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<meta content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=yes" name="viewport"/>
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<title>12 April, 2023</title>
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<title>Daily-Dose</title><meta content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" name="viewport"/><link href="styles/simple.css" rel="stylesheet"/><link href="../styles/simple.css" rel="stylesheet"/><style>*{overflow-x:hidden;}</style><link href="https://unpkg.com/aos@2.3.1/dist/aos.css" rel="stylesheet"/><script src="https://unpkg.com/aos@2.3.1/dist/aos.js"></script></head>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-down" id="daily-dose">Daily-Dose</h1>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" data-aos-anchor-placement="top-bottom" id="contents">Contents</h1>
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<ul>
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<li><a href="#from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-vox">From Vox</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</a></li>
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</ul>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</h1>
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<ul>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Behind the Expulsions of Two State Representatives in Tennessee</strong> - How Republican super-majorities in state legislatures are undermining the democratic process. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/behind-the-expulsions-of-two-state-representatives-in-tennessee">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ro Khanna’s Progressive Case for Saving Silicon Valley Bank</strong> - The ambitious California congressman has made a career of navigating the demands of Big Tech and the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-political-scene/ro-khannas-progressive-case-for-saving-silicon-valley-bank">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>What’s Behind the Fight Between Pope Francis and the Latin Mass Movement?</strong> - The discord has become a stand-in for conflicts over the decline in Catholics’ participation in Mass, over the progressive orientation of Francis’s pontificate, and over Vatican II itself. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/whats-behind-the-fight-between-pope-francis-and-the-latin-mass-movement">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Liberal Victory in Wisconsin</strong> - Last week’s election upended the ideological balance of the state’s Supreme Court, with big implications for abortion access, voting rights, and gerrymandering. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/a-liberal-victory-in-wisconsin">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Disastrous Potential of the Texas Abortion-Pill Ruling</strong> - A nationwide ban on mifepristone would further erode doctors’ ability to provide—or learn how to provide—lifesaving care. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-disastrous-potential-of-the-texas-abortion-pill-ruling">link</a></p></li>
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</ul>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-vox">From Vox</h1>
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<li><strong>Can AI create a convincing Wes Anderson film? (Not really!)</strong> -
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<img alt="An AI-generated image of Harry Potter as a runway model." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/J6vXLuU4jIvYo4QD70DodxhPbtk=/309x0:1674x1024/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72172452/Screen_Shot_2023_04_11_at_10.09.44_AM.0.png"/>
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<figcaption>
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“You are Balenciaga, Harry.” | YouTube/DemonFlyingFox
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</figcaption>
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</figure>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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If Balenciaga Harry Potter is the future of entertainment, could Wes Anderson Lord of the Rings be its next chapter? (Spoiler: No!)
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="I8XJ39">
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In the past month, not one but two pieces of AI-generated content featuring the fashion brand Balenciaga went viral. The much bigger deal was the <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23661673/pope-puffer-coat-generative-ai-midjourney-imagination">photo of Pope Francis</a> in a white puffer coat (and absolutely dripping in swag) that a lot of people thought was real. But I’d argue the more interesting one was a video that <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iE39q-IKOzA">imagined <em>Harry Potter</em></a> if it were a Balenciaga campaign in the late ’80s or early ’90s.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wwbcRO">
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The clip, which is just under a minute and features mostly zoom-ins of recognizable characters and a deep house backbeat, isn’t really all that interesting in itself, unless you happen to be both a big <em>Harry Potter</em> person and a major fashion stan. Unlike the photo of Balenciaga Pope, the point isn’t to be like, “Haha, you got fooled by AI!” Instead, what’s interesting to me is the question of just how long we, as a society, have before AI-powered video becomes most of what we think of as visual entertainment.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="eswvnr">
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To find out, I asked the clip’s creator, a YouTuber, photographer, and AI hobbyist who goes by the username Demon Flying Fox and lives in Berlin. (He asked to be referred to by his handle to avoid conflating his photography business and his work with AI.) On where the concept came from, he says, “I was brainstorming random video ideas, and it’s helpful when there’s a big surprising contrast. <em>Harry Potter</em> has been spoofed so many times, so it’s evergreen, and Balenciaga is the most memorable company because of its marketing and aesthetics.”
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SWmwCd">
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More notable than the concept itself, however, was the fact that the clip only took him about two days to create using the AI tools Midjourney, ElevenLabs, and D-ID, and that he’s only been playing around with AI for a few months. Thanks in part to the success of Balenciaga Harry Potter, he’s now able to earn a full income through YouTube ads and Patreon subscribers.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HZ0GDl">
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One possible takeaway from all of this is that the future of AI-generated media is thrilling and possibly even mind-opening, allowing us to “greatly increase the raw material of plausible worlds the mind can imagine inhabiting and, through them, the kinds of futures we perceive as possible,” as my <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23661673/pope-puffer-coat-generative-ai-midjourney-imagination">colleague Oshan Jarow argues</a>. Another viable takeaway is that AI could have potentially devastating consequences for art, sidelining subjective human experiences and encouraging the culture industry to only invest in safe, lowest-common-denominator drivel that can be endlessly focus-grouped into maximum profit. “In general, the more a movie seems created by consensus — as many big franchise flicks designed for maximum box office earnings are — the less good it is,” writes my <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2020/1/29/21058521/hollywood-ai-deepfake-black-mirror-gemini-irishman-cinelytic">other colleague Alissa Wilkinson</a>. “It’s designed to please many and challenge few, not for any philosophical reason but because that’s what makes a lot of money.”
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TR4Ds6">
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Both of these futures are already happening in tandem. We’re already at the point where anyone can spend a few months, days, or hours experimenting with AI and creating something like Balenciaga Harry Potter, and in doing so circumventing (or, depending on your perspective, stealing) the creative labor of actors, graphic artists, and filmmakers. But how far are we from a world in which those months, days, and hours are reduced to seconds? How far are we, really, from typing a few words into an AI and it spitting out an entire feature-length film?
