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chatGPT, GPT3 and Reading Time
Time for a new discussion to take place. Reading time. Do you read through articles or do you skim them. Is reading the headline enough or do you read every word of the article? I ask because in the age of chatGPT and GPT3 I would ask the same question as I asked about social media.
If you want to discuss ROI for businesses and PR firms or advertisers then you need to discuss ROI for users too. Facebook, Instagram and Twitter wanted to control the timeline by using a “home” feed. The Home feed is an algorithm driven feed that shows you popular content, rather than content by friends, that you and they would converse about. The result is a lonely social media experience. The ROI goes down, That’s why I took a break from Twitter to play with Mastodon and revive my blogging habit.
Now we’re coming to the new discussion, about chatGPT. From the tests I have run with chatGPT it is a glorified encyclopaedia rather than AI. It spits out predetermined answers, rather than showing signs of learning and logic. I played with Copperman years ago, and other projects. With those, the more you chatted with the app, the more intelligent it would become. With chatGPT it always gives standard responses. It’s boring. It has no humanity. It has no character.
Writing is a creative process. You sit there, knowing that you want to create content but you need to spend time thinking of ideas, and then you need to write to the word count that you, or others has set. That process injects humanity into what you write. It also means that someone has taken the time to develop an idea, and maybe even proofread it.
By making it easy to generate content for WordPress and other platforms chatGPT, GPT-3 and other technologies are making it harder to find content worth reading. One of the biggest challenges when looking for content., reviews and information about products is the spam. the boiler plate content that people generate for a Casio watch, or other products.
Content should be written by humans for humans. The more noise we generate by fake AI, the more difficult it will be to find human content, by humans, for humans. That fake AI will also create formulaic answers to specific questions, rather than original content.
I love technology when it replaces the need for humans to do boring and repetitive tasks that can be automated, but something creative, such as writing we should keep humans. One tech mag recently allowed AI to write articles and those articles then had to be proofread and corrected by human editors.
ChatGPT is Hype
Recently I was reading a book about AI and deep learning and it wrote about how there is a cyclical habit of people to say “this is a great step forward in AI” only for interest to flare up, and then die down again as the miracle solution is understood and interest wanes again. chatGPT might seem exciting to some, but to me this looks like a human language search engine, rather than proper AI. Give it random words and it doesn’t do anything. I asked chatGPT “how fast does a squirrel run and it crashed, twice. It isn’t intelligent.
The apple watch will put no one out to pasture. Have you seen how many people from my generation can’t even read books on a kindle? What will put the web out to pasture is the tabloid/gossip magazine style of writing. Too many mainstream media hubs and blogging platforms write for the clueless and emotional portion of the web rather than the informed.
There was a time when I would read up to ten thousand tweets a day and spend 20hrs a day in social media. Today that passion has collapsed because conversationalists have left.
There was a time when I would spend several hours a week listening to the TWIT network to gain a better understanding of tech news and current affairs. I stopped listening when they stopped editing out the small talk. What value does small talk have to an international audience?
The Apple Watch marks the next, probably last, step in the downfall of the web. Or more precisely, the downfall of the web as commonly understood: that HTML medium which has spent the last two decades dominating the way we buy, share, search, learn and collaborate.
As long as you create your user account, enter your credit card details, personal address and other data the statement is true. I can easily see myself booking a flight or hotel via the mobile phone and using a smartwatch to check in to a flight or hotel. Operations where a “yes” or “no” answer is enough will benefit from smart watch devices. For most operations web interfaces and mobile phones are key.
“What began the toppling of the web? The mobile app. And the reason is pretty simple: apps deliver a much better user experience.”
The discussion is not about evolution and alternatives rather than elimination. The World Wide Web interface on desktops and laptops is practical. Actions which would take several minutes on a mobile phone take seconds on a laptop or desktop. The focus should be on “What tasks can be simplified through the use of a mobile phone or smart watch?”. Bus tickets, train tickets and cinema tickets would benefit from smartwatch access. When you’re shopping using your phone to scan the bar codes would be good. Once you finish shopping press “Complete” or “pay” and the financial transaction happens automatically. This isn’t replacing the web interface. It’s streamlining other processes.
For companies and indie developers alike, the way forward means forgetting the previous decades’ assumptions around screen real estate, keyboards, even reliable network connections. The mobile paradigm means APIs, orchestrated into apps that are optimized for the devices they run on. That’s the bold new realm ahead.
I disagree. Rather than take a reductive approach I would take a complementary approach. Look at dual factor authentication for example. We often use a password and a temporary passphrase to log in to a number of services today. Look at the booking of flights. We use a computer to book the flight and the mobile phone for the QR code which we scan when boarding. I don’t picture myself booking a flight with the watch but I do see myself confirming the check in.
I don’t see myself getting an iWatch because I already have a smart watch on my wrist. I wear a suunto Ambit 3 and use it to keep track of my walks, of my training in the gym and theoretically could use it to see updates once Suunto have the Android app version ready.
