Birth CanalDias Novita Wuri, Scribe, $24.99

Indonesian author Dias Novita Wuri is a rising literary star. Her novella Birth Canal writhes with talent compressed into a forceful and beguiling suite of interconnected stories. Id read anything by a writer who can describe the sky above Jakarta like this: [It] had a rosy nuance that somehow seemed both warm and sad, like a freshly slapped cheek. Wuris gift for metaphor is matched by a supple and sidewinding narrative construction that follows women across time and place. An unnamed narrator tells of his unrequited love for Nastiti, who suddenly disappears in present-day Indonesia. An Indo-Dutch girl is forced to become a comfort woman for the Japanese. Another strand emerges that takes us from US-occupied Japan post-WWII to a young Indonesian woman who becomes obsessed by a porn actor while living in contemporary Osaka.

The Ghost ShipKate Mosse, Mantle, $34.99

The history of piracy is epic and cruel and full of legends. Bestselling author Kate Mosse, co-founder of Britains Womens Prize for Fiction, sets her sails into it with a buccaneering novel of love and revenge. The Ghost Ship is the third book in The Joubert Family Chronicles series, and though it can be read as a standalone, its better not to miss the full backstory. In the opening decades of the 17th century, Louise Reydon-Joubert has escaped the gallows with her lover Gilles. Fleeing a fatal injustice, the pair head into the world of Barbary corsairs and their enemies. It is not for the faint of heart: slavers and privateers infest the waters off northern Africa, but not all beyond the reach of laws and convention are black-hearted, and among one crew, the bravest of men turn out to be women in disguise. The Ghost Ship rewrites nautical adventure fiction with a strong female protagonist and contains a spicy mix of intrigue, romance and daring on the high seas.

A Better PlaceStephen Daisley, Text, $32.99

New Zealander Stephen Daisley won the 2011 Prime Ministers Literary Award for Traitor, an elegiac novel about an Anzac soldier and a Turkish doctor wounded at Gallipoli. In A Better Place, another war looms large. Twin brothers Roy and Tony Mitchell fought in World War II. Only Roy returned. Tony was killed in action on Crete, his death recounted in visceral detail, and Roy came back to New Zealand forever changed. He built a lone hut near a creek, the broad verandah for his dogs an after-echo of a private pilgrimage undertaken years before in the North African desert. Daisley writes fiction with the economy and clarity of a poet and with deep empathy for the impact of violence. A Better Place contrasts brisk and often confronting accounts of military action and experience during wartime with elegy for a personal aftermath ghosted by trauma and loss.

The Art of Breaking IceRachael Mead, Affirm, $34.99

Snuck on to an Antarctic expedition led by her husband Phillip in 1961, Nel Law became the first Australian woman to set foot on Antarctica. Women were not allowed to do this at the time, and this historical novel imagines Nels pioneering journey, sharply capturing the misogyny of the male-dominated enterprise, as well as the scope of Nels achievement. Nel wasnt content with being relegated to or defined as an explorers wife.

She was an artist and the trip to Antarctica liberated her to paint more than 100 oils and watercolours of the icebound continent.

The plot has some pacing issues, but its great to read fiction based on polar expeditions (another male-dominated field) told from a different vantage. Its clear, too, from her vivid descriptions of its inhospitable beauty that Rachael Mead has made her own voyage to Antarctica.

NON-FICTION PICK OF THE WEEKBorder CrossingsMohammad Chowdhury, NewSouth, $34.99

Mohammad Chowdhury is being grilled at a border crossing between Jordan and the West Bank. Since the September 11 terrorist attacks, he has become all too familiar with this kind of prolonged interrogation. His subtle account of the 10 hours spent in this Israeli immigration hall is as tense as any thriller, encapsulating the many ironies of his status as both global citizen and perennial outsider.

Born in Britain to Bangladeshi parents and educated at Oxford, Chowdhury grew up caught between cultures.

