The animation, writing, and voice acting in this is absolutely perfect. I loved this game when it came out and I truly would watch a whole series of this show.
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Will AI Actually Mean We’ll Be Able to Work Less?
Elizabeth M. Renieris writing for The Walrus:
And now, argues tech writer Paris Marx, “new technologies like AI are framed as offering us various forms of empowerment and liberation: We’ll be able to work more productively, spend less time doing our chores, and anything we want will be a click or tap away. But those promises never paint an accurate picture of how that tech is transforming the world around us or the true cost of those supposed benefits.”
Not only does new tech often result in more work for people but it also introduces additional kinds of work. Ian Bogost anticipates that AI-powered chatbots such as ChatGPT “will impose new regimes of labor and management atop the labor required to carry out the supposedly labor-saving effort.” Just as computers and software advances have “allowed, and even required, workers to take on tasks that might otherwise have been carried out by specialists as their full-time job,” citing procurement and accounting software as examples, Bogst predicts the “inevitable bureaucratization” of AI.
Simply put, the AI productivity narrative is a lie. It holds that by automating tasks, AI will make them more efficient and make us, in turn, more productive. This will free us for more meaningful tasks or for leisurely pursuits such as yoga, painting, or volunteerism, promoting human flourishing and well-being. But if history is any guide, this outcome is highly unlikely, save for a privileged elite. More likely, the rich will only get richer.
Because it’s not technology that can liberate us. To preserve and promote meaningful autonomy in the face of these AI advancements, we must look to our social, political, and economic systems and policies. As Derek Thompson observes in The Atlantic, “Technology only frees people from work if the boss—or the government, or the economic system—allows it.” To allege otherwise is technosolutionism, plain and simple.
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Solo Acts: Marco Arment and his podcast app Overcast
Ashley Esqueda has been making a great mini-series withing Vergecast called Solo Acts where she interviews solo entrepreneurs making awesome things on the internet. In her final episode she had Marco Arment on and it did not disappoint.
I have long been a fan of Marco’s work and to hear the story behind Tumblr, Instapaper, and Overcast in one place is fantastic.
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Twitter’s Auto Response to the Press is a Poop Emoji
Twitter, AKA the “Free Speech” platform is now changing how they respond to journalists looking to get information from the company. Instead of a reply either giving journalists doing their job or even a simple “no comment” Twitter is now auto-responding with a poop emoji.
If you’re wondering if this is a joke played by a disgruntled employee I have bad news for you, it’s coming from the head moron in charge.
Micah Lee of The Intercept decided to test out Elon’s latest shenanigans and found it to be true.
Free Speech indeed.
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We’re Drowning in Subscriptions
Leticia Miranda writing for Bloomberg:
If it feels like you’re drowning in subscriptions, you aren’t wrong. It’s hard to keep track and, even if you do, you may eat at Panera a lot less than you thought after the first few months of guzzling free tea. For some companies, that’s part of the calculation, plus there’s the bonus of scooping up data on consumers while having them pay for the privilege of free delivery. What a steal!
So why are you suddenly seeing everyone offer some kind of subscription program? There’s a few reasons. The cost to lure in new customers has skyrocketed over the last couple of years as companies and states curb data tracking. Apple Inc.’s mobile operating software allowed customers to opt-out of tracking, limiting how much data marketers collect. Mozilla and Google started to phase out third-party cookies on their networks, further curtailing data collection. California passed a privacy law in 2018, which set a precedent that other states have followed.
Companies cut off from their old data pipes are looking for new ways to learn about us and sell us things. That means they need more data collected directly from us and with our consent. Turns out that subscription programs not only allow them to get our consent to share our information, but we also agree to pay them for that data in return for free perks.
With a looming economic downturn, people are looking to cut costs, opting for cheaper alternatives and dropping little luxuries. Add to that subscription fatigue, and companies will need to think more creatively about how they can help consumers save either time or money. It’s finally time for the subscription economy to go into reverse.
While I agree with most of the things here, I think it’s hilarious this piece required me to login to read it, which is another gripe about the internet I’ve written about.
