Category: ideas

GPT-3 is a product of OpenAI, an artificial intelligence research lab based in San Francisco. In essence, it’s a machine-learning system that has been fed (trained on) 45 terabytes of text data. Given that a terabyte (TB) is a trillion bytes, that’s quite a lot. Having digested all that stuff, the system can then generate all sorts of written content – stories, code, legal jargon, poems – if you prime it with a few words or sentences. – The Guardian

David Balzer: “Here, I want to go beyond critiquing institutional messaging and superficial pledges towards diversity, equity, and inclusion. Instead, I want to use my experience as the former co-leader of a cultural nonprofit — a white, cis-gender queer who attempted, not always successfully, to change that nonprofit’s relationship to colonialism and white supremacy — to explain why such statements were doomed to fail.” – Hyperallergic

“The pandemic offered a temporary reprieve from sound, both in cities and in oceans, giving scientists a once-in-a-lifetime (we hope) chance to study the sudden onset of quiet. The lockdown created a deeply unsettling soundscape, like the hush after an explosion, which extended on week after week. The quietude was revelatory, but not serene. Birds in neighborhood trees assembled into a network of local choirs, and the bated traffic let them be heard. The nights were laced with sirens, but devoid of laughter, arguments, and music.” – New York Magazine

A new report calculates, in detail, what it would take to aggressively transition to a clean energy economy in the U.S. by 2035—the timeline needed to make it possible to hit the target of the Paris climate agreement—and finds that decarbonizing the economy could quickly create 25 million jobs. “For a world looking to bounce back from a pandemic, there is no other project that would create this many jobs,” the authors write. – Fast Company

“The global poverty rate is now lower than it has ever been in recorded history,” Jim Yong Kim, a former president of the World Bank, recently argued. “This is one of the greatest human achievements of our time.” Or perhaps not. – The Atlantic

Anyone concerned with the question of charismatic political leaders necessarily stands in the shadow of Max Weber, the great German sociologist who wrote sketches of the subject not long before his death, a century ago, from a case of pneumonia brought on by the Spanish flu. For Weber, charisma was one of three basic forms of political authority, along with traditional rule based on custom and rational rule based on law and bureaucracy. – The Point

Introduced in 1832, the radical idea was called the National Equitable Labour Exchange – a system of currency built on the idea that labour is the source of all wealth, and that goods should be bought and sold based on the time it took labourers to produce it. While the Exchange lasted only a few years, the idealistic project helped to lay the groundwork for some of Owen’s more successful later reforms, such as shorter working days, with the ultimate goal of a workday based on the principle of ‘eight hours labour, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest’. – Aeon

Return on investment (ROI) logic has become a dominant motif of much of philanthropy today. Many contemporary philanthropists perceive themselves as social entrepreneurs, doing well by doing good. Their giving philosophies reflect the practices of global finance as well as the manner in which they made their fortunes. – Aeon

The argument to Congress: “We are over 675,000 small businesses and organizations in every town, city, and state, employing 5.1 million hard-working Americans who are now desperately struggling to stay above water. Our influence reaches across every sector, because the arts economy is a jobs multiplier. … If you lose us, we lose the economy. We need your help.” – American Theatre

No, seriously: Can we? Landscape architects say yes. – Fast Company