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZtQxPD">
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So I tried it. Specifically, I tried to follow Demon Flying Fox’s method for AI video creation to see how easy it was for someone with extremely limited experience with either video editing or AI to replicate something like Balenciaga Harry Potter.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BJYD2N">
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Not wanting to totally rip off his idea but still honor the spirit of it, I chose a different highly recognizable visual style — the films of Wes Anderson — and another hugely popular fantasy series, <em>The Lord of the Rings</em>. Using Demon Flying Fox’s preferred AI tools (for which I’ll be noting the costs not as an advertisement but for full context), I started by asking ChatGPT to write me a scene from a film adaptation of LOTR if it were directed by Wes Anderson. Here’s the first bit of the full scene it sent me:
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</p>
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<blockquote>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="yMdBLJ">
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<em>INT. BAG END - DAY</em>
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jgHgYS">
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<em>The camera pans across the cozy interior of Bag End, a hobbit hole in the Shire. We see Frodo (ELIJAH WOOD), sitting on a comfortable armchair, holding a small ring in his hand. Gandalf (BILL MURRAY), an old wizard, enters the room.</em>
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="sTOWpk">
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<em>Gandalf: Good morning, Frodo! How are you feeling today?</em>
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="AfrKB3">
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<em>Frodo: (looking up from the ring) Oh, hello Gandalf. I’m fine, I guess. Just a bit worried about this ring.</em>
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="A8x9o1">
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<em>Gandalf: Ah yes, the ring. It’s a dangerous thing, Frodo. But don’t worry, I have a plan.</em>
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="pbvuDf">
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<em>The camera zooms in on Gandalf’s face, and we see a mischievous twinkle in his eye.</em>
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2T5l1R">
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<em>Gandalf (continued): We need to take this ring to Mordor, and throw it into the fires of Mount Doom. And I have just the team to help us.</em>
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="onyLSj">
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<em>The camera cuts to a montage of Gandalf gathering a group of characters, each with their unique personality and skill set. We see Legolas (OWEN WILSON), the elf, Aragorn (JASON SCHWARTZMAN), the human, Gimli (ADRIEN BRODY), the dwarf, and several other characters.</em>
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</p>
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</blockquote>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="D9CJvT">
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It’s pretty bad as far as screenwriting goes, but the fact that it offered suggestions for which actors would play which characters was an unexpected delight (although at 6-foot-1, Adrien Brody is much too tall to play a dwarf, and apparently AI hasn’t heard <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/10/everyone-who-has-publicly-accused-bill-murray-of-misconduct#:~:text=In%20her%20recent%20memoir%2C%20Dying,writes%20Davis%20in%20her%20memoir.">we’re not casting Bill Murray</a> in anything these days).
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lN9tyJ">
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Next, I used Midjourney (annual subscription cost for basic plan: $96) to create portraits of each character in the scene. This is where it gets complicated, and where some of Demon Flying Fox’s artfulness makes itself apparent. I started with the most basic of prompts — “Gandalf the Grey if he were filmed in a Wes Anderson movie,” for instance, which gave me this:
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</p>
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<figure class="e-image">
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<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/StN5eyVU9ovZo-X1ju2lu_pwlZ8=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24577296/Gandalf_1.png"/> <cite>Midjourney</cite>
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</figure>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wAmAPQ">
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Nice-looking, sure, but I didn’t want a perfect square shot. From watching <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDp_8lPUbWY">his tutorial</a> on creating AI avatars, I learned that if you want to change the aspect ratio of Midjourney images, you have to include “—ar 3:2” in the prompt, and that it helps to include “full body” if you don’t want super close-ups.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="IkPaZT">
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After I interviewed Demon Flying Fox, however, he mentioned a couple of other keywords that might be helpful. Although he wouldn’t say exactly what his prompts were for creating Balenciaga Harry Potter, he recommended including the term “cinematic,” as well as adding specific dates for reference. The prompt that landed me with my final Frodo was this: “Frodo Baggins, portrait, full body, cinematic, film still, in the style of a Wes Anderson live-action movie circa 2008 —ar 3:2.”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="eIcv9L">
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For other characters, it helped to add the time of day, which direction they were facing, and any props to include. Here’s what got me my final Legolas: “Owen Wilson as Legolas the elf, portrait, full body, cinematic, holding a bow and arrow, symmetrical, facing forward, film still, exterior shot, daytime, in the style of a Wes Anderson live-action movie circa 2008 —ar 3:2.”
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</p>
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<figure class="e-image">
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<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/KIIEc6Qm8rVs3Wll2lGmUHL7jjY=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24577299/legolas.png"/> <cite>Midjourney</cite>
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</figure>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="n22wwE">
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I repeated these steps for all the other characters mentioned in the scene (I also added the other three hobbits in the fellowship, along with Brad Pitt as Boromir, which felt apt for an Anderson adaptation). I particularly enjoyed the results of the prompt in which I cast Tony Revolori as Peregrin Took:
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</p>
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<figure class="e-image">
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<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Rgl8b9JfLBiNYJuKWE35rhWIX5I=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24577301/pippin.png"/> <cite>Midjourney</cite>
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</figure>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="T3DmRL">
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Next, I created voices for the two speaking characters in the scene, Frodo and Gandalf, using ElevenLabs (prices start at $5 per month), which clones a sample of an existing voice that you can then make say whatever you want (no need for me to explain all the ways this particular tool could be misused, but I digress). I needed clips where there was zero background noise and you could clearly hear the speaker, so for Gandalf, I found a<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LDdyafsR7g"> clip of a young Ian McKellen delivering the “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” speech</a> from <em>MacBeth</em> that worked well, although the AI randomly got rid of his English accent. I typed his lines into the prompt and then recorded the fake Ian McKellen saying what I wanted him to say, and repeated the process for Elijah Wood as Frodo.
