Overall, the AI pieces missed more than they hit. I thought the facial recognition article particularly redundant, bringing literally zero new insights into this space that I haven't already read in at least 6 other publications. The Hinton article did not justify its length and the metaphors were clumsy.
I did enjoy Daniel Immerwahr's piece on deep fakes. Unlike those two articles, this did at least bring an interesting angle on this topic even if I think Immerwahr was being too narrow in photos specifically. As the other AI article on generative artists have pointed out, the deepfake voice / music clone is on a different trajectory than images, even if these still mostly aren't to trick people (although I've heard of some phishing scams that have successfully done this).
Finally, the article on the eulogy for coding was decent. As some folks on Hacker News noted, the author wasn't coming at this as an expert (the specific example of getting random entries from a dictionary he cites is easier than many coding interview questions at tech firms). But the overall sentiments mostly rang true, even if the prose could be better. I doubt coding is fully going away but it certainly is changing a lot.
I had previously read a review of that Chaplin book in the LARB so it didn't feel as if Menand had brought that much to the picture here. I'd put the piece on the Sphere or deepfakes as my must-read for the week over it.
Lots of thoughts on this week's issue.
Overall, the AI pieces missed more than they hit. I thought the facial recognition article particularly redundant, bringing literally zero new insights into this space that I haven't already read in at least 6 other publications. The Hinton article did not justify its length and the metaphors were clumsy.
I did enjoy Daniel Immerwahr's piece on deep fakes. Unlike those two articles, this did at least bring an interesting angle on this topic even if I think Immerwahr was being too narrow in photos specifically. As the other AI article on generative artists have pointed out, the deepfake voice / music clone is on a different trajectory than images, even if these still mostly aren't to trick people (although I've heard of some phishing scams that have successfully done this).
Finally, the article on the eulogy for coding was decent. As some folks on Hacker News noted, the author wasn't coming at this as an expert (the specific example of getting random entries from a dictionary he cites is easier than many coding interview questions at tech firms). But the overall sentiments mostly rang true, even if the prose could be better. I doubt coding is fully going away but it certainly is changing a lot.
I had previously read a review of that Chaplin book in the LARB so it didn't feel as if Menand had brought that much to the picture here. I'd put the piece on the Sphere or deepfakes as my must-read for the week over it.