Buzzwords of the Day 9-20-2023
#Today’s Buzzwords:
declare -a Buzzword = { “Blockchain”, “Artificial Intelligence”, “Dark Pattern” }
$Buzzword{0} = “Blockchain” – NFTs, But for Pallets of Toilet Roll
The UK rolled out a new law this year, which comes into effect this week pertaining to authenticating digital documents. In an effort to bring the mechanics of international commerce into the 21st century, they aim to establish a system for authenticating digital documents (such as invoices, trade manifests, etc.) for deals processed digitally. In the past, such documents could be verified a number of ways including stamps & seals, as well as limiting copies, but how can similar protections be applied to a digital document?
It appears the current plan is to use blockchain technology to digitally sign agreements, which is nothing new. What is new, is the UK taking steps towards establishing a legal framework around physical ownership of digital content. From a cursory glance, the law appears to strictly limit these arguments to the space of trade agreements and only for the purposes of establishing ownership in case of a document’s veracity being called into question.
What stands to be seen is how this law will be upheld, what/who will be in charge of the blockchain holding this system up, and what other media might governments seek to apply this legal structure to, should it turn out to function in practice? Something to consider, especially when the average member of the average international government could not likely explain the difference between an Artificial Intelligence and a Large Language Model. Time will tell.
Full article: https://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/The-most-important-law-youve-never-heard-of-the-Electronic-Trade-Documents-Act
$Buzzword{1} = “Artificial Intelligence” – They’re Putting AI in the Visual Studio now!
This is going to be a recurring one, considering the recent explosion of Large Language Model (LLM) integration across industries beyond the tech sector. Every day feels closer to an announcement of “We put AI in the toaster!”, but here we are. Per The Verge*, Microsoft plans to roll out an LLM-based chatbot, “Github Copilot” to Visual Studio users for a monthly subscription. Bonus points may be available for this one, as “stuff-as-a-service” will certainly be a recurring theme as well.
With that in mind, this integration makes a lot of sense – LLMs are a multi-faceted tool that can, when wielded properly, be a force multiplier for developers & creatives. It is not at all an adequate substitute for human input, and it is more often wrong than it is right when solving a prompt for the first time. In learning to write scripts for bash, ZSH, and Powershell, I personally avoided using any LLM or copilot tools (to help cement an understanding of how their commands function and interact) before I start working off of pre-generated code blocks.
Full article here: https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/20/23882605/github-copilot-chat-ai-chatbot-individuals
$Buzzword{2} = “Dark Pattern” – Epic AND Google in One Week? [edit - ALSO Amazon?]
I should start any of these with a definition of what a Dark Pattern (also known as a "deceptive design pattern") is: [ " a user interface that has been carefully crafted to trick users into performing an action desired by the UX design infrastructure “ ]
There were two headlines today that covered this one. A class action lawsuit against Epic Games offers Fortnite players an opportunity to claim a portion of settlement funds from a suit alleging Epic engineered the store design on Fortnite in a manner that allowed players to easily purchase store items unintentionally. This is a practice that is still prevalent in other games (frankly, many games) with in-game stores, and noticeably more prevalent in games with an “obfuscation factor” for money spent, such as a proprietary in-game currency like V-Bucks, CoD Points, or Halo Coins. The obfuscation of pricing by means of these currencies is another practice that can be perceived as deceptive, and will likely be covered at a later date.
The second Dark Pattern of note this week comes from Google, the almighty search engine itself. The United States Justice Department has accused Google of weaving their search engine so tightly into the web that competitors like DuckDuckGo and Bing cannot fairly compete in the market. Is this a case of “Google paid everyone off to use Google”, or is it “Maybe Google is just a better search engine?”. It’s more complicated than that. True, there are a lot of partnership deals Google has struck, many of which position them to dominate market share of the search engine space. Alternative search engines are equally powerful (personally, I use DuckDuckGo primarily for their privacy features), but even I will casually “Google” something when searching on my phone, mostly by muscle memory. This is where the “Dark Pattern” accusation breaks down for me slightly. It is entirely plausible that Google intentionally engineers their search engine into a preferential spot, particularly with Chromium-based browsers. Arguably, it is Google’s right to do so as well; particularly with Chrome. It is also entirely plausible that competing search engines are struggling because, frankly, muscle memory is hard to break. There are reasons why Kleenex sells more tissues than “small competing brand goes here” – muscle memory and reflexes.
*[edit] - on the first installment of the series, I get to add content! Thanks for breaking news right after my first post :’)
New court filings (reported originally by the Wall Street Journal) accuse Amazon of ALSO engineering dark patterns into their interface, in what the FTC claims were deliberate decisions by members of key leadership { Neil Lindsay (Sr. VP - Prime) , Russell Grandinetti (Sr. VP - International), and Jamil Ghani (VP - Prime Subscription Program). The lawsuit further claims that these individuals were personally aware of down-scope instructions to developers to include dark patterns in the client-facing UI, specifically to drive up Prime subscriptions.
Full articles: https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/19/tech/fortnite-refund-settlement-claim/index.html | https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/20/technology/personaltech/google-search-engine-trial-antitrust.html | https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/20/23882675/amazon-prime-ftc-dark-patterns-lawsuit
