@baldur@toot.cafe
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baldur

@baldur@toot.cafe

Writer, web developer and consultant based in Hveragerði, Iceland. Lapsed Interactive Media Academic. Webby Tech Stuff and webby book stuff.

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baldur, to random
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“A Photographer Tried to Get His Photos Removed from an AI Dataset. He Got an Invoice Instead.” https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkapb7/a-photographer-tried-to-get-his-photos-removed-from-an-ai-dataset-he-got-an-invoice-instead

baldur,
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@mikro2nd

Pretty much, yeah.

baldur, to random
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So, now that I've published my book on the risks of generative AI, The Intelligence Illusion, I'd like to go over how it's structured and what each chapter offers.

It starts off with an outline of the book (similar to this thread), followed by a glossary

https://illusion.baldurbjarnason.com/

baldur, (edited )
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The glossary is a bit irreverent but accurate. A tactic by the AI industry is to win the rhetorical battle in advance with wishful mnemonics, naming AI features as if they've accomplished something they haven't

It's vital to challenge their framing right at the start

Then I go into detail as to why language models absolutely aren't the 'spark of Artificial General Intelligence'. It's important to get the AGI issue out of the way early, for reasons the next chapter goes into

baldur,
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Chapter 3 is on strategy. This highlights the various strategies you can take when approaching generative AI for business use. It ends with a warning: anthropomorphising AI and the AGI myth cripple your ability to think clearly and strategise about AI

Chapter 4 is a warning about the AI industry's long LONG history of false promises and sometimes outright fraud.

https://illusion.baldurbjarnason.com/

baldur,
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Chapter 5 outlines the first major recommendation: favour specialised AI tools that you can thoroughly vet over general-purpose ones

Chapter 6 warns you about the specific kinds of fraud that generative AI enables.

Chapter 7 warns you against letting your customers interact directly with generative AI, and outlines why.

Chapter 8 goes into detail on why you should prefer open AI models whose training data is documented.

https://illusion.baldurbjarnason.com/

baldur,
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Chapter 9 talks about what language and diffusion models are actually good for.

Chapter 10 goes over the many legal and regulatory risks.

  1. Outlines the copyright situation with generative AI.

  2. Talks about the many issues with unsecured and unsafe training data sets

  3. Talks about plagiarism and licensing issues.

  4. Hallucinations, fabrications, and how flawed AI summarising is.

  5. Goes over the many output issues

  6. The impact on software development.

https://illusion.baldurbjarnason.com/

baldur,
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  1. Why AI "reasoning" is extremely flawed.

  2. How Fear of Missing Out leads you to take unnecessary risks.

  3. How AI is accelerating the trend of bad software

  4. The afterword.

  5. Reading recommendations.

  6. Aaaaaall the references. There's a ton of them.

And that's it. That's the book's structure in a nutshell and what you can expect from reading it.

https://illusion.baldurbjarnason.com/

baldur,
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@eric Thanks! 🙂

baldur, (edited ) to random
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One of the more fun aspects of the new book (https://illusion.baldurbjarnason.com/) were the illustrations.

I wanted a constructed 'digital' vibe but wasn't sure how. With quite a bit of experimentation with Daz3D, Geometrize, and Affinity Photo I hit upon an aesthetic that I think works in this context.

baldur,
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I have to confess that I made the pictures separately from the chapters and had to figure out which fit best with which afterwards.

baldur,
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Some just worked right away and fit the topic of "AI" to a tee.

baldur,
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For those images, matching them with a chapter was relatively straightforward.

baldur,
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Sometimes even fun.

baldur,
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For other images, even though I liked the picture and wanted to use it, figuring out where was just plain tricky.

baldur,
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The hard part for this one was making sure that its menacing vibe was appropriate and not over the top.

baldur,
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@glecharles

😁 Used to play the Shadowrun tabletop roleplaying game back in the 90s. I might have been thinking a bit about that atmosphere when working on these 🙂

baldur,
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I was kind of worried about the excessive negative space in this one but I think it actually works out okay.

baldur,
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I almost dropped this one. It has a bit too much of a fantasy vibe. I only used it over some of the rejects because I'm a sucker for ravens.

baldur,
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@glecharles 😁

baldur,
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This one's almost a cliche, but tropes are the bread and butter of creative work so you can't disregard them completely.

baldur,
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So, that's half of them, I think. I might post the other half after my coffee break later today.

Or, maybe I'll post some of the rejects.

Or, both. We'll see. 🙂

baldur,
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I totally forgot to add the book link to most of these 😅

So, anyway, these are some of the images I used to illustrate my new book:

"The Intelligence Illusion: A practical guide to the business risks of Generative AI"

https://illusion.baldurbjarnason.com/

It's a thoroughly researched ebook on the risks of using generative AI in a business, with recommendations for approaches and strategy.

baldur,
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@aris Thanks! 🙂

baldur,
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Had a bit of fun trying to mix a noir and cyberpunk vibe.

baldur,
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Went for a bit of a goth vibe here.

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