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The Talk Show ep. 370 – ‘Fine Hypertext Products’, with Jason Kottke
I will always listen to Gruber and Kottke talk about their tenured careers as bloggers and hearing them talk about the past 25 years of blogging made me really consider how I want my writing online to look like. In fact, after listening to this episode I did the following:
- Curated all of my content into one space (here)
- Realized I wanted to write shorter posts more frequently instead of long newsletters on something like Substack
- Decided that one personal brand is better than multiple brands
- Come up with a tagline for my site: “outward links, inward essays”
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I don’t want to log in to your website
Elizabeth Lopatto writing for The Verge:
There is a new trend among websites where they want my email address before I’m allowed to read their free content. While I sympathize with the struggles of the media business, I am just going to point out something obvious: not reading is easier than reading — and way easier than logging in.
I don’t mind that The Atlantic requires an email — it has kept me from hate-reading the astounding churn of bad takes they publish — but just about everyone else has got to knock this off. You hear me, Reuters? I am annoyed with Reuters, specifically, because it’s a wire service, and I can usually find its articles without logging in by avoiding the Reuters website. As for you, The New York Times, I do not want to read your stories in your app! No thanks!
And confidential to Substack: if I have clicked into a newsletter on the web, blocking my view of the thing I’m trying to read with a subscription pop-up isn’t going to make me more likely to subscribe. It just means I’m probably not going to read the newsletter.
I don’t know, man. I was on the internet in the 1990s, and I remember when people just made stuff for fun — as a gift to other people. It seems like there’s less and less of that spirit remaining, and it’s why the internet sucks now. It’s why I have to append “reddit” to my Google searches to avoid getting SEO glurge — the for-profit stuff drowns out everything else. It’s why people are using DALL-E for newsletter header images to make sure their newsletter gets a bigger card in a social media feed — because it doesn’t matter what the image looks like as long as it exists. It’s why people intentionally put errors in their TikToks to juice engagement — because all the people commenting to tell you you’re wrong boost you in the algorithm. This is the bad place!
The original slug for this is “google-facebook-login-ads-web-design-hell” which I think is a better title, but either one drives the point home.
To add to this, I think that while people are willing and able to pay for content like The New York Times and The Atlantic or any number of Substacks these pop-ups won’t help close those looking to support you. You can’t beat most readers into paying you.
If someone you knew was out on the street corner screaming at your face you wouldn’t pay them even if what they had to say was both entertaining and worth listening to.
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Making Content for Yourself
A man in front of a laptop stressed and unable to write, digital art, DALL-E 2
Kate Lindsay wrote a piece on Embedded about making content for yourself and how it is more authentic than most content out there today.
In it, she spoke about scrolling on TikTok and finding several videos where she was among the first person to watch a video posted.
What I thought was profound was instead of Kate immediately dismissing the videos due to them being unpopular, she zoomed out on her focus and went a different way with it. Instead of vilifying someone for making something literally no one was watching, she instead found a shimmering light in what others might see as darkness.
[T]he more I’ve been writing about how social media has changed over the past few years—the transition from social media to performance media—the more I’ve become convinced that content created for essentially no one is a more authentic snapshot of the human experience than anything that ends up boosted by TikTok onto For You Pages.
Not only do I agree with the sentiment here, but it is also something that I am trying to do here with Clicked. Having something that you make for yourself, regardless if others enjoy it, is an admirable goal. Admittedly it isn’t always easy.
As a recovering defeatist, it is hard to qualify your work as something that is worth other people’s time (and money). Too often, I have had a thought or an idea for something I wanted to make but didn’t because I deemed it as shit. Whether that was making designs for stickers and clothing to sell, a newsletter, a YouTube channel, a screenplay, or anything creative for that matter, I couldn’t deem any of them as fulfilling to others. I worried about how everyone else might react to it. So instead of even trying, I decided that it was just pointless because no one would care, so why bother exerting that energy when nothing would come of it? This is emphatically a bad take for anyone that is even a little creative.
In fact, a lot of those kinds of thoughts are just bad in general, with or without a creative project attached. It’s like saying that there is no need to care for your teeth because you don’t smile. Sure, you can hide your teeth, but they are vital to your well-being, and not caring for them can cause some serious problems beyond just a cavity if you ignore them for long enough.
