In November 2022, OpenAI released ChatGPT to the world. Soon after, a software developer asked it to provide instructions for removing a peanut-butter sandwich from a VCR, and to write these instructions in the style of the King James Bible. ChatGPT complied: “And the Lord said, ‘Verily I say unto thee, seek not to put thy peanut butter sandwiches in thy VCR, for it is not a suitable place for such things.’”
Recently, I was caught on the horns of a dilemma. I had a decision to make and, either way, I knew my life would follow a different track. On one path, I accept a job offer: it’s an incredible opportunity, but means relocating hundreds of miles away, with no social network.
In the 1980s, the futurologist Hans Moravec warned that, paradoxically, it would be the actions that are easiest for humans (such as holding a piece of sushi with two chopsticks) that would pose the greatest difficulties for robots and computers.
Using “the Internet” sometimes seems disconcertingly synonymous with using Google. Google Search, the most popular search engine on the planet, indexes the open Internet, driving traffic to Web sites, and Google Ads provides the revenue that publishers survive on.
The first couple minutes of Quincy—the 2018 documentary about Quincy Jones, co-directed by his daughter Rashida—are really a quite striking prologue. The shots are simple enough: There’s the obligatory survey of so many record plaques and iconic portraits posted on so many walls of Quincy’s mansion in Bel-Air.
We live in a time of large-scale democratic reckoning, coupled with crumbling trust in public institutions and their elite functionaries. More people will cast electoral votes in 2024 and 2025 than at any other moment in human history...
Before the gig economy consumed a third of the workforce, it was mostly musicians who worried about gigs. There are debates about the origins of the word—some believe it derives from an eighteenth-century term for horse-drawn carriages that may have doubled as stages for performers, while others contend that it was adapted from a Baroque dance called the gigue
In the 2010s, affiliate marketing became a dominant strain of online business models. The Wirecutter, which sold to the Times in 2016, made money by driving its visitors to retail Web sites like Amazon or Best Buy, taking a small cut from any purchase of items it recommended.
As an obsessed amateur photographer, I spend too much time reading photography forums on the Internet. Not long ago, I came across a particularly plaintive discussion. “Let’s say, hypothetically, I’d like my future great, great grandchildren (and their offspring) to see some of my photos,” someone wrote.