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</p>
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<figure class="e-image">
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<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Np04Nmz_8S4AhGhVbI22TFmKHPw=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24577303/Screen_Shot_2023_04_05_at_5.14.12_PM.png"/> <cite>Eleven Labs</cite>
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</figure>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="j47tzq">
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Then it was time to animate each character and make it appear as though they were actually speaking. To do so, I uploaded each character image from Midjourney into D-ID AI (pricing starts at $4.99 per month), where you can either type out a script for each character to say or upload an existing sound bite. I did the latter for Frodo and Gandalf, and for the other characters who didn’t have speaking roles but still needed to look, y’know, alive, I inserted a series of “pauses” into their speech box. The result was basically just the characters blinking and moving their heads around a bit.
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</p>
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<figure class="e-image">
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<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Kw3UEoMokxOSYKxT-sL7LyC0YVs=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24577305/Screen_Shot_2023_04_05_at_5.19.39_PM.png"/> <cite>D-ID</cite>
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</figure>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dUE0ZM">
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Once I had all my clips, I edited them together in CapCut (free), because as far as I’m aware, there isn’t currently an AI that takes a bunch of clips and then splices them into something that makes sense. CapCut is by far the most instinctual (but still pretty serious) video editor I’ve used, and the full edit took me about two hours. I added a music backtrack from CapCut’s library labeled “Wes Anderson-esque Unique Suspenseful Orchestra” (unclear whether it was AI- or human-generated), and voila!
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BlgWCl">
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Behold, the final video:
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</p>
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</div>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Yw5OZ9">
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Fair warning: It’s really bad. Like, bad in a way that makes me pretty confident that the world of on-demand bizarro fanfic is far away from being something that we actually need to worry about. It also took significantly more effort than simply typing some words into a box and getting a fully real-seeming cinematic scene, and I still used a considerable amount of my own (again, limited) artistic instinct to make certain judgment calls, so it’s not as if the whole thing was a robot’s doing.
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</p>
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It’s possible, however, that we’re not far away from a robot being able to make “Wes Anderson’s <em>The Lord of the Rings</em>” or something much better. It’s not improbable, for instance, that the tools provided by companies like Midjourney, Eleven Labs, and D-ID could all be integrated into a single system. The startup <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/04/technology/runway-ai-videos.html">Runway is also a leader in the text-to-video race</a>, where prompts like “a shot following a hiker through jungle brush” or “a cow at a birthday party” can generate corresponding video clips. While the clips shared by the company so far have been short and quite pixelated, <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/20/23648113/text-to-video-generative-ai-runway-ml-gen-2-model-access">The Verge called</a> the prospect of Runway’s text-to-video AI “intoxicating — promising both new creative opportunities and new threats for misinformation.” The company plans to roll out beta access to a small group of testers this week.
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There’s also ModelScope, which is free to use and promises the same thing, but when I tried the prompt “Frodo Baggins in a Wes Anderson movie” it presented me with maybe the most horrific gif I’ve ever seen. As to why there’s a fake Shutterstock logo on it, I could not even begin to guess.
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</p>
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<figure class="e-image">
|
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<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/CBWc3OpWz-bV-RWuW8sym0wi9Hg=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24577307/ModelScope_Frodo.gif"/> <cite>Model Scope</cite>
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</figure>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Fooeen">
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While this was a fun experiment and I’m genuinely looking forward to seeing some truly weird AI-generated fanfic content from people who live on the internet, it’s also impossible to talk about without considering the ramifications of a world in which anyone can summon convincing videos of whatever they want. We don’t know what will happen to the value of creative labor nor to the impossible-to-quantify worth of the human hand in art, opening us up to ideas that AI can only provide a simulacrum of. We don’t know what will happen to people whose livelihoods, both financially and psychically, depend on creating art for others that can easily be replicated by these tools.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="k32nn2">
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But we have a pretty good guess. Illustrators are already furious with AI tools that have stolen, mimicked, and devalued their work. “There’s already a negative bias towards the creative industry. Something like this reinforces an argument that what we do is easy and we shouldn’t be able to earn the money we command,” one artist <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/jan/23/its-the-opposite-of-art-why-illustrators-are-furious-about-ai">told the Guardian</a>. The Writers Guild is <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/wga-ban-ai-created-works-negotiations-1235358617/">currently pushing</a> to ban AI-generated work in its next contract, underlining the need to safeguard artists from potentially career-destroying tools not only by evolving cultural norms, but with policy.
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It’s going to be a wild few months, and hopefully we’ll get to see more Balenciaga Harry Potters — fun, inventive videos meant for little else than silliness — than creepily realistic images of public figures wearing expensive puffer jackets that send the entire media apparatus into an absolute tailspin.
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</p>
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<em>This column was first published in the Vox Culture newsletter. </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/pages/newsletters"><em>Sign up here</em></a><em> so you don’t miss the next one, plus get newsletter exclusives. </em>
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</p></li>
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<li><strong>The climate apocalypse is also a religious crisis</strong> -
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<figure>
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<img alt="A Black Jewish rabbi appears to be talking." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ENsZsRSxczqYnPjwgFN45_WH4Qo=/82x0:1149x800/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72172417/extrapolationscover.0.jpg"/>
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<figcaption>
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Daveed Diggs in <em>Extrapolations.</em> | Apple TV+
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</figcaption>
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</figure>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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Extrapolations’ Dorothy Fortenberry on God, Laudato si’, and the climate crisis.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jhNRLQ">
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Climate change presents us with an unusual apocalyptic moment — and not just because various natural catastrophes and cataclysms are part of its effects. “Apocalypse” means a moment of revealing, when the curtain blows aside and we see the world as it really is. We see ourselves as we really are.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="u19Pgs">
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That’s what the Apple TV+ show <em>Extrapolations</em> aims to be: a mirror, held up to its viewers — many of them well-off and comfortable, the kind of people who might assume climate change won’t touch them all that much — to show them who they really are. The answers can be tough to face. Coming to terms with the reality of what could happen due to climate change can raise huge questions and emotions — about guilt, fear, depression, selflessness, and the meaning of life.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0KPI7p">
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Having watched the show, I wanted to talk to someone about it — and I could think of nobody better than Dorothy Fortenberry. She’s a writer and producer, and co-showrunner of <em>Extrapolations</em>. Created by Scott Z. Burns, the guy who wrote the 2011 pandemic film <em>Contagion</em>, <em>Extrapolations</em> takes a hard look at the human experience ahead. The eight episodes tell a series of stories spread out over 30 years, starting in 2037.