Greg Morris recently wrote about his writing as well, and his words often cut me like a sharp blade. Hell, sometimes I feel like he is talking directly to me even though I know he isn’t.
Many of the people I follow seem to struggle with either wanting to write more and not having a subject, or pigeonhole themselves to a point they feel trapped. The truth is, I often start typing away intending to publish something without even a topic in mind. The tactile feedback from my keyboard is enough to keep my happy for a little while.
I don’t have ‘a thing’. There isn’t one area that motivates me to write about it, there is just me. I think that is the reason that my posts meander around some topics, but rarely stay still. There’s some tech, some personal things, some really random posts, but mostly it is just what is going on in my head.
A lesson to be learned here is just make something you want, fuck everyone else and worry about what you want to make. If someone else likes what you put out into the world, then that’s wonderful, but it isn’t the main goal. As the great Steven Pressfield says, “[w]e must do our work for its own sake, not for fortune or attention or applause.”1
How to ignore the naysayers in your head
There is a reason every creator you love has said something along the lines of “make something for yourself, not for others.” They aren’t just saying this to gain points for being motivational; it is because literally no one but you will give a shit when you start, so you might as well make something that you can hang your hat on. Otherwise, you won’t have anyone admiring what you made.
If you know someone that is in a rut creatively, never tell them to “just make something.” That’s like telling a depressed person to “just be happy.” It’s insulting and unhelpful at best and damaging at worst. Instead, try to be more granular and actively listen to them when talking to you about a problem they are having. Be the springboard they need, or at least allow them to talk to you about it for a bit. Even as little as 10 minutes can help someone feel less stuck with their creativity. What you might see as a simple conversation might mean the world to the other person dealing with negative thoughts in their head all the time.
I have noticed that finding others that allow me to elaborate my hangups to them is a fast and easy way for me to untangle my thoughts. That untangling then gave me clearance to taxi onto the proverbial runway. To peek behind the curtain a little more, this is also why I am writing this post.
If you don’t have someone to be a springboard with, try writing out the problems and thoughts you are having when in your creative rut and see if you are able to see a pattern.
For instance, if you find yourself always talking about other people and what they might think of your work, you might want to ask yourself why you want to make something in the first place. If you think that none of your ideas are good enough to be consumed, you can still make it and decide not to share it. Dan Harmon’s advice for writer’s block has been a huge help for me which is, “prove you are a bad writer. You are trying to prove you are a good writer; that is what’s blocking you.”
In short, dig deeper into what is causing these negative feelings and thoughts toward your work, and see what might be causing it. Similarly, if you know someone in a creative rut, be the olive branch they might need and allow them to share their ideas and work with you.
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The impact of AI on content creators
Recently, I read an article that said that in the next 5-10 years, AI would generate 90% of all the content on the internet. That number seemed a bit high to me, but it got me thinking about how AI is changing the landscape of content creation. Now, mere weeks later, here we are with everyone and their mother talking about how marvelous AI art is. Even people outside the tech space are sharing their experiences, which seems only to be growing exponentially.
Before I start this article, I want to disclose that I have written this piece with the help of a new AI tool called Lex that touts to “[use] AI to create a mind-blowing writing experience.” Truthfully I went in as a skeptic with this, but I must admit that this tool helped me with my writing. For example, when I was stuck in my head unable to continue, instead of rereading what I just wrote to figure out where I wanted to go next I called up Lex to read my previously written text and expound upon it in a new paragraph. Sometimes it worked beautifully and other times, what was written wasn’t exactly my style, but it did allow me to keep the flow going. To say it is good is an understatement.
After literal years of hearing about the doom and gloom of AI coming to take over the world, it does feel oddly bleak to see just how fast things hit us. Generative image creation tools like DALL-E, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and more have seemingly come into people’s lives overnight. Just a few months ago, I remembered hearing about DALL-E and seeing just how powerful it was. I thought, “that’s neat, but honestly, who the hell is going to use this?” It turns out a lot of people will. Venture capitalists, programmers, creatives, and several different industries are looking at the power of AI and using it in exciting ways.
In one recent example, reported by The Verge, the popular stock photo service, Shutterstock, will soon be selling AI-generated art in partnership with OpenAI’s flagship image generator DALL-E 2. However, they are also banning the sale of any art not made using its DALL-E integration.
