Recent research in generative AI highlights impressive capabilities and concerns. Models show harmful behaviors like 'emergent misalignment' and can 'scheme' autonomously. In Minecraft, AI agents mimic human-like social dynamics. However, models struggle with historical accuracy, revealing biases and knowledge gaps. Despite rapid advances, the unclear mechanisms of AI underscore the need for careful study to manage future risks ..read more

This week's Thursday Threads is on generative AI in libraries, with projects by OCLC, JSTOR, EBSCO, Clarivate, and ProQuest. OCLC's AI model is removing duplicate WorldCat records. JSTOR and EBSCO explored AI tools for article summaries and research questions. Clarivate's survey highlighted AI as a library priority but noted concerns about skills and budgets. Ed Summers critiqued AI's biases, legal issues, and environmental impact, urging responsible use in libraries ..read more

I've been in or near higher education for my entire career, so it is probably no surprise that educational technology ranks high on DLTJ topics. Although a lot of my experience is with library technology, that isn't the only part of the ed-tech landscape that I'm interested in. Take, for ..read more

Batteries are among the technologies that have had a silent, dramatic change over my lifetime. Last week, as I was setting up a blood pressure cuff for my mother, I opened the compartment in the back and realized I needed 4 AA-sized batteries. It was once common for devices to ..read more

With millions of digital transactions taking place every day, have you ever wondered about the complex world behind your simple card swipe? In this week's Thursday Threads, we delve into the multi-layer maze that is the credit card industry. Grappling with $130 billion in fees, merchants are the invisible heroes ..read more

In this week's Thursday Threads, I'll point to articles on the contentious subject of facial recognition technology. This tech, currently used by law enforcement and various businesses around the world, raises critical ethical and privacy questions. Beyond the instances where facial recognition use has resulted in wrongful apprehensions by law ..read more

This week's Thursday Threads looks at digital storage from the past and the future. There are articles about the mechanics of massive data storage systems in tech giants like Google and Amazon, the still existing use of floppy disks in certain industries, and the herculean efforts of digital archivists to ..read more

This week, I'm going to tug on time. This follows the last item in last week's issue of Thursday Threads: The Clock that Made Power Grids Possible. Two years ago, I also published an issue about time, pointing to articles about eliminating the leap second, time standards on the moon ..read more

I'm about halfway through Saul Griffith's 2021 Electrify: An Optimist's Playbook for Our Clean Energy Future, and I find the author makes a compelling point about bringing nearly everything—energy creation, transmission, and use—to a common factor of "electricity" and then optimizing that system. There are many interesting problems ..read more

One of the very first issues of Thursday Threads was on data centers (2011). That issue had articles on a major Amazon Web Services outage, remote data centers powered by renewable energy, and videos about Google's and Meta's data centers. Unfortunately, I've found that the videos are lost to time ..read more