For all the trials of being treated as a foreigner in his own country, it is apparent from this searching memoir covering decades of living and working in 85 countries, that outsiderdom has granted him enormous adaptability, tolerance and a deep understanding of cultural and religious complexity. A tale that is cosmopolitan yet down to earth, poignant yet comic, and above all, humane.

What An Owl KnowsJennifer Ackerman, Scribe, $35

If anyone knows anything about anything, says Winnie-the-Pooh, its Owl who knows something about something. Sadly, Owl cant tell us directly. But as scientists become more adept at interpreting owl behaviour, their unique evolutionary characteristics and habitats, the inner life of these haunting creatures is revealing itself.

As nocturnal predators, owls are known for their keen vision, but equally vital is their silent flight and acute hearing. Owls flat faces operate as feathered satellite dishs, enabling them to hunt hidden prey by homing in on their aural traces.

Scientists are also learning more about owl psychology, their subtle emotions, sensitivity, and stoicism. This enchanting exploration of the only bird with front facing eyes like our own is as much about ancient human fears, fascinations and desire to know, as it is about the birds themselves.

Rental Person Who Does NothingShoji Morimoto, Picador, $29.99

There is something very culturally specific about the concept behind this book. A Japanese man decides to rent himself out to people who want a neutral presence to accompany them somewhere, watch them do something or just listen to them. He refuses, however, to do anything that violates his do-nothing ethos. As Shoji Morimoto conceives it, this is his dream job because it involves no stress or obligation.

Its not until more than halfway through the book that we learn he does not take payment, as this would create expectation and therefore stress.

This is when Rental Person emerges as a quietly intriguing, egoless disruptor of the capitalist contract although he would probably contest this description. Much could be written about why he is in demand, but Morimoto is not interested in such reflection. He is not-doing what he pleases and he wishes everyone else could, too.

Living With AICampbell Wilson, Monash University Publishing, $19.95

If you are looking for a way to get your brain around the vast and bewildering field of artificial intelligence, this punchy essay is a good place to start. The engine of AI is the supercharged neural networks that enable deep learning: the solving of problems through computer analysis of vast amounts of data. While Campbell Wilson is upfront about the destructive potential of AI the most apocalyptic scenario being an artificial super intelligence that renders humans superfluous he puts the scaremongering in perspective. For the most part, these tools will be beneficial, he says, adding the proviso that this assumes developers, the public and governments are vigilant in monitoring how risks can be mitigated. But even the most constructive uses of AI, such as identifying illegal online imagery, exposing deep fakes, chatbots and so on, will invariably raise complex ethical dilemmas.

The Booklist is a weekly newsletter for book lovers from books editor Jason Steger. .

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What to read: Beguiling stories and a memoir of cultural complexity - Sydney Morning Herald

When machines can think, will humanity become obsolete? Will the sentient constructs born from the reckless invention of shortsighted people lead to our own destruction or enslavement? Is it too late to turn away from the artificial intelligence advancements that are already in place today? How can the risks of learning machines be eliminated before its too late?

These questions may seem like the plots of science fiction, but today these are the real problems that we are facing as a species.

Artificial intelligence is advancing at an astonishing rate, and there is the potential for AI to soon become so intelligent, that it surpasses human intelligence. This is known as "superintelligence" and presents what is known as the "AI control problem." If AI were to become more intelligent than humans, it could potentially pose a threat to our existence. For example, an AI could decide that humans are a threat to its own existence and take steps to eliminate us. Or a badly informed or poorly instructed AI agent could follow its mission goals in an extreme way that would threaten the human population.

But even without super artificial intelligence there is the potential for AI to be used by bad actor humans for malicious purposes. AI could be used to create autonomous weapons systems that could kill without human intervention. It could also be used to manipulate people or spread misinformation.

There is the potential for AI to lead to mass unemployment. As AI becomes more sophisticated, it is likely to automate many tasks that are currently done by humans. This could lead to widespread job displacement and economic disruption.

It is also important to note that there are many people who believe that the benefits of AI outweigh the risks. However, it is important to be aware of the potential dangers of AI and to take steps to mitigate them. For instance, ethical guidelines for the development and use of AI should be put in place. These guidelines should ensure that AI systems are fair, unbiased, and safe. But who polices these ethical guidelines and will international competition for the most powerful AI system force the abandonment of those guidelines?

