will publishers continue to monetize their work?”  #AI [Link]

18 May 2023

Hype: The Enemy of Early Stage Returns

“Technology alone does not create the future. Instead, the future is the result of an unpredictable mix of technology, business, product design, and culture.”  #Technology [Link]

18 May 2023

Business Mentality

“Hi, we’re the company you work for and we care about your mental health!” #Labor [Link]

18 May 2023

Montana becomes first US state to ban TikTok

“Montana has became the first US state to ban TikTok after the governor signed legislation prohibiting mobile application stores from offering the app within the state by next year.” I’m willing to wager that this never comes to pass.  #Technology [Link]

17 May 2023

Many US Twitter users have taken a break from Twitter, and some may not use it a year from now

“A majority of Americans who have used Twitter in the past year report taking a break from the platform during that time, and a quarter say they are not likely to use it a year from now.”  #Technology [Link]

17 May 2023

Severance, by Ling Ma

Though it fades out weakly, I loved this story about loss, meaning, and what it means to be an immigrant, dressed up as a science fiction novel. The science fiction is good too, and alarmingly close to the real-life global pandemic that took place a few years after it was

16 May 2023

Indirect Prompt Injection via YouTube Transcripts

“ChatGPT (via Plugins) can access YouTube transcripts. Which is pretty neat. However, as expected (and predicted by many researches) all these quickly built tools and integrations introduce Indirect Prompt Injection vulnerabilities.” Neat demo! #AI [Link]

16 May 2023

Widely used chemical strongly linked to Parkinson’s disease

“A groundbreaking epidemiological study has produced the most compelling evidence yet that exposure to the chemical solvent trichloroethylene (TCE)—common in soil and groundwater—increases the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease.” By as much as 70%!  #Health [Link]

16 May 2023

ChatGPT is not ‘artificial intelligence.’ It’s theft.

“Rather than pointing to some future utopia (or robots vs. humans dystopia), what we face in dealing with programs like ChatGPT is the further relentless corrosiveness of late-stage capitalism, in which authorship is of no value. All that matters is content.”  #AI [Link]

16 May 2023

Google Bard is a glorious reinvention of black-hat SEO spam and keyword-stuffing

“Moreover, researchers have also discovered that it’s probably mathematically impossible to secure the training data for a large language model like GPT-4 or PaLM 2. This was outlined in a research paper that Google themselves tried to censor, an act that eventually led the Google-employed author, El Mahdi El

15 May 2023

My New Startup Checklist

Interesting to see what creating a new startup entails in 2023.  #Startups [Link]

11 May 2023

Creative Commons Supports Trans Rights

“As an international nonprofit organization, with a diverse global community that believes in democratic values and free culture, the protection and affirmation of all human rights — including trans rights — are central to our core value of global inclusivity and our mission of promoting openness and providing access to knowledge and

11 May 2023
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Ben Werdmuller

Ben Werdmuller

Writing at the intersection of technology, journalism, and community.

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Ben Werdmuller explores the intersection of technology, democracy, and society. Always independently published, reader-supported, and free to read.