The dispute began with the decision to cancel or postpone (both verbs are contested) a program of “Teen Bootcamp” workshops – funded by the Serp Hills Foundation and the JTM Foundation – for young writers. The library had engaged six authors, including Jinghua Qian, Omar Sakr, Alison Evans and Ariel Slamet Ries, to conduct the workshops.
On social media and elsewhere, the writers had voiced their support for the Palestinian people in the face of Israel’s full-scale invasion of Gaza.
[…]
In response to the criticism, library management defended the workshop decision as “apolitical”. Meanjin editor Esther Anatolitis tweeted in reply, “There is no such thing as an apolitical cultural institution”.
A boycott, open letters, petitions, resignations: these are definitive evidence something has gone wrong with the library.
[…]
A paradox of neoliberalism over the past three or four decades is that, when commercial-style governance is applied in traditionally less commercial spheres – such as libraries, universities, publishing and the public sector – it is often applied more rigidly and narrowly than in genuinely corporate sectors, such as banking and professional services.
But libraries are not just another type of corporation, and a library CEO is not the same as the head of a commercial corporation.
Linkage
Things Katy is reading.
The State Library of Victoria is in crisis. Is it time to rethink how libraries are governed?
in The ConversationCory Doctorow: IP
in LocusNow, free software advocates – and free culture advocates – hate the term “intellectual property.” The argument against IP rails against its imprecision and its rhetorical dishonesty.
Prior to the rise of the “intellectual property” as an umbrella term, the different legal regimes it refers to were customarily referred to by their individual names. When you were talking about patents, you said “patents,” and when you were talking about copyrights, you said “copyrights.” Bunching together copyrights and trademarks and patents and other rules wasn’t particularly useful, since these are all very different legal regimes. On those rare instances in which all of these laws were grouped together, the usual term for them was “creator’s monopolies” or “author’s monopolies.”
[…]
Seen in this light, “intellectual property” is an incoherent category: when you assert that your work has “intellectual property” protection, do you mean that you can sue rivals to protect your customers from deception; or that the government will block rivals if you disclose the inner workings of your machines; or that you have been given just enough (but no more) incentive to publish your expressions of your ideas, with the understanding that the ideas themselves are fair game?
When you look at how “IP” is used by firms, a very precise – albeit colloquial – meaning emerges:
“IP is any law that I can invoke that allows me to control the conduct of my competitors, critics, and customers.”
That is, in a world of uncertainty, where other people’s unpredictability can erode your profits, mire you in scandal, or even tank your business, “IP” is a means of forcing other people to arrange their affairs to suit your needs, even if that undermines their own needs.
TechScape: How cheap, outsourced labour in Africa is shaping AI English
in The GuardianIn late March, AI influencer Jeremy Nguyen, at the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, highlighted one: ChatGPT’s tendency to use the word “delve” in responses. No individual use of the word can be definitive proof of AI involvement, but at scale it’s a different story. When half a percent of all articles on research site PubMed contain the word “delve” – 10 to 100 times more than did a few years ago – it’s hard to conclude anything other than an awful lot of medical researchers using the technology to, at best, augment their writing.
[…]
Hundreds of thousands of hours of work goes into providing enough feedback to turn an LLM into a useful chatbot, and that means the large AI companies outsource the work to parts of the global south, where anglophonic knowledge workers are cheap to hire.
[…]
I said “delve” was overused by ChatGPT compared to the internet at large. But there’s one part of the internet where “delve” is a much more common word: the African web. In Nigeria, “delve” is much more frequently used in business English than it is in England or the US. So the workers training their systems provided examples of input and output that used the same language, eventually ending up with an AI system that writes slightly like an African.
And that’s the final indignity. If AI-ese sounds like African English, then African English sounds like AI-ese. Calling people a “bot” is already a schoolyard insult (ask your kids; it’s a Fortnite thing); how much worse will it get when a significant chunk of humanity sounds like the AI systems they were paid to train?
Scientists push new paradigm of animal consciousness, saying even insects may be sentient
in NBC NewsBees play by rolling wooden balls — apparently for fun. The cleaner wrasse fish appears to recognize its own visage in an underwater mirror. Octopuses seem to react to anesthetic drugs and will avoid settings where they likely experienced past pain.
All three of these discoveries came in the last five years — indications that the more scientists test animals, the more they find that many species may have inner lives and be sentient. A surprising range of creatures have shown evidence of conscious thought or experience, including insects, fish and some crustaceans.