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</p>
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<div id="6lGXiN">
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="VpzcaP">
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Fortenberry and I spoke for <a href="https://megaphone.link/VMP1433984231">Vox’s podcast <em>The Gray Area</em></a> about a wide range of topics — choices the show’s writers made about technology, fossil fuels, and more; the complex relationship between individual action and corporate responsibility; and why climate change robs us of not just our future but also our past.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="akTf9J">
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But the most interesting part, for me, was when we got into religion — both how religious communities are going to have to confront the effects of climate change and why this apocalypse is, in some ways, an inherently religious one. We discussed Pope Francis’s <a href="https://www.vox.com/2015/6/16/8788813/pope-francis-climate-change">encyclical <em>Laudato si’</em></a>, his first major letter to Catholics as pope, a document <a href="https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2016/10/28/13433050/pope-climate-change-polarization">less about persuasion</a> and more, as Fortenberry argues, about contextualizing climate activism in terms of human dignity. You can hear our full conversation on the podcast, and read the part about these topics below.
|
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="IRL7mp">
|
|||
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<em>This interview has been edited for length and clarity.</em>
|
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DRcNWs">
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<strong>There is something inherently religious about the climate crisis, and not just because flooding brings to mind the very first apocalypse on record in many religions: a big flood. The climate shift is sort of biblical in proportion. And it raises questions that religion has historically attempted to answer. </strong>
|
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|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="pH0Q3C">
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Religion is one of the areas in which we consider the entire world — the whole planet. You’re thinking about every animal, every plant, all the creepy crawly things, all of the people. That kind of mindset is pretty unusual in most aspects of our life; we don’t often walk around thinking about the entire globe and every live thing upon it.
|
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="b3Hdsw">
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But it’s also important when you think about climate change to contemplate every live thing on the planet. If there is a God, then that is the perspective of God, right? God is capable of understanding and imagining and holding in mind this notion of all living things. And that’s the perspective that we try to, I think, aim for when we think about climate change.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="no5YTU">
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So I think that for anyone who has ever spent any time thinking about the notion of a higher power — certainly a deity that created the universe — it maps very neatly onto climate change, because you’re considering such big stakes.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="nh0zsq">
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And then exactly as you said, so many religious texts, including the Old Testament, are full of stories where people screw up and then there’s a huge natural disaster.
|
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hylvg2">
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<strong>Like a </strong><a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%206-9&version=NIV"><strong>flood</strong></a><strong>, or an </strong><a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Numbers%2016&version=NIV"><strong>earthquake</strong></a><strong>, or a </strong><a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Leviticus%2010&version=NIV"><strong>fire</strong></a><strong>.</strong>
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="raJMoT">
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People just sin, and they’re told not to and they’re like, we’ll stop sinning tomorrow. And then eventually, the only consequence of their tremendous quantity of sin is a huge natural disaster, which destroys almost all of them.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zWU3DV">
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The few that survive are like, we are definitely not gonna sin again. And then of course they do, and there’s another natural disaster — all of which also maps very neatly onto climate change. The repeated warnings, the reluctance to give up sinning. So I think for somebody who thinks about religion, it’s not a big stretch to put those two on top of each other.
|
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</p>
|
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<figure class="e-image">
|
|||
|
|
<img alt="A Black Jewish rabbi crouches near a machine in a flooded synagogue." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/QxgDMPYPt3aGKZLCdrdcux98jUA=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24577722/extrapolations1.jpg"/> <cite>Apple TV+</cite>
|
|||
|
|
<figcaption>
|
|||
|
|
A flood, in <em>Extrapolations.</em>
|
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</figcaption>
|
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</figure>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fOOcYN">
|
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|
I had come into the project as a person who was already considering climate change and religion quite a bit. It was something that <a href="https://scienceandfilm.org/articles/3448/dorothy-fortenberry-on-climate-storytelling">was very important to me</a> that I was grappling with, and I was really grateful to be able to join [<em>Extrapolations</em>] at a time when they knew that they wanted to have an episode about a rabbi and about religion, but there was a lot that still had to be figured out. I felt really grateful that I got to kind of raise my hand and be like, hang on, let me jump in here. I’ve got something to say.
|
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="M6U2gn">
|
|||
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|
Religion and religious spaces provide a physical location for people to come together and have feelings collectively. Which is another thing I think that climate change evokes, and that people really often struggle with [finding] a way to process. People often feel their climate feelings alone, looking at their phone, seeing a sad tweet, feeling kind of doomed, and there’s not anywhere that you can go. And I think one of the things about religious buildings is that they are the place where you go for the wedding, they’re the place you go for the funeral, they’re the place you go when there’s a baby, they’re the place that you go after the disaster. There’s one place where you go for all the different kinds of feelings.
|
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</p>
|
|||
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DPHxwa">
|
|||
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And climate change creates so many different kinds of feelings.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CugmJX">
|
|||
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|
<strong>Climate change brings up a lot of feelings for us. You know, I was thinking about the feeling I have on an unseasonably warm day in the winter. </strong>
|
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|
</p>
|
|||
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="h4pfF1">
|
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It’s spooky!
