Whenever I've driven by the old Frank Erwin Center these last few months, I've noted how little of it is left. Yesterday they demolished the remaining structure. This video from UT's president on LinkedIn has the final seconds.
Tuning in to a little more of the Trump trial. The jury could go either way and I won’t be shocked, because you really do want to be sure, but the idea that Trump didn’t know anything about this is just laughable. 🇺🇸
It has only been a week since GPT-4o and they’ve already had a few days of bad news, including resignations and the latest with Scarlett Johansson. You can feel it becoming an “OpenAI can’t trusted” narrative that will be hard to shake. Need to prioritize this (and the Apple deal?) above all else.
Cool to see this visualization of the growing blogroll network. Blogrolls are fun and useful, and there's still more we could do with them. If you're using Micro.blog, you can set up a blogroll by clicking Design → Edit Recommendations.
Microsoft's Recall on the new Copilot+ PCs is quite impressive:
Now with Recall, you can access virtually what you have seen or done on your PC in a way that feels like having photographic memory.
There are obvious trade-offs using this if someone gets access to your computer, but I'd be comfortable with it if there are enough settings. For example, maybe I only want the recall to go back one week, not months.
When your company becomes the enemy, all that matters to people is what feels true. OpenAI's Sky voice shipped months ago, not last week. We hear what we want to hear. OpenAI mishandled this, no question, but most likely Her is ingrained in Sam's head vs. intentionally ripping off Scarlett.
In the last 35 years, there have been a tiny number of truly revolutionary technologies that change everything: the web, mobile, and artificial intelligence. We can fight it, or we can guide it. But trust has eroded. To succeed we have to rebuild it. Move fast and break things will be a disaster.
Next month's road trip is starting to take shape. Got my reservation for Bryce Canyon booked this morning. Also the Durango-Silverton train. Lots to see. 🗺️
Any chance that WWDC will have a live keynote this year? In the last couple weeks, we've had… OpenAI: live. Google I/O: live. Microsoft: live. To balance AI we need to lean in to human creativity, and a pre-recorded 2-hour advertisement will never feel as alive or engaging as a human on stage.
As someone who usually supports OpenAI, I'd still welcome an actual lawsuit from Scarlett Johansson about the voices. For one, I'm a huge fan of hers, but also I'd genuinely like to know if anything shady happened at the company. Dishonesty will cast a shadow over everything the API touches.
Watched the Satya Nadella portion of Microsoft Build today, and the few minutes with Sam Altman, then skimmed through the other news. Microsoft is doing a lot, not all of it relevant to me. Importantly they plan for data centers to be powered by renewable energy (in 2025) despite scaling up for AI.
Yesterday's AI thoughts
I posted a series of microblog posts yesterday with a common theme of trying to understand what is going on with OpenAI. This is a company with a lot of drama, nearly imploding last year with the board and CEO shakeup, and more recently alternating between amazing demos and dumb mistakes.
I got a lot of pushback about one of my posts in particular. I'm even seeing people want to leave Micro.blog because of it. This is disappointing to me, especially since I think I've gone out of my way to have a balanced approach to AI. We have a global setting to disable everything that uses AI in Micro.blog, for people who are against the technology on principle.
Here are the relevant posts from yesterday so you can see them more in context:
When your company becomes the enemy, all that matters to people is what feels true. OpenAI's Sky voice shipped months ago, not last week. We hear what we want to hear. OpenAI mishandled this, no question, but most likely Her is ingrained in Sam's head vs. intentionally ripping off Scarlett.
In the last 35 years, there have been a tiny number of truly revolutionary technologies that change everything: the web, mobile, and artificial intelligence. We can fight it, or we can guide it. But trust has eroded. To succeed we have to rebuild it. Move fast and break things will be a disaster.
Any chance that WWDC will have a live keynote this year? In the last couple weeks, we've had… OpenAI: live. Google I/O: live. Microsoft: live. To balance AI we need to lean in to human creativity, and a pre-recorded 2-hour advertisement will never feel as alive or engaging as a human on stage.
As someone who usually supports OpenAI, I'd still welcome an actual lawsuit from Scarlett Johansson about the voices. For one, I'm a huge fan of hers, but also I'd genuinely like to know if anything shady happened at the company. Dishonesty will cast a shadow over everything the API touches.
I also tried to clarify a few things in replies on those blog posts to other people's points:
Sam was clearly inspired by and obsessed with Her. I don't think it was subconscious, but that also doesn't mean they sampled her voice explicitly.
The board firing Sam Altman is looking more and more rational. Which is why I think this should be an "all hands on deck" moment for OpenAI.