More resources need to be dedicated to research on AI safety. This research should focus on developing techniques for preventing AI from becoming a threat to humanity. But how much risk can we tolerate? Its unlikely that any artificial superintelligence will be 100 percent safe.

Guest:

Roman Yampolskiy is an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Louisville J.B. Speed School of Engineering. His research expertise is in understanding the limitations, safety concerns, and controllability of artificial intelligenceincluding developing a plan for conceivable adversarial scenarios between humans and AI.

"The Source" is a live call-in program airing Mondays through Thursdays from 12-1 p.m. Leave a message before the program at (210) 615-8982. During the live show, call 833-877-8255 or email thesource@tpr.org.

*This interview will be recorded on Thursday, June 8.

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What are the threats and promises of AI? - Texas Public Radio

From checking for typos and recalling facts through to writing poems and creating art, artificial intelligence (AI) systems can now do tasks it would have been hard to imagine them being capable of even a few years ago.

These new generative AI systems, like ChatGPT, DALL-E2 and OpenArt, have exploded in popularity over recent months. Recent data suggest that ChatGPT has over 100 million users and OpenAI (owner and developer of ChatGPT) receives approximately one billion visitors to its website each month. Analysis from Swiss bank UBS indicates it is the fastest growing consumer app in history.

While technology trends like web3 and the metaverse have attracted plenty of investment and media attention, whether they will have much real-world impact is still unclear. Generative AI seems to be different.

There is broad consensus among technology researchers and commentators that it is a highly significant development at least as significant as the smartphone; probably as significant as the web; and perhaps as significant as electricity. Some go further still, claiming that it is the precursor to machine super-intelligence, and therefore represents an existential risk to humanity, which must be mitigated urgently.

This might seem surprising, given that AI systems have been part of UK citizens daily lives for more than a decade. Whether or not we are aware of it, with their ability to detect patterns in historic data, AI systems have been ranking our social media feeds, determining what digital ads we are shown, and recommending films we might like to watch on streaming services.

So, what is different about generative AI? To paraphrase technology analyst and investor Benedict Evans, its novelty lies in running the pattern-matching machine in reverse. Instead of identifying existing examples that fit a given pattern, it generates new examples of the pattern. The output of generative AI systems is anything that can exist as a digital file text, imagery, audio or video. The result is that an unprecedented super-proliferation of content is underway.

ChatGPT one of the generative AI systems that has burst onto the scene is an example of a large language model (LLM). Here, we focus on the economic implications of such systems.

LLMs produce text outputs in response to natural language instructions from a user (known as prompts). Trained on vast corpuses of text from books and the web, LLMs work by making iterative statistical predictions about what word should come next in a sequence. As a result, they can be used to produce articles, essays, computer code, stories, poems, song lyrics, messages, letters, political speeches and eulogies that are more or less indistinguishable from those written by humans.

The best-known LLMs are those developed by Silicon Valley company OpenAI, largely thanks to the popularity of its consumer-facing application ChatGPT. Released in November 2022, it is underpinned by OpenAIs GPT-3.5 model (premium subscribers can use the even more powerful GPT-4).

Other examples of LLMs include Googles LaMDA, accessible to users of its ChatGPT-like beta product Bard, Metas LLaMA and Anthropics Claude. Microsoft, meanwhile, has invested more than $10 billion in OpenAI and integrated GPT-3.5 into its search engine Bing. And well-capitalised start-up firms are in the process of productising LLMs for specific use-cases, including copywriting and the drafting of legal contracts.

Once they have got over marvelling at its ingenuity, ChatGPT users often find themselves irritated or enraged by its shortcomings. Partly because of its user interface, many instinctively expect it to work like a search engine, retrieving information from a database and presenting results with a high degree of factual accuracy. But this is not what LLMs are designed to do.

