Newsletter Archives

• 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

• Perplexity is 10 times better than Google

  Posted on November 11, 2024 at 02:45 CST by B. Livingston • Comment in the Forums

  

  ISSUE 21.46 • 2024-11-11

  PUBLIC DEFENDER

  

  By Brian Livingston

  The chatbot wars are well underway, and one result is that I find myself using the new Perplexity search engine 99% of the time, falling back on Google only to look up a street address or some trivial factoid.

  Google has served up its now-familiar list of 10 links for years. Perplexity also points you to several websites and videos. But its result pages begin with a well-written summary of what you’d learn if you actually visited all those links and vids.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.46.0, 2024-11-11).
  This story also appears in our public Newsletter.

  Public Defender Google, Newsletters, Perplexity, search engines

• Microsoft is pushing Copilot AI out to you

  Posted on January 22, 2024 at 02:44 CST by B. Livingston • Comment in the Forums

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  PUBLIC DEFENDER

  

  By Brian Livingston

  The Microsoft Corporation is moving swiftly to make its Copilot artificial-intelligence software an integral part of Windows and the company’s Microsoft 365 suite of office applications.

  Redmond reportedly even plans to build Copilot into the Notepad text editor (perhaps for all those readme.txt files you can’t compose by yourself).

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.04.0, 2024-01-22).

  Public Defender Aforai, Andonix, Bing Chat, ChatNBX, Claude, Google Bard, Green AI, Newsletters, Pareto, Perplexity, YouChat