Thanks to three generous Sizzle subscribers (Bart Reardon, mvyrmnd & someone else that wishes to remain anonymous), I am able to increase the amount donated to Cafs for each person you refer to The Sizzle during Sizzlethon 2023 to $4 for the first 250 referrals. That means if we manage to get 250 people onto a 90-day free trial of The Sizzle, I will be able to donate $1,000 to Cafs! So if you haven't already got a unique URL to share with your mates, stop reading this and visit https://sizzlethon.thesizzle.com.au now.
Satya Nadella has added yet another twist to OpenAI's management saga, tweeting last night that "we're extremely excited to share the news that Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, together with colleagues, will be joining Microsoft to lead a new advanced AI research team" - but according to "multiple sources" the Verge has spoken to, it isn't a done deal as Sam & Greg are "willing to return to OpenAI if the remaining board members who fired him step aside". Meanwhile, Altman's replacement, Mira Murati who was the CTO, only lasted a few days before being replaced by Emmett Shear, the former CEO of Twitch and a friend of Sam Altman. Oh and 738 of 770 OpenAI employees sent a letter to the OpenAI board demanding that all board members resign and Altman and Brockman return, or they'll leave to join Altman and Brockman wherever they end up. What a fucking mess.
Back in 2018 the Victorian government set up a dashboard to show the status of IT projects valued at over $1m as an attempt to be transparent and accountable in the face of constant budget blowouts. Fast forward 5 years later and that dashboard hasn't been updated in over 12 months. Projects like WorkSafe's data analytics initially budgeted at $1.17m blew out last year to $25m, Barwon Health's automated rostering system was given $3m in 2018 but still isn't complete, as is a case management system for the Magistrates' and Children's courts valued at $89m that started in 2016. It wouldn't be so bad if the only problem is projects spending more than planned, but they aren't even getting done, let alone on time, and the system the government itself created to expose these failings isn't even being used!
The ABC has a story today about the University of Tasmania cutting the time they'll pay for marking student work and one of the anonymous teachers they interviewed said "I'm seriously considering getting ChatGPT or Artificial Intelligence (AI) to write the feedback for me" and that "the way things are going, the uni wants to save money wherever it can, so yes we'll be using AI in no time for marking and feedback". It would be easy to cast ChatGPT as evil here, but the real blame is on UTAS not giving their staff enough paid time to do their work properly. Using tools readily available to save time, even if that tool results in subpar, perhaps even discriminatory, output is a symptom, not the cause.
Friend of The Sizzle, Samantha Floreani, has another banger of an opinion piece worth a read. They write in Overland about Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech, a book about the Luddites and how modern society has misunderstood these people are dumb idiots against technology. The Luddites provide a historical example of "organised and rational working-class solidarity against the technological manifestations of power, profit and labour exploitation". They weren't anti-technology for the sake of it, but anti-technology because it came at the expense of our humanity.
A photo of me (brown jacket looking weird) sitting in front of the Sydney Apple Store the morning of its grand opening in 2008. The man showing off Mac is Adrian Franulovich, owner of MacMedic (best place to get your Apple gear fixed in Sydney) and now President of the Australian Computer Museum Society. (I don't know who took this photo but it was in my photo library)
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The Sizzle is created on Wathaurong land and acknowledges the traditional owners of country throughout Australia, recognising their continuing connection to land, water and community. I pay my respect to them and their cultures and to elders both past and present.