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Privacy against the machine
I have given up on privacy. I know the idea is sound – not everyone should know everything about everyone – but the society or “reality” that we are building, supporting, craving is incompatible with privacy. Denying a cookie here and there, or worrying about submitting private information to a large language model, is nothing but a rather transparent fig leaf. The best we can hope for is to remain just a set of features and slip past public notice, but avoiding the notice… Read more
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AI for therapy?
People are turning to AI chatbots for mental health support – talking through breakups, anxiety, depression, sometimes even suicidal thoughts. Dangerous? A recent paper (Moore, Jared, et al. April 2025) at least says AI is not ready for therapy. (Funny that back in the 80’s the first chatbot, Eliza, was made for therapy, which was, of course, far off of the capabilities of todays LLMs.) The researchers found that LLMs show stigma, reinforce delusions, and lack the human depth required for therapy. Valid concerns—especially… Read more
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AI = Accessible Intelligence
AI is transforming many aspects of our lives, and its potential to enhance accessibility is particularly exciting for those who still struggle to participate fully. Recently, at the Annual Conference for Inclusion Enterprises in Germany, I discussed how AI tools like ChatGPT can help. In particular, I am impressed by how easily AI can translate between different media formats—voicing written text, subtitling spoken words, or describing visual inputs. I also found out that powerpoint already supports live-subtitling and translating out of the box. So,… Read more
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The Babelfish Moment
One of the most wondrous inventions in science fiction is the universal translator in Star Trek or the Babel fish in hitchhiker`s guide to the galaxy – a device (fish) that can easily and quite poignantly translate all kinds of texts. In Star Trek it is one of the keys to unite peoples and build a federation. Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT are bringing us now to the brink of actually breaking down the language barrier and I think this is one of,… Read more