What I find most interesting about Shutterstock’s announcement is they plan to “reimburse creators when the company sells work to train text-to-image AI models.” So not only will Shutterstock be walling up the AI in its platform, but it will be actively paying people who make AI art that sells. I think the company expects to change its payroll from professional photographers to people with knowledge of generating good AI art.
However, in a tale of two photo services, Getty Images CEO Craig Peters actually shared negative feelings toward selling AI art. His main reasoning is copyright issues, but I don’t think that is the only factor Peters uses in his criticism. He expounded on his critiques, saying, “I think we’re watching some organizations and individuals and companies being reckless […] I think the fact that these questions are not being addressed is the issue here. In some case[s], they’re just being thrown to the wayside. I think that’s dangerous. I don’t think it’s responsible. I think it could be illegal.“
As for which of these two companies will end up on the right side of things is still too early to tell but it is indeed exciting to see these two companies at odds with one another.
Don’t get me wrong; I think there is a genuine art to making good AI-generated material. Any sap can go on Midjourney today and start trying to make something mediocre (see the above image).
Only someone that genuinely understands the syntax and limitations of these services can make something special. I am sure with more time, programmers and UI designers will work together to create apps and services that allow for more granular specifications in a prompt without the user having to learn the syntax and other information of that nature. Think instead of having to know the specific keywords needed for a certain effect it is just a simple button or option to choose from.
Even still, more iterations and improvements will continue to be made, and those with a finger on the pulse of this will get ahead of those just doing this for fun and amusement.
It is my prediction that humans will still very much be a part of the creative process, just in new ways.
I am in awe about all the things that people can now do with the help of AI that they weren’t able to do before. And it’s not just content creation but also content consumption. With AI’s help, people can now read and consume content at a rate that was once impossible.
For instance, the speed reading app Spritz recently announced that it is now using AI to help people read faster. The app now uses “an algorithm that analyzes text and predicts which words a reader is likely to know and which ones they might need help with.”
Another example is simply watching people create AI art in real time. If you go on Midjourney today—which you can it’s free to join—you are taken to a Discord chatroom where you and several other people can put in different prompts for the AI to generate images. So not only does your art show in chat, but you can also see other people’s prompts in real time. You see their prompts and the art made from Midjourney with those prompts as well. Just by observing how others use the service, I can learn a lot about syntax and different keywords to that work.
Not only is there lots of attention behind this, but there are piles of money too. Coatue, an investment management company leaning in on AI, made some interesting observations in a recent document they shared.
Of course, AI art is just the tip of the iceberg. More than 1.2 million software engineers now use GitHub Copilot, which writes 40% of their code automatically. Jasper.ai, which writes blog posts and marketing content, has seen tremendous adoption over the last two years and is rapidly becoming an industry standard. RunwayML, an AI-based video editor, now has hundreds of thousands of users, including video editors working on The Late Show, Top Gear America, and Everything Everywhere All at Once.
This incredible AI renaissance is happening simultaneously across many diverse fields and verticals. This is not a coincidence: scaling breakthroughs have enabled AI to become exponentially more powerful in a very short period of time. Engineers are now taking this technology breakthrough and applying it everywhere they can.
Along with some examples of the “AI renaissance” Coatue had some bold predictions for AI. I have them in bullet points here, but I want to expand on these points just a bit.
AI will drive the cost of content creation (word, image, video) to near zero
I think lowering the cost of content creation can be a valuable thing. After all, lower costs and more accessible media products have changed the media landscape multiple times over. Thanks to the printing press we expanded information to the masses so efficiently. Thanks to the internet being accessible we can connect with anyone across the world with a few clicks and key presses. If we didn’t have website services making it cheaper and easier to make websites we wouldn’t have had the blogging boom in the early 2000s. If the video industry didn’t make cameras and film equipment that consumers can buy more easily we wouldn’t have had the YouTube boom over the last 10 years. Can AI be used in a new resurgence of media?
The value of sports increases exponentially as the only form of “original content”
This isn’t exactly a hot take, seeing that this is the biggest reason people I know still have cable TV.
