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Blog: ‘Minimum Viable Curiousity’

AI
Jason Tate

Michael Lopp, writing at Rands:

I’ve made a career being a human terrified by becoming irrelevant long before AI showed up to drive my car. You bet I am poking every bit of AI that I can. Daily. I am trying to figure out what it can and can’t do, and this article aside, I am optimistic, just like I’ve been for the last three decades, that revolutionary innovations will knock your socks off in the next few years. It’s still early days for AI. Really.

However, I am deeply suspicious of AI, especially after watching decades of social networks monetize our attention while teaching us to ignore facts and truth, minimizing our desire to understand. Many humans don’t check their facts; they believe what they read in the feed. Most humans believe the manufactured reality is designed to get them to believe someone else’s agenda. The convenience of these services and tools has made us lazy and, worse, not curious.

Anthropic Apologizes After One of Its Expert Witnesses Cited a Fake Article

Legal
Jason Tate

Maxwell Zeff, writing for TechCrunch:

A lawyer representing Anthropic admitted to using an erroneous citation created by the company’s Claude AI chatbot in its ongoing legal battle with music publishers, according to a filing made in a Northern California court on Thursday.

Claude hallucinated the citation with “an inaccurate title and inaccurate authors,” Anthropic says in the filing, first reported by Bloomberg. Anthropic’s lawyers explain that their “manual citation check” did not catch it, nor several other errors that were caused by Claude’s hallucinations.

Anthropic apologized for the error and called it “an honest citation mistake and not a fabrication of authority.”

DOJ Probes Live Nation, AEG for Covid-Era Refund Collusion

Legal
Jason Tate

Reuters:

The U.S. Justice Department is conducting a criminal antitrust probe of Live Nation and AEG’s response to concert cancellations at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, Live Nation confirmed while denying any collusion on Thursday. The probe is focused on whether the live-event companies colluded on refund policies for canceled concerts, according to an earlier report by Bloomberg News.

Collusion with competitors can be a criminal offense under antitrust laws. Probes do not always result in charges.

Lorde Interview with Rolling Stone

Lorde
Jason Tate

Lorde sat down with Rolling Stone:

As we talk in her apartment and around her city, Lorde often repeats how “terrified” she is to open up about the album — and to let the world hear it. There are songs she forebodingly describes as “rugged,” vulnerable, and messy, fitting for an artist who’s unlearning the conditioning that taught her to be digestible and “good.” 

“There’s going to be a lot of people who don’t think I’m a good girl anymore, a good woman. It’s over,” she promises, eyes bright and full of fire. “It will be over for a lot of people, and then for some people, I will have arrived. I’ll be where they always hoped I’d be.”

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Blog: America Has Crossed the Line Into Competitive Authoritarianism

Jason Tate

The New York Times:

When citizens must think twice about criticizing or opposing the government because they could credibly face government retribution, they no longer live in a full democracy.

By that measure, America has crossed the line into competitive authoritarianism. The Trump administration’s weaponization of government agencies and flurry of punitive actions against critics has raised the cost of opposition for a wide range of Americans.

SoundCloud Changes Policies Around AI Training

Soundcloud
Jason Tate

Kyle Wiggers, writing at TechCrunch:

SoundCloud appears to have quietly changed its terms of use to allow the company to train AI on audio that users upload to its platform.

As spotted by tech ethicist Ed Newton-Rex, the latest version of SoundCloud’s terms include a provision giving the platform permission to use uploaded content to “inform, train, [or] develop” AI.

And, SoundCloud responded:

The February 2024 update to our terms of service was intended to clarify how content may interact with AI technologies within SoundCloud’s own platform. Use cases include personalized recommendations, content organization, fraud detection, and improvements to content identification with the help of AI technologies.

Trump Fires Top US Copyright Official

Jason Tate

Ashley King, writing at Digital Music News:

“Donald Trump’s termination of Register of Copyrights, Shira Perlmutter, is a brazen, unprecedented power grab with no legal basis,” said Morelle. “It is surely no coincidence he acted less than a day after she refused to rubber-stamp Elon Musk’s efforts to mine troves of copyrighted works to train AI models.”

Morelle also linked to a pre-publication draft of a US Copyright Office report released last week—the third part in a longer report—that focuses on copyright and artificial intelligence. The report outlines that, while each case’s outcome cannot be pre-judged, there are limitations on the amount that AI companies can count on “fair use” as a defense when training their large language models (LLMs) on copyrighted work.

Blog: ‘Anxiety Is an Expensive Habit’

Linked List
Jason Tate

Ryan Holiday:

Anxiety, I’ve come to realize, is a very expensive habit. It has cost me so much. A lot of misery, a lot of frustration, countless hours of sleep. It’s caused me to miss out on a lot of things that are important to me. How many family dinners have I ruined by letting my mind wander to what could go wrong? How many minutes of vacations have I missed out on because I was preoccupied, lost in spirals about things that hadn’t happened? How many opportunities have I passed up because I was too caught up in my own fears? How many nights did I waste lying awake at night, worrying about what might or might not happen?

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Underoath Talk With Revolver

Underoath
Jason Tate

Underoath sat down for a lengthy chat with Revolver:

“Every record we’ve ever done, people find a way to hate it,” he continues. “When an artist makes something that I don’t understand right off the rip, especially if it’s an artist that I love, I want to listen to it and understand why. Not until all five of us are stoked does a song make it out of the studio. That’s how it is every time we make music … Whatever you [eventually] hear in your speakers is exactly what excites Underoath at this moment.”

The All-American Rejects Discuss Future

All American Rejects
Jason Tate

The All-American Rejects talked with Variety:

The Rejects decided to leave Interscope on their own terms. “We weren’t dropped,” notes Ritter. “We negotiated our way out of that building because it didn’t feel like it was a home for us anymore. They had Imagine Dragons records.” The band continued to tour relentlessly, and the burnout set in. “We did a couple of tours in that break and they just didn’t feel right at all,” says Gaylor. “By the end of them, we were like, I don’t want to do this. Packing on the bus to go home like…” He widens his eyes as if stunned, staring into the abyss.

Turnstile Talk With NYT

Turnstile
Jason Tate

Turnstile sat down with The New York Times to talk about their upcoming album:

“There is something exciting about being able to make music in a way where there’s no formula, there’s no expectation,” Yates, 35, said. The band’s 2021 album, “Glow On,” propelled it from the upper echelons of the underground into a dramatically larger landscape that included TV commercials, Grammy nominations and a spot opening for Blink-182’s arena tour. With a new album, “Never Enough,” due June 6, Turnstile is pushing its sound further, and the stages are set to get even bigger, leading to an inevitable question: Can the group retain its magic (and its mission) as it grows?

Vinyl, Me Please In Trouble

Jason Tate

The Denver Post:

“It seems VMP has stopped shipping records entirely and they’re still charging for memberships that promise new releases,” he continued, echoing more than 100 complaints reviewed by The Denver Post across Reddit, social media, YouTube, and VMP’s Discord server. “There has been zero communication and no response from customer support for over a month now.”

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Spotify Stock Drops on Latest Earnings Report

Jason Tate

Bloomberg:

Spotify Technology SA shares tumbled on Tuesday after the streaming company gave a muted outlook for profit and subscriber growth in the current quarter. 

The Stockholm-based company forecast gross profit margins of 31.5% in the second quarter, missing analysts’ average estimate for 31.6% according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Spotify sees monthly active users rising to 689 million, less than the 694.4 million analysts expected.

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