A long WSJ piece on how China boxed the US out of the South China Sea. ‘“We just don’t build military bases in international waters simply because we can and we want to,” said Adm. Harris. “The Chinese apparently can and did.”’

Gaven Reefs, Spratly Islands, 2014-2015, Airbus satellite imagery, source

‘Behind the scenes, insurers are using unregulated predictive algorithms, under the guise of scientific rigor, to pinpoint the precise moment when they can plausibly cut off payment for an older patient’s treatment.’

A comparison of the performance of ChatGPT and Anthropic’s AI, Claude–and their proneness to error and hallucination. It was undertaken in January, which now seems long ago.

‘I don’t want a kind of sterile, computational future where you go and get your mammogram done and then a little red box will say This is probably cancer. That’s not actually a future anybody wants when we’re talking about a life-threatening illness, but there aren’t that many AI researchers out there who have their own mammograms.’ From an interview with Meredith Broussard, author of More than a Glitch.

An account of where Tesla, and its promised Full-Self Driving capability, is at. The experience, as recounted here, suggests that AI has a long way to go, for something that has been promised for some years now, and a reminder that the technology, and the businesses that build it, remain deeply human–and reliant on humans.

A new organisation, the Human Artistry Campaign, has been launched to support songwriters and musicians, and help ‘ensure artificial intelligence technologies are developed and used in ways that support human culture and artistry – and not ways that replace or erode it’.

‘”I’m particularly worried that these models could be used for large-scale disinformation,” Altman said. “Now that they’re getting better at writing computer code, [they] could be used for offensive cyberattacks.” Well, yes. The harder thing will be how it reshapes society.

A long, data-rich thread on growth in India. Its investment in infrastructure and new industries, and uptake of technology, is marked.

An infographic of common dark patterms.