Ben Werdmuller helps leaders at newsrooms, non-profits, and mission-driven organizations to navigate their biggest technology challenges.
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There are some jaw-dropping infringements here, including an image where DALL-E apparently copies the entire Pixar universe from the single two-word prompt, "animated toys". It's impossible to hand-wave this away. Even if you don't think the New York Times case has merit, it'
2058 was many things: the hottest year in recorded history, a year when civil rights protests made national news in the face of deepening inequality, and where conflicts and the climate crisis turned millions of people into refugees around the globe. But it was also a year marked by rapid
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"I’d do this even if no one read it. Blogging, for me, is the perfect format. No restrictions when it comes to length or brevity: a post can be a considered and meticulously composed 3,000-word essay, or a spurted splat of speculation or whimsy. No rules about
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I like this breakdown of different positions on the open social web: a broad set of things that people who want a big fediverse advocate for, and one for people who want a smaller, safer fediverse. I'm mostly in the "big fedi" camp. I want the
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OpenAI feels a bit like Napster: a proof of concept that shows the power of a particular experience while trampling over the licensing agreements that would have been needed to make the whole thing legal. The Napster user experience eventually led to our streaming music present: you can draw a
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"Dutch Jews who survived the death camps and returned to the Netherlands were for years monitored by the Dutch secret service because they were considered to be extremists and a danger to democracy." There's no context that can possibly make this acceptable. The Netherlands is still
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"Your individual risk depends on a large number of factors, but there's a consensus: one out of every ten people who catch Covid go on to develop Long Covid. It's not a one-time risk, either. You face these odds every single time you catch the
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Technology news tends to center on the global north, but the implications of technology are global. Rest of World does a wonderful, necessary job shining a light on those stories. What I particularly appreciate about its coverage is that it's not just critical (although there certainly are critical
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If the Markup is jealous of another newsroom's coverage, you know the stories are good: the Markup has consistently been the most important outlet for investigative technology journalism. There's a special mention here for 404 Media, which has also been a fantastic addition to the tech
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I enjoyed Get Back and They Shall Not Grow Old, but what's obvious to me after reading this piece is that these upscaled films will look as outdated in 20 years as CGI from 2003 does today. They'll look like cartoons. Not without value, but nothing
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It took me several attempts to get into Bridge, but finally, this week, I picked it up again and was sucked in. There are plenty of other novels about traveling multiple universes to see the other yous, and Beukes knowingly stops to play with those expectations. The real story here
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That an AI model trained on Google Street View photos can look at a picture and figure out where it is isn't much of a surprise, but it's still jarring to see that it's here. I think the real lesson is that AI undermines