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="yQGHgT">
|
|||
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|
<strong>It’s spooky, it’s confusing, and I feel happy to be in the sunshine and also full of dread.</strong>
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1uHlHw">
|
|||
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|
<strong>The show really digs into the depression that climate change can bring on — a slow-rolling depression that really settles over people when it starts to feel like, well, what’s even the point here?</strong><em><strong> </strong></em><strong>If I’m a teenager and I can see this coming, and I know I can get involved with activism, but it also really feels like nobody cares who should, then I’m gonna have these feelings of depression. Other people have feelings of guilt to deal with — sadness and guilt and fear of mortality. </strong>
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1B9xpW">
|
|||
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<strong>This is something religious leaders often have to deal with and help people through. How much of this went into writing the show? </strong>
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jSUOaL">
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We were thinking about how religious leaders can help people through these feelings of overwhelm. One of the things that [religious communities are] supposed to be there for is to deal with someone when they’re in grief, when they’re going through a period of depression or anger or any difficult feeling, and shepherd them through that.
|
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="OXIcsk">
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|||
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As a Catholic, I come from a perspective of going to confession. It’s a place you go when you feel bad. There’s a physical place you go, and then you say all the things that you did wrong. And you’re not just let off the hook. You’re given the task of improving your behavior in the hopes that you will not be quite as bad as you were the last time — but you also know that you’re gonna be back at confession a year from now. It’s a duality that acknowledges that you’re never going to reach a place where you don’t have to show up and say what you did wrong, but also that you are capable, perhaps, of improving upon your past behavior and having slightly different superior sentences to confess to next time.
|
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</p>
|
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I think those feelings have to have somewhere to go or they ought to have somewhere to go. It’s very difficult to be sitting with those feelings alone. It’s really hard to understand yourself as a carbon-emitting entity on the planet. The whole notion of a carbon footprint can make us feel like the most efficient way of reducing our input would be to stop existing, which I think is horribly bleak. It’s helpful to have somebody else, who’s maybe a professional, guide you through a way of understanding yourself as someone who is, through every action, contributing to this problem, while also finding reasons to keep going, keep the faith, keep hope alive, keep working toward something better.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="i7O7lg">
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<strong>I guess that explains why it feels like </strong><a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html"><em><strong>Laudato si</strong></em></a><em><strong>’</strong></em><strong> is such an influence on this show.</strong>
|
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</p>
|
|||
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hSDgMS">
|
|||
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|
I am very fond of <em>Laudato si’</em>. It’s Pope Francis’s encyclical on climate change, on care for our common home. It is a long essay — a short book — about climate change, its causes, its effects, possible solutions. It’s my personal favorite piece of climate writing. I do go around handing it out, which is perhaps somewhat demented, but I think it is underdiscussed, especially by people who are very interested in climate change and not at all interested in the pope — which is a lot of people who are very interested in climate change, fair enough.
|
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</p>
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<div class="c-float-right">
|
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<aside id="n4ggqW">
|
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<q>“I think there can be a tip in the climate discourse toward despair. There can be a temptation to view all of humanity as the bad guy.”</q>
|
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</aside>
|
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</div>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Fh5zHJ">
|
|||
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But I think people who think all day about climate change often notice an absence of a humane approach. I think there can be a tip in the climate discourse toward despair. There can be a temptation to view all of humanity as the bad guy. <em>Laudato si’</em>, coming as it does from the pope, views people as gifts of God, that every single person on the planet is supposed to be here and they’re all made in the image of God and we’re so lucky to have them.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="p0whyD">
|
|||
|
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I think that kind of generosity toward all of humanity is something that the climate movement as a whole could really benefit from embracing, and [Pope Francis is] able to do that while not sparing the fact that there are absolutely people who are responsible. He’s very happy to call out oil companies, gas companies, wealthy people, people who like having nice little organic gardens but don’t like having anybody who’s not rich living next to them. He’s really good at naming all of the people who are responsible while also holding this deep love for all humanity.
|
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|
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|
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He also has a particular relationship to technology, which I think we also tried to capture in the show — that technology can’t be good or bad. Technology is just something that we make, and then we use it in ways that either make things better or worse. But a technological fix is impossible unless it is deployed by humans collectively with their eyes on the collective good.
|
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</p>
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<em><strong>Laudato si’ </strong></em><strong>is very much about privileging short-term gains over long-term effects, and how that creates a throwaway culture, right? Where it’s not just poor people, but elderly people, or people with different mental capacities, who are pushed to the margins in a culture that privileges the short term over the long term.</strong>
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PHyfUu">
|
|||
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|
When you look at the climate movement and you look at the environmental movement, there are definitely strains and people within it who act like some people are disposable, or like it’d be great if some people didn’t exist, or didn’t have so many kids, or stopped being so gross.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="nPoekp">
|
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|
I think that is a bad strain in the climate movement. I think it is correcting for that now and is not as bad as it used to be. But I think there’s certainly still room to have as capacious as possible an understanding of all the people.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1zEIsy">
|
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|
It goes back to that, like, God perspective. Can we really hold every single person, including severely disabled people, including very old people, including very young people — can we hold all of them in our head as deserving a planet to live on?