Instead, GPT-3.5s probabilistic approach frequently produces what have been called hallucinations factoids, non-existent URLs and fabricated academic references that are all the more hazardous because they are so plausibly articulated. A more banal frustration is the need to copy-and-paste ChatGPTs outputs into other software to make use of it. With this fact-checking and administrative burden, ChatGPT users could be forgiven for expressing scepticism at the idea that LLMs are poised to replace 300 million jobs.

But what this neglects to consider is that LLMs can also be used programmatically, via application programming interfaces (known as APIs). As an experiment, Ankur Shah and I built a database of information about UK insurance products. We then wrote a prompt for an insurance product review article and programmed a simple system to populate the prompt with the product data, send it to OpenAIs API, and push the LLMs output directly into a web content management system.

We were able to publish hundreds of online review articles like this one in less than an hour, at a cost of around $7. Completing the same project with human freelance writers would have taken several months, and cost closer to $70,000. Further, including real product data in the prompts pre-empted the LLM hallucinating incorrect cover limits or imaginary policy features.

So, if used correctly and with careful prompts, LLMs like ChatGPT could indeed change the way in which certain jobs are done. In light of this practical experience, it is plausible that LLMs will mean disruption for writers most acutely in fields like content marketing, where subject matter expertise and a distinctive authorial voice are less important than in journalism or fiction.

The same goes for customer services. Chatbots powered by LLMs and trained on domain-specific data are a major upgrade on their predecessors contrast a GPT4-powered bot like Intercoms Fin, for example, with Avivas clunky online assistant. The same bots can be connected to speech APIs, opening the potential for contact centres to be fully automated.

For organisations able to launch these systems, this would mean material reductions in operating costs. For customers, it would mean an end to queuing for web-chat or telephone support, since AI systems can handle hundreds of interactions simultaneously. But for front-line customer services workers, the prospect will seem rather less utopian.

These efficiency gains and operating cost-savings ought to have a favourable impact on productivity in some industries. This is especially true in sectors like financial services, telecoms, media and education. But it does not necessarily follow that higher sectoral productivity will lead to productivity improvements across the whole economy.

Indeed, despite widespread adoption of the previous generation of digital technologies, productivity growth has stagnated since the global financial crisis of 2007-09, to the continuing puzzlement of economists.

It could be that we have been living in an unproductive bubble, or that most organisations have not yet worked out how they can use mobile apps or big data analytics to become significantly more productive.

Whatever the reason, the implication is that we should not take for granted the idea that LLM-enabled cost-savings will produce productivity improvements for the whole economy. Back in 1987, economics Nobel laureate Robert Solow famously quipped that the computer age is everywhere except in productivity statistics. The same could well be true for AI.

But as Diane Coyle, one of the Economics Observatorys lead editors, writes, the real value of LLMs and other generative AI systems will not come from enabling a small number of technologically-advanced companies to slash their costs or invent new products. Rather, it will come from changing how things are produced as assembly lines did in the 1910s, or just-in-time production in the 1980s.

To this end, the most important facet of LLMs may well be their aptitude for writing computer code. The UK faces a chronic shortage of software developers, accentuated by Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic in August 2022, there were more than 30,000 vacancies in this field. In this context, there are two roles that LLMs could play.

First, they can increase the productivity of todays developers, partly closing the skills gap. One lever is GitHub Co-Pilot, an LLM-powered tool sometimes described as autocomplete for code. This tool already has more than a million users and enables developers to write software up to 55% faster than they could previously.

But this pales in comparison with the second possibility, which is that large numbers of people with little or no coding experience could start using LLMs to build software. Until now, the main constraint on what computer systems can be built has been the availability of workers with skills in Python, PHP, JavaScript and so on; but in future it may well be the capability to imagine what a system might do and specify in natural language how it should function.

If we believe that LLMs will indeed change how software is produced, nurturing that capability through industrial and education policy would be a smart move for policy-makers.

When trying to make sense of the economic implications of new technologies, one of the biggest challenges is the obfuscating effect of hype and criti-hype. In the case of LLMs, technology executives have incentives to talk up the science fiction-inflected risk of artificial general intelligence obliterating humanity, as it increases the perceived value of actually existing products (like chatbots), which might otherwise seem trivial.

