Tag: meta

Categories
At Large Letter From An Editor

Sweet Dreams

Eurythmics’ Annie Lennox (Photo: Library of Congress)

Did you see the video of President Trump singing the Eurythmics’ 1980’s hit, “Sweet Dreams”? He’s really pretty good, to be honest. Except honesty has nothing to do with it. The video — all of it, including the imitation of Trump’s voice — was created by a Google artificial intelligence program, an algorithm trained on Trump’s voice and speech patterns and tasked with creating this bizarre cover song.

The video was only online for a couple of days, but it’s just another example of what we’re all going to be facing in the coming years: The fact that most human creative endeavors can be replicated by artificial intelligence, including novels, screenplays, television scripts, videos of politicians or celebrities (or any of us), pornography, political propaganda, advertising jingles, emails, phone calls, “documentaries,” and even the news. It’s going to be a huge influence in our lives, and it has an enormous potential for creating mischief via disinformation and the manipulation of “reality.”

That’s why seven companies — Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection AI, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI — met with President Biden last Friday to announce a voluntary commitment to standards in the areas of safety and security. The companies agreed to:

  • Security test their AI products, and share information about their products with the government and other organizations attempting to manage the risks of AI.
  • Implement watermarks or other means of identifying AI-generated content.
  • Deploy AI tools to tackle society’s challenges, including curing disease and combating climate change.
  • Conduct research on the risks of bias and invasion of privacy from the spread of AI.


Again, these were voluntary agreements, and it bears noting that these seven companies are fierce competitors and unlikely to share anything that costs them a competitive edge. The regulation of artificial intelligence will soon require more than a loose, voluntary agreement to uphold ethical standards.

The U.S. isn’t alone in trying to regulate the burgeoning AI industry. Governments around the globe — friendly, and not so friendly — are doing the same. Learning the secrets of AI is the new global arms race. Using AI disinformation to control or influence human behavior is a potential weapon with terrifying prospects.

It’s also a tool that corporations are already using. I got an email this week urging me to buy an AI program that would generate promotional emails for my company. All I had to do was give the program the details about what I wanted to promote and the AI algorithm would do the rest, cranking out “lively and engaging” emails sure to win over my customers. I don’t have a company, but if I did, the barely unspoken implication was that this program could eliminate a salary.

It’s part of what’s driving the strike by screen actors and writers against the major film and television studios: The next episode of your favorite TV show could be “written” by an AI program, thereby eliminating a salary. Will the public care — or even know — if, say, the latest episode of Law & Order was generated by AI? Will Zuckerberg figure out how to use AI to coerce you into giving Meta even more of your personal information? (Does it even Meta at this point? Sorry.) You can be sure we’ll find out the answer to those questions fairly soon.

And we’ve barely even begun to see how AI can be utilized in the dirty business of politics. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ campaign used an AI-generated voice of Donald Trump in an ad that ran in Iowa last week. Trump himself never spoke the words used in the ad, but if you weren’t aware of that, you might be inclined to believe he did. Which is, of course, the point: to fool us, to make the fake seem real. It’s coming. It’s here. Stay woke, y’all.

Sweet dreams are made of this
Who am I to disagree
I travel the world and the seven seas
Everybody’s looking for something …

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Facebook is Great!

Welp, here I am, back on page 3, writing the Letter From the Editor. It’s weird, sure, but I’ve only done this 837 times in the last 20 years, so I think I can handle it. The Flyer staff is rotating this column until we hire a new full-time editor, and this week, the honor is mine.

As most publications do, the Flyer keeps close track of its internet traffic. Editorial staffers get a read-out each week of which web posts drew the most readers. Food stories get a lot of action. So do breaking news posts and oddball stories, like, say, a wallaby escaping from the zoo. My “At Large” column typically makes it somewhere into the top 10, though not every week. I don’t say this to brag, but to help illustrate the following point: Facebook literally shapes what you read. Here’s a real-world example:

On Wednesday morning, when the weekly Flyer issue goes online, I post my column on my Facebook page. Within two hours, I know whether or not Facebook approves of the content. Most weeks, by noon, I have 75 to 100 “likes.” Over the course of the rest of the week, I usually hit 120-140 likes and 40 or 50 comments. Several people usually “share” my post, which also helps get it out into the world. Facebook is a big driver of readers to the Memphis Flyer site, and not just for my column.