|
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|
</p>
|
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|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="462rWN">
|
|||
|
|
Extrapolations <em>is currently streaming on Apple TV+. New episodes drop weekly on Fridays.</em>
|
|||
|
|
</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li><strong>Microsoft’s current AI dominance is thrilling the company’s diehard fans</strong> -
|
|||
|
|
<figure>
|
|||
|
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<img alt="A man holding up two copies of Windows 95 in a crowded store, from August 1995." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/GG07_XEJZNNzOy6wQCpiaQyT4tY=/22x0:1461x1079/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72172327/GettyImages_51990367.0.jpg"/>
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<figcaption>
|
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Back in 1995, Microsoft’s new operating systems were a big deal. | Torsten Blackwood/AFP via Getty Images
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</figcaption>
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</figure>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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They stayed true through Zunes, Windows Phones, and the original Bing. Now Microsoft’s fans are enjoying its big AI moment.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZrYAPz">
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|
It’s too early to tell how Microsoft will ultimately fare in the AI search war <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2023/2/7/23590069/bing-openai-microsoft-google-bard">it started</a> with Google. Both companies have now rolled out their AI-infused search offerings, though Microsoft’s new Bing, the result of its <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2023/1/23/23567991/microsoft-open-ai-investment-chatgpt">partnership</a> with OpenAI, which made ChatGPT, has gotten the lion’s share of the attention and praise. <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2023/2/6/23588308/google-bard-chatbot-chatgpt-ai-testing-public">Google’s Bard</a> chatbot, on the other hand, has so far been a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/testers-say-google-bard-worse-than-chatgpt-2023-3">disappointment</a>.
|
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JOvcOF">
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This has put Microsoft in a position that we are used to seeing Google in: <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2023/1/26/23571710/microsoft-open-ai-chatgpt-google">on the cutting edge</a>.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KJAdiS">
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It has also put Google <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-08/chatgpt-success-drives-google-to-put-ai-in-all-its-products">on its heels</a>. The search giant currently looks like an also-ran with an inferior product. Microsoft has found itself in that position all too often since Google’s early 2000s rise, which would ultimately allow it to dominate the internet. So now Microsoft’s having a rare moment in the sun, and at Google’s expense.
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</p>
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<aside id="arjpS4">
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<div>
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</div>
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</aside>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="twyIOv">
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Microsoft’s fans seem to be enjoying it. Vox asked several of them how they felt about seeing the company at the forefront of what could be potentially world-changing technology for the first time in a very long time. Their answers show how Microsoft’s OpenAI integrations into its consumer products have managed to live up to a lot of the buzz so far, but there’s also a long way to go before anyone can say that they’ll give Microsoft a real edge over competitors.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JpmvYu">
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“Oh, how the <a href="https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=How%20the%20turn%20tables">turn tables</a>,” Brett Lemoine, an IT worker who lives in Texas, said in an email. “I think, for maybe the first time, Microsoft is ahead of the game on this one. In my opinion, they had better products in the past, but they never stuck because they were released too late and/or never got enough user adoption (Zune, Windows Phone).”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bUsGXW">
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Lemoine calls himself a “Microsoft fanboy” on his <a href="https://twitter.com/bremic9188">Twitter profile</a>, where he’s also <a href="https://twitter.com/bremic9188/status/1438233730028539905">posted a photo</a> of his much-faded tattoo of the Windows 7 logo.
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</p>
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<figure class="e-image">
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<img alt="Photos of a tattoo of the Windows 7 logo on the back of someone’s left shoulder. One is the brand new version and the other is the faded version 12 years later." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/-LPPRMANcWxX9HbM1tkTtG7WswE=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24578190/Image__2_.jpeg"/> <cite>Brett Lemoine</cite>
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<figcaption>
|
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Brett Lemoine’s Windows 7 tattoo, then and now.
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</figcaption>
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</figure>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ELcTuX">
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“I got the tattoo back in college — was my first one,” he explained. “Always wanted a tattoo and I guess Microsoft was my biggest passion at the time.”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zfNH9m">
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Lemoine, who says he is not related to Blake Lemoine, the former Google engineer who thought its chatbot <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/11/google-ai-lamda-blake-lemoine/">had become sentient</a>, has also passed what may be the truest test of a Microsoft fan: He had a Windows Phone, which was Microsoft’s <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/10/16452162/windows-phone-history-glorious-failure">ill-fated attempt</a> to compete with Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android ecosystem. Released in 2010 at a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/22/technology/microsoft-earnings-q4.html">cost of billions</a>, the Windows Phone was a relative latecomer to the market and never really caught on. When mobile devices overtook desktop and laptop PCs in terms of usage, Microsoft didn’t have much of a foothold.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="iwN28t">
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Vivian Chandra, who works in education and lives in New Zealand, said in an email that her Windows Phone was “quite awesome,” but she had to give it up. Once developers stopped supporting apps for it, she eventually found herself in an airport needing to use an Air New Zealand app that no longer worked. Chandra is still devoted to the Microsoft hardware that hasn’t been discontinued. When the Surface tablet was first released 10 years ago, she made a special pitstop in the United States on a trip to Canada to pick one up so she wouldn’t have to wait for it to come to her country. She recently bought a Surface Pro 9, too.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="cPHwVq">