You’re right on the “total” lie, I shouldn’t have phrased it that way, because anything misleading in the OpenAI post would be dishonest. I was trying to respond to folks who are saying that when Scarlett declined to lend her voice, OpenAI copied it anyway. I don’t think that’s true. If I’m wrong, I’ll stop using any tech from OpenAI.
They already have the technology to actually clone someone's voice, which I assume they didn't use here because it would be an even closer match.
Did I get it wrong? For reference, here is OpenAI's blog post about hiring actors for the voices, and Scarlett Johansson's letter.
Perhaps I shouldn't have blogged about this, but it's my personal blog where I explore a range of topics. I do not run my blog posts through a PR department, and I think most people appreciate that blogs should feel authentic and human, even when they disagree.
This post from @jsonbecker is going to be timeless, because as a society we increasingly let social media amplify each side of an issue until it's out of proportion with the facts:
…sometimes when your peers and people you respect have all decided what the “right” view is, it’s very hard to comfortably express a less strident, more lukewarm, more timid, and possibly more complex or nuanced take, especially if you’re not ready, willing, and able to present a dissertation about your view point.
Wrapped up some updates to the iOS app and submitted to Apple. Hopefully goes through smoothly. 🤞
Jason Fried previews the next product from 37signals on Twitter X, called Workbook:
It's a dead simple platform to publish web-based books. They have covers, they can have title pages, they can have picture pages, and they can have text pages. Each book gets its own URL, and navigating and keeping track of your progress is all built right in.
Intrigued by this. We can always use more ways to easily publish to the web.
Sort of paradoxically, the more I consider how AI will change the web, the more clear it becomes how to build features that keep the humanity in what we create. Take almost anything that AI is good at, but not as good as a human, and then make it much easier to do that thing the old-fashioned way.
"You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain." — from this scene in The Dark Knight
Sky narrative wrap-up, for now
Tonight the Washington Post has what looks like an exclusive story on OpenAI's Sky voice. I didn't want to keep writing about this, but here we are. Some quotes from the article:
...while many hear an eerie resemblance between “Sky” and Johansson’s “Her” character, an actress was hired to create the Sky voice months before Altman contacted Johansson, according to documents, recordings, casting directors and the actress’s agent.
The actress's agent spoke to the Washington Post:
The agent, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to assure the safety of her client, said the actress confirmed that neither Johansson nor the movie “Her” were ever mentioned by OpenAI. The actress’s natural voice sounds identical to the AI-generated Sky voice, based on brief recordings of her initial voice test reviewed by The Post.
And from Joanne Jang, who worked at OpenAI with the actors:
Jang said she “kept a tight tent” around the AI voices project, making Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati the sole decision-maker to preserve the artistic choices of the director and the casting office. Altman was on his world tour during much of the casting process and not intimately involved, she said.
There was also a statement from the actress who voiced Sky:
In a statement from the Sky actress provided by her agent, she wrote that at times the backlash “feels personal being that it’s just my natural voice and I’ve never been compared to her by the people who do know me closely.”
Maybe we haven't heard the last of this story and more news will drop. Even if it wasn't intentional, there may be a legal case against OpenAI. But it appears that my initial take was correct.
I've been rolling this whole saga over in my mind since I first blogged about it. People are clearly concerned about AI generally and OpenAI specifically. There is also too much misinformation and divisiveness on social media, and a loss of nuance. When the narrative turns against a company, everything that follows will be viewed through a different lens, as if slightly distorted.
Feeling deflated this morning after the AI drama of the last couple days. I got so much flack over it. Now that the Washington Post is out with their story? Crickets. 🦗
Micro.blog for iOS was updated today with some improvements and fixes. Here's a quick demo video of the new uploads search for Micro.blog Premium subscribers:
Humans in the loop
Just finished listening to this interview on Stratechery with Satya Nadella and (separately) Kevin Scott. Some really thoughtful points about how Microsoft sees things around AI.
I liked this segment from Kevin especially, after talking about how humans can no longer beat computers at chess, yet we still love to watch humans play chess against each other:
I don’t think the AI is going to take over anything, I think it is going to continue to be a tool that we will use to make things for one another, to serve one another, to do valuable things for one another and I think we will be extremely disinterested in things where there aren’t humans in the loop.
I think what we all seek is meaning and connection and we want to do things for each other and I think we have an enormous opportunity here with these tools to do more of all of those things in slightly different ways. But I’m not worried that we somehow lose our sense of place or purpose.
Tried the new Cajun place that opened a couple weeks ago, Lil’ Easy.