But then there are those weeks when Facebook apparently decides that nobody needs to see “At Large.” Two hours after I post it, the column will have two or three likes. At the end of the week, maybe 20 people will have seen the story link on Facebook. My friends say they don’t see it in their feed, even though they “follow” me. I can’t figure out what negative algorithms are being triggered on these off-weeks, but it’s frustrating as hell, knowing Facebook is “curating” my audience. And, sadly, it’s about to get worse.

In late July, Meta, er, Facebook announced it was moving entirely to algorithmic, “recommendation-based” content rather than that of a true social media platform based primarily on friend/acquaintance-based content. Instagram, owned by Meta, has already made the switch, which is why you’re seeing tons of “reels” from strangers on IG, instead of pictures of your friend’s vacation. Instagram’s algorithms are prioritizing content based on your browsing habits and geo-fenced locations, not your social media contacts.

All this is helping further de-platform and destroy local news-media operations. Facebook has since its founding used content from news operations without paying for it. News is just another piece of “content,” along with cat videos and comely “influencers” dancing on TikTok.

There is a bipartisan bill called the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA) that’s been floating around Congress for months. It would provide a temporary, limited-antitrust, safe harbor for local news publishers to collectively negotiate with Facebook and Google for fair compensation for the use of their content. The act is tailored to ensure that coordination by news publishers protects trustworthy, quality journalism and rewards publishers who invest in journalists, giving them a higher portion of the funds that result from the negotiations.

If you value trustworthy local news produced by legitimate journalists, I urge you to learn more about the JCPA and bring it to the attention of your congressperson.

And on that note, if you’re reading this online, I urge you to scroll down below this column, read the text in that big yellow box, and then click the black bar that reads “donate.” You’ll learn how to support the Flyer’s work by chipping in any amount you’d like. You’ll also see a list of the hundreds of folks who already support us as part of our Frequent Flyer program.

If you’re reading this in print, we thank you, as well! We take pride in being one of the very few progressive voices in the Mid-South, and we’d appreciate your help in keeping that voice alive and free to the public. Facebook sure isn’t going to provide original local news or content. … And they’re probably going to make it really difficult for you to read this column.

The Memphis Flyer is now seeking candidates for its editor position. Send your resume to hr@contemporary-media.com.

Categories
At Large Opinion

Mind Over Meta

Tatine hangs with Al Yankovic. (Photo: Bruce VanWyngarden)

Facebook is a daily presence in my life and has been since 2010 when I joined the social medium to post pictures of a trip my wife and I took to the Grammys in Los Angeles. I remember I created an “album” of photos, each carefully captioned: the beach at Malibu; the HOLLYWOOD sign; Tatine meeting Weird Al Yankovic. So exciting!

It was around this time, I suppose, that most of us basically stopped shooting pictures with a camera. You remember that tedious process: You’d take your film to Walgreens, then wait a few days to go pick up your developed pictures (along with the negatives, in case you wanted to go crazy and print another copy). Then you’d sit out in the parking lot, looking through your vacation shots or whatever. No filters, no enhancements. What Walgreens gave you is what you got. How crude.

Now, our phones take care of all of that. Instant sharing! Filters! Video! No more dusty sleeves of old photos stuck in drawers. And Facebook has all our shots organized by date and subject matter and helpfully suggests reposting them as “memories” for us, so we can amuse/bore our friends all over again.

Around the world, three billion people are using Facebook to advertise their lives, faces, interests, writing, families, gardens, pets, food, businesses, music, vacations, politics. And Facebook uses all that free information we provide to make mega-billions of dollars from companies that want to advertise to us. It is a marketing behemoth with algorithms so advanced, you’d swear they’re reading our thoughts. That’s because they are, literally — the ones we write down for them. We are Facebook’s product and they’re getting top dollar for us, but we don’t seem to much care. Check out my new shoes, y’all!

Facebook has made some huge blunders. When the company pushed for a “pivot” to video in 2015, thousands of journalists were laid off, replaced by video “content providers.” Three years later, Facebook had to tell advertisers (and newspapers and media organizations) that video was not working as they’d promised. People actually preferred reading to being spoon-fed videos. Oops, said Mr. Zuckerberg, give us some journalism again, please.

And the company seems a little touchy these days, given all the bad press it’s gotten regarding its failure to remove political disinformation and racist, white-supremacist content from its platform. I have a friend who was reprimanded by the Facebook popo last week for using the word “Chubby” in referencing the Sixties singer, Chubby Checker. Yes, it’s his name, but it breached some sort of algorithmic dog whistle. I’m guessing that typing “Porky Pig” would definitely get you 30 days in the hole.

