Newsletter Archives

• The time has come for AI-generated art

  Posted on April 14, 2025 at 02:45 CDT by Catherine Barrett • Comment in the Forums

  

  ISSUE 22.15 • 2025-04-14

  Look for our BONUS issue on April 21, 2025!!

  MEDIA

  

  By Catherine Barrett

  The horse may have five legs, but it’s already out of the barn.

  AI-generated images are here to stay, and we need to learn how to recognize them and use them legitimately. They’re not authoritative depictions of how things look, but they are handy for illustrating ideas. In what follows, I’ll tell you how they work and address ethical and practical concerns.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (22.15.0, 2025-04-14).
  This story also appears in our public Newsletter.

  Media AI, ChatGPT, Copilot, DALL-E, Generative AI, Google Gemini, Leonardo.ai, Midjourney, Newsletters

• What do we know about DeepSeek?

  Posted on February 17, 2025 at 02:44 CST by Michael Covington • Comment in the Forums

  AI

  

  By Michael A. Covington

  On January 27, the Chinese AI company DeepSeek caused so much panic in American industry that NVIDIA stock dropped 17% in one day, and the whole Nasdaq had a 3.4% momentary dip.

  What scared everybody? The impressive performance of the DeepSeek large language model (LLM), which competes with ChatGPT, reportedly cost less than a tenth as much to create and costs less than a tenth as much to run.

  The bottom fell out of the market for powerful GPUs, at least temporarily, because they don’t seem to be needed in anywhere near the quantities expected.

  But what is this DeepSeek, and what do we make of it?

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (22.07.0, 2025-02-17).

  AI AI, Artificial Intelligence, ChatGPT, Claude, DeepSeek, Llama, LLMs, Microsoft, Newsletters, OpenAI

• The mustache question

  Posted on February 7, 2025 at 15:49 CST by Will Fastie • Comment in the Forums

  We’ve been having something of a debate around here regarding the use of AI. Susan, as you well know from her numerous posts and columns about it, warns about jumping into Microsoft’s Copilot service. I agree that caution is warranted, and one of the first things I reported here was the abusive threat Bing’s chat feature made to a reporter. I have a slightly different take, based on the premise that these AI services and features are here whether we like them or not, and whether we fear them or not.

  I conducted a very simple and brief experiment based on questioning two assistants. I asked Bing search, “Who was the last US president to have a mustache?” Bing did more or less what I expected — it gave me a list of results, with the first being a link to a Wikipedia article about facial hair on all presidents. I saw nothing on the first page with the answer. Further research would have been necessary.

  Then I asked Copilot. It’s response? “William Howard Taft.” It provided several citations in support. Of course, that’s the correct answer, and Copilot did the research for me. Annoyingly, Copilot’s response included a question to me: “Is there a particular reason you’re interested in presidential facial hair?” I was tempted to tell it “None of your business.”

  So, I ask you: Which assistant do you think did a better job?

  AI Bing, ChatGPT, Copilot

• The best stories of 2024 — updated!

  Posted on December 30, 2024 at 02:45 CST by B. Livingston • Comment in the Forums

  

  ISSUE 21.53 • 2024-12-30

  Look for our BONUS issue on January 6, 2025!

  PUBLIC DEFENDER

  

  By Brian Livingston

  The year 2024 is now in the books. I’m pleased to report some positive moves this year that may make the tech industry’s products better for us all.

  I’ll give you some important updates today on (1) keeping artificial-intelligence services from creating malicious images, (2) minimizing social-media websites’ negative effects on users’ mental health, and (3) discovering how “answer engines” are improving on the tiresome linkfests of old-guard search giants.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.53.0, 2024-12-30).
  This story also appears in our public Newsletter.

  Public Defender AI, ChatGPT, DALL-E, Deepfakes, Generative AI, Google Gemini, Newsletters, OpenAI, Perplexity, Social Media

• Write 200 social-media posts in 10 minutes! Quality, right?

  Posted on October 28, 2024 at 02:44 CDT by B. Livingston • Comment in the Forums

  PUBLIC DEFENDER

  

  By Brian Livingston

  I’ve been thinking about the profession of journalism lately, given the emails bombarding me these days about how I could create 240, 300, or even 1,200 articles per hour if I would only use the latest in chatbot tech.

  YouTube’s funny farm is overflowing with videos of such miracles. They tell me I could write a whole ebook in 24 hours — true writers never sleep, you know — and make $8,327 a week ($433,000 a year) merely by pressing a few buttons.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.44.0, 2024-10-28).

  Public Defender AI, Chatbot decay, Chatbots, ChatGPT, Generative AI, Newsletters

• Get Office Copilot now — without paying

  Posted on September 2, 2024 at 02:44 CDT by Peter Deegan • Comment in the Forums

  MICROSOFT 365

  

  By Peter Deegan

  It’s possible to get many of the AI features promoted for Copilot without paying Microsoft $30 per month.

  What you’ll get is less streamlined than in the paid product, but it’s still approachable. Besides, the paid version isn’t yet anywhere nearly as good as the hype.

  In this article, I’ll explain some of the ways you can use free Copilot with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. You’ll be able to experiment and thus gain an appreciation for whether paid Copilot Pro or Copilot for Microsoft 365 are worth the cost.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.36.0, 2024-09-02).

  Microsoft 365 ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, Copilot Pro, DALL-E, Generative AI, Google Gemini, Meta AI, Newsletters, Office

• Artificial minds

  Posted on May 13, 2024 at 02:42 CDT by Michael Covington • Comment in the Forums

  COMMENTARY

  

  By Michael A. Covington

  Artificial intelligence changes the ethics and computing scene.

  In my previous article, Ethics and computing, I discussed how the rise of personal computing created a break in our natural understanding of ethics.

  Now, the rise of AI adds further complications. Let’s delve into that a bit.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.20.0, 2024-05-13).

  Commentary AI, Artificial Intelligence, ChatGPT, Ethics, Newsletters

• Learning to program PowerShell with AI

  Posted on November 6, 2023 at 02:44 CST by Bruce Kriebel • Comment in the Forums

  WINDOWS

  

  By Bruce Kriebel

  The media has been ablaze with headlines shouting that AI will put programmers out of jobs.

  Less discussed is how AI can help professional and even novice programmers learn a new language. An excellent case for this is Windows PowerShell.

  PowerShell is, well, powerful. It’s a great tool for writing scripts, especially special-purpose or time-saving scripts that solve tiny problems in a way that allows customization so that you get the exact result you desired. But PowerShell is very different from the command-line language handed down from the earliest days of MS-DOS. That makes learning it daunting.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (20.45.0, 2023-11-06).

  Windows AI, Bing Chat, ChatGPT, Google Bard, Newsletters, PowerShell, Scripting
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