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“The buzz [over AI] is quite exciting,” Chandra said. “They missed the boat with smartphones, but this might be a new way for them to move ahead of Google.”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="F2KYD1">
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Microsoft has indeed missed the boat in the past, but it was doing just fine before OpenAI came along. It’s currently the <a href="https://companiesmarketcap.com/">second-most</a> valuable company in the world, with Apple being the first. Google is fourth, just behind the state-owned Saudi Aramco. So Microsoft’s still beating Google in terms of market cap.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0F9vNe">
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But, aside from its gaming division, it’s been a long time since Microsoft’s consumer offerings got much buzz. Often, the company either enters a market too late, as it did with the Windows Phone, or it loses out to an upstart that offers something better. Google’s search, Chrome, and Gmail are the majority of consumers’ preferred web search, browser, and email providers. Microsoft’s web search, browser, and email offerings are not. Decades ago, people <a href="https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsofts-windows-95-launched-20-years-ago-today/">lined up overnight</a> to get their hands on Microsoft’s new Windows operating system; now, Google’s Android mobile operating system has the <a href="https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share#monthly-201501-202304">biggest market share</a>. Microsoft is an enterprise or business services provider, such as Office productivity and server software and cloud computing. Even its social media platform, LinkedIn, is about business. These offerings have been lucrative. They’re also boring.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="VAOGGH">
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Microsoft seems to believe that OpenAI will help it recapture that past glory and excitement. OpenAI’s integrations with its consumer products were unveiled at a <a href="https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2023/02/07/reinventing-search-with-a-new-ai-powered-microsoft-bing-and-edge-your-copilot-for-the-web/">splashy event</a> in February with a clear message: With generative AI, web search was about to evolve, and Microsoft was going to lead the way. Google was not because it had been playing it too slow and too safe with its AI offerings. Now, Google is forced to scramble to push out its own generative AI products. So far, Bard and Google’s other AI offerings have been met with much less fanfare and had fewer features and <a href="https://www.zdnet.com/article/i-tested-google-bard-it-was-surprising-in-a-bad-way/">more flaws</a>. Even Bing’s <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/15/23599072/microsoft-ai-bing-personality-conversations-spy-employees-webcams">missteps</a> have been more interesting than <a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-ai-chatbot-bard-offers-inaccurate-information-company-ad-2023-02-08/">Bard’s</a>.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zgiypi">
|
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Google is the <a href="https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/3/22/23651093/google-bard-ai-chatbot-microsoft-chat-gpt-generative">boring</a> one now. Microsoft fans who hadn’t used Bing and Edge much before OpenAI — even diehards have their limits — say they’re enjoying the experience now.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="IvMBxD">
|
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Sam Hosea was a “teenage Microsoft groupie” whose earliest memory with Microsoft was “tinkering around with QBasic.” Now 40 years old and living outside DC, where he works as a caregiver, Hosea said in an email that, until recently, he “hadn’t thought about Bing in a very, very, <em>VERY</em> long time.” Lately, he’s been using it quite a bit.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ls9qQ4">
|
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“For the past few weeks, I’ve literally been spending much of my free time chatting with the AI bot on the Bing app!” Hosea said. Meanwhile, he hadn’t even heard of Google’s Bard until he was asked how he thought it compared to Bing.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jsVvwL">
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Lots of other people are trying out Bing, too. Microsoft recently <a href="https://blogs.bing.com/search/march_2023/The-New-Bing-and-Edge-%E2%80%93-Momentum-from-Our-First-Month/">announced</a> that the search engine <a href="https://blogs.bing.com/search/march_2023/The-New-Bing-and-Edge-%E2%80%93-Momentum-from-Our-First-Month/">crossed</a> the 100 million daily user mark (Google, by contrast, does billions of searches per day). Microsoft also said that Edge “continues to grow in usage” without providing a number. It remains to be seen if Microsoft can build on that to become a real competitor to Google, which remains the undisputed leader in search and browsers, or if it will even be able to maintain the excitement around Bing and Edge if and when the AI novelty and hype fades. Even some of Microsoft’s biggest fans aren’t sure of that yet.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DZNffb">
|
|||
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|
Chandra admits that she prefers Chrome and Google search over Edge and Bing now. While she hasn’t noticed a big difference yet in the new offerings, she’s hoping Microsoft will continue <a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/translator/blog/2019/11/21/kia-ora-te-reo-maori/">its</a> <a href="https://news.microsoft.com/en-nz/2021/10/22/identity-through-the-macron-the-windows-11-aotearoa-keyboard/">tradition</a> of integrating the Māori language into its products by making it available in AI searches.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ySyfVK">
|
|||
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And while Hosea is having fun asking Bing deeper questions and having conversations with it, his “go-to for day-to-day searches” is still Google.
|
|||
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</p>
|
|||
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="18kXcL">
|
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Brian Hoyt is the IT director at an elementary and middle school in Washington state, and his Microsoft use dates back to 1984 and MS-DOS. He says he hasn’t used Microsoft’s AI integrations much because they’re not yet available for education customers, but he is wondering if Microsoft will run into issues down the line because it <a href="https://www.theinformation.com/articles/openai-and-microsoft-are-partners-until-they-vie-for-the-same-customers">doesn’t own</a> OpenAI outright, while Google’s AI products were either <a href="https://www.vox.com/2014/1/26/11622732/exclusive-google-to-buy-artificial-intelligence-startup-deepmind-for">acquired</a> or developed in-house.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="QVrswf">
|
|||
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|
“They definitely seem to have the first mover advantage, but it is unclear if that will hold up,” Hoyt said, noting that Microsoft will have to <a href="https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/20/rely_on_microsoft_bing_search/?td=rt-3a">monetize</a> those costly AI offerings at some point and that could cause some pushback.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="YfrSq5">
|
|||
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|
As for Lemoine, he says he’s considered getting his Windows 7 tattoo refreshed, if not covered up with a newer Windows logo. But he’s not letting Microsoft’s possible renaissance influence that decision.
