#78: Things being better, worse, different, and new.

💎 Word gems

Things could be better (Experimental History / Adam Mastroianni)

This is a fascinating research study that suggests when we think of how things could be different, we imagine things being better. It’s a surprising finding, with multiple studies to back up its claim, but it fits well with the adage that the default state of capitalism is to keep us wanting what we don’t have.

When you ask people to imagine how things could be different, they imagine how things could be better. This doesn’t depend on how we word the question, and it happens in people’s everyday thoughts. Everybody seems to do it; demographics make little difference. Polish people also imagine how things could be better, as do Chinese people answering in Mandarin. And people imagine how things could be better even though it appears to be harder than imagining how things could be worse.

It’s not your imagination: Shopping on Amazon has gotten worse (Washington Post / Geoffrey A. Fowler)

The same problem is happening with Alexa and Google search results - inserting ads everywhere degrades usefulness and erodes trust.

Amazon has turned shill results into its next big thing. After selling $31 billion in ads last year, Amazon became the third-largest online ad company in the United States, trailing only Google and Facebook. Some brands and sellers love Amazon ads because they show up right at the moment you’re making a purchase — though others tell me ads have become an extra Amazon tax they have to pass on to customers.

The peculiar case of Japanese web design (sabrinas.space)

This is a fascinating piece looking at how and why Japanese web design feels so distinct from other countries.

[I]t’s clear that the introduction of the iPhone/smartphones didn’t impact Japan in the same way as the rest of the world (or at least, the English-speaking world).

In fact, the early 2000s design differences suggest that Japan has been on its own design trajectory for a while.

The promise and the peril of ChatGPT ($) (Platformer / Casey Newton)

ChatGPT is the latest product coming out of the explosion of AI tools. It’s scarily good and raises so many questions: Will it replace existing algorithmic products like Google and Amazon? Should we (and could we) see what is being fed into these models to give us these outputs? Should we know if something online is made by a human or an AI?

Finally, there’s the basic unknowability of what ChatGPT is really doing. For as great of an advancement as ChatGPT appears to be, it’s important to remember that there’s no real technological breakthrough here that made the bot appear to be smarter. Rather, OpenAI simply trained its LLM on far more parameters than other public models have to date. At some point, training AI models on exponentially more models than their predecessors caused an exponential leap in their abilities. But the mechanism through which that leap took place is still unknown to us — and it’s why no one who has built one of these things can tell you with any real specificity why it answered any particular question the way it did.

💩 Cool shit

ChatGPT - Try it out yourself.

You Don’t Need HTML - What it says on the tin.

Sign Learner - A browser extension to help you learn ASL while browsing the web.

Map of the Universe - A fun exploration of the observable universe and it doesn’t even begin to convey the scale of the universe.

Editable Dance Generation from Music - The recent AI advances continue to astound me. This generates realistic dance moves based on the music being input.

NationStates - A simulator to create your own nation.

OpenAI Cookbook - A great resource filled with examples using OpenAI.

Pattern Collider - Generate unique tile patterns.

World Cup visualized - A really unique data visualization of every 2022 World Cup match.

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