At the same time, in academia, think-tanks and the media, the booming market for commentary and opinion on the social and ethical implications of generative AI seems to give incentives for alarmism.

As is often the case, the reality is more mundane. The economic impact of LLMs will be felt first in content creation and customer services, before software development is changed dramatically with any luck, to the benefit of wider productivity.

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What might be the economic impact of AI tools like ChatGPT? - Economics Observatory

Unprecedented interest

As the corporate world reckons with the impact that artificial intelligence may have on, well, everything, the consulting firm Accenture announced on Tuesday that it will invest $3 billion in the technology over the next three years.

Its the latest sign of the growing enthusiasm for A.I., and how companies across the spectrum are moving to adapt and incorporate services like chatbots into their businesses. There is unprecedented interest in all areas of A.I., Julie Sweet, Accentures C.E.O., said.

Accenture plans to double its A.I.-focused staff to 80,000, through a mix of hiring, acquisitions and training. (The firm has 738,000 employees.) It also plans to use generative A.I. more in its client work and help customers increase their use of the technology.

Other consulting firms have made big A.I. moves, too: PwC said in April that it would invest $1 billion over the next three years, while EY announced in 2021 that it would invest $2.5 billion over three years. Bain and Company has partnered with OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, while Deloitte is teaming up with the chip maker Nvidia. And IBM, whose A.I. work dates back at least to the introduction of Watson, has announced a Center of Excellence for generative A.I.

The business world overall is going big on A.I. Investments on generative A.I. alone are expected to hit $42.6 billion by year end, according to PitchBook. And mentions of A.I. or artificial intelligence on corporate investor calls have soared this year.

But consulting giants are still grappling with what A.I. means for their business. Theyre already under pressure to stay relevant amid challenges to their industry, including clients potentially cutting back on their services amid economic headwinds.

While many firms are embracing A.I. to automate a growing number of tasks, some executives are quick to note that the technology cant replace all they do: For any business, technology is usually not the real challenge, its the people component that slows things down, Alex Singla, who leads McKinseys A.I. consulting team, told Observer last week. Thats where I think management consulting still has a major role to play.

Donald Trump is being arraigned on classified material charges on Tuesday. The former president will appear in a Miami courtroom to face accusations tied to taking national security materials after leaving office. This evening, he plans to host a fund-raiser at one of his New Jersey golf courses; however, a super PAC backed by the Koch network has begun running ads against him.

Hard-right Republicans relent on paralyzing the House. Rebellious lawmakers agreed to let the chamber vote on some matters yesterday, after seizing control of the floor in retribution for Speaker Kevin McCarthys role in the debt ceiling bill. They have threatened to stall further legislation if McCarthy doesnt give them more power.

Binances U.S. arm fights an S.E.C. effort to freeze its assets. In a court filing ahead of a hearing scheduled for Tuesday, the crypto exchange urged a federal judge to reject the regulators move, which it said would make staying in business all but impossible. The S.E.C. sued Binance last week, accusing the exchange of violating securities laws.

Will Apple cross the $3 trillion threshold again? Shares in the iPhone maker rose nearly 1.6 percent yesterday, putting its market value just shy of $2.9 trillion. Enthusiasm for Apples new virtual-reality headset may help propel the companys market cap past $3 trillion for a second time it hit that level last year though its shares were down slightly in premarket trading.

Stocks look set to extend their gains on Tuesday morning as investors await a pivotal Consumer Price Index report, due for release at 8:30 a.m. Eastern.

Market participants are betting that Tuesdays inflation report will be relatively tame, giving the Fed the cover to leave interest rates unchanged at a meeting on Wednesday. The so-called Fed pause has helped turbocharge some rates-sensitive sectors particularly tech stocks in recent weeks, sending the Nasdaq and S&P 500 to 14-month highs yesterday.