Google's AI overviews are pretty hilariously not ready. Maybe they never will be. Generative AI is a powerful, transformative technology, but that doesn't mean it should be used everywhere! Sometimes dumb code is better.
This blog post is a test for something new I’m working on. I think a lot of people feel overwhelmed that AI is everywhere right now. Personal blogs should lean in to the human voice. There’s a new play button on the permalink for this post on the web which will use a recording that I’ve uploaded.
Audio narration in Micro.blog
This feature went from idea to implementation quickly because it turns out we already have full podcast hosting in Micro.blog! How convenient. I'm going to use this post to break it all down.
AI is everywhere, including some places it probably shouldn't be. If you've been following my blog you know that I see huge potential in generative AI. We're using it in Micro.blog to improve photos search and accessibility text for photos. But like many tools, AI is going to be overused before we all find the right balance for what it's good at.
When Jean and I were talking to Christina Warren at Micro Camp, I asked Christina about a talk she gave at Çingleton about 10 years ago. I actually blogged about it at the time. What struck me as particularly relevant now as we're about to be swamped with AI-generated content is that there's no substitute for the human voice. I don't just mean that an actual recording is better than a synthetic voice. I also mean that things that are created by humans will increasingly be sought out.
We want to see the personal side of someone, not just the polished brand. We want to see the imperfect, the creative, the emotion. We want authenticity.
In Micro.blog, you can now upload an audio recording of one of your blog posts. Use the audio icon in the new post form on the web, which is available to everyone starting today, even at the standard $5 plan. Your blog readers can listen to the audio narration of the post if they don't feel like reading the post. Of course it's especially great for the visually impaired.
Here's what it looks like on my blog, next to the posted date. Shout-out to Medium which I drew some inspiration from.
I'm also adding audio narration to this very blog post, so you can click over to the web to try it out.
When there's audio attached to a post, Micro.blog attempts to check if it is probably the narration for a post. If the number of words in the post and the audio duration is roughly comparable to how long it would take a human to read the post, it assumes it's narration and not a podcast. Podcast episodes are more likely to be longer with very short "show notes" in the actual blog post text.
Micro.blog checks this so that it can hide the default audio player and transcript link. These would add clutter to normal blog posts.
Blog themes will still need to be updated to support the play button. I've already updated the Alpine theme and will update others later. Themes can use a new API called Narration.js. Just plop this JavaScript anywhere you want the play button in your template, likely the layouts/post/single.html file. (Note that this currently needs to be on the permalink page. It won't work correctly on the home page with a list of blog posts yet.)
{{ with .Params.audio }}
<script type="text/javascript" src="https://micro.blog/narration.js?url={{ . }}"></script>
{{ end }} If you're using Micro.blog Premium, the audio narration will also be included in the podcast feed. Any blog can effectively be a podcast, even if you don't think of it as a traditional podcast. Some of my favorite writers have had great success with a dual model of email newsletter plus podcast version of the same content, like Ben Thompson and Molly White.
I can't wait to see how people use this. It's totally optional. It's more work, and not everyone is going to want to do that extra work. I'm imagining this would be used for selective, special blog posts, rather than everything. I'm also interested in working this functionality into our companion app Wavelength, which should cut down on the technical steps.
In some ways, this feature isn't actually about what is possible. This feature is a statement: we make things for humans, so they can make the web a little better. Along the way there will be plenty to automate, plenty of AI tools that will be important shortcuts, but we're not going to lose our voice.
Wow. Mavs steal another one. Luka with a clutch shot, and Naz Reid who was 7-9 from 3 misses the game-winner. Good game. 🏀
Went to Barton Springs today to swim but there was a ridiculous number of people waiting in line, must’ve been over 200 people, stretching well past the Zilker train depot, so we went kayaking instead. Austin may be too crowded.
We’ve somehow reached the 600th episode of Core Intuition. On this episode, we talk about the Scarlett Johansson vs. OpenAI fallout, and the reaction on my blog and the social web.
After we recorded episode 600 of @coreint, I thought I had blown it, maybe had a bit too much coffee and didn't slow down to properly capture what is going on with OpenAI. So I listened to the episode again, and I think it holds up really well. We might've covered it more fully than anyone else has.
Fort Worth, downtown with the county courthouse.
Finished reading: Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas. If this was only a standalone novel, I’d have some complaints, but I know people love the series. Seems like a good setup, and I’d like to see where it goes. 📚
Mr. Goodnight. ☕️
New feature idea for the social web: before strangers can reply to your posts, they have to read your resume. 🤪