Advertising will be hyper-personalized: unique ads and commercials for every user!
That exclamation point and chipper attitude weren’t added by me. For some reason, marketing people are excited about even more specific advertising for their products and services. I anticipate that this will continue to push people to believe their phones/TVs are listening to them, which I feel will only continue to make seemingly normal people spiral into tinfoil-hat conspiracies.
Personalized advertising can be helpful for niche markets but it is also widely loathed among consumers, and I believe brands that lean in on this will get widespread backlash instead of increased profit margins.
Metaverse will become AI augmented reality
Of course it is. This is both feasible and predictable for anyone that has been looking into the Metaverse. That said, there is practically no one taking part in the Metaverse right now so even if the AI on it is amazing your response to it may as well be crickets.
Every developer will be an AI developer
Again, pretty predictable.
The majority of code written will be AI-generated
I think these last two points may as well have been combined into just one.
As AI improves, it will only become more ubiquitous, which begs the question of whether we, as creators, are doomed.
Creators that can lean into this “AI renaissance” and use these tools to their advantage are going to be the ones that thrive. Yes, AI will change the landscape of content creation, but it will open up new opportunities for creators willing to adapt.
Nat Eliason, who writes in his newsletter Infinite Play, shared how AI generative tools like Lex may be the ones making the mundane and less human types of writing. Things like the crappy SEO blog posts, listicles, etc., will no longer need teams of people to write them and instead be handled by “one or two writers working more as editorial directors of these new AI writing tools.” Nat says even some more advanced styles of writing, like non-fiction and fiction stories, may end up being created by AI as well in time. So is there anything AI can’t write? For Nat, there is one.
You’ll need to experience a life worth reading. Either through the wildness of your adventures or the depths of your introspection. You don’t have to delve into such dark topics that you end up hanging yourself. But if you’re not willing to reach that level of honesty in your work, you should probably give up now.
Anything short of the rawest, most honest human connection will be gobbled up by robots.
Heavy stuff from Nat here, but I can’t help but incline to agree with him. Short of AI gaining conscious behavior, it will be damn difficult for a computer to emulate passion, emotion, and the humanness some writers have.
Sure, AI can simulate it and even get pretty close, but it still won’t be able to replace it. And I think that is what we as creators need to lean into. The human element we can bring to our art will make us irreplaceable.
As long as we can embrace this change and adapt to it, we will be able to find opportunities that open up because of it.
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Apple doesn’t care about iPad-first users
As you probably saw, Apple has announced a new line of iPads, one being a new base iPad and the other being the new M2 iPad Pro. I would say that the responses online are primarily dunking on Apple’s odd decisions for the iPad lineup, and for good reason. I will provide a peek into some of these oddities, but I think these announcements from Apple are the nail in the coffin for many people hoping to see Apple truly lean into the iPad made for “real work.” Instead, Tuesday’s announcements have just reinforced the failings Apple has continually provided to iPad-first users.
As someone that used to do a podcast all about the iPad and made an iPad my daily computer for years, it truly pains me to say that Apple doesn’t care about iPad-first users. Don’t believe me? Let’s look at the iPad hardware, software, and the iPad lineup.
Hardware
Apple announced two new iPads, one being an all-new base iPad with flat edges and a Surface-style folio keyboard, the other being an updated iPad Pro. The new base iPad is an addition to the lineup, making the entire iPad lineup now up to 5 different flavors. All of them have their downsides, but some are just unforgivable.
One of the more ridiculous things I have seen from this announcement is that the new base iPad, which looks akin to the refreshed iPad Air and iPad Pros, still only works with the first-generation Apple Pencil.
What’s more comical is thanks to the new USB-C charge port, you now have to use a silly cable to charge the Apple Pencil on the iPad. So much for USB-C bringing clarity and ease of use for charging.
Also, the new iPad Pro has little to write about regarding what Apple has done. Sure they slapped on the latest and greatest M2 processor, but other than that, Apple hasn’t innovated anything. They cared so little about upgrading the iPad Pro that the display and camera hardware weren’t even updated! Even so, I would argue Apple doesn’t think the iPad Pro deserves a significant refresh because iPadOS will continue to be the throttle holding the iPad Pro back.