That has prompted a group of top researchers on animal cognition to publish a new pronouncement that they hope will transform how scientists and society view — and care — for animals.
Nearly 40 researchers signed “The New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness,” which was first presented at a conference at New York University on Friday morning. It marks a pivotal moment, as a flood of research on animal cognition collides with debates over how various species ought to be treated.
War on Gaza: Israeli drones lure Palestinians with crying children recordings then shoot them
in Middle East EyeIsraeli quadcopters are employing a "bizarre" new tactic of playing audio recordings of crying infants and women in order to lure Palestinians to locations where they can be targeted.
On Sunday and Monday night, residents of the northern parts of Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp woke up to the sounds of babies crying and women calling out for help.
When they went outside to locate the source of the cries and provide aid, Israeli quadcopters reportedly opened fire directly at them.
Labour’s fiscal credibility rule isn’t neoliberal — whatever MMTers say
in The New StatesmanSergeant Simon Wren-Lewis of the Status Quo Squad, saying "Move along! Nothing to see here!"
Is Labour’s fiscal policy rule neoliberal? That is the charge some on the left, particularly followers of the Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) movement, have laid against Labour’s fiscal credibility rule (FCR). MMT stands for nothing very informative, but it is a non-mainstream macroeconomic school of thought aligned to the left. Bill Mitchell, one of the leading lights of MMT, has run a relentless campaign against the FCR through his blog. As my own work with Jonathan Portes helped provide the intellectual foundation for the FCR, I will try and explain why I find the charge of neoliberalism nonsensical.
Labour announces 'fiscal credibility rule'
in BBC NewsA reminder to self that the difference between Corbyn and Starmer was, in this respect at least, not as great as I may have wanted.
The Office for Budget Responsibility - the government's economic watchdog - will be given new powers to "whistle blow" when it believes that the "credibility rule" has been breached.
And under the Labour plans it will also report to Parliament rather than the Treasury.
"We know now from the world's central banks that the world economy is looking at stagnation, and there needs to be a new rule," Mr McDonnell told me.
"And we want people to have confidence in a Labour government. That means we are introducing a new fiscal credibility rule.
"First, that a Labour government will always balance day to day expenditure.
"Second, that we will only borrow for the long term, and that means for investment - investment in our infrastructure, in the homes that we need, the railways, the roads, the renewable energy.
"And in new technology to grow our economy.
"Third, debt will fall under a Labour government over a five year period.
When ChatGPT founder had ‘no idea’ how to monetise product
in MintThese people have no idea how computers work, how brains work, or how to define intelligence. They just believe that if they get enough transistors together, feed it enough data and the electricity requirements of a large industrialised nation, they will eventually create God. It's the ultimate cargo cult. They're drunk on they're own snake oil. And they're among the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world, instead of being institutionalised for their own safety. It's so funny/scary.
The video shows Sam Altman in talk with Connie Loizos. When Loizos asked Altman is he is planning to monetise his product, Sam Altman replied with: “The honest answer is, we have no idea."
Sam Altman further said that they had no plans to make any revenue. "We never made any revenue. We have no current plans to make any revenue. We have no idea how we may one day generate revenue," he said.
Speaking about the investors, Sam Altman said, “We have made soft promises to investors that once we build this sort of generally intelligent system, basically we will ask it to figure out a way to generate an investment return for you."
As the audience laugh, Sam Altman said, “You can laugh. It's all right. But, it is what I actually believe is going to happen."
Car harm: A global review of automobility's harm to people and the environment
for ElsevierDespite the widespread harm caused by cars and automobility, governments, corporations, and individuals continue to facilitate it by expanding roads, manufacturing larger vehicles, and subsidising parking, electric cars, and resource extraction. This literature review synthesises the negative consequences of automobility, or car harm, which we have grouped into four categories: violence, ill health, social injustice, and environmental damage. We find that, since their invention, cars and automobility have killed 60–80 million people and injured at least 2 billion. Currently, 1 in 34 deaths are caused by automobility. Cars have exacerbated social inequities and damaged ecosystems in every global region, including in remote car-free places. While some people benefit from automobility, nearly everyone—whether or not they drive—is harmed by it. Slowing automobility's violence and pollution will be impracticable without the replacement of policies that encourage car harm with policies that reduce it. To that end, the paper briefly summarises interventions that are ready for implementation.
All the Ways Car Dependency Is Wrecking Us
in CityNerd for YouTubeBy popular demand -- a comprehensive review of all the ways car dependency destroys our communities, our health, and our planet. With gratuitous commentary by your host!