In this era of artificial intelligence, it is becoming urgent to distinguish human art from what machines produce. There is an ontological difference, even before an aesthetic one, between art and what a machine can generate through statistical calculation based on millions of images created by others. Algorithms lack the spark of humanity. For this reason, the Church wishes to renew an alliance with artists and cultural institutions to safeguard our humanity.

The author of a paper that inspired an Apple engineers's AI "torture chamber" has condemned the experiment. Check out my updated article at machine dot news or below. machine.news/apple-engineer-…

A man who claims to be an Apple engineer is doing unspeakable things to AI models. But can machines really "suffer"? Check out my story at machine dot news (Also - hello! Breaking a very long Twitter silence to share this...) machine.news/apple-engineer-…

A top US Army general admits to using AI to make key military decisions Major General William ‘Hank’ Taylor also added "Chat and I" have become "really close lately"

A rare double-ringed radio circle just appeared in deep space. Citizen astronomers have identified a rare "odd radio circle" (ORC), a massive, ring-shaped magnetized plasma structure nearly a million light-years across. It's only the second double-ringed ORC discovered and the farthest yet, located 7.5 billion light-years away, with its light predating Earth's formation. Invisible in regular light, these faint structures are detected by radio telescopes like Europe's LOFAR. Citizen scientists from the RAD@home Astronomy Collaboratory, not AI, spotted this one by analyzing telescope data. The double-ring likely formed after a central galactic explosion, possibly from a supermassive black hole, re-energizing old plasma clouds to glow in radio waves. The rings, appearing to intersect due to perspective, are likely stacked at different depths, spanning 978,000 light-years—ten times our galaxy's width. Questions remain about their massive size, rarity, and formation, but this find expands our understanding of galaxy evolution, revealing secrets hidden in cosmic static.

Technology should empower everyone. Big Issue and @Lenovo are helping bridge the digital divide by providing refurbished laptops to communities that need them most. Sustainable, empowering, and life-changing. -ad bigissue.com/life/ethical-sh…

Spoiler: yes.

Sounds nice. Pretty sure I've already been there...

Writing about Sir Keir Starmer today and was looking for all the things he had been compared to. Hit a blank after dalek and concrete bollard, so turned to ChatGPT. Here's what it said. Loving "a photocopier on its last legs". Ha ha! (Said with love and neutrality, obvs)

There is insane demand for people who can understand and explain technology in a compelling way.

Infosec job. Wrote a report every day saying they need to spend money to fix a, b, c or they'll get hacked. Got ignored for 18 months, they got hacked. Fired me. Took all my daily reports to the tribunal and fucked them for an absolute fortune. Guess who the hacker was.

"Catfishing, cyberstalking, denigration, dissing, flaming, flooding, fraping, grooming, masquerading, outing, pulling a pig, racism, social exclusion, trickery." The EU's definitions of cyberbullying in a report that (shock) doesn't call for internet censorship to tackle it...

Been a bit quiet on here for, erm, most of the past decade. Been busy raising kids, learning various new trades to fund indie journalism and working like a dog. Going to start sharing little newsy bits I encounter on my travels. Tech, science and internet. Same as ever!

Australian academics asking the questions that matter on AI.

Interesting post on how far the Common Vulnerabilities Exposure process doesn't work with AI. (TLDR: traditional software flaws are easy-to-list code. AI flaws can be suspect data, corrupt ML algorithms). Is AI security good enough? No. qa.com/resources/blog/ai-sec…

Was X really involved in 88% of foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI) campaigns in 2024? Would love to know what @elonmusk says about the EU's report... machine.news/russia-and-chin…

I absolutely love that the EU still uses British spelling. Long may it last! Gone but not forgotten. Maybe destined to return one day...

It's rare to see a phrase like "where's the secret lair of the lich king?" in a patent. So why is Meta trying to dox the lich lord? It's levelling up NPCs with GenAI - characters controlled by the game, not the player... A @MachineDotNews story: machine.news/meta-npc-genai-…

Thank goodness. No more rapidly evolving digital landscapes (at least from my instance of ChatGPT)...

The language of AI is leaking into the mainstream. Here's a new jungle tune from @_SullyMusic named after my favourite phrase of the past few years: Model Collapse. Hoping for a banger called quantum weirdness when the next tech wave breaks...