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Friday is here and we gotta do the roundup on Friday. Let's get into it. On the podcast this week: an AI avatar that testified in court, and Meta’s facial recognition for its smart glasses. In the supporters’ section, we talk AI in baseball.
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Also: If you’re a paying subscriber, our comment show is up! Check your inbox for the Transistor link (and there’s a secret YouTube video in there, too). It was a fun hang, you should join us. As we mention in that episode, if you want to send us an audio comment or question in the form of a voicemail, we’d love to run some in the next show! Send a voice note to podcast@404media.co and we’ll give it a listen. Please check out and support our referral program while it lasts, and buy some NEW HATS! Ok enough of that. Here’s what happened this week:  U.S. Senator Mike Lee speaking with attendees at the 2022 Student Action Summit at the Tampa Convention Center in Tampa, Florida. Credit: Gage Skidmore OBSCENE NOTIONSRepublican Senator of Utah Mike Lee introduced a bill that would effectively ban porn at the federal level in the United States. The Interstate Obscenity Definition Act (IODA), introduced by Lee and Illinois Republican Rep. Mary Miller on Thursday, aims to change the Supreme Court’s 1973 “Miller Test” for determining what qualifies as obscene. “Obscenity isn’t protected by the First Amendment, but hazy and unenforceable legal definitions have allowed extreme pornography to saturate American society and reach countless children,” Lee said in a press release. “Our bill updates the legal definition of obscenity for the internet age so this content can be taken down and its peddlers prosecuted.” It completely removes the “intent” requirement from the current law, which would mean anyone sharing or posting content that’s at all sexual or “intended to arouse” could be prosecuted for a federal crime.  Image: MASN via MLB (DEJECTEDLY) GO O'SThe Baltimore Orioles should be good, but they are not good. At 15-24, they are one of the worst teams in all of Major League Baseball this season, an outcome thus far that fans, experts, and the team itself will tell you are either statistically improbable or nearing statistically impossible based on thousands upon thousands of simulations run before the season started. Trying to figure out why this is happening is tearing the fanbase apart and has turned a large portion of them against management, which has put a huge amount of its faith, on-field strategy, and player acquisition decision making into predictive AI systems, advanced statistics, probabilistic simulations, expected value positive moves, and new-age baseball thinking in which statistical models and AI systems try to reduce human baseball players into robotic, predictable chess pieces. Teams have more or less tried to “solve” baseball like researchers try to solve games with AI. Technology has changed not just how teams play the game, but how fans experience it, too.  Image: Michelle Urra Sex is often playful, and it’s no wonder why it’s been a consistent theme in video games for as long as the industry has existed. Sex has stayed a constant theme in video games throughout the 2000s, be it for conquest, laughs, storytelling, or pleasure. What has changed, though, is the approach to putting sexual content in video games. There has never been a shortage of sexualization—specifically of women—in video games, but in more recent years, there’s been a push to explore sex and romance as part of a game’s narrative. LET IT GO, LET IT GOA startup is throwing chatbots at “ghosting”—being abandoned by someone abruptly and without explanation—by roleplaying as your ex, former friend, or absentee job recruiter who is just so sorry about how it all went down. Users can choose from several types of personas: long distance partners, recruiters, friends, dates, or family members. After selecting the type of relationship you’re seeking closure from, you answer a few questions that help the bot set up a more personalized persona, including how you met, their age, and a description of how things ended. Of course, we tested a few. MORE FLOCKERYFlock, the automatic license plate reader (ALPR) company whose cameras are installed in more than 5,000 communities in the U.S., is building a product that will use people lookup tools, data brokers, and data breaches to “jump from LPR [license plate reader] to person,” allowing police to much more easily identify and track the movements of specific people around the country without a warrant or court order, according to internal Flock presentation slides, Slack chats, and meeting audio obtained by 404 Media. READ MOREResponding to Kanye’s Nazi Song Is All Over Instagram, Nunya Biznas wrote: “If, for example, there were a hit song whose purpose was to call the genocide occurring to Palestinians what it is and condemning Israel and its supporters, would Meta wax philosophically about 'the context of social and political discourse' or would they just remove it? I bet they'd probably just remove it, and I doubt it'd even take much pressure from Trump for them to do so. That's not even the real question though. The real question is this. If the bias in favor of white supremacists was THAT OBVIOUS, would it even matter? I also betting no. Between this example on Instagram and the article I'm sure someone at 404 is writing right now about Grok being forced to believe the genocide of white South Africans is real, it's far beyond time for people to admit that the mainstream social media platforms of America are outright racist, Nazi platforms.”
Yes, in fact, we were working on that Grok story! And replying to American Schools Were Deeply Unprepared for ChatGPT, Public Records Show, Mark Hartry writes: “I'm 71 and personally have no use for ChatGPT or any of its competitors. My experience in life goes back to when computers and calculators were first being developed. I joined the Navy in 1973 and was trained as a nuclear power plant operator. During Nuclear Power School, the only authorized aid was a slide rule. As calculators became available, the Navy started placing restrictions on their use. The Navy bases advancement on the results of rating exams which consisted of 150 questions concerning the rate (occupation) individuals were trying to advance to the next pay-grade in with a three hour time limit. As an electrician's mate, the exams I took involved a lot of algebra and trigonometry. The only calculators allowed to be used were the basic ones that could perform addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. No scientific, programmable, or extended function calculators allowed. Test takers had to know the material to pass with a high enough score to advance. When my children were in school, I didn't allow them to use a calculator for their math homework until they mastered the material. That attitude prompted some interesting parent-teacher meetings, but I maintained that students needed to perform using paper and pencil before using a calculator. That way it was more likely to catch an error. I look at AI the same way. It can be a useful tool but people need to know how to perform a task the old-fashioned way before relying upon it. My trigonometry teacher in high school was known for a mathematical proof that 1=0. We had to find the error. It wasn't as apparent as one might think. (I regret not keeping a copy of it.) When using AI, if one doesn't already have a firm grasp of the material involved, they will likely miss an error. Or produce something that is beyond their own capabilities, making it obvious.”
 BEHIND THE BLOGThis is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss Star Wars' weird little guys, catharticles, and spectacular views. EMANUEL: I probably wouldn’t have blogged about Star Wars special effects studio ILM using AI this week if I didn’t already have Star Wars on my mind, and I’ve been thinking about Star Wars because I just finished binging season two of Andor. If you read any coverage of the show you probably already heard it’s very good so I’ll just echo that opinion and say that you should definitely watch it. It’s unlike most Star Wars stuff for a bunch of reasons—no Skywalker saga focus, no Jedi, it’s generally far more grim and for adults—but it is like Star Wars in that it’s filled with weird little guys. Read the rest of Emanuel's Behind the Blog, as well as Jason and Sam's, by becoming a paid subscriber.
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