|
|||
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</p>
|
|||
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RlCvoW">
|
|||
|
|
“OpenAI stuff doesn’t sway me either way,” he said.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KutrzF">
|
|||
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|
<em>A version of this story was first published in the Vox technology newsletter. </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/pages/newsletters"><em>Sign up here</em></a><em> so you don’t miss the next one!</em>
|
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|
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</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
</ul>
|
|||
|
|
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</h1>
|
|||
|
|
<ul>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>IPL 2023 | M.S. Dhoni set to lead CSK for 200th time; Jadeja hopeful of win against RR</strong> - CSK is in the fifth position in the points table with two wins and a loss in three matches and a total of four points</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Champions League QFs | Man City thrashes Bayern 3-0; Inter overcomes Benfica</strong> - Manchester City dominated Bayern Munich in the first leg of the Champions League quarterfinals draw; Inter defeats Benfica 2-0</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Morning Digest | BJP announces first list of 189 candidates with 52 new faces for Karnataka elections; unfazed India to hold G-20 event in Leh, and more</strong> - Here’s a select list of stories to read before you start your day</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>DC vs MI | First win is always special, says Mumbai captain Rohit Sharma</strong> - Five-time champions MI suffered defeats in their first two matches but the Rohit-led side finally pulled off a win after completing a chase of 173 in the last ball</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>I’m happy I could come up with a match-winning performance, says Nicholas Pooran</strong> - The West Indian batter gives a good glimpse of what he is capable of</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
</ul>
|
|||
|
|
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</h1>
|
|||
|
|
<ul>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Woman’s body stuffed in gunny bag found by roadside in Hyderabad</strong> -</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>T.N. Bill seeks to exempt factories from working hour norms</strong> - If the Bill is adopted and becomes a law, the State government would be able to exempt any factory or group of factories from any or all of the provisions of Sections 51, 52, 54, 55, 56 or 59 of the Act</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>‘I was not an aspirant’, says A.T. Ramaswamy</strong> -</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Assam bans use of gestation, farrowing crates in pig farming</strong> - A circular issued by the State’s Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Department follows an appeal from the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>‘Establish steel factory at Bayyaram as per AP Reorganisation Act’</strong> - Minister Puvvada, MPs Ravichandra and Kavitha appeal to Centre</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
</ul>
|
|||
|
|
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</h1>
|
|||
|
|
<ul>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ukraine conflict: President Zelensky condemns beheading video</strong> - A video emerges online that appears to shows a Ukrainian soldier being beheaded.</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ukraine war: Leak shows Western special forces on the ground</strong> - The UK has the largest contingent of military special forces in Ukraine, according to a leaked file.</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Europe migrant crisis: Italian state of emergency to tackle migrant boats</strong> - The six-month measure comes as thousands of migrants land in Italy in three days.</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Gerard Depardieu: French actor faces new sexual assault allegations</strong> - The actor is accused of sexual assault or harassment by 13 women, a French news website reports.</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ukraine war: Russian parliament approves online call-up</strong> - The Kremlin denies it wants to speed up mobilisation of Russian men or end widespread draft-dodging.</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
</ul>
|
|||
|
|
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</h1>
|
|||
|
|
<ul>
|
|||
|
|
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The mounting human and environmental costs of generative AI</strong> - Planetary impacts, escalating financial costs, and labor exploitation all factor. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1929528">link</a></p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Galaxy S23 Ultra’s “15 W” wireless charging is 33% slower than last year</strong> - Compared to last year’s models, Samsung’s wireless charging somehow got worse. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1930900">link</a></p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Developer creates “self-healing” programs that fix themselves thanks to AI</strong> - “Wolverine” experiment can fix Python bugs on the fly and re-run the code. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1930533">link</a></p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Forget the race cars, here’s how F1 will really cut carbon emissions</strong> - The cars might be fast but they’re also only 0.7% of F1’s carbon footprint. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1930918">link</a></p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Questionable $2,500 hoodie makes you look like you were plucked out of Minecraft</strong> - Plus: The pixelated silk pants you’ve been searching for. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1930826">link</a></p></li>
|
|||
|
|
</ul>
|
|||
|
|
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</h1>
|
|||
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<ul>
|
|||
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>what’s the difference between a job and a wife after six years?</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
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<div class="md">
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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A job still sucks
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</p>
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</div>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/thatguy2226xbox"> /u/thatguy2226xbox </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/12j8cg3/whats_the_difference_between_a_job_and_a_wife/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/12j8cg3/whats_the_difference_between_a_job_and_a_wife/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>kid: “Mum, what’s an orgasm?”</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
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<div class="md">
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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Mum: “I dunno, ask your Dad….”
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</p>
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</div>
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<!-- SC_ON -->
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Allenc38"> /u/Allenc38 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/12ipnei/kid_mum_whats_an_orgasm/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/12ipnei/kid_mum_whats_an_orgasm/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>When my wife starts to sing, I always go outside and do some garden work….</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
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<div class="md">
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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so our neighbors can see there’s no domestic violence going on.
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</p>
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</div>
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<!-- SC_ON -->
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Stationary-Event"> /u/Stationary-Event </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/12j6muf/when_my_wife_starts_to_sing_i_always_go_outside/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/12j6muf/when_my_wife_starts_to_sing_i_always_go_outside/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A drunk walks up to two priests…</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
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<div class="md">
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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A drunk walks up to two priests…
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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He says “I’m Jesus Christ.”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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The priest shakes his head. “No son, you’re not.”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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The drunk goes up to the second priest. “I’m Jesus Christ.”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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The second priest gives the same answer.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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The drunk glares at them for a second. “Look I can prove it. Follow me.” ….
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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He leads them to a bar and walks inside.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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The bartender takes one look at him and says, “Jesus Christ, you’re here AGAIN?!”
|
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</p>
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</div>
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<!-- SC_ON -->
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/DooleyMTV"> /u/DooleyMTV </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/12iuka7/a_drunk_walks_up_to_two_priests/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/12iuka7/a_drunk_walks_up_to_two_priests/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
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|
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Guy takes his best mate home to meet his wife:</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
|
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|
<div class="md">
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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|
His wife screams, “You fucking dickhead, my hair and makeup are a mess, the house is a tip, the dishes aren’t done, I’m still in my pyjamas, I can’t be bothered to cook and it’s my time of the month! Why the fuck did you bring him home? The husband replies”Because he is thinking of getting married"…
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
</div>
|
|||
|
|
<!-- SC_ON -->
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Buddy2269"> /u/Buddy2269 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/12ixurm/guy_takes_his_best_mate_home_to_meet_his_wife/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/12ixurm/guy_takes_his_best_mate_home_to_meet_his_wife/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
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</ul>
|
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