@olliebown
Professor @UNSW Art&Design. Research: Creative AI, computational creativity, music, IxD, society, evolution. Music: Icarus, Tangents. And: Social justice, equity, cycling, urban planning, 18-19C history. Don't know why I post, mostly notes to self.
150 school kids murdered by a foreign state and the news media has just moved on, Hegseth talks about punching while they're down. Foreign leaders missing passing up discerning critique: action needs to be taken but the US is making a mess of it. If only there was some kind of league of nations.
What I dearly hope it will do is flush out the word-salad associative memory random hacks that a lot of human writers are prone to.
For a quick intro, it's great. What's changed is that I used to be able to rely on that as an indicator of the student's ability. But now I can't. As for the AI's ability, it's the same problem. It *looks* good. Even a peer reviewer is convinced. But is there depth? I remain open, but doubtful.
Has the AI made me redundant, made the PhD student redundant? No. The problem is that most of human cognition takes a word-salad associative memory approach. That doesn't mean that real hard work, work that AI can't do, isn't set in the background. When I squint, the work looks amazing.
It's getting unworkable out there! I'm sent a PhD application that pushes all my buttons. This person understands my work and is seemingly anticipating the next project I'm working on. So I check what ChatGPT would do if I asked them to write a PhD enquiry to Oliver Bown, and it's the same.
Couldn't agree more. There's nothing quite like the smell of cigarette smoke in a so-called "VIP Lounge" to remind you how fundamentally corrupt our politics is around gambling.
First time below 90kg in at least 10 years, probably more like 20 or even 30. Aiming to settle around 85kg and get back to building strength. i.e., I survived the young children phase and I'm back!!
Tony Benn should indeed be rolled out at these times.
Lots of talk about whether Trump hating Anthropic means you should like Anthropic. I have a list of issues with Anthropic as long as my arm, but people need to remember the orders of magnitude greater evil Trump represents. Orders of magnitude. A government bullying a corp to trash its ethics.
Watching carefully. This is the juncture. If Trump successfully manipulates the midterms then no democracy in the world can consider itself safe from the interference of a buoyed global autocratic/oligarcic order.
abcnews.com/US/pro-trump...
The richest man owns X.
The second and third richest men control Google.
The fourth richest man owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
The fifth richest man owns The Washington Post.
And now the sixth richest could soon take over both Paramount and Warner Bros.
See the problem here?
Once a week I turn down a potentially excellent international PhD candidate because there is almost no chance of getting international PhD scholarships. I miss the global rules-based order and international cooperation.
UNSW AI Institute's own Toby Walsh at the National Press Club, far from an AI hater, talking great sense on copyright and ethical design.
iview.abc.net.au/video/NC2611...
Not quite: you can't have a consecutive repeat.
So the password "eh439dhto6hh" is not allowed but the password eh439dhto6h" is.
Apple password policy includes not having ANY two repeated characters. I just had to simplify my password to make the grade.
Following!
This sent me on a morning distraction. Checked Hendrix, checked Cream, checked out the Population II album mentioned in the thread. I think I'm with you, Blue Tapes, Communication Breakdown is the metal template.
Is the dominant academic trend NIHILism (nothing-is-how-it-looks-ism)? Pick some scientists or engineers or government agencies or corporations. Assume they completely believe all the theories and models and simplifications they make. Explain to everyone that Nothing Is How It Looks.
Raving moderate!
Thanks! I was trying to remember what this movie was called the other day. Must be topical 😅
V important paper highlighting LLMs' deep incoherence, helping measure the depth of the stochastic parrot. Also highlights the kudos of Edward Asford Lee for warning us early that explainable AI was another turtles-all-the-way-down situation. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yv13...
Ever seen a sticker on a glass door saying "caution glass door"? I've only seen one in my life. It was at the Sainsbury's on London Road in Brighton back in 2002 when I lived there. It's still my favourite example to discuss in an introduction to aesthetics in interaction design.
Back in 2026 when people started releasing AI agents onto the web with their own bank accounts and email addresses hoping to witness self-advancing super intelligence but just ended up starting a new digital plague.
C'mon consumer rights Australia. I know I have unsubscribed from Insta-spam email notification. I just logged into Instagram (something I do very rarely these days) and this triggered immediate re-subscription of Insta-spam email notifications. Do people not know the inbox is sacred?
We have a problem. The targets of these creative protest actions are billionaire power holder who have invoked Nazi or fascist views and grossly distorted the truth against the public interest.
These works are expressions of love for humanity, truth, equality.
www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02...
Sometimes a line isn't a standalone object, it's a paragraph border. Go to the paragraph above and choose "no borders".
Nobody should have to go to a YouTube video to work out how to delete a horizontal line in MS Word, but I did, and I actually gained a tiny bit better understanding of the UX lunacy involved in this juggernaut.
TLDR (next post)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyET...
Just need to write this down. Just for me. Don't copy. Extremely amazing.
Baby spinach
Cherry tomatoes
Avocado
Spanish olives (black and green deli olives with a teeny touch of chili)
Tinned tuna
Prosciutto
Fresh mozzarella
Mix it all up. No dressing. Eat.
Let me know if you find out!
RMIT is hosting another PhD scholarship connected to our project "From Noise To Signal", exploring sound in the gallery.
sialsound.studio/news/arc-phd...
Gold. Joe Biden ripping off Neil Kinnock's speech (fair enough). Neil Kinnock just being plain amazing. Angus Deaton joking that neither ever reached high office!
youtu.be/-q3OZGuty18?...