For now the use case for the Suunto Ambit 3, Suunto Ambit 2, Mares Icon HD Garmin 210 and other devices is that I go out in to the real world and do some sports activity. While I am doing that activity I have access to a certain amount of data. When I complete the task I stop recording data and I sync it to the computer at home. That data is then uploaded to a number of fitness tracking softwares, computer applications and more. I then analyse that data and look at the map of where I have been.
In scuba diving this data is useful as it allows me to improve my diving technique. For walking and other activities the data is mainly for fun.
App developers, UX designers and companies need to think of the dynamic individual and how a smart watch can automate the gathering of certain pieces of data. In practical terms I believe smart watches should simplify the user’s life. They should definitely not replace the laptop or the smartphone.
Why The Apple Watch Will put The Web to Pasture once in for all
Fearless Netflix Documentary
Fearless is a documentary produced by Netflix, exploring the life of bull riders that come from Brazil, to the US to compete in 26 competitions to see who is the best bull rider. This documentary is interesting because, for the most part it is in Portuguese with English subtitles.
Big in Brazil
In Brasil there is an event Barretoswhere 900,000 people, at the time the documentaries were made, go to watch bull riders compete against each other. Bull riding is a unique sport because a person tries to hold on to a bucking bull as it tries to throw the rider off. The rider gets point for style, but so does the bull. If the bull throws the rider off within eight seconds then the rider gets zero points. If the rider stays on then they can get up to 90 points.
Dangerous
The sport is very dangerous because it’s a small human being, on a big bull. They can get thrown and land on their head and break their neck, trampled, headbutted, and more. They can get their arms or legs caught. They risk injury in a multitude of ways. The paradox is that it lasts for eight seconds. All of that danger and risk, for an activity that lasts a few seconds.
If you look at the stats you can see how often bull riders are thrown off their bulls. It’s impressive to see that people fall from two or more meters onto the ground and often walk away. it’s interesting to watch the helpers get in front of the bull to block its path when the rider is bucked off.
It’s a strange sport because the humans are injured, rather than the bulls. The bulls are fine aftre the competition.
Glimpses of How They Train
An aspect of the documentaries that I like is that we see that it’s not just that they ride bulls, and that is it. They train. We see a five or so year old child try riding a calf and get thrown several times. “Do you want to ride again?” “yes”. We also see a slightly older girl practice riding on the barrel. “Stay on, don’t let go” as the barrel mounted on a spring goes forwards and backwards, and from side to side.
We also see how the adults train, how they ride the grown up equivalent of a rodeo bull, how they react, how they “dance” to keep their balance and to negate the movements made by the bull to throw them off.
Fear
Although the documentary series is called Fearless it explores the riders and how they deal with fear, injury and continue riding. They explore how the riders are confident, until they are injured, and how they recover from the injury and it’s physiological and psychological effects. They use the analogy of broken eggs, and how one or two riders get injured, but seem unphased.
One rider speaks about how he retired, and never once missed bull riding. Another questions whether to retire at the end of the season.
And Finally
I am familiar with Razeteurs, bull fighting and the Running of the Bulls. I have even witnessed the running of the bulls in a small village. Bull riding is one version I have never really thought about, because in Europe Bullfighting, bull running and Razeteurs are more common. I watched this documentary by fluke, and I like the subject matter.
It explores family, bull riding in the US and Brazil, about family, life as a migrant in the US, with little to no English, and more. It’s a good subject matter. It is well filmed, well edited, with good use of event commentator and bull rider interviews.
Glympse and real time location sharing
Glympse is a real time location software that allows you to share your location with twitter, facebook, by e-mail or via a number of other social networks. It is simple and intuitive to use. Connect your facebook, twitter and other services with the application. When you are heading to work or to the mountains for a ski trip you can start to share your location in real time. You can set the amount of time that the location is shared.
This is better than google latitude, foursquare and other services because it requires nothing from the receiver of this location sharing offer. Instead they simply click a link and they are kept up to date with your location progress.
The flexibility of this service gives the user good control therefore fearing for your privacy is not so relevant.
What I would like to see in future versions is the ability to play back the route we have taken. I would like to playback the train trip from one city in Switzerland for example.
Over 16,000 views on youtube
In the space of two weeks I have gone from having just 11,000 views on my youtube channel to over 16,000, thanks mostly to videos I shot with the phone. I went to film the Geneva Lake Parade and then the Paleo. The Lake Parade generated several thousand views and already I’ve had over four hundred views to the Paleo Manu Chao and Tiken Jah… can’t remember the name.
It’s not bad and it demonstrates the trend that I think is interesting. Go out and film, put it online with the right keywords and watch as people flock to see the content that you have offered them. Of course this is just an experiment but it’s increased my visibility quite a bit. I’ll wait to see how long it takes to get to twenty thousand views and more.
What are the next events I could cover in Switerland?