Apple, AI and Ahhhhhh
For those of us who didn’t get glasto tickets
Sorry we took a bit of an unintentional pause. We’ve been busy hosting an exhibition in Vienna, talking at re:publica, building something fun for The Royal Society’s new AI and Science paper and popping over to MozFest!
All Eyes on Rafa
By now, you might have seen this image shared on Instagram. According to NBC News, it has been shared over 40 million times.
It might be one of the most viral pieces of AI-generated content so far - up there with fake Pope.
A lot of people who have been fighting for Palestinian liberation are angry at the sheer reach of it. How has an AI-generated image reached more people than the thousands of posts from Palestinian journalists, horrific footage showing the brutality of the attack or many links to resources to support??
Garbage Day writer Ryan Broderick makes a really good argument that the reason this has been circulated so widely is more to do with the platform than the content. Instagram is still one of the most used social media platforms in the world, but as many people have learned, it is oppressing posts about Palestine following 7th October.
And this AI-generated post managed to bypass this. Precisely for the reasons that it is being criticised for—for being so generic and benign that it doesn’t really say anything—it’s been able to get through censorship and suppression.
Apple squashes creativity
Comments from recent Pixar leaders, Tech CEOs and Ashton Kutcher (??) demonstrate that many people who fund generative AI fundamentally misunderstand that one of the best parts of being creative is the creating. The process is genuinely where the magic comes from! I don’t stroll through a park with an ice cream to reach a destination; I do it because I like it. I don’t need to get somewhere faster. This is why a recent Apple advert, in which a whole host of fun, creative things were being destroyed and replaced by an iPad, didn’t land very well. The backlash was immediate and whilst Apple pulled the ad, the damage was already done.
“Nvidia Blackwell is nothing short of a doomsday device”
‘Techrader is an ally’ is not a string of words I’d expect to say. But here they are with a scathing write up of Nvidia’s Compute 2024 conference. For context, Nvida are one of the world leaders in GPU production, which is the hardware the drives AI, gaming, robotics ect. But why the negative write-up? Because the latest creations from Nvidia have major environmental, social and economic implications. For example, one million Blackwell GPUs (their latest creation) would suck down an astonishing 1.875 gigawatts of power. For context, a typical nuclear power plant only produces 1 gigawatt of power. We need more mainstream publications to push back against the technoptimist view rather than just regurgitating what is said at these conferences.
And finally:
Want to work with us?
We can be your workshop facilitators, speakers, or creative leads. Get in touch if you’re interested 👋🏽
Thanks!
Arda + Savena
All the typos in this email spell out a secret message