The main thing to watch for: Economists are forecasting that inflation continued to ease last month, with the headline C.P.I. figure edging lower to 4.1 percent, a significant drop from last summers peak of 9 percent. Economists see good progress on food and energy prices, which have held steady or fallen in recent months.

Its a different picture for core inflation, which strips out food and fuel prices. Theres been less improvement there as used car prices, airfares and vacation lodging prices climbed in recent weeks. That speed bump, said Michael Gapen, chief U.S. economist at Bank of America, will keep the pressure on the Fed to raise rates this summer, probably in July.

A skip is not the same as a prolonged pause, he wrote in a preview note.

Elsewhere in the markets:

Stocks in Hong Kong and Shanghai closed higher on Tuesday after Beijing surprised the market with a cut to one of its short-term lending rates. Investors expect several stimulus measures in China to lift domestic demand in the worlds No. 2 economy as a downturn looms.

As regulators around the world aim to rein in Big Tech, the European Union is reportedly preparing to crack down on one of Googles most profitable businesses: the technology that powers much of the internets advertising.

The European Commission is expected to file a formal antitrust complaint on Wednesday accusing Google of abusing its dominant position in ad tech, according to Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal. The division is big for Google, bringing in nearly 14 percent of the companys $54.5 billion in ad revenue in the first quarter.

The commission began an investigation into Googles ad-tech division in 2021, and it has already imposed three penalties, worth some $8.6 billion, on other parts of the company, including those tied to its Android operating system.

The demand this time may be more drastic, according to The Journal: European regulators may rule that only selling off parts of the ad-tech business will restore competitive balance.

Its not just Europe piling on the pressure. The Justice Department has made similar accusations against Googles ad-tech business, and is seeking to unwind some of its acquisitions. British regulators, who have been flexing their muscles in recent months, are also investigating.

But will this dent Googles core business? Shares in its parent company, Alphabet, were up slightly in premarket trading on Tuesday despite the news, putting its market value at $1.5 trillion. And Google has been fighting the previous punishments from the E.U., having taken its defense in the Android case to the highest European regulatory court.

In other tech regulatory news, the F.T.C. sued in federal court to stop Microsoft from closing its $69 billion takeover of Activision Blizzard, a further hurdle for the megadeal.

Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner, writing to Congress about the standoff that ended last week with the professional golf body merging with LIV, a Saudi-backed rival competition. Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, announced an inquiry into the deal.

JPMorgan Chase secured a potential $290 million deal with victims of the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein after a frantic weekend of calls, midnight meetings and last-minute negotiations.

But the banks lawyers are not done: JPMorgan is fighting a separate case brought by the U.S. Virgin Islands, which filed new evidence yesterday that the banks executives had known about the illegal activities of the disgraced financier, who died in 2019.

How the deal was reached: Lawyers for the bank and victims were far apart after weeks of negotiations that went down to the wire, David Boies, the lawyer who represents the victims, told DealBook. It was very hard fought, he said, of an agreement that still has to be approved by a judge.

On Sunday, Boies was taking calls as he dined with his family at a restaurant and negotiations continued past midnight after he got back home. They resumed around dawn yesterday. After the two sides finally landed on a figure, talks continued over what the bank would say. JPMorgan reiterated yesterday that it regrets associating with Epstein but did not admit liability.

Whats come out in U.S. Virgin Islands case: The territory, where Epstein had a home, sued JPMorgan last year because it says the bank failed to stop him from setting up a sex trafficking operation there. No one wants him, Epsteins private banker wrote in a 2008 email, the territorys new filing shows. It also disclosed a dozen communications from 2007 to 2013 that suggest executives were aware of Epsteins crimes.

Will they settle? A deal in the Virgin Islands case could be appealing, especially if JPMorgans defense that the territory was complicit in facilitating Epsteins crimes is thrown out. The cases have moved unusually quickly because Judge Jed Rakoff is forcing the lawyers to be more realistic, said Boies. He believes that the banks lawyers became more serious about settling with his clients after a May hearing, when Rakoff indicated he was inclined to certify the victims case as a class action.

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Accenture Will Invest $3 Billion to Expand Its A.I. Offerings - The New York Times