Links for June

AI, Economics, Suicide, Crime, Mortality, Sci-Fi

Wherever you’re reading this, I appreciate you! I’m travelling a lot this month and the pace of posts might be a little slower than usual, but I hope for it to pick up by month’s end. For now, some items of interest:

AI Ups and Downs

In links for April I talked about a woman who was fooled when criminals used an AI-generated clone of her daughter’s voice to fake a kidnapping. Another way to use AI technology for ill-gotten gain is to manipulate the market with fake news of disasters befalling a country, region, or a particular company. Consider this example by way of Zvi: A faked photo of an explosion at the Pentagon seems to have led to a substantial drop in the S&P 500 that reversed when word got around the image was bogus. Unscrupulous short sellers could have a field day with this sort of thing.

Arnold Kling discusses a more honest application of AI generated sound and picture: AI generated house concerts. The basic idea is that a band might license AI generated versions of themselves that you could engage to play private concerts right there in your living room, maybe with some sort of customizability like you get to do guest vocals on one of the songs. (Now picturing myself doing the Henry Rollins bit in Tool’s “Bottom.”)