However, third-party app developers like those behind DaVinci Resolve have decided to try and beef up the iPad’s abilities as they bring a full-fledged video editor to the iPad. The app is not here yet and hasn’t provided any release date, though, so we will have to wait and see. However, if this kind of app makes its way to the iPad and works well, I think it brings hope that third-party developers will be the heroes the iPad Pro deserves.
Software
I used to flame people on Twitter for saying that the iPad wasn’t a “real computer,” but as I step further away from my iPad, the less I feel like it was ever meant to be a primary computing device. I love my iPad Pro (11” 2020 model), and I use it for several things like podcast editing, handwriting notes, mind mapping, and even using pro tools like Affinity Designer. Still, most of the apps and tools I use on the iPad aren’t from Apple, which should be telling to any pro iPad user.
Apple refuses to port over its pro app lineup like Logic and Final Cut and instead has relied on third-party developers like Black Magic to fill the void. I love the Affinity software and even left Adobe’s costly suite of apps for them, but Apple needs to put its money where its mouth is and show that they believe in the iPad as a “pro” machine.
On top of making their pro apps accessible on the iPad, Apple needs to focus on the features they are making on the iPad and make them more reliable.
Take Stage Manager, for instance. This feature was announced in June and was immediately hit with controversy as they limited it to just M1 iPad Pros, even though the earlier versions of the iPad Pro seemingly had more than enough power to handle the window-management feature. Eventually, Apple (uncharacteristically) listened to their users and expanded it to more iPad Pros. Still, more than four months later, there are continuous bugs and issues revolving around Stage Manager with no indication Apple might pull it from the iPadOS 16.1 launch coming October 24th.
So more people will see just how flaky and buggy Stage Manager is, and I honestly can’t see that Apple cares about the poor experience they are about to give millions of iPad users worldwide.
If we expect Apple to honestly care about iPad-first users, they have a lot to do on the software side of things to make up for it.
The Clunky iPad Lineup
When I look at the iPad lineup, the one word I think of is bloated. There are a ton of options with very few differentiating factors. Hell, even the iPad Air and iPad Pros were the same when they both had the M1 processor.
I think Matt Birchler surmised it best in his post recently:
I think the iPad lineup is kinda weird right now too. There’s not a clear, linear increase in features across the line (which now has 6 distinct models), so even if you have unlimited money to spend, you’re going to have to compromise on something.
Want a webcam in the proper spot? Gotta get the regular iPad (the new regular iPad). Want to also use the latest (4 years old) Apple Pencil? You can’t; now you gotta get an Air, Mini, or Pro. Want a keyboard case? We’d need to bust out a compatibility table to even begin to answer that question.
The Tim Cook era of Apple has seemingly caused the Apple lineup to grow exponentially, leaving many to Google and research which Apple device is best for them, only to compare them all in a table. I am all for having options, but this is getting out of hand.
I also can’t help but think that this expansion in the lineup is spreading the Apple product team(s) too thin. They are so busy trying to ship something new that they don’t have the time or resources to innovate current products in any meaningful way. For example, the flagship iPad Pro should have gotten more than a processor upgrade, and Apple Pencil hover support.
Conclusion
I’m aware it doesn’t help to be pessimistic all the time, but it sure is hard not to be when you take a good hard look at the iPad right now. Still, I hope this device’s future does indeed improve, and I think continuing the conversation is a good start for change.
I hope that Stage Manager gets improved, and I hope that Apple removes the first-generation Apple Pencil altogether and makes app iPads support the magnetic second-generation Apple Pencil.
I hope third-party developers see the potential in bringing truly pro apps like DaVinci Resolve or Affinity Designer and decide to fill the void Apple continues to ignore.
I also hope that Apple does lean in on the pro side of iPads and unleashes the true potential of the iPad, maybe even allowing macOS on it. Something has to be done to enable the iPad Pro to flourish and differentiate from the rest of the iPad lineup. And while they are at it, bring some color to the iPad Pros too.
As I stated from the beginning, I love my iPad, and I hope to one day look at it as my daily computer again. Still, right now, with the current state of iPadOS and the current iPad lineup, I can’t justify grabbing my slab of glass over my MacBook Air.