Two weeks ago, I wrote a column about the daily emails I get from Donald Trump. The Flyer art director illustrated the column with an image of a Trump fundraising ad that had been emailed to me. Normally, when I post my column on Facebook on Wednesday morning, I start getting comments, likes, etc., within minutes, mainly because I’m followed by a few hundred people, so it shows up in their news feed. That week, however, nothing. By mid-morning, I’d had two comments, maybe three or four likes. Facebook was obviously suppressing the distribution of the column.

When I figured it out and changed the art, things got back to normal quickly, but it gave me a real sense of how much Facebook can shape what all of us read in our news feeds — for good or evil.

Here’s hoping they’re as vigilant at stopping nazi memes and hate speech as they are at keeping Donald Trump from getting a free ad — and at protecting Chubby Checker’s feelings.

Categories
News The Fly-By

MEMernet: Aerial Porta-Potty and Reddit Meta

CREDIT: Posted to Instagram by tobysells.

A round-up of Memphis on the World Wide Web.

Half-Mile High Club

Roof work on the FedExForum continued hilariously last week as a crane hoisted the porta-potty from the top.

Posted to Instagram by tobysells.

Red-handed meta

We’ve been caught!

A keen-eyed Reddit user noted that someone here at Flyer HQ has been mining the Memphis subreddit for tasty MEMernet morsels.

“Memphis Flyer definitely has a Redditor on staff,” read a post last week from u/productiveslacker73. “Kudos for giving the OPs credit.”

Keep up the good work, r/Memphis!

More meta

Last week’s Flyer cover story (“By Air and by Land!”) was the 50th written by our very own sports writer, Frank Murtaugh. 50!

Here’s to 50 more, Frank!

Posted to Facebook by Anna Traverse

Categories
News News Blog

Michael Strahan’s Personal Trainer Gives Health Advice

Latreal La Mitchell

  • Latreal “La” Mitchell

This Saturday, Latreal “La” Mitchell, personal trainer for Pro Football Hall of Famer Michael Strahan, will provide Memphians with fitness and nutrition advice.

On behalf of Meta, a new line of wellness products created by the makers of fiber supplement brand Metamucil, Mitchell will be hosting “MEMfix: Edge Event.” The one-day community event will be held in the Edge District — an area within a quarter-mile radius of the Marshall/Monroe Avenues intersection.

Attendees will be able to enjoy a number of healthy activities, including cycling classes, health screenings, and a wellness lounge. People will also get the chance to meet one-on-one with Mitchell for health and wellness advice and motivation.

“La will help motivate the people of Memphis, and show them how easy it can be to start making small, healthy changes,” said a spokesperson for Meta. “As a personal trainer and health coach, La will be talking to people about their overall health. She will be offering tips and inspiration to [help Memphians] start making small, healthy changes that may have greater effects on their overall health.”

Mayor A C Wharton and representatives from Common Table Health Alliance and other community agencies will join Mitchell for the event. It takes place Saturday, October 18th from noon to 3 p.m. at the intersection of Marshall and Monroe.

MEMfix: Edge Event is among a series of health-centered events occurring this year as a result of a new partnership between Meta, Common Table Health Alliance, and the City of Memphis.

“Meta’s goal is to help provide the community with the resources it needs to get healthy,” Meta’s spokesperson said. “We know there are great local organizations already doing this, and our hope is that by partnering with them we can reach more Memphians and have a greater impact on the community’s health and wellness.”

The partnership between Meta, Common Table Health Alliance, and the city is also part of the multi-health wellness line’s national initiative and sweepstakes, “Meta Effect,” which encourages people nationwide to make small, healthy changes that can impact them significantly. People can visit here for more information on the initiative.

“[We want] all Americans to experience what we like to call the ‘Meta Effect,’ which is the simple idea that one small change can lead to good things,” the spokesperson said.

Out of the nation’s 50 largest metropolitan areas, Memphis is the unhealthiest, according to the American College of Sports Medicine’s 2014 American Fitness Index. Contributing factors to Memphis earning the top slot were the city’s high obesity rate (35 percent of adults in Shelby County are obese), low fruit and vegetable consumption by many residents, and high cardiovascular disease and diabetes death rates.