I still like the idea of blogging regularly about relevant news stories, but you never know what's worth writing about as the start of a bigger, long-term story.
Like that time I got laid off by my (former!) company's Chief Marketing Officer because he outsourced my entire department* — layoffs aren't particularly newsworthy, but five years later I'd learn that he (allegedly!) did it as part of a plot to embezzle more than $5 million.
In the present day, there's a lot of talk about people being replaced by generative AI. The adult industry, long recognized as one of tech's early adopters, has two sides of the story about its use managing OnlyFans audiences.
- One NSFW creator is very happy with the way generative AI allows her to engage with larger numbers of fans (and how it works to charge those fans the upper limit of what they're willing to pay). She's very thoughtful about the nature of the service she's providing — pointing out that even SFW personalities involve teams of people working to create a fictionalized version of an identity; she sees AI as just another component of that team creating a fantasy for the audience. She also points out that while using AI breaks the rules set by OnlyFans, many of its other rules are broken on a regular basis. ("So as long as they're making money and it's not related to minors, they're probably going to turn a blind eye.")
- In the Philippines, people at OnlyFans "management companies" experience bleak working conditions that are only getting worse. Sales quotas are increasing and their transcripts are being used to train AI "which would replace the worst performers on the team." They're also aware that their work skirts the OnlyFans' terms and conditions, but they have their own workaround. ("The chatbot generates a message and the creator or a human worker hits send, allowing companies to comply with OnlyFans’ requirement that only humans send messages from a creator’s inbox.")
Elsewhere on the topic of "getting paid to tell lies that people want to believe," I am concerned about the vacancy at the head of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
As a former Fed economist put it, "Large, unpredictable shifts in economic policy are placing unusual strains on our measurement apparatus because they are causing large, unpredictable changes in the behavior of consumers and businesses. These changes are difficult to measure in real time." Measurement difficulties resulted in the previous BLS head losing her job.
Her suggested replacement, E.J. Antoni:
- Was identified on the east and west sides of the Capitol among the crowds involved in the Jan. 6 riot,
- Proudly displayed artwork in his office that commemorates a Nazi battleship,
- Shares a name with a Twitter account that actively promoted harmful conspiracy theories,
- Has only one published economics paper, but several partisan blog posts, and
- Utterly lacks the credentials that would be necessary for someone serving in the position.
(Some corners of the internet are also referring to him as "Austrian Screech," and it's hard to disagree.)
My main concern is that he's going to say whatever it takes to keep his patron happy without understanding the damage he's doing. Justin Wolfers has likened BLS data to essential infrastructure — getting it wrong will have ripple affects that cause problems in a variety of systems.
Image credit: PaintedFeet01 / Pixabay
